Heartsick: a novel

by Dia Reeves

The minute you stop working, you freeze to death.”

“Thirty-five?” “See my shoes? They’re thirty-five. You? Not even close.” Rue redid the math. “Eighteen? Or seventeen? Something like that.”

There’s already someone inside of me and she would eat you for breakfast.

Both his clothes and skin were gone, the yellowed arc of his rib cage exposed to the open air, heart trapped inside.

heart-shaped hair bobbles.

“And that’s bitch as in heinous individual, not as in female dog. Just so we’re clear.”

chopping a servant into fifteen well-preserved pieces and then nailing him, in no particular order, to the wall:

decided that Westwood probably understood what traumatized his staff better than she did.

That’s why things are so thin around here.”

“It’s where he keeps his lab. On a strange world with a green planet hanging just over the horizon.

“Do I have permission to quit? Because I do. I quit.”

“It’s just George. He never makes anyone nervous. Not even when he was alive.”

Drabbin had an English accent, but not a nice one like Mary Poppins.

this is my sister-in-law.”

God

“Are you sure you’re not being murdered? Maybe I should stay down here and protect your—”

“So what did I taste like?” The leaves on the branch in her hand turned brownish-yellow and the roses wilted and turned pale. Rue laughed, delighted.

“The last servant you ‘needed’ can’t listen to birdsong without screaming into his apron.” The twins exchanged guilty looks. “He’s in therapy now,” Sterling said. “He’ll snap out of it.”

Ignoring her so aggressively that attention from anyone felt like balm.

Rue could rip out someone’s guts with her “toenails” if she wanted to. Not that she did want to, but the twins didn’t even have the option.

“Forgive me for calling Karissa a bastard.” “You can’t negotiate forgiveness,” Stanton said. “It either happens or it doesn’t.” “Then let’s see what happens.”

“Love hurts, and there’s no remedy. How can you be seventeen and not know that?”

“Why they stop hating you?” “I let them take things from my brain.”

“You and happy have never even seen each other. Don't say to me you are happy.” “Well I am. I will be.”

You went outside and skinned a wild hog and tried to turn the skin into a coat because you said you didn’t have family to keep you warm anymore.”

“John’s a wanker, but he’s right sharp he is. He says to me, human flesh has soul in it; the more flesh you eat, the more soul you has. It’s important to feed the kids’ souls, make them bigger and brighter.”

“Sterling is gauche, but that’s my fault. In our mother’s womb, I gobbled up all the tact and left none for him.

no rapture, no gratitude—and

“Which college are you going to?” he said, at last, “so I can go to a different one.”

A little vivisection is good for the soul.”

“That wasn’t cannibalism.

I’m losing more and more of my soul to the bone machine, Sterling is losing his to me. It really does make sense that Dad would try to heal us. That he’d try anything. We made him promise to stop feeding people to Karissa though. That was just…” “Evil?” Rue suggested. “Pointless.”

“I’m not. I can’t. Not with my weak feelings.”

but too interfering for his own good.” “So you beheaded him?” “No. The mister did—he hates being interfered with.”

“Ethan was always staring at me, disappointed like, even after he was dead. So I popped out his eyes and put them in backward.”

Rue wondered whether Sterling would be as upset if Grissel had put the other heads’ eyes in backwards too. So that it wouldn’t seem as if she were picking on his uncle. Humans had a weird sense of fair play.

“Westwood killed your uncle. Can that be fixed?” “Everything can be fixed.” Stanton’s zealous conviction burned into Rue. “And Uncle Ethan’s death was his own fault. In part. He thought Dad wasn’t sane enough to be raising us.” “Westwood chopped off your uncle’s head.” “Because he was angry.” Stanton tossed another sliver of glass onto the lawn. “Not because he was insane.

“Take mine. I got your tooth, you get my heart. Fair trade.”

I still need to open you up and look in your chest. Learn your dimensions.”

“Stanton says you should hurry up and kiss me.” “Stanton can go to hell, and while he’s there, he can wait his turn.

Or maybe she hadn’t been mean enough.

“She has no social skills.” “You’re such an absolute freak,”

Gotta be cognitive dissonance

tacky question,

anything he thought unusual or pretty,

Karissa even said a little prayer. “I hope you go somewhere you can jump and play. Amen.”

“I wonder why it’s so hard to be loved,” Rue whispered. “Do you know?” “It’s because we care. People only love you when you don’t care if they do.” “How do we stop caring?”

“My parents wanted me to…marry, I guess you’d call it…a boy I can’t stand. I said no. Your dad asked you to kidnap an innocent man and then eat him alive. You said yes.

“But we’re your family now,” Stanton said, stroking the red mark he’d made on her cheek. “So we’ll have to be the ones to eat you someday. We’d never feed you to the dogs.” “It wouldn’t even be cannibalism, since heartless aren’t human. You look like you’d taste good, too.”

“You don’t have to eat people. Unless you want to, of course.”

“Poorly thought out tasteless gift ideas

“I mean it’s ridiculous you think the man’s heart was eaten. We don’t eat them.”