#FridayFlash – The Donor
The Weighing of the Heart, from the British Museum
Awareness has been slow in coming to the corpse, but it explodes into life as it opens its eyes. Bandages cover its face, and it cannot see, but its fury gathers in its dormant muscles. Life sparks throughout its dead fibres, and it tears its right arm free from its wrappings. Cold fingers form hooks and rip the fabric away from its face. Its eyelids flicker, and its vision swings from blurry to pin sharp and back again. What on earth is going on?
The corpse realises it is not merely a corpse, it is a mummy. Just as it requested. Its heirs fulfilled its wishes. It would smile if it could remember how.
Realisation dawns, and the urge to smile splits in two. The process has gone awry. They have followed the procedure – up to a point. It concentrates, and performs an inventory of its body. Lungs and liver, both gone. Presumably resting in their designated canopic jars. But the stomach and intestines are still there – as is the brain. What? The brain should be gone, and there should be jars for the guts.
A chilling howl erupts from the throat of the corpse. The heart is missing. The only organ that should remain present after mummification is gone. Without the heart, it cannot pass into the Halls of Ma’at for the final judgment. Without the heart… I am doomed.
* * *
Max lies in the hospital bed. A drama plays out on the television, and women with spray tans gesticulate in silence since the sound is off. He barely pays attention, preferring instead to gaze out of the window at the blue sky, and the waving branches he can see wafting above the sill. Who needs soap operas when the world is so wonderful?
He doesn’t tire of the view, although he does tire of the hospital. He can’t wait until he can leave, but transplants are debilitating, and they want to make sure he’s well enough to be discharged. Edie visits daily, but he can’t wait until they can start their life again properly, at home.
The nurse enters as the last wisps of blue leave the sky, chased away by deep indigo and twinkling stars. She closes his blinds, insisting he needs to rest, and he chastises her for spoiling his view. She leaves the blinds closed, and stalks out. I don’t like her. She’s got a bedside manner like a bulldog.
Max drifts in and out of sleep until an hour before dawn. The hospital never truly shuts down, with the shouts of the stricken fighting with the moans of the dying. Still, in that quiet hour before the day begins again, the building finally approaches the nearest state to silence. Max lies back to enjoy this short bubble of peace.
Something moves in the corridor outside. Max looks to the door. Fabric is being dragged along the linoleum floor. A rhythmic thump between swooshes. Are they footsteps?
Max assumes an orderly is struggling with a patient, and resolves to ignore it. Moments later, the door handle rattles. Max reaches to his bedside table for the alarm button, but he cannot find it. Did I leave it there? The door handle suddenly slams down, and the door swings inward.
A figure stands silhouetted in the doorway, the rough approximation of a man, with fabric dangling from his limbs. It reminds him of the mummies in the old horror films that Edie loves to watch on late night TV. Is this some kind of a joke?
“Who are you?” calls Max.
The figure does not respond, and shuffles into the room, thudding its feet on the floor, dragging its wrappings behind it. Max tries to wriggle up onto his elbows, glancing about the room for the alarm button, but there’s no sign of it. He’s too weak to roll over to see if it’s fallen onto the floor.
Before he can reach under his pillow, the figure looms over him. It glares down at him, vivid green eyes peering out from between torn bandages. The skin around the eyes is waxy, and pale. Who the hell mummifies people in this day and age?
“What are you supposed to be, some kind of a joke?”
“No….joke….” The figure’s voice comes in rasps as it fights to draw breath into its body. It sounds like his father did, just before his 40-a-day habit finally killed him.
“Then what do you want?” Max knows he should feel afraid, but there is something too absurd about this to really worry him. Robert at the office probably hired an actor to liven up Max’s days.
“What…is….rightfully…mine….”
Before Max can react, the figure dives forward. Its fingers are more like talons than human digits, and it rams its hand into his chest. Fragile bone splinters, and blood wells up between the torn stitches. Max howls in pain. He tries to raise his arms to fend off another attack, but the figure is too quick. Its second punch breaks through, and Max feels his new heart torn free before he loses consciousness.
* * *
The mummy clutches its heart to its chest, the dead man in the bed forgotten. The bedroom disappears in a golden glow, and it is dimly aware of figures standing around it. Long fingers pry the heart from its grasp, and voices murmur around it. It longs to smile, or sing – its time has come. Its heart will be weighed and measured.
The glow fades, and a growl erupts in the shadows. Its blood would run cold if it had any.
I shouldn’t have killed that man…
Its heart is tossed into the shadows, where it disappears into the jaws of Ammut. The mummy falls to the floor, a crumpled heap of limbs and bandages. No afterlife awaits its soul, only an eternity of nothing.
