Each week, I send out a story via my email newsletter. Each story is around 1000 words, sometimes less, sometimes more. The stories are in a variety of genres: supernatural, thriller, sci-fi, horror, and sometimes romance, and all of my stories typically feature a gay protagonist.
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This is story number 18 of the series. Enjoy!
SynthHeart
Ricky’s fingers trembled as he pressed them against his chest, feeling the steady thump of his new heart. The synthetic organ pulsed with an eerie regularity that felt foreign in his own body. He’d been lucky, they said. A perfect match, delivered just in time to save his life.
But as he gazed out the window of his 43rd-floor apartment, watching the neon-lit skyscrapers of New Phoenix stretch endlessly into the smog-choked horizon, Ricky couldn’t shake the feeling that something was… off. More than off.
It started small. Flashes of memories that weren’t his own. A childhood home he’d never seen. The taste of a fruit he’d never eaten. At first, he dismissed them as side effects of the meds, but as days turned to weeks, the foreign thoughts grew more frequent, more vivid.
One night, Ricky jolted awake, his heart racing. In his dream, he’d been kissing a man he’d never met, feeling a surge of emotions that weren’t his own. The stranger’s face lingered in his mind – olive skin, sharp cheekbones, eyes like liquid amber.
“What the hell is happening to me?” Ricky muttered, running a hand through his sweat-damp hair.
The next morning, he marched into Dr. Reyes’ office, demanding answers.
“It’s not uncommon for transplant recipients to experience some psychological adjustments,” the doctor said, her tone maddeningly calm. “Your brain is simply adapting to the new organ.”
Ricky leaned forward, his voice low and intense. “This isn’t just ‘adjustment.’ I’m having memories that aren’t mine. Feelings that don’t belong to me. It’s like… like someone else is taking over my mind.”
Dr. Reyes’ eyes narrowed slightly. “I assure you, Mr. Chen, the SynthHeart 3000 is a purely mechanical device as opposed to organic. It can’t transmit memories or alter your personality.”
But Ricky wasn’t buying it. As he left the clinic, his mind raced. If the doctor wouldn’t help him, he’d have to find answers on his own.
Over the next few days, Ricky dove deep into research, scouring the darknet for information on black market organ trades and underground clinics. He barely slept, fueled by a growing obsession to uncover the truth.
It was during one of these late-night deep dives that Ricky stumbled upon a name: Dr. Timothy Volkov, a brilliant but disgraced scientist who’d been working on experimental neural-interface organs before disappearing off the grid.
Ricky’s heart – his new, strange heart – skipped a beat. This had to be connected.
Using skills from his day job as a data analyst, Ricky managed to track down Volkov’s last known location – an abandoned research facility on the outskirts of the city.
As Ricky approached the dilapidated building, his palms were slick with sweat. The place looked like it hadn’t been touched in years, windows boarded up, vines creeping up crumbling walls. This can’t be it. Still he pressed on.
He found a side entrance, the rusty door creaking open with a push. Inside, the air was thick with dust and the musty smell of decay. Ricky’s footsteps echoed in the empty hallways as he made his way deeper into the facility.
Suddenly, a noise. Ricky froze, listening intently. There it was again – the soft whir of machinery, coming from somewhere below. So it wasn’t abandoned!
Heart pounding, Ricky followed the sound, descending a rickety staircase into the bowels of the building. The lower level was a maze of corridors, but Ricky navigated them with an eerie familiarity, as if he’d been here before.
He rounded a corner and gasped. A state-of-the-art lab sprawled before him, humming with life. And there, hunched over a workbench, was a man Ricky had never met but instantly recognized – the stranger from his dreams.
The man turned, amber eyes widening in shock. “Ricky?” he whispered. “How did you find me?”
Ricky’s mind reeled. “Who… who are you? What have you done to me?”
The stranger’s face crumpled with a mixture of guilt and longing. “My name is Andre. And I… I gave you my heart.”
“What? But they told me it was synthetic…”
Andre shook his head. “Not entirely synthetic. Enhanced. I’ve spent years developing a way to transfer consciousness through organ donation. When I learned you needed a transplant, I… I saw my chance.”
Ricky staggered back, his world tilting on its axis. “You’re insane. Why would you do this?”
“Because I’ve loved you from afar for years,” Andre said, his voice breaking. “We worked in the same building. I saw you every day, but you never noticed me. This was the only way I could think of to be close to you.”
Ricky’s mind raced, fragments of memories clicking into place. The shy guy from accounting, Andre. Quick glances in the elevator. A dropped file, hands brushing as they both reached to pick it up.
“Okay,” Ricky asked. “How does someone with your day job even start doing something like this?”
“Well, the truth isn’t always what it seems, is it? My name isn’t actually Andre. It’s Dr. Timothy Volkov.”
“Wait, hold on—Dr. Timothy Volkov? The Timothy Volkov? The guy who disappeared?”
Timothy gave a tired nod. “The very same. I’ve been in hiding for a couple years now, avoiding detection because not all my peers, and certainly not the authorities, agreed with my research. You see, not everyone is ready for the kind of breakthroughs I’ve been working on.”
“Your talking about the synthetic organs, like my heart? That’s your work? I thought that was abandoned after you went off the grid.”
“Synthetic organs with the ability to store and evoke memories,” Timothy correct. “It was never abandoned, Ricky. I just moved underground—literally and figuratively. I had to disappear, but the work… the work never stops. I took the accounting job here to support myself and, in a way, to keep a low profile. But I couldn’t let go of my real passion.”
“So you’ve been working on your experiments… here? Right in this old building?”
“Yup. This place has been my sanctuary. Thankfully, the building has been abandoned for years so nobody bothers with it.”
“TThat’s… incredible,” Ricky said. “But, how did you ever manage to gather all the equipment? The materials?”
“You’d be surprised what you can do when you know the right people. I’ve made a few… discrete purchases over the years. And let’s just say, I’ve got a knack for utilizing, repurposing, some of the company’s resources—within the accounting ledgers, it all gets lost in translation.”
Ricky nodded thoughtfully. “So you blend in by day and by night… you’re still a revolutionary. But aren’t you afraid? Someone could catch on, could discover you?”
“Hell yeah, I am afraid. But not for the reasons you might think. It’s not for my safety, but for what could happen to my work if it gets into the wrong hands. What I’m developing could save millions of lives, but it could also be twisted for dark purposes. That’s why I’ve kept it secret. It’s also the reason I was shut down. The world isn’t ready, but it doesn’t mean I can stop.
Ricky was filled with a mix of admiration and concern. “So… what are you going to do now? Keep hiding? Or do you have a plan to reveal your work?”
“I’ve certainly considered it. The synthetic heart is nearly perfect—on a good day, it’s more efficient than a natural one and much better than the synthetic ones on the market. You’re living proof of that. But before I reveal anything about my work, I need to ensure it’ll be used for the right reasons. That’s where I’m stuck. I can’t trust anyone, and revealing myself could mean a one-way ticket to… well, a place I’d rather not end up.”
“You know, you could have just asked me out for coffee,” Ricky said, a hysterical laugh bubbling up in his throat.
Timothy’s lips quirked in a sad smile. “I was too scared. And then, when I heard about your condition… I couldn’t bear the thought of you dying. I managed to get in and replace your synthetic heart with one of my own before the operation.”
Ricky shook his head, trying to process it all. “So what now? Are you just… taking over my body?”
“No!” Timothy said quickly. “The process isn’t meant to overwrite you. It’s more like… sharing. Merging. Two minds becoming one.”
Ricky opened his mouth to argue, but suddenly, a wave of Timothy’s memories washed over him. Years of longing glances, of gathering courage only to falter at the last moment. The ache of unrequited love, the desperation that drove him to this insane plan.
And underneath it all, a deep, unwavering affection that made Ricky’s breath catch in his throat.
“I… I don’t know what to say,” Ricky murmured.
Timothy took a hesitant step forward. “You don’t have to say anything. I know this is crazy. If you want, I can try to reverse the process. You can go back to your old life and forget all about me.”
Ricky considered it for a long moment. But as he looked at Timothy – really looked at him for the first time – he felt a spark of something. Curiosity? Attraction? Or maybe just the wild desire to see where this insane situation might lead.
“You know,” Ricky said slowly, a smile tugging at his lips, “I think I might need some time to process all this. Maybe… over coffee?”
Timothy’s face lit up with hope and disbelief. “Really? You’re not furious?”
Ricky shrugged. “Oh, I’m definitely more than a little bit pissed off. And we are going to have a long talk about consent and boundaries. But… I can’t deny there’s something here. Something worth exploring.”
He held out his hand. “So, what do you say? Want to get out of this creepy lab and go somewhere we can talk? I have a feeling we’ve got a lot of catching up to do.”
Timothy hesitated for just a moment before taking Ricky’s hand, their fingers intertwining as if they’d done it a thousand times before.
As they stepped out into the warm night air, Ricky felt his heart – their heart – beat with a new rhythm. One of possibility, of adventure, and just maybe, the first notes of a love song neither of them saw coming.
THE END