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I had this scenario in my head a few weeks ago. I thought there'd be more, but once I wrote their bar scene they were done. So here's the completed bar scene (sadness) and some of my notes for an idea I had about men being born with the hearts of animals.
The Bar Scene
Mary said that it got easier with practice, spotting the boys with the hearts of animals. I guess I never had the gift. She and I would sit in one of the low tables in the back of Murphy’s Bar, her elbows pressing into the table as she cradled a pint of whatever was on tap. I usually had a Sprite although sometimes I let them slip Bacardi into it and pretended not to notice. It was our usual Wednesday night routine: grab our customary table at the back of the bar while Mary tried to teach me how to spot the human men. So far I had learned to tell the mouse-hearted but she insisted I was cheating since I went off of their twitchiness rather than the state of their hearts.
“Try again,” she said, knocking back far too much of the pint at once before she rested her head against the wall with her eyes half-shut. I rolled my eyes and pointed past her at the table near the front where five men sat with their sleeves pushed up past their elbows. They were drinking Vodka straight from the bottle; I was pretty sure they were covering for something.
“An Ostrich, a Jackal, and two Vultures,” I said, my voice lilting up at the end, leaving my sentence a question. Mary quirked an eyebrow at me without opening her eyes and grabbed her mug without using the handle. She took a sip then wrapped her other hand around the tankard and sat up straight. With her back to the table of men she pointed over her shoulder to the men in turn.
“Rabbit, Termite, Termite, and a Vulture.” She nodded at me before turning her tankard over on the table, empty. “Good job on that one, although I’m beginning to think you cheated.”
I leaned back in my seat and motioned for another round. The waiter squeaked before scuttling to the bar for a refill. He was most definitely a Mouse.
I leaned back in my seat and motioned for another round. The waiter squeaked before scuttling to the bar for a refill. He was most definitely a Mouse.
“I didn’t cheat exactly… more like an educated guess.”
“What gave it away?” Mary asked, taking her replacement from the waiter without sparing him a second glance. I smiled at him slightly and his eyes widened in fear before he left to refill to the table of the men we were examining. “Was it the fact that he’s been drinking the dregs of all his friends’ drinks? Or was it the state of his heart?”
I shrugged and drank half of my Sprite in one sip before I choked and started coughing: Vodka in this one. Mary chuckled under her breath before she patted my hand condescendingly.
“It’s alright, Dee,” she said. “Some people just don’t see it.”
“Yeah well, I kinda feel as if I should, you know?” I smiled as I sipped slowly at the laced soda. “My mom was the first to diagnose the problem all those years ago, feels as if the ability should be hereditary or something.”
“Well Heaven knows the Hearts aren’t,” Mary said. “Dated a Lion once, damn that was nice, but his brother was the meekest Mouse I’d ever met.”
“You think there are any Humans our age left, Mary?” The Mouse waiting tables had disappeared behind the bar so I drummed my fingers against the tabletop making my empty soda glass rattle in tune to the beat.
She drained the last of her beer and upended this mug next to the first.
“The truth, Dee? I’m not even sure the girls are Human anymore.”
Notes
The media’s reports said that the problem was that too many boys were being born stillborn. It was something in the water, something in the hormones, something was happening. That wasn’t the problem. The problem was that boys were being born without hearts.
`The first of the Heartless was found out by accident, beating out his tiny Ostrich-heart in the arms of his traumatized pediatrician. I think my mother cried more than the Ostrich’s. She was the attending and this was the third of her tiny boys whose heart had raced between her fingertips until he took a tiny shuddering breath and lay still in her arms.
It wasn’t SIDS, it wasn’t anything they could discover from external examinations. The babies were perfectly healthy to look at, tiny fingers and toes and dimples in their cheeks when they smiled.
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