Sensation

It is just a sensation.
Nothing more.
Listen to Heather, she has it too.

He kept saying that in his head, as it could make that real. Just a sensation.

Coming back to Heather, she was talking about her leg. It was gone long time now, thirteen years she said, but it was still there, attached to her body. She could feel it. She felt the pain, she felt the touch. The only thing she could not do was seeing it.
Because her leg was gone, thirteen years ago with the incident.

Was the break fault, she said, piece of shit car. So long to the left leg and her husband.
He was driving, fault in the brakes my ass, a man so dumb to marry a boring cunt like Heather shouldn’t be allowed to drive.

He hated Heather or to be more specific, she disgusted him.
A living lamentation of how her fucking phantom leg was just a metaphor of her husband to be still with her, though she couldn’t see his chubby pink face. And she would take his picture from her wallet to show his fat face to everyone else.
Then she cried and Tom, the group leader, would rise from his chair and go to hug her and it was hilarious: Tom left both his arms in Afghanistan, now he had two cheap plastic prostheses that made him look like a mannequin from the mall.
A mannequin embracing a fat old bitch with one leg. After all these meeting were funny, how do you jerk-off Tom?

like Heather he lost a leg too. Wasn’t an accident, cancer did that.
Cut it straight from the quadriceps.

He never minded that, he accepted it as a natural consequence of his sluttish life.
It was not God punishment, more like an eruption. All his life had been a pile- of magma, any bad things he did was accumulated under his skin ‘till the day the magma erupted, as a cancer.
Was just his opinion. if it sounded stupid fuck that, he didn’t care.

The dreams began three months after the surgery.
He dreamed his leg, it was still there and it was disgusting. Far beyond the phantom limb.

A swollen rotted leg was still attached to his body, in the dreams he was in the bed, he just looked down and he could see it: was full of worms been busy eating the dead black flash, three big flies were resting on his foot, shitting more worms, he couldn’t move but if he could he would never touch that horrific thing.
He didn’t feel pain, he didn’t feel anything.

Was just the smell.
Putrid and sweet, it would make you puke your lungs.

When he woke up the smell was still there, attached to him, attached to the bed, it wouldn’t go away. No matter how many times he showered, washed his clothes she sheets. It remained with him.

He was tough, he could handle a bad dream, but he couldn’t resist that smell.
So he started to follow the meetings. Any Tuesday he wore his prosthesis and went there, with the hope that someone else was experiencing that, someone like him who was having dreams.

But he was alone.
The only other cripple who had dreams was Joshua, a big fat black guy.
They had to cut his foot because of’ the diabetes. After that he often dreamed he was running in a field full of flowers.
Diabetes runs in my family, Joshua said often. No one runs in your family you fat shit, he thought every time.

The meetings resulted into a failure for his purpose. They were enjoyable when Tom tried to hug one of the guys and were amusing for making fun of the others but nothing more.
Their purpose was to help to accept the loss of a piece of the body and move on, enjoy your life even with something less than before. In the end they were just cripple whining for their situations.

He didn’t need that, he just wanted to stop dreaming, and he just wanted to breathe fresh air again.

Marta had both her tits cut off; breast cancer.
They had something in common, they were junkies. Didn’t take long before they met outside the meetings, in the same sidewalk.
When he invited her over his place, he was thinking that an overweight forty year old heroin addicted without breast wasn’t the worst woman ever been in his house.

She was sitting on the floor, cooking, he was on the only chair he owned. He put away his prosthesis and looked at her.

Do you dream?
I do?
About your tits?
What do you mean?
When you dream, are they still there?
Yes, and my hair are still black and I’m twenty years younger.
Can you still feel ‘em?
No, do you?
Sort of.
Sort of?
It’s complicated.
Why you are attending the meetings?
I need help.
How?
I want to stop dreaming.
Are these dream so terrible?
Can’t you feel it? this smell?
No.
I can.

She raised on her feet with the syringe in her left hand.

You first, where?

He raised on his only leg, pulled down his treasures and his underwear, then came back to sit.

I think it’s my last vein.
She did him first, then she took it for herself.

Later they were in bed, both naked. He was caressing her scars on her chest, neither could be sure if they had sex, they were silent.
She turned to him and rested her head on his chest.

Above the smell he felt something, a naive sensation, a lonely tear went down from his right eye. And the he said it.

Help me.

She looked at him, kiss his forehead and raised from the bed. She walked to the window, opened it.
He could feel a string of fresh air in the room.

She looked out.

Get dressed, it’s a wonderful night. Let’s go for a walk.

Slon