The cavity under his ribs is empty. He knows this for a fact. Where lungs and a heart once lay is a void, a gaping, sucking, consuming void. He never could get rid of it. Blood skirts around it, flows the best it can, and he should be dead, really, truly, he should be. A body can't work without a heart, that's what the scientists say, and yet here he is. No pulse, no air in his lungs, nothing that indicates that he's alive and yet he is.
His skin is cold. There's a void under his ribs that threatens to devour him until there is nothing left of who he was once, until he is nothing but a shambling corpse.
No breathing. No heartbeat. He is dead, in a way.
The stories all said that the best romance, the best love, is one where a person would tear their insides out to make a safe haven for their beloved, a bed of blood and tissue where nothing could ever harm them, and while that's all well and good, is exceedingly romantic, in fact, he doesn't understand. No lungs and no heart means that a person isn't alive and that means that there's no reason for them to give up their body. No heart means no love. A worthless sacrifice, he always thought, thinks.
But perhaps it's different, for them. He didn't give his up willingly. Perhaps it's different when you do it as a choice, as an act of selfless devotion, a last hurrah before you die. He doesn't know.
He is dead, but not, and one day that void will eat him, will drink every last drop of blood that runs through his veins when it shouldn't, and then he will drop, because, he's certain, the blood is the only thing keeping him standing.
And when he drops, the void will grow past the limits of his body, of his corpse, of his skin, and absorb him too, then grow again and again, eating anyone and anything in sight until there is nothing left.
He thinks that, maybe, his sister loved this place. Maybe she loved the way the light plays off the water, the sand under her fingers and the scent of flowers on the breeze. He can't recall what emotions feel like, but he remembers, faintly, vaguely, his sister laughing with delight as the water washed up against her toes.
There is nothing behind his ribs but a hungry and insatiable void, and he thinks that he will stay alive but dead for a little while longer. Just until the memory of his sister's laugh fades away to nothingness.
He digs his fingers into his chest. There is no heartbeat that he can detect. And yet, there is a faint thumping in his ears.
His chest has no lungs and no heart. But he may not be dead as he thinks he is.
He isn't sure what to think of that.
