by Kendall Tackett

This morning, I woke and found that my heart was missing.  

A gaping hole above my left breast and a trail of blood, and dollops of skin, and puss, and sinew leading out of my bedroom, to the hall, out the door. I followed the trail, holding a dirty purple flannel from my laundry basket over the crater in my chest. I could feel the broken rib poking my hand. Arteries spiraling out, hoses left unattended and gushing. 

The trail made up of little chompy bits of me, dots on a treasure map. Some kind of sick path of breadcrumbs out of someone’s nightmare.

X marks the spot and I end up at your front door. I walk right into your kitchen, where you excitedly tell me that you have a new pet. A naked mole rat, who came to your door first thing this morning. A baby, you said, covered in blood like it had just sprung from its mother’s womb. You’re not incorrect, not entirely.  

You bring him to the door to show him off, cradling him between sprawled-fingered-hands, and his wet little nose, hiding behind the longest, ugliest buck teeth I’ve seen in my life, wiggles through the bars of his cage and stops as his beady black eyes lock onto mine. His loose pink skin reminds me of somebody’s grandfather’s uncircumcised penis, and I can’t look at him anymore.

You had already gone to the pet store. You bought a cage, asked the kid at the counter for pellets to feed your newest friend. He said we don’t sell naked mole rat food here but I think it might like these regular rat treats. You googled it and found out they eat their own poop, root vegetables, and especially love sweet potatoes so you went to the farmers market for the best, organic tubers you could find.  

It seemed, at first, wrong to cage him, but the idea is growing on me. Naked mole rats are small and vulnerable and easily stomped on. And he looks safe and happy in there.

“His name is Thaddeus.”

I sit and stare as you lovingly feed bits of sweet potato to the little guy, who looks, to me, like God’s most disgusting creation. You have cartoony heart-shaped pupils bouncing out of your skull as he nibbles out of your fingers, your face lightens with a sort of awed hilarity that makes me see him in a different way. Maybe he’s not so bad.

I was planning on telling you all about my heart escaping but that cage on your kitchen counter seemed a better place than this empty crevice. Naked mole rats need to be socialized, anyway. And it would probably eat my other organs if I put it back. Probably just escape again to the cage he loves so much. He seems happy to be your pet.

I don’t want him back anyway. You can keep him.

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