The Heart Stitcher

• Jennifer Williams, Grade 10, Catholic Regional College
• Short Story
• 2022

Finalist in the 'National Treasures 2022' competition

The Heart Stitcher’s shop sat along a cobblestone street with a rainbow array of flowers peeping between cracks. The stores were pleasant and welcoming, with white brick fronts and shining windows. Floral arrangements lining windowsills cast sweet, soothing scents. Birds chirped, adding their singsong calls to the crowd’s lively babble. It was a fairy-tale street, with stores that sold potions, magic mirrors, and all manner of mind-boggling wares.
Even among these shops, along this wondrous lane, the Heart Stitcher’s shop was quite queer.
Threads, needles, and fabrics swamped the benches, creating a mess more suited to a child’s bedroom than a professional’s workshop. Not that her customers cared. They came to her for one reason, with one wish, which only she could fulfil.
To mend their broken hearts.
The people who walked into her shop were not the chatty patrons of other establishments. Their silence spoke enough. Their eyes were glazed, hollow, and wet, missing a sparkle. No smiles plastered their faces; trauma and despair ruled their expressions.
She sat them down on benches and cut them open, like a surgeon, revealing their hearts. Some just had tears, easy to stitch up. Others had ripped more drastically, barely hanging on. Some had rotted or dead sections, wrinkled like a prune. For those, she had to replace the tissue. But every heart she had come across, she had fixed. Every patient walked out the door with clear eyes and the ability to smile renewed.
All but one.
The day he walked in would haunt the Heart Stitcher for eternity. The emotional turmoil of her customers never bothered her. She remained indifferent, focused on her craft. But the pure anguish enveloping this man tugged painfully at something inside her. There seemed to be a great shadow following him, pushing him down as if a boulder lay on his back. His face was ghost pale. The worst part was his eyes. To the Heart Stitcher, they looked like two black holes, void of everything but agony.
Her hands trembled as she carefully revealed his heart. She gasped, eyes and mouth widening. A heart was always one; even in its worse condition, the parts clung by thin strands. But his was split perfectly down the middle, with no indication that it was ever together. She shook as she scrutinised its condition. Desperately she searched, but to no avail. She could find no spot where they seemed to connect. No part she could sew back together. She tried to stitch it up, but it kept coming undone. For the first time in her life, she didn’t know how to fix it. A feeling bubbled inside her that she couldn’t name. Her heart was too loud, her breath too quick. What was this emotion?
She couldn’t look at him any longer.
“I’m sorry.”
Immediately, he understood. The shadow over him darkened. For the first time ever, her customer left unfixed.
As he left, his eyes burned into her. Horrid, tortured eyes branded into her mind forever.