Fiction Friday: The Find (part 2 of 2)

The man carried the twitching, warm paint can, tightly in both hands up stairs. He needed to get it into the light. He couldn't see a hole or even a crack where the creature could have gotten in the dim basement. Part of him knew there was no hole, so he imagined what it could be as he walked. Perhaps a little machine or battery overheating. His son must know. Maybe a joke.

He sat the can on the table. The small circle of mint colored paint on the lid, the color which had been used on the walls of the living room, shown in the sun coming from the sky light. The man's hands were calloused from work and sweating from the heat of the can. He walked around the can, looking for the imperfection he hoped to find. It was solid. Someone must have intentionally put some moving, heated thing in the can.

Young people are crazy, the old man thought thinking about how this generation was surly going to be the death of the world. All their friends seem to be in a computer or a phone. They would be distracted from a person right in front of them for a beeping machine in their pocket. They fight for owls and throw away babies. They didn't care for human contact. They destroyed their own education, language and each other. The old man never saw his an that way, but putting a machine in a bucket certainly showed an equal level of craziness.

He tried the lid, but it was on too tight. So, he lifted the bucket by the handle and took it over to the sink, so the bumping wouldn't knock the can off the table. As he stepped into the garage, he heard the can and steel sink bumping together. The sound started to sound familiar.

The screwdriver was not hard to find, hanging on the wall. Clearly not used very much, the man thought. He grabbed a nice wide, flat head and moved back into the kitchen.

He left the can in the sink, a little concerned the something alive would be inside. He though the sink would help catch what ever it was. He placed his left hand on the top of the can, just as warm as it was before, and placed the end of the screwdriver beside the lid. Slowly, he pried.

The lid loosened and the man used his hand to lift it. Strings of red, mucus, stretched beside the inside of the can and the lid. It made a soft liquid sound as it was removed. The man leaned over and looked down into the can, it took him a long time to figure out what he was seeing.

It was fist sized and pink. No machine or batteries. It was a strong muscle contracting every second or so. The man dropped the screwdriver in the sink. It was a heart. A human heart.

The man was lost in the dark of the can. In his mind he tried to form the questions, but he couldn't. He was stuck. This wasn't trash, this was a heart. He couldn't keep it. He couldn't through it away. If it was dead, he could bury it, but it defiantly beat. It beat his confidence out of him.

He sat heavily on the kitchen footstool. The heart rattled the can against the inside of the sink. Bump, bump. The old man cried.