Artificial Heartbeat-Prologue

Artificial Heartbeat
Prologue

A light spring breeze blew throughout the house, causing the cobwebs to shift and separate from their dockings in the corners of the ceiling, drifting slowly to the floor. The rooms of the house were cold and dark as if there was no life in them anymore.

Is he out?

Room after room came up empty.

No. He never leaves the house. Where is he?

The door to the studio hung loosely on its hinges; the door had been slammed shut too hard once after an argument, and it was never properly repaired. The inside of the room was in the same sorry condition as the door. The paint was drying in uncapped tubes; broken brushes littered the unswept floor; unfinished paintings propped up against the walls or tipping off shelves, lying broken on the floor.

The studio was never left in such a condition, and the sight of it now was troubling. Something wasn't right.

The house was eerily quiet. The silence offered the mind to think unwelcome and frightening thoughts.

The answering machine in the living room was flashing. The number of messages was astounding. More astounding was the layer of dust that collected on the tables. The layer was thick, altering the color of the wood, paling it to a grey-brown. The layer of dust was at least a month old.

In the deathly silence, a heartbeat echoed off the walls.

“No. I told you, I can’t come home for a while.”

“But- -”

“Hiroh, come on,” he interrupted, sighing. How many times had he repeated himself? “I’ll be home for spring break, Hiroh, I promise. I just have a lot of work I need to do here lately, with finals coming up and everything else. I’ve explained this to you a million times.”

“Isaac…,” the man on the other line whispered pleadingly. “Spring break is in four weeks and you haven’t come home the past two weekends. Are you avoiding me?” There was a thick layer of jealously dripping off those words.

“Hiroh, seriously. I don’t have time for this. I’m hanging up.”

Keeping to his word, he threw the phone back onto the receiver. Isaac kicked the chair next to him, knocking it onto its side.

He was tired of being babied, and protected. Hiroh’s jealously was frustrating.

“I’m twenty-two. God!” He shouted into the empty room.

Isaac continued to walk through the house, thinking about their fight. He had been upset with himself about the argument a few days later when his temper leveled out. He regretted how childish he had acted in the interim. He had avoided Hiroh’s calls and deleted the messages without listening to them for days after they had fought. When Isaac did start taking the calls, there was an air of hostility in his voice that almost forced Hiroh into silence.

As he walked, Isaac became worried that Hiroh had fallen into another fit of depression. Hiroh had become very unstable after Isaac had started college; his jealously and protectiveness caused almost an addiction and he suffered from separation anxiety. Isaac foolishly had aggravated him, and now he feared the consequences of his thoughtless actions.

The bedroom had always been Hiroh’s haunt when he was upset, so that immediately became the next destination.

With the door opened, a creaking noise filled Isaac’s ears. The sound, which normally would have seemed insignificant, screamed in this silence. His body trembling, Isaac turned his russet-brown eyes to the swaying figure across from him. Those chocolate eyes traced the taut rope up to the rafters to where it wrapped around Hiroh’s neck. He nearly threw up as his eyes fixated themselves on the corpse that was once his lover and his guardian. He was unable to turn look away in shock.

Isaac’s hands shook as his fingertips brushed the ice-cold skin. Tears drew lines down his cheeks, sobs rocked his body. Guilt and sorrow wrapped around his heart and squeezed, like fingers, bore into him like knives.

“Hiroh…,” he whispered pathetically with a shaken voice. With the initial shock of the sight wearing off, he stumbled backwards in horror, and anguished scream erupting from his throat.

In that instant, he had realized everything he had lost. Never again would Hiroh’s voice soothe him when he failed a test. Never again could Hiroh hug him when he returned home after working hard at school. Never again could they sit together and talk.

“Hiroh!” He screamed, half of the word lost in a sob.