Stranger Times

Wind-up Heart

3rd place in the Wattpunk Romance Mashup Contest.

(The challenge was to make a love story using one of their provided prompts, in some form of a punk setting, were one of the characters had a mechanical body part. The first paragraph is the prompt.)

There were boots under the banana tree. Not wholly unexpected there in the greenhouse of the botanical gardens, except these boots were laying down and covered with shimmering oil smears. Also unusual were the deathly pale legs coming from them, stretched out on the loamy soil.

The air was hot and wet, and pushed into the lungs like warm soup. Despite the heat promoting the rivulets of sweat that now ran down her face, Regina Mindale felt as if the air around her was pushing heat into her body.

Her vision went blurry as she dragged the body across the soil, cursing under her breath as the ground seemed to wrench at the heels, pulling at the boots and stymieing her efforts.

'"I have to hurry." She muttered to herself, barely mouthing the words as she huffed the thick, moist air into her lungs. "Only two more minutes until the brain starves and starts to die. The damage is irreversible."

She pulled hard, and managed to drag the body into the shade. She stopped, breathing hard, waiting just a moment for her hands to stop shaking. Her fingers were rubbed raw from the exertion, and bled in a few places.

She bit her lip to keep the pain from distracting her, and ran from the body into the nearby workshop. Her fingers fumbled frantically as she searched.

"Scalpel, bone saw, and vice. No time for delicacy. Wind up pump will have to serve for now. Opium's dry, no time to purify it. He'll have to live without an anesthetic, or he won't live at all." Regina muttered to herself as she dropped the items into her small bag.

She ran back to the body in the shade and drew out her tools. She cut as quickly as she could. "No niceties. Every second counts. I'll forgive your scars. I can endure so much."

"As long as I have you."

She cut through the ribs and set the vice, exposing that beautiful man's heart. She hesitated a singe, long breath, before she cut it out and started to replace it with her device.

She set the severed arteries into the brass ends, stitching through the guide holes in the ends to attach them. "Too long. Oh, love, I took so long, who knows what you might have lost."

"But no more."

She set the winding key into the device, and twisted it. Three times.

The corpse gasped, and screamed.

Regina cried out and delight, squealing as she scrambled over to kneel beside his head.

"My love! Songbird of my heart, can you hear me?" Regina asked.

"Regina?" The man asked, his voice a ghost of a whisper.

"You live!" She sighed, grasping his hand. "Oh love, I worried so!"

"My chest." The man rasped, raising his head.

Regina carefully forced his head back down to the loamy soil, and rubbed her hand across his forehead. The gesture left a wide streak of red across his face.

"Don't try to move. You had an accident." Regina said, as she wiped her hand across his forehead again. She was careful to avoid the small crack on the side of his head.

"What happened?" The man asked, in a quiet rasp.

Regina frowned, and shook her head. "That's not the voice I fell in love with. Must be the blood pressure. I'll adjust that soon."