I look at the crumpled piece of paper one last time and stuff it back in my pocket.

I am finally here. 56, 77th Street. Ground floor, door 112.

On the door, apart from the numbers printed in large bold characters, a smaller inscription can be read : "Women's Movement for Physical Equality". I had stumbled upon this name a few weeks back and it's been running in my mind ever since. Set up only months ago and trying to make a difference for themselves and women all around them. Their work was still pretty much insignificant, but they slowly gained grounds in town.

Right before I knock on the door, I notice a small metallic button beside the handle. When I press it, the door automatically rotates on its hinges to invite me in. Impressed, I shake my head and walk in.


"Good morning, how may I help you?"


Sitting directly on the floor, a woman with short back hair welcomes me with a polite smile. She turns her face away from a computer screen to look up at me with an inquisitive look. At the end of her single arm, resting calmly on the desk before her, I distinguish the rudimentary shape of two fingers opposing each other.


I fiddle with the piece of paper in my pocket before answering. "Good morning. I have a meeting with Miss..." Think, think... "Miss Sarah Taylor?"

"Yes of course, and you would be Mister Thompson?" I nod. "Great! She'll be with you shortly. If you could sign this visitor registry that would be great."


Through an extraordinary feat, she grabs a sheet of paper from a nearby drawer using the two halves of her fingers and hands it to me. I drop on one knee to get down to the level of her desk and enter my info, quickly scanning the room around me. The current room seems to lead to two or three offices hiding behind closed doors while a waiting area has been set further in the same space I'm in. I hand the paper back to her and stand up. As I'm heading towards a chair, she hails me again.


"Wait, I almost forgot!" I stop to look at her. "We are hosting a conference in town next week to tell people about our organisation and it's goals. Let me give you a pamphlet."


I bite my lip as she leans forward and pushes herself away from the desk, her legless hips brieftly rising in the air before thumping back on the floor. She progresses by short hops towards a corner of the room where a pile of pamphlets lay on a low table, whose legs have obviously been sawed short. After sticking one between her lips, she proceeds to trace her steps back to me, still pushing herself up and forward with her arm. She smiles again and I return the favor. Even after several months, I'm still uncomfortable... meeting new people.

When I finally reach a seat, I take another good look around. I'm guessing this space doubles as a break room as well. There's a coffee machine in the back, biscuits, boxes of tea, cans of soda... Behind me, cushions of different sizes are dispersed on a round carpet. On one of the cushions is printed their slogan : "We too can do it!". The entire thing looks very professional, although with a unique feminine touch.

The sound of a door opening brings me out of my stupor. Just like the main door, it too moves like it has a mind of its own. I stand up and stick my sweaty hands in and out of my pockets, not remembering how to properly stand or present myself. Ahead of me, the unobstructed doorway reveals a young woman in her early twenties. The light plays on the glossy fabric of her pants as she waddles forward, the short stump of her right arm already extended towards me.


"You must be Jonathan Thompson? I'm Sarah Taylor, nice to meet you." She senses my hesitation and chuckles softly. "I won't bite you, you know. Not after all the money my father paid to straighten those teeth."

I try to laugh but only manage to exhale sharply. "Of course. I'm Jonathan." 

Her stump slides into my grasp and we shake. "Meetings can only ever start by a good handshake." She smiles at me. "Why don't you come in so we can talk."


As she turns around and begins walking back around her desk, I sit in the room's only chair set right in front of it. Like the woman's at the entrance, her desk is set close to the ground to allow her to reach it while sitting on the floor. As she walks around the room, her long hair, dyed a delicate shade of lavender, rustles against the skin her back through a wide opening in her sleeveless top. She sets her stumps on the polished surface in front of her and looks up at me.


"So", she begins before catching her breath, "what can I do for you today Mister Thompson?"

"Well, as a recently graduated journalist", I lie, "I stumbled upon you organisation and thought it was fairly interesting." Hearing this, she straightens herself even more than she already was. "Is this a charity? A movement? How would you describe yourselves?"

"No, we're not a charity in the sense that our goal isn't to collect and redistribute money like the ones for cancer or child abuse or poverty usually do. Right now, I'd consider us as part of a movement that is trying to change the mentality of the general population."

I smile nervously. "Change the population's mentality, that's quite the challenge don't you think? Some people fight their entire lives for causes and never make a dent in people's perceptions."

"You're right but I think what we're fighting for is worth the trouble. If we can be part of the first snowflakes to accumulate on a mountain that one day causes an avalanche I would be quite proud of it."

"I think the name of your movement is quite evocative of what it does, but could you perhaps elaborate on it?" 


I should've brought a pad to take notes, or perhaps ask her permission to use my phone to record our conversation, both would've made me look more professional. But she thinks nothing of it. She joins her stumps together, still set on the desk, and adjusts her position on the floor.


"My.. I mean... Our goal is to bring to attention to the population the unfair treatment women have been receiving for... as long as we can remember, really. Most of us don't work and will never attend college, we're stuck staying at home making kids, or at least trying to, that we can't even take care of because nothing is adapted to any of us." I can feel a veil drop in front of her eyes as she finishes her sentence. Her arms disappear behind the desk and I see her unconsciously reaching down... for her stomach? She realises it and starts speaking again. "We advocate for a better recognition of womankind and perhaps a nudge in the direction of adapting this world so that it can become accessible for both men and women."

"So you're saying women are as capable as men to accomplish any action?"

She rolls her eyes. "I mean, I'm not stupid either." Her arms are back on the table, now. She swings her left up and down vigorously. "I can try to hammer a nail as hard as I want but the fact is I can't take a hold of the hammer. I like to cook, but I wouldn't hire myself to chop vegetables because I'm awfully slow at it. However, I don't see why we can't be in parliament or teach or study marketing, right?"

I interrupt her. "Interestingly enough, there are a lot of girls studying HR in my school."


She jerks her arms towards me, as if I just confirmed her point exactly.


"I think we deserve a better place in this society. I've seen it, I know it's possible."

There's my chance. "You know? How could you know?"

"I mean: I know it, I believe it, I am certain of it." She taps the surface of her desk in rhythm to emphasise her words.


She didn't seem to catch what I was insinuating, there. Perhaps my intuition oh her was wrong? 


"And how do you intend to accomplish what you just said?"

"Right now we're mostly distributing pamphlets while we wait to give our first conference. Here, let me give you..." She begins turning around to grab a pamphlet but I flash her the one that's already in my pocket. "Most people won't book us when they hear what it will be about because they are convinced it won't sell. Perhaps if they give us a chance to explain ourselves, we can show the world that there is another way of doing things! That this is not normal!"

"Not normal? You're making very little sense, Miss Taylor. I understand that you think this isn't fair, but that it is not normal?"

She swings her hair backwards before answering. "Unfair is what I meant, yes. There has to be another way."

"And do you happen to know the way Miss Taylor?"


She squints her eyes looking back at me, like she's trying to decipher what I just said. I can almost expect what she's going to say next, but she scoffs.


"Of course not. I can't predict the future, Mister Thompson."

"I wasn't talking about the future."


The air is tense, almost awkward. I think she knows where I'm trying to go, and I'm now pretty sure I'm going the right way, yet noone is flinching yet. I don't think she believes my journalism story anymore. I've blown it. We simply look at each other, waiting for the other to speak. A lock of hair frees itself from behind her ear and she places it back, moving the entirety of her shortened arm in the process.


"Is... this all?" She finally says. "I wouldn't want to rush you out but there's many things I need to work on right now." She gives the mouse of her computer a flick and the screen jumps back to life.

"I think it is, yes."


I stand up, hesitate to extend my hand, then don't. She's focused on her computer screen, now. It seems like I already left the inside of her head. I decide to walk to the exit, without a goodbye or the proper end to a conversation.


"Wait." I say in a last attempt, stopped midway through the door. "There's something more I need to talk to you about."

She frowns and looks at me again. "Like I said, I think we covered everything we cou..."

"You were the one to get the idea for this movement, right?"

"That is... correct, yes." She answers.

"And why is that?"

Behind her eyes, I see retrieve a disk from a drawer at the back of her brain, push it in a disk reader and recite it's content from memory : "As I said earlier, because I think that, as women, we require the same respect, rights, and accessibility to all aspects of society, no matter our physical attributes, whether we have a single limb, shortened ones or none at all, and this, in a way that..."

"That's not what I meant." I interrupt her. "What event triggered your desire to address this issue?"


Her eyes drift off and her arms begin to twitch. The fog is thickening in the room. She absently joins her stumps together.


"Well, one day I... was just fed up, you know." Her eyes look up to meet mine, but immediately stray off again. "All these years of being oppressed and thought of as inferior just because I have no limbs. I'm more than my body. I can... We can be just as smart as you men. Nothing against you personally, of course." She gestures towards me as she adds this last part.

"So nothing particular happened? Just the accumulation over the years?"

"That is correct." She says, while correcting the angle of a sheet of paper that hasn't moved since I entered the room.

"I ask mostly because I thought the 20th of August of last year could've been an important date for you..." I let that slide off the tip of my tongue and...


I knew it. I FUCKING KNEW IT! She freezes, her eyes locked into mine. I can see her jaw trembling. From fear? Excitement? Confusion? I can't tell. But I've got her. I was right.


"What happened on August 20th?" She says sharply.

"Nothing important it seems. It was nice chatting with you." 

"Sit. Down."


Her voice sounds aggressive, now. She points the chair I just got up from using one of her stumps, the other one partially hidden behind her lilac-colored hair. Even without legs and so few of the length of her arms, she manages to look imposing, in a way. But I can still see this... emotion behind her eyes. She cannot wait to hear what I have to say and we both know it.

I cough.


"I was still a student last year, graduated only a few weeks ago. I used to live in an apartment with two girls from my faculty, moved out since. I always thought I'd be nice to live with two girls. As a teen I pictured them walking around in their underwear, talking about clothes, or having pillow fights every night while I could mostly... Well. The typical fantasy really. Turns out it wasn't as glamorous, but it was just fine. Studying, partying, more studying, all the usual stuff. Then, one morning, the 20th of august, I woke up to one of them, Alyssa, calling my name over and over. Said she had to go to the bathroom and kept calling for help. I thought she was just making fun of me. I told her to go by herself, but she told me to stop being ridiculous. She wasn't the kind of girl to make these kind of jokes, at least she had never done so for as long as I had known her. She told me I knew it wasn't gonna come here today, and she continued insisting more and more until my second roommate started calling me, too. I was trying to go back to sleep and this whole situation was starting to piss me off. When I couldn't stand it anymore, I walked up to Alyssa's room and barged right in."


Sarah isn't breathing anymore, she's drinking the words right out of my mouth.


"Do you want to guess what I found inside?"

Her words escapes her mouth in a whisper. "She was limbless, wasn't she?"

"She was."


All the air in the office goes ice cold and Sarah shudders. She uselessly tries to warm herself up by clutching her arms together. She sighs, like the air in her lungs had been burning her insides for an eternity. She doesn't seem to know how to stand anymore.


"Go on, please." She says, the aggressiveness nowhere to be found in her voice or on her face.

"She was laying on her back, completely naked on top of the sheets, squirming her body from side to side, begging me to take her to the bathroom. I just.... stood there speechless. After a moment, I snapped out of it and slipped a shirt over her head before doing was she kept asking for. I couldn't stop looking at.... her. How the shirt awkwardly crumpled where I expected to find her shoulders, the way her hips just... I carried her back to her room and fetched her some clothes. Reaching in exactly the right drawers, the right cupboard, like I just knew where were the things I was looking for."

"And your other roommate?"

"Belle was still worthy of her name. It means beautiful in French, but I guess you knew that. All she had left was an arm quite like yours, only even shorter. Just enough to say her body extended beyond one shoulders. The worst of it all was that..." I pause and moisten my lips. "none of them noticed. They teased me when I told them I was uncomfortable giving them a bath, laughed at my flushed cheeks after I finally accepted to. They asked what was wrong with me every time I questioned what seemed to have happened. At one point I just played along, helped them the entire day. Cooked for them, helped them eat, get dressed, get cleaned, then put them to bed when they asked, hoping it it was all just a dream..."

"But it wasn't." Sarah finishes for me. "And it never went away..."

"It never did. And..."

"All the women around you..." Her left arm moves up and down as she looks for words. "...suffered the same fate." She completes again.

I nod. "My sisters, my mom, most of my friends... Studying in HR, there were quite a lot of girls in my class. They were all unique in their ways. Most had short arms or legs," I gestured towards her, then towards the reception desk, "some longer ones, and others without anything at all."


Another pause. We look at each other in silence for a while. I thought Sarah would want to add something, but she wants more of me, so I start talking again.


"I was seeing this Italian girl at the time, Vanessa. Brilliant girl she was, in her fourth year of medical school, very talented. But from the 20th and on, she had switched to literature. She couldn't have used a scalpel even if her life had depended on it. Apparently, the region where she was born has one of the highest limb ratio on earth for women. I know because I looked it up. Well she... She was the black sheep of the bunch. She had lost every possible inch of limb in her body. I tried to talk to her about it the first couple times, but she got mad when I kept bringing it up so I stopped. Since her family was pretty rich, she had a personal chauffeur that could drop her at my place at anytime of the day. We kept going out for a bit, but I broke up two months later. She wasn't the girl I had fallen in love with, you know. We used to go jogging together, she could run a 5 miles like it was nothing. Then, I had to set her tablet up myself if she wanted to get some reading done for school. I'd prop it up on an articulated stand in her living room and she'd sit right in front of it, flipping through the pages with her tongue. I never managed to get any work done myself while she read, I could only stare at her. When she focused on her books, she became unstable on her legless rump, oscillating like a house of cards in the breeze."

My own vision blurs of memories.

"The sex had become so intense. She was completely at my mercy and she loved it. She knew how to take advantage of it all, moved around with her impossible body like she always had, seemed to know what made me tick. There were so many new angles, so many options to explore... And the feeling of total control over her defenceless body, her shoulders and pelvis left inconceivably empty... The emptiness that laid beyond her neck, her shoulders moving beneath her skin like they would tear right through it, desperately reaching for arms that never existed, her back arching under my rhythmic pounding, her empty hips failing to anchor herself to the bed as I lifted them up effortlessly, her body squirming under my own, her hair and lips and breasts and stomach and genitals and ass even her ribs and everything that made her all so vulnerable to me. She was horribly helpless yet undeniably in control of this lump of flesh and bones that she had become, barely able to move but oblivious to its absurdity. And she never made any comments on how I would..."


I stop. What am I doing? My fists are clenched at my sides and my erection is pressing hard in my underwear. Sarah is looking strait at me, not a trace of disgust or anger in her eyes. She's still listening.


"I... I.." I stutter. "This was extremely inappropriate I... I am terribly sorry... I shouldn't... This was a mistake."


But I stay put on my chair. I should be running away in shame after all I just said. My blood is pounding inside my ears. But how could I leave? She's the only one who... Knows about all of this. The only one I can talk to. As if reading my mind, she nods.


"What about you?" I finally ask. "What happened to you?"

She waddles from side to side until she has turned 90 degrees and walks around her desk to face me. I sit on the floor before her, our eyes almost levelled.


"It wasn't as sudden." She says before breathing in deeply. "One day, I woke up looking like this." She raises her arms straight into the air, then reaches for her shoulders and looks down at her hips. "Like you, I was shocked, to say the least, but nobody said anything about it, so it became hard to question anyone. I thought of it as a astoundingly realistic dream. My girlfriend thought nothing of it, either. And since it went back to normal the next day, I kind of shrugged it off. But... it happened again, the next month. And again only a few weeks after. Always more frequently than the last time. Before I knew it, I stopped waking up with limbs altogether. Day after day having to climb in my bed and waking up only to fight against the covers before I can crawl to reach the floor. On the 27th consecutive day, August 20th, my girlfriend had turned into a man, and every other woman had become more or less like me."

"Wow." I say. "So you saw this coming? Did you think it would come this far?"

She laughs. "Never in a million years. I mean, what are the odds of you waking up as a Jewish young girl in the 1960s? Probably just as low as losing your limbs in the span of a night, right? When it started being more frequent, I feared one day it would be here to stay, so I sort of made up my mind before it happened."


The telephone rings. Before I can offer Sarah any help, she clicks her tongue and the receptionist's voice fills the room. 


"Sorry to disturb, it's the printer on line 2, something about pixelated images of the second set of flyers?"

I can see her crane her neck slightly. "Tell him I'll call him back."


The line cuts again. We can still hear her muffled voice from across the door as she reschedules the call.


"You said," I hesitate, "that your girlfriend had... turned into a man?"

She laughs nervously. "Yeah. I guess being a lesbian is harder you're both quadruple amputees. But everything is exactly the same. She's the same person as before, we have the same memories. I definitely needed an adjustment period. But not her... him. I am very lucky to still have him in my life."

"I'm sorry about all the... Things I just said. It was really inappropriate."

"Oh, don't mention it. To a certain degree, I found what you said to be interesting. I mean, it's only together that we can see both sides of the same coin, right?"

"About that..." I pause, unsure if I want to ask such a personal question. "How... is it?"

She raises her eyebrows. "Losing my arms and my legs?" She chuckles. "Well I... It's not that it's..." She looks up at the ceiling before fiddling with her arms. "It's both not as bad as you'd think it is, and as shitty as you'd imagine. I mean, I literally have to drag my ass across the floor to move from point A to point B. As for my arms, well." She raises them in front of her and gestures towards my hands, where the crumpled piece of paper has unconsciously reappeared. I set it between the narrow ends of her limbs. "I need both arms to grab on to anything, really. I've learned to use my teeth like a makeshift hand like most girls I know."


She pushes her shoulders back and cranes her neck, effectively putting the ball in reach of her mouth. As she moves the dull ends of her stumps together, it rolls in her feeble grasp and she gently unfolds it. Her attempt to throw it back at me is weak and unsuccessful.


"See? Like you said earlier, I'm utterly helpless. You could lift me up and lock me in a cupboard and I wouldn't be able to defend myself. I'm dependent on my boyfriend and I hate it. But at the same time... It feels so good to be in his arms. Like it's the only place in the world where I belong. I'll swear at myself while standing in front of the mirror, struggle around endlessly on the floor or repeatedly fail to climb on the couch until I feel like biting my tongue out and my eyes fill with tears. But as soon and I feel his hands on my body or reaching beneath me I just.. forget it all. It's really strange. I know I should be wishing to have my limbs back with all my heart, yet it feels irrationally good to be so vulnerable before him. Sometimes I can't decide what I want most; being able to feel my hand run across my thighs, or squirm worthlessly on the bed, waiting for him to come and take me. It really is breathtaking."


My turn to be impressed. I never would've guessed even her could have felt this way, especially while retaining her memories of having limbs.


"After so long, I barely remember what its actually like. This is my new normality. I don't instinctively extend my hand or try to get up from chairs anymore. It's also why I've created this organisation. If I'm the only one that knows about all of this, I might as well try to make our lives easier in the process."

"I'm guessing I'm the first person you meet that noticed any of this, then?" I ask her.

"Yes, of course. I wouldn't run around screaming this nonsense at the top of my lungs. Not that I can run, really."


Just like that, we start laughing. Like two people that know each other so well already. I look at her again. She must have been stunning with a pair of legs and nails at the end of a complete set of fingers. She's still gorgeous, but in a different way. She ruffles her hair with a stump and fixes them away from her shoulders. I can almost picture her using her hands to do it. It would be so easy. Instead, she has to use these arms, so short that they barely reach beyond her breasts.


"What do we do now?" I check my watch. "It's been half an hour since I walked in here. Your receptionist must think we're in a hell of a good brainstorm."

"You're the one that came to see me, remember?" She answers. 

I smile. "You're right." Another silence. This one not as heavy as the ones before. "I think I would like to see you again. I've been having a hard time talking to girls I knew before the 20th... It's nice being able to talk so freely."

"I think I'm better than you on this. You've met a few neuters, I guess?" I nod. "Well, on Thursdays, I get to spend the day with some of my closest friends in one of these nurseries they run."

"Really?" I lower my tone, I almost yelled. "How is it?"

"Oh, nothing special." She rolls her eyes. "We mostly watch TV, exercise, and once a month we organise wrestling matches, which usually ends up in a pile of squirming young girls clumsily humping each other, their bodies glistening with massage oil."

I'm speechless. "I, uhh.. You... You sh.."

"I'm kidding." She winks at me. "I noticed earlier that you don't seem to consider this whole thing as entirely negative, am I right?"

"I guess you are." She totally is. Even though women have it rough, I have.. found my way to enjoy it.

"Since this is my office, let me offer you a deal." She turns around and begins to walk back behind her office. With every step, she throws her entire body to one side, then to the other, alternatively moving a hip forward and slowly progressing with her rump. "Let's meet here once every two weeks to talk. About what happened, about my life, about yours, about anything really. It'll do us both good to vent to another that knows we're not crazy." She leans forward to tap a single key before meticulously grabbing the mouse with her arms to drag it. After double-clicking, she starts tapping again, her shoulders actively moving her arms up and about. "Here, I'll send you an email about it with a recurring event. In the meantime, I'll try to use this organisation as a cover to investigate and find other people like us. Here, if you ever need to join me."


She slides a business card over to me. I stuff it in my pocket where my cellphone is just as it vibrates. It's her email. I check it quickly, but will read it in details later.


"What about the other women working with you?"

"They know nothing about this. Let's keep it this way. There's a third girl, too. She has an attitude but she's alright."

"What does she..." I wonder if it's rude to ask this. "Look like?"

"Mid-thirties, strait hair, glasses, keeps bragging about her foot."

"She has a foot?"

"She has a mouth that never shuts the hell up about her foot, that's what she has. What good can it do her, being stuck on her hip like that. I'm better off without it."

"A girl in one of my classes had two finger at the end of one of her arms. Extended a bit further than her elbow. The other was as short as yours."

She raises her eyebrows. "Two arms?! Wow, Someone's hit the jackpot."

I relieve an itch in my back. "Yeah, I almost failed this class because I couldn't stop looking at her. It got awkward too when we had to work together... Anyways."


There. Everything has been said, while at the same time there was so much more to explore and talk about. As I stand up, I suddenly feel insultingly tall compared to her as I watch her walk back to the door.


"It was n... It was great to meet you." I extend my hand. "I look forward to chatting again with you two weeks from now."

"It really was."


She sounds sincere. I can't imagine how alone she must've felt all this time. I know I was, and I wasn't even a victim of this.


"I know we've only just met," she says, looking at my hand, "But I would really like a hug from you right now."


Without thinking about it, I put my hands beneath her arms and lift her up to me. I circle my arms around her and press her small body against mine, her arms returning the favor as best as they can gently pushing on the sides of my neck. It's been so long I've been physically this close to a woman since it happened, I almost forgot what it felt like. She's so warm. I can feel her heartbeat in my own chest and her breath on my neck. I whisper kind words into her ear, I'm not even sure which. Her hair smells nice, the skin of her cheek is soft against my own. When I set her back down, she wipes away the tears in her eyes and smiles up to me.


"See you in two weeks Mister Thompson." She says in a louder, more professional voice. "I look forward to doing business with you again."


I smile and walk out of her office. I salute the receptionist, passing in front of her to join the main corridor through the automated door. As I step outside, I try to remember the feeling of Sarah's body against mine. I stand atop of the stairs in front of the building, drenched in sunlight, picturing us in this otherworldly embrace. How good it felt, like I had reconnected to something I had been missing for all this time. Human contact and warmth. 

I reach into the pocket of my coat for my phone and quickly type something. I send it before I can begin to overthink it.

'Hey V. Coffee at my place like we used to? Let me fix the mistakes I've made.'