beating heart

Don’t be ridiculous. There’s not a giant beating heart in the middle of the town square, suspended by strange ropy red cabling, powering the dark forces that have swept through the village. That’s ridiculous. How would that even work?

It’s obviously a metaphor. As such, it can be wrestled with symbolically, perhaps with wheat paste posters, but you absolutely shouldn’t fire a rocket launcher at it over the heads of the vampire lords who’ve replaced the local government.