Stop Your Heart

&;#8230;.Stop Your Heart

a short story by J.B. Pravda

"It's a gift&;#8230;&;#8230;.since I was a kid; nobody knew it,
but I could tell me body to do lots of things" was the boast of Miss
Maggie Magee.

"Like what, can you tell us what sorts of things?" was the obvious
question Det. On Duty Randalthorpe routinely issued, a reflex really in
The London Metropolitan Police Bureau's Investigations Division, newly
formed with the advent of fingerprints.

"All sorts of things, you know&;#8230;.make meself feel orgasmic,
think they call it" pointing to her groin.

Having signaled his fellow observer, M'Ordant, the new exchange officer
from France, made for the outer office just off the interrogation room.
"Most unseemly for so young a lady" he mused.

"Not at all, not in London's East End, Marcel" cautioned Inspector
Connery.

A man was dead. Well-respected, to say the least, his death certificate
specified acute heart failure, massive in its effect, of itself
extremely rare for a man of 49 with no prior history of such
difficulties. Making Ins. Connery's task unusually difficult was the
interest of the Palace in the matter.

"She's primping for the Fleet Street crowd, that's all" Connery
gathered; "No, not that simple" he concluded.

"Mon frere, have you not read Poe?" Marcel M'Ordant puzzled.

"The American drunkard&;#8230;..see here&;#8230;." Connery
blustered; "Got plenty of live ones here and now" he confabulated,
failing to hide his ignorance.

"As you wish" Marcel offered, having decided to make his own
inquiries.

"Curious, isn't it" pondered Dr. Charrington.

His audience was none other than Marcel M'Ordant, who had turned up a
sudden steep rise in heart-related illnesses in the verge region of
London City proper.

"Dr., have you perchance read E.A. Poe?" Marcel was not
confident.

"Yes, yes, of course&;#8230;..man of science, you know; quite
well-regarded in those circles in his day&;#8230;.why do you
ask?"

"Simple continental curiosity&;#8230;..odd, is it not, Poe wrote
mostly of European themes, while poorly traveled" M'Ordant
puzzled.

"No provincial, he, surely" agreed the avuncular physician. "There is
one work, never published, collected by my dear father, rare manuscript
collector, that one, nonpareil" Charrington mused, vacant in aspect,
seeming to stare at its yellowed pages.

"Impossibe" Marcel objected; he knew since boyhood every tale, or so he
thought.

"Nay, my dear man; for this one was found on his person, freshly
minted, so to say, when found demised he was in the gutters of Lord
Baltimore's namesake&;#8230;..tragedy of tragedies, his right arm
missing" revealed Charrington.

"It sounds like one of his tales rather than the truth!" the Gaul
expounded.

"However you choose to receive it, the fact is that on that very night
he had visited, in unkempt and raucous state, the zoological gardens,
wherein he communed with a caged Bengal tiger, of India" preached the
surgeon. "No manner of triage could have spared him, sadly" compounded
he.

"Are you suggesting, Professor, that somehow this girl's claims are
connected to wildness?" Marcel challenged.

"Nothing of the sort&;#8230;..I, too, am a man of science; no, you
see, the tale in question speaks graphically of one Maggie Magee, whose
talents included the stopping of hearts!"

Marcel, at this precise moment, felt an overwhelming pain in his chest,
falling out straightaway. His body was shipped by merchant carrier
across the channel, to the burial site wherein all of Miss Magee,
trollope of Parisian brothels, were laid to rest.