Heart Without A Beat

6:12 PM, Jan 10th, at the balcony

Page 3

Hey Angie,

Today we went to the seaside, the seaside we always go to since we were tiny little things.

 I can recall a couple of times we’ve spent there, like when we were nearly ten, we raced in to the water and splashed each others faces, we built badly shaped sandcastles, and I remember when we were seventeen- well, you know what happened when we sneaked down there in the early morning hours to skinny dip!

Ah, we spent some really good times together.

Do you remember the time when I got so sick I was bed bound for months? We were nine, I think, and I took the time off school. A severe flu I had, your Father told me, it was easily spread throughout the little town. Lucky for you, you had flu jabs given by the nurses every so often. 

Anyways, you passed the time during my illness by reading me books. Children books. Books about a boy getting stuck on an island and befriends with the ocean, and books about a boy who would sit up on a high tree branch all day long and come up with names for each drifting cloud.

But my favourite book of all was about the boy who wouldn’t stop eating pickled eggs.

Also known as 'The Pickled Egg Boy’.

“What does pickled egg taste like?” I asked you, taking the pillow behind me and fluffing it up more comfortably.

“I don’t know?” You answered, flipping through the pictures of the story. You were sitting crossed legged at the end of the hospital bed I was in and couldn’t stop brushing your layered hair out of your face irritatedly.