Ex Vivo

There’s a pulsing in my abandonment, where I have never felt full.

I came to the museum the moment I heard about the new exhibit. The first institution to boast a human soul on display is only a two-hour drive from my home.

Anima Organ of Homo Sapiens reads the plaque. So clinical. The purple, pulsing pearl is sitting on a velvet pillow, no glass cage, no moth-eaten, red ropes sectioning it off. Glaring down from behind the display is a great black eye, the lenses shifting as the camera zooms in and out, taking in the entire room. Mechanical and methodical. Soulless.

The organ is still glistening as if wet, although it should have been long dry by now. Whatever they used to preserve it, it’s working well.

The anima organ was discovered in 2030. Morgan Milliferd located the structure in the deceased body of famous singer Valentin Acevedo.

The anima is a nodule hooked to the top of the stomach, serving little purpose. For many years, the organ was mistaken for a tumor.

How wrong they were to label the backbone of culture a bodily burden.

The hole in me aches.

Patrons mill around, glancing at history with glassy eyes, not even attempting to read the plaques. I can’t blame them for that last part. They don’t display the truth.

It wasn’t long after the discovery that the dissections began. All undocumented, of course. All posthumous, they said. But how can a dead body tell you that when the anima is removed, so is the desire to paint? That suddenly, very little matters. That nothing is real anymore, and consequences are nothing to fear?

Religious books will tell you that everyone has an immortal soul. But in the pages of biology textbooks, the soul is very much perishable. Without nourishment, it withers into the stomach acid. What the plaque fails to mention is when Morgan Milliferd discovered evidence that the president was lacking an anima, she was executed.

Afterwards, every child was forced to endure invasive surgery by the time they were three years old. A perfect, unified society. One nation, one soul, under God.

Flashes of grey and beige pass by the corners of my eyes. Dull clothes on dull people. But my eyes are fixed forward. It should be just an organ. The color is a putrid eggplant, the shape a lopsided ball, covered in rough pimples and divots. Something in my gut hitches at the sight, a hunger desperate to be sated.

I make eye contact with the camera, glaring down at me. It’s an all-consuming black eye. As my hand crosses the edge of the pedestal, splintering alarms fill the air, red lights flashing against white walls.

Before anyone can reach me, I’ve plucked up the artifact, popped it in my mouth, and swallowed.

My last thought as I’m pummeled to the ground is: how nice it is to feel whole.