Snow is falling. Windows frosted over are darkened by the sleeping state of the city. Shadows cast along stone doorways from tall metal poles suspending gas lamps tremble from the wind. High gray stained walls of surrounding residency crowd and seem to close in on a man dragging a lone body on a stretcher. The man, The Body Keeper, walks along side it, peering down over his misty glasses to examine the white skin of the person on the cart. The person, pale and thin in the sparse light of the street lamps, inhales and exhales shallow breaths that materialize in the form of thin steam through his white cracked lips. The fellow was not dead already, but it seemed he would be soon.

The Body Keeper, a rickety old man with circled spectacles and scattered hair, did not gather his name on his own intention. He had earned it by caring for what no other wanted to; the sick and the dying. With his hunched back to the wind, the man folds his crooked fingers tight around the frigid metal bar of the stretcher to stabilize himself.
The deepening snow did nothing to aid the travelling. The stretcher that the man owned was squeaky and rusted so that it made quite a noise when it passed by. The sound was so prevalent and recognizable that when The Body Keeper was coming, a dull sense of fear sat in the stomach like a rock dropped in the sea.
It was easy to be frightened of The Body Keeper. It was not his appearance that fostered this uncomfortable, anxious feeling. His presence alone elicited a nervous buzz among those who saw him, but if one were to ask why, they would not receive a suitable answer. The simple truth was that once someone left with him, they weren't ever seen again. The lost souls, they imagined, would never return.
The man rounds a corner into an alleyway. Much of the snow here has gathered up to his knees, proving able to slow his journey. The slippery cold envelopes his ankles, uncovered by rolled grey socks that used to be white. Stinging at the edges of his travels, the snow understands soon that it can not stop the man, and thins itself as he reaches the end of the alley. He alternates between pushing and pulling the gurney to reach a tall wooden door at the far end of the path. The door, tall and broad with a cold silver door knock, stood as another barrier to the man, but he was not frustrated. Fumbling with a rusted skeleton key, he slips into the dark room, followed by the stretcher.

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The sickly young man on the gurney finds himself in the basement of a concrete bare-walled warehouse, illuminated by suspended bulbs and half shadowed by the Body Keeper. He was wheeled under the brightest bulb, hung in the center of the room. The light seemed to make everything surrounding darker, as if to set the stage for the Keeper's actions. He wheels up a separate cart, this one holding not any individual but instead an array of special instruments. He wastes no time; plunging one of the sharp, rusty ones down into the chest of his victim, sawing around his most important organ, to remove it in its entirety. It was evident that The Keeper had done this before, removing the victim’s heart completely, setting it on a browning white cloth by the special, rusted and sharp instruments. Still warm, spurting and deflating, it was perfect to The Body Keeper.
Limping to the other end of the dim room, the Body Keeper's mind is monopolized with one thought: receiving the animal. The wall of the room, which the keeper reaches, is host to a short wooden drawer, a bedside table without its companion. The drawer is hardwood, stained red but not by its manufacturers. He bends over, slow and careful, as if to keep himself uninjured, opening the drawer, plucking a limp dead animal from the selection: a black cat with matted fur clotted with old, dried blood. The nightmare already had its tiny heart removed, which the Body Keeper took from a small jewelry box tucked in the back of the drawer. He hitched himself back to the gurney, with the feline's heart in his left hand. With his right, he placed his thumb and forefinger on either side of the dead man's slack jaw, easing it open to slide the hardened and cold cat's heart into his mouth. This was before draping the cat over his knees and placing the man's heart into the cavern of the small, chilled, dead animal's chest.
The Body Keeper, reaching into his reddened slacks grabbed a sewing kit, with rusting needles glistening, from his back pocket. He had slipped the kit into his pocket earlier, at the table of instruments, to save time on getting to this step; the most important step to The Keeper. With intense concentration, the man sews his latest victim's heart into the small animal's chest, having had to scrape out some of its insides to make the foreign heart fit. Closing the hole, the surgery was complete. The man's eyes glisten as he glances at his creation with care. The bulging area in between the two paws, he thought, held all the love the animal felt for him.
Finished, The Body Keeper holds the cat in his left arm against his chest and uses his right to sweep all of the special instruments quick off of the table to make room for his creation. Returning his attention to the man on the stretcher, he slides one arm under the neck of the victim, and inserts one arm under the knees. He lifts the man, who seems lighter without the emotion of the heart weighing him down, and he limps across the room, slow, the limp worse now. Dropping the man on a pile of other poor beings, the newest addition rolls off the pile to hit his head hard on the concrete with a disturbing crack. Fresh blood springs from the ear of the man, wetting the edges of The Keeper's shoes. The still hot liquid from the victim's head pools under the other frigid bodies. Flies detect the newest member, coming quick to examine him. Maggots and fleas emerge to greet him. Cold, stiff, criss-crossing limbs, are unable to shake the hands of their new friend. Grinning at this, The Body Keeper returns to his animal, picks it up, and lies on the stretcher that once held a father, a son, a friend. He holds the cat in his arms, stroking its long black fur that is clotted with blood.
The Keeper falls asleep all at once, his subconscious almost matching the man he had killed but his heart was still inside of him, beating. Visions of living beings flit behind his eyelids. In his dreams, living animals worship him. They adore him for bringing their lives back, allowing for them to have a bigger, better, stronger heart that beats. They curse every human on the earth, every animal in existence, but they do not curse The Body Keeper. The Keeper brings life. Everybody and everything else brings death, hurt, pain, sadness, and disappointment.
The black cat sashays around his legs in this dream. It licks his nose and stretches out in the peeking rays from the small half-circle windows that exhibit the new coming sunlight in the Keeper's basement. The old man awakens realizing that he is clutching the cat, gripping it in such an intense manner that if the cat were living, it would have been crushed by the force. The man will swear to himself later that he felt a heartbeat on the animal in that moment. He rubs his eyes, smearing red liquid on his rough, unshaven skin, and falls asleep once more.
         When he wakens, thin rays of light creep into the space, falling onto his face and into his eyes. His pupils dilate and his eyebrows shoot up, eyes widening to the size of small moons.   Incredible pain rips through the old man's chest, and does not cease. With horror, the Keeper meets the realization that the thing that brought him the most satisfaction in his life will be the thing that will end it. His heart was malfunctioning. His heart was rejecting him. Knowing that the end was near, he stumbled over to the corner of the room, where a large box was waiting. The cardboard was soaked through with thick, crimson fluid. Eager, he tries to drag the box with the arm that felt on fire. The box, pulled across the floor broke at the bottom and the contents erupted from the end like the dam were broken. He did all of this with his cat still grasped tight in the arm that was fine.
         Out of the ends flew numerous creatures. A night owl, a puppy. A raccoon, a skunk. Each marked with the similar bulge of a human heart. As these animals rolled out onto the floor, The Body Keeper threw himself down with them, crushing the box with his frail, aged body. His eyes rolled back into his head, his fingers digging into the animal in his hands. Skin, fur, and blood were later found under his red, blackened nails.