The Heart's Voice (Chapter 1)

“For more than thousands of years, the demons have been hunting for human souls. Most do not believe in the demon chief and the rest of the demons. The humans couldn’t care less about these silly folklores, but I know they’re not just stories because I’ve seen the reality. I’ve seen orphans wander out on the streets at night and never come back. I’ve seen beggars fall asleep on the sidewalks and never wake up. No one else notices them because no one cares. They would be glad to get rid of the helpless, homeless, lifeless people in the world.

If only the humans would stand and fight against the demons, I could be saved, but no. They won’t fight because they’re either cowards or completely stupid.”

“Who’re you talking to?” came a hoarse whisper.

“No one. Just talking to myself. There isn’t anyone around to talk to anyway,” Flo replied in an emotionless voice.

“Well, then shut up. We’re trying to work here,” the voice snapped and Flo heard something twitch. After that… footsteps. She felt a quiver go through her,

“Alright, alright, I’ll stay shut!” she shouted desperately and the footsteps stopped.

“Good girl.” The voice commented and the footsteps retreated. Flo wiped the forming sweat on her face in exhaustion. Her jet black hair, which was braided behind her back, was dripping with sweat. Her sapphire blue eyes fell on the pale, pink, pumping surface of the organ she’d been sweeping. It had red and purple veins coming out of it at different points. She picked up her broom and started again. They lived inside a giant dimension where the organs of an ancient dragon were scattered everywhere. They pumped and breathed like a real dragon would.

“This dragon is my last hope. If I keep its organs clean at all times, it might send me back to my own world; the Earth. That is my origin and home planet. These demons treat me like a slave. They only feed me twice a day for hours of cleaning and washing, even though people on Earth eat three meals a day. I used to live there once but the demons captured me and brought me here. It doesn’t really matter to me because I used to be the sweeper in a hospital wing… hearing people’s screams pierce my ears all the time.”

“I can hear you whispering something, Flo! If you’re done here, then move on to the heart,” one of the demons yelled from behind the walls. It was a strange power of being able to hear the tiniest whispers through a ten inch thick wall. Flo sighed and got off the soft surface of the unidentified organ. She stepped onto the concrete floor and slipped her feet into her worn out shoes. “This job keeps getting tiring by the hour,” she complained to herself.

She followed the sidewalk, passing different rooms where the demons were working, reading, teaching and doing all kinds of things. There was a laundry room where the demons of this quarter used to pile all of their dirty clothes in shoppers having their address tags attached to them. The shoppers would one by one be thrown into tiny holes where the clothes inside them would be washed and dry-cleaned. Finally, they would be sent back to whichever addresses were written on the tags.

Few of the very special rooms were either the ones that contained another one of the dragon’s organs or the chief’s research labs. Flo had never been to any of the labs because there was never any work for her there. After passing about a dozen different rooms she found a dead end. And at the very end was a trapdoor; almost hidden by shadows of the walls around it. Flo opened it and jumped inside. There was only one lantern hanging on a hook on the wall beside her. Flo took it and continued walking down the steps. The lantern was her only source of light and heat, both because there was no electricity in this dimension, nor were there any heat emitting substances. She was human so she was obviously emitting little heat all the time but that was all. Even the dragon’s organs had cold blood going through them.

Flo carefully walked down each step and in a few minutes time, she started hearing soft dim heartbeats. They got louder as she approached the heart. It gave off a vibrant, red light to ward off the dark, looking more alive than ever.

Flo put the lantern aside and walked towards it. Its veins ran horizontally, vertically and diagonally. Each starting from the heart and ending at the walls around it. The veins carried the blood from the heart to the purple walls that pumped at each heartbeat. The heart itself hung in mid-air like a sleeping soul. Flo stared at the mystifying object in front of her. “It looks almost magical… I can’t stop staring at it every time I come here.”

“Thank you!” a deep voice echoed through the entire room. It brought tremors to the walls and floor, sending Flo to the ground. Her heart leaped inside her and she held her breath. “What? Who said that?” she squeaked.

“Don’t be afraid. I am just a heart although I used to be a great and mighty dragon.”

The words soothed her and her feet found the energy to stand up again. “I’m aware of that. Now if you stop talking for a while I can clean and wash you up so you look as good as new.”

“Why? Do you not like me talking?” the voice shook the whole place again.

“No, it’s not that. It’s your voice. It’s too deep. It makes the entire place tremble and I don’t want to keep falling again. I might dislocate one of your veins by accident.”

There was dead silence. Flo’s words had gotten to the heart and it didn’t speak at all while she cleaned. The pumping continued. Thud thud…thud… thud thud… thud… A pattern she’d memorized a long time ago. She’d even made up a song to that beat. She sang while dipping the cloth in a bucket full of water and started sweeping. She stood on a metal plate attached to a rope that went up to the roof and the other end came down beside it. Flo pulled the rope hard. It was easier when she was just a child. She was lighter then. Still, she tried with all her might to lift herself up to the top portion of the heart. She tied a knot and got off.

“That tickles…” the heart spoke again, and again the entire place shook. Flo found it harder to balance herself on the already thumping heart but she managed to clean it.

When she was about to leave the heart whispered, “I know of a way to get you out of here.” Flo’s heart almost stopped beating at the thought of escape. She whirled around immediately and asked the obvious, “How do I get out?”

“It’s not going to be easy but I feel that you can do it. To get out, you will have to free me from this prison and I’ll free you. I’m the only one, other than the demons who is capable of opening the dimension gates.”

“That’s not just hard, it’s also impossible. Your organs are huge and they’re scattered all over. You can’t just expect me to free them all. I’m only human.”

“Oh, you won’t have to do that. You only have to destroy the seal placed on me.” Flo gave him a look that said, ‘you’re crazy if you think I can do that!’ “If you don’t want to do it, then fine. Go on living the life of a robot.”

“What did you say?” Flo snapped suddenly wide alert.

“I mean, look at yourself. Even though I can’t see you, I know that you’ve gotten thin to your bones.” Flo touched her cheeks, feeling the sharpness of her jaw underneath her skin. She stared at her hands and legs. She could see the shape of her bones. That is why her brown shirt always drooped down to her knees. It covered her shorts which she tied with a thin rope so that they don’t fall.

Noticing Flo’s silence, the heart continued, “I know you work all day without a single break. I heard you say that they fed you two times a day. I bet that each day after breakfast you work tirelessly until night comes. That’s when you eat your second meal and sleep. Do you really want to live like that?” Flo shook her head, “No. I don’t,” she admitted. “Then do this for me. You will have to look for the seal yourself. It could be the one place where the demons don’t ask you to ever clean because it’s too much of a risk for them. This is all the help I can give you…” the heart whispered and then when she turned around to walk away again, he said in a louder voice, “Oh, I’m so excited.”

The place shook again. “Uh… sorry about that.”

Inside a dark room somewhere, the demon scientists scribbled readings onto their notebooks. The monitors showed that it was behaving very strange lately.

“Hey, what’s the matter? Why’d you call the Chief of all demons to this filthy, undusted room?” A demon demanded while bursting into the room followed by an old man who was the chief.

“Sir, the readings­–”

“What about the readings? Show them to me!” the chief growled.

“Sir, according to the readings, it has been feeling quite happy recently. It’s always depressed but this is the strangest thing.” The scientist showed them the monitor on which there were lines going up and down in an uneven pattern.

The chief and the other demon looked at the monitor and then at each other as if they knew what was going on.

“The only reason for it to be happy is if somehow it was going to be freed soon. And if that happens, the dragon will regain its original form and destroy us all. We need more unhappy souls to keep its happiness level at minimum. We need to keep it asleep no matter what,” the chief explained.

Flo exited through a doorway made of stone and took off her ugly shoes once she was in a tiny dark room. She placed the lantern in the middle of the circular room and went to wash her hands from the washbasin. She found her metal cup near the wall somewhere. She washed it properly and only when she was sure that it was clean enough, she drank from it.

“Where’s tonight’s dinner? Someone was supposed to put it here for me so that I can eat up and rest when I get back from my work duties.”

She sat there and waited but no one came. Frustrated, she left the room and climbed a thick rope up the trapdoor. “Hey! Where is everybody?” She called and heard her voice echo back from every corridor. “No one’s around. Even the door guard isn’t guarding the–”

That’s when all the alphabets in the book hit her… she realized that this could be her only chance. No one is guarding the door…

“I’ll just take a peek inside to see what it is these demons are guarding all the time. Then I’ll look for someone to fix me my dinner.” Slowly, like a snake, Flo sneaked her way through. The door was already ajar and she saw that there was only a demon wearing a lab coat. He had glasses hanging from a chain through his neck and he was furiously scribbling something on a notebook. All the while he also seemed to be jumping from one monitor to the other, checking the screen and nodding to himself. He kept making weird faces every now and then. And after a short while he finally spoke,

“OH… I need to go to the bathroom. No one is there to sneak in. I’ll only take a second.” With that, the demon scientist slammed the notebook on a table and dashed for the bathroom door beside him.

“Alright. My luck is with me so far. The dummy went to the bathroom, leaving everything unprotected…” Flo entered the room and almost gasped at the sight in front of her. “What is that?” she whispered. Only a few feet away from her on the wall lay another piece of the dragon’s organ which was thumping harder than anything. Flo crept closer to it. In the middle hung a sleeping boy, with both his arms stretch out to his sides horizontally. The flesh on his arms seemed to have become a part of the organ.

“What are they doing to the poor boy?” As Flo stepped even closer, her foot got stuck in something. Almost immediately, she retrieved her foot in horror but breathed out when she saw that it was just something sticky on the floor… Then she looked around at the walls and all the dusty, dirty corners. Everything looked as if it had never been swept. “Wait a minute… a room where they never let me in would be a room which hasn’t been cleaned in years probably and I’m only fourteen. I was brought here at the age of ten which means… This place might have last been cleaned four years ago!”

The monitor flashed on and off suddenly when she spoke aloud. Flo checked the screen. She still knew how to read. It said that the happiness level was rising to maximum. “Isn’t that supposed to be a good thing?” She wondered out loud.

Suddenly, the organ started glowing. A whisper came out from it, “You found it, Flo. It’s me, the heart again. This boy is the seal. You have to break the seal. Kill the boy and I will be free.”

“What? K-kill? Are you mad? I can’t kill a person. I’m not one of them, you know. Isn’t there another way?” Flo sounded shocked.

“The only other way is to hack into their systems and detach the boy manually.”

“I’ll do that–” she was saying when she heard the scientist humming and washing his hands. She reacted quickly to her intuition and locked the bathroom door from the outside. The demon was still unaware. Then she turned to the organ, “What does hacking into their system mean?”

“You don’t know that? Forget it, just kill the boy. Stab him with a knife or something.”

“NO. Tell me what hacking means.”

“I don’t know what it means. I’m an ancient dragon. This is the modern time. You’re human so you of all people should have known.”

“I’m only a kid. I found the room at least, give me credit for that,” Flo argued, gesturing towards the dark gray room.

“Yes, all the demons have been dispatched. Chief, you must be tired by now. You go rest. We’ll handle things from here.”

Flo’s feet began to tremble at the sound of the people coming back. She managed to hide behind a corner table kept in a shadowed spot, hoping to escape the room as soon as she got the chance. Unfortunately, her luck had just ended the minute she’d stepped into this room. The corner behind the table was full of cobwebs and dust. Flo held back a cough while covering her mouth with her hand.

“The readings are even worse than before. And where’s Crayz?” The scientist asked the other demon who just shrugged dumbly. Suddenly the bathroom door banged, “Hey, get me out of here! Somebody!”

“I think we just found him. Crayz, you fool! You were in charge of this place. What if someone had sneaked in? Do you want the chief to turn you into a human? Well, do you?” The scientist asked harshly while unlocking the door for him.

“Sorry Jon… But I had to go, it was an emergency. You understand, don’t you?” Crayz asked with eyes full of apprehension.

“Well, you two settle this yourself. I’ll be leaving now. I’ve got work to do.” The third demon left awkwardly.

“You really are pathetic. The readings have gone worse while you were in the bathroom,” Jon said when the demon was gone.

“They’re same as before. Happy,” Crayz replied unenthusiastically.

“I’ve got some extra souls to feed it. We need to make sure that the readings don’t reach max otherwise, you know what’ll happen.”

“Yes, I know. It’ll be easier for it to break free…”

While Jon was opening a vile containing dark liquid, Crayz’s eyes wandered suspiciously around the room. Jon noticed him, “What’re you looking for?”

“Not what, it’s who. Did you see someone go out of this room when you were on your way here?”

“No, thankfully I didn’t. No one came in or got out,” Jon replied.

“That means that the person is still in here.”

“Who’re you talking about?” Jon asked, confused.

“The one who locked me in the bathroom, that’s who.”

Flo’s heart jumped inside of her, warning her that this could be it. She could be dead in a matter of seconds. Luckily for her, Jon just laughed at Crayz’s wild suspicions. “Don’t be a fool, Crayz. You must’ve accidentally closed the door while the lock was on. You must’ve locked yourself inside otherwise no one is stupid enough to dare to lock a demon scientist, however stupid, in a bathroom.”

Crayz banged his iron hard fist on the table in fury. “I am NOT stupid. I’m telling you. I’ll prove it to you!” he shouted and started searching under tables and chairs. He opened a dusty cupboard and more dust puffed onto his face. There was no one there either. Flo’s heart was hammering inside her. She kept thinking, ‘this is it. The demon will find and kill me… this is the end.’

“Crayz, stop it. You’re acting like a crazy man.”

“Oh, yeah? Well maybe that’s what I am. Crayz-eee!” Crayz pulled back a chair and it fell hard on the floor. One of its legs made a creek.

Jon rolled his eyes and concentrated on his work. He went over to a long, rectangular table. There were several tubes all connected to each other. One end was injected in the boy’s arm while the other had a funnel attached to it. Jon carefully poured the dark liquid into the funnel and then hurriedly opened several taps that released different chemicals into the tubes. The chemicals fused with the liquid and bubbles began to form.

“Hey, Crayz! Look here,” Jon called while still gazing at the changing liquids. Crayz was stomping towards a shadowed table in a corner. Flo had her hands balled to tight fists and could feel her uncut nails cutting into her flesh. She didn’t dare to breathe when she saw Crayz’s shadow on the wall beside her. Suddenly, the table shifted and was being lifted into the air. Flo fell backwards and her head hit the floor. She clapped her hands on her mouth to hold back a scream.

“Crayz! Something’s wrong!” Jon shouted urgently. Crayz dropped the table without giving a second glance and rushed over to his partner. Flo heard him sprint towards Jon with heavy footsteps and felt relief wash over her. At first, she struggled with her fingers, slowly opening them. They had gone numb by now and blood was just starting to ooze out. Flo breathed hard as she tilted her head upwards to see what had gone wrong.

“What is this? The body is rejecting the black liquor,” Jon told him and his long, stick fingers started working with the taps, adjusting their flow.

Crayz looked up to where the tube was injected to the arm. He squinted while walking closer to it. “Jon, stop. There’s nothing wrong with the tubes… the source of our problem is up there.” He pointed towards the injection tube where a red vapor was forming. Jon followed his finger but did not see anything at first. Then the vapor started to thicken. Jon’s eyes widened.

“What is that? This shouldn’t be happening. We have to stop it somehow.”

“I’m already on it.” Crayz covered the distance between him and the boy in a matter of seconds and roughly pulled out the injection tube.

“What are you doing, you fool! That’ll awaken the boy!” Jon yelled while fearfully glancing at the boy’s face over and over again. There was no change in his facial expressions, to his relief.

“I’m going to inject this on the other arm. This arm’s giving us troubles.”

“Good thinking,” Jon commented. Unluckily for Crayz, he’d wasted too much time already that the red vapor started to spread and surround the boy’s body like a barrier. When Crayz got close enough to inject, the vapor produced white sparks and electrocuted him. He was pushed back and fell onto the already damaged chair, further breaking it to pieces. Crayz growled in an exasperated tone and got up while clutching his right arm which was bleeding. He stepped forward again but Jon blocked the way,

“You really are crazy. Don’t get close to it if you treasure your life. Let me look at your arm once we’re done dealing with this thing.”

Flo gasped from underneath the table. ‘What’s happening?’ She tried roll to her side and pushed herself up into a sitting position, staring at the face hiding behind the red vapor. The boy’s eyebrow twitched. Flo crawled closer, making sure she was still hidden.

“I don’t think we can deal with it now.” Crayz started trembling all over, “It’s spreading to our machines and they’re producing sparks. This whole place might blow up if we don’t get out of here right now.”

“Are you positive about that?” Just as Jon said that, a small machine part blew up and rocketed towards the ceiling. Crayz was already backing towards the door. The minute another machine part blew up both demons broke into a run and darted out of the room.

“Flo! Get up! Get out of here. There is too much power leaking from the boy. Save yourself or else you both will die.” The heart spoke when the two coward demons had left.

Flo tried to get up but her head hit the table and she held it. It had already been throbbing from being banged

onto the floor and now this. “Ow…” Flo groaned and tears filled her eyes as she slowly crawled out from underneath the table. A machine exploded nearby and before Flo could even tell where it was, she was propelled towards the tables and chairs in the middle of the room.

“Flo!! Get up. Get OUT!” The heart commanded, “You have to get up. Come on. Don’t let the pain stop you. Push those tables away and run for it. You don’t have much time.”

Flo moved her aching arms and placed them on the broken table on top of her. She used all her power in pushing it upwards. Unfortunately, something heavy fell from the ceiling and Flo screamed.

“I can’t move! My leg! Something fell on it! It’s too painful, it’s killing me!”

“No, you can’t give up. It will kill you if you don’t move from there. The room is caving in! I’m sorry I can’t do anything to help…” The heart sounded depressed, like he’d already given up hope; so had Flo. She gave one last look at the sleeping boy… their eyes met… He seemed sad for some reason. Flo closed her eyes, ‘Wait! He’s awake! I can’t just leave him here. He’ll die too!’

No matter how much Flo struggled, she just couldn’t keep herself awake long enough. The last thing she

remembered was that the heavy weight on her leg was being lifted. Shadows lingered on top of her…