AcmeShorts

I've been experimenting with auto-surgery ever since med school. But my greatest project has only now, these many decades later, reached its conclusion. To remove ones own heart is every man's dream. But to do so and live, live to enjoy the satisfaction of it beating before one's very eyes, has until now been out of reach. But look! It's done! That thump muscle, that throb meat! I won't let it squeeze out another beat in darkness. I never trusted the way it lurked in there, in secret, autonomic, involuntary... But all that's changed now. By severing my lower leg, and grafting my tibia to my sternum so it stretches out before me, and then growing a lattice of connective tissue capable of supporting my heart and all of its blood vessels at the end of it, propped up on my instep right before my eyes, I am now ready for the final step. I will connect the motor nerve from my severed leg to my heart and remove this temporary pacemaker; and then I will have achieved my dream, Rebecca, the dream you have driven me to. I will at last be able to beat my heart consciously. From now on, Rebecca, I will be free of you. And I'll watch. I'll watch it under the bright sun, Rebecca. From now on, every beat will be strictly voluntary.