The woman peeked into the small wooden box opened before her and gasped. She looked up at her boyfriend, who could hardly retain himself from smiling, before going back to the thin silver chain.
"But Petrus, it must have cost you a fortune! You shouldn't have!"
"Nothing is too expensive for the lady in my life."
They both knew they were alone in the room, but he turned his head every other way just to be sure. The heavy wooden door hadn't budged since they had entered, the metal bar still in place. He reached in the box and picked up the delicate chain before setting the prior on the table beside him.
"You know, being a counsellor has it's perks. I make good money."
"I know but still..." She waddled where she sat, hesitant. "Okay, put it on me."
He walked around her and put it around her neck, securing the clasp before fixing her hair over her new gift. She turned around.
"How do I look?"
She straightened her shoulders and posed before him. From the chain hung a subtle but remarkably shiny translucent jewel. Dragged down by it's own weight, it slipped ever so slightly between her breasts with each of her breaths.
"Perfect."
She smiled and bit her lip, lowering her head out of respect, even though they had been married for many years now and she knew he didn't care about the gesture anymore. Raising her head again, she slowly started making her way to him. First swinging her torso to the right, then to the left, making little to no progress with every step. She dragged her hips across the dusty stones that made the floor of their room, and their entire chambers, until she could crane her neck far enough to kiss him on the lips. The camera shifted to the side, highlighting the flatness of her stomach and the shape of her breasts through her revealing clothes. He set his hands on the sides of her face and returned the favour with vigor and they both started to breathe more heavily. After what seemed like only a few seconds, he tore off her clothes and revealed her naked body before undoing the buttons on his own garments. He lay her on the ground and promptly penetrated her. She gasped once more as her breasts began moving in sync with his thrusts.
"Well you just lost me there." I say, suddenly a lot less interested by the movie. "You wanna keep watching?"
He isn't answering, his eyes are glued to the screen. I guess it's not worthy to even try at this point. They're all into it, no exception. Plus, he's got the remote. It's not like I could snatch it away from him.
I stay put as their little action scene unfolds. She screams, so does he, still hard at work over her on the ground, where the fake decor is less convincing than earlier. I always wonder if the actors manage to enjoy sex when filming scenes like this. Of course it's on camera, it's scripted to some extend, and there's a filming crew all around them but... it's still sex, right?
His hands run on every corner of her limbless body, to the rounded armless shoulders all the way to her spherical buttcheeks, their shape undisturbed by the presence of any legs. He lets her go for a bit and we see her revel in the pleasure, worming and squirming helplessly where she lays. I rub the stumps of my arms together, as I often do when I feel sorry for myself, glad I at least could hand on to these.
My phone chimes. It's Jonathan. He tells me there's something I should definitely check out on channel 6, that it's huge. He says it's about us, about the situation.
"Nick, sweeeety, could you switch to channel 6, pretty please?"
Snapping out of his trance, he kisses me on the cheek and kindly obeys. The news are on and the newscaster is already halfway into his intro of the next report.
"...of a trend on Reddit called "I woke up an amputee" that has been gaining popularity in the last few weeks. It's members, all exclusively women, claim to have experienced drastic changes to their anatomies in the span of a single night, calling it supernatural, and honestly thought-to-be impossible. These women are banding together and are starting to speak up about this issue, as they call it. Suzie Case has prepared this for you."
I feel my body covering itself in sweat almost instantly. I contract my pelvic floor muscles, the closest thing I've found I can do that scratches the irrepressible urge I sometimes get to cross my legs, and straighten my back. There's a flashy transition, followed by a few classic journalist phrases like you'd expect to find in any other reports. They show text screenshots from Reddit where keywords are highlighted. woke up like this, nobody noticed, had changed overnight, like born this way. All these things I experienced myself, and to some extend, Jonathan has, too. Up until now, he was the only other person I knew of that was aware of it. How many others can there be? This means there's a good chance I wasn't the first one who it had happened to.
The reporter is a well known journalist with a single arm twice the length of mine. She is presenting a microphone, which is conveniently wedged in a royal-blue armband, to another women sitting on the floor of what has to be her living room. She's scruffy looking, like she hasn't slept much in the last few days, and I can tell even just by looking at her hair that she could use a shower.
"What do you mean what happened, are you looking at me right now?" Her shoulders move erratically under her shirt, agitating her dangling sleeves. "It all began when I woke up the other day to a weird-looking guy in my room, saying he has to bathe me and help me up!! As I scream and try to run away from him, I fall over like a doll, like I'm paralysed and can't move. I panicked, thought he broke in last night, drugged and disabled me because he then started undressing me by force! But then he took off my shirt and I see that all that's left of me is this... thing!" As the reporter narrates other cases found on the same trend, which, according to the victims, had all happened in the last few weeks, the camera pans down to the women's hips, where the remains of what once was a leg shyly pokes out of her shorts. It stomps the ground irregularly to emphasise some of her words. "After passing out from shock, I woke up wearing fresh clothes, sitting on the living room couch, but the weird guy was nowhere to be seen. I made my way back to my room, managed to find my phone and check on the internet, mind you without legs!! or fingers!!, or hell even without limbs! Took me an eternity, and this is a small apartment!"
"And so you're saying you have no memories of yourself ever living in this body?" The reporter asks neutrally.
"Absolutely not. Not even during the most feverish of hallucinations. As for yourself, I've been watching you for years now, I think I would've noticed if you only had this joke of an arm for yourself! I would've thought you were quite the feat, inspiring even, but look at the both of us! This is insane! And you dare to pretend this is how it's always been?"
Suzie doesn't seem insulted in the slightest at the attack on her anatomy and the interview continues. The woman says she called a few of her friends to try to understand what was going on and none of them believed in her crazy story. It was then that she decided to search on internet, hoping to find an answer, when she found the thread about women that had experienced the same thing.
"Waking up and suddenly being limbless or almost, only having part of an arm or a leg, sometimes multiple small limbs, but rarely more" she reads off of a computer screen, "and I started chatting with them. Finding out some of them had been living like this for weeks, or months. It's like we were all waking up from a collective dream one after the others, everyday with newcomers joining the discussion, not being able to talk to anybody else about this. They had all adapted to their new lives. Most of them now stayed at home, but there were some that still kept their jobs. They even made a sub-thread filled to the rim with tip and tricks to help people get around their new anatomy. How to use their mouths like a hand to manipulate things around the house, how to handle objects with one, two, or no arm stumps, to help others take advantage of what they have to be able to function most effectively on their own."
"And how does finding this trend has made you feel?" She asks.
"Relieved, but also inspired, honestly." She shrugs her shoulders to push her glasses on top on her nose. "These women where at a moment in their lives where nobody would believe what they where saying. But did they abandon each others to their own misery? Hell no they didn't. Instead, they banded together to make a bunch of video tutorials detailing how to do the most mundane and basic tasks, like pushing yourself up if you have found yourself losing your arms, or getting in and out of your clothes. There's an entire video series dedicated to waddling techniques depending on every women's situation. You have a bit of everything? There's a good chance you can walk on all fours faster than any other ways. You have a bit of leg left, like me? Use it to push yourself forward. You've only got an arm? We'll make do, swing that **bleep** around and use it as a counter-weight to roll your bum forward. You don't have limbs at all? They'll show you how to use your hips to roll efficiently anywhere you need to go. I couldn't believe it. And still can't."
The scene cuts to the backyard of a suburban home for another interview, this time with a young girl who woke up the morning of her 18th birthday with nothing but four short stumps. Since her discovery, she says she's been enjoying her new life at the fullest while under the supervision of her boyfriend, a mastodon-looking dude.
"I mean, that's pretty much what I've always wanted." She crinkles her nose and contracts her abs to reposition herself on her lawn chair. She's wearing a simple bikini that features her alleged brand new body. Even if she did read about the other women on Reddit, she quickly made her mind about the whole situation. She worries not about what she now calls her armlets and thighnies because she says her limbs weren't worth as much as the life she's been living since then. "Laying around in the sun, getting a nice tan, with absolutely no chores to do, I'm liking it a lot." She shrugs and cranes her neck down, barely reaching the sides of the sunglasses that rest on her head with her stumps to lower them over her eyes. "Oh, and watch this."
With great effort, she starts rocking her body left and right on the chair until she manages to throw herself down on the grass face-first. She shouts out to her boyfriend, whose enormous frame suddenly fills half of the screen. He appears from behind the shed and throws himself at his sweetheart, setting her up again on the chair. She kisses him thanks and he bolts back to keep doing God knows what at the back of the yard. She looks back at the journalist, then directly at the camera.
"I mean, what is there more to want?" As to add effect to her little demonstration, she agitates her four stumps, which are the shortest I've seen on another girl yet.
"So those are your final words on this situation?" Suzie asks her.
"It's the single best thing that ever happened to me since I was born." She answers, resting her arms beside her.
After another transition, the camera sets inside yet another apartment where everything seems to have been adapted for women of this world. The counter tops, tables and all the furniture has had their legs sawed off, so that they lay close to the ground. A young woman is shown turning the door handle of her bedroom with an armless shoulder and pushing it open with her forehead before rotating to face the camera.
"So your story is reversed from everyone else's, right?" Suzie asks.
"You could say that, yeah kind of." The girl answers with a genuine smile on her face. Older than 20 but definitely still below 25, she swings her head to expertly fix her short black hair. On her right side, her body's feeble attempt at growing an arm is bent on itself like a dying twig. "I've lived my whole life like this, except I used to be the exception. My friend Sally from high school had lost a few fingers in a firecracker accident, but she still had her arms and her legs, you know. I was always the outcast, but I managed. I've always had great and understanding friends, and also a lot of help. My father built this entire apartment just so I could be more independent... Well, I guess he built it for the two of us, now."
Just like these other women, Mindy also claims that the world around her changed overnight, although she says she hasn't. She remembers always being this way, even before everyone else would transform, as she calls it. Her voice-over continues talking as, completely legless, she is shown dropping on the ground from a sofa to roll up to the kitchen cabinets, where she hooks her chin on a support beam sticking out to help herself up. Using her mouth, she opens a drawer to retrieve an adaptive spoon her father built her many years ago.
"So how did you notice these changes if you have not changed yourself?"
"At first it took me a while, and by a while I mean probably around an hour, since waking up with no arms and no legs wasn't any different for me than any other day. I went through my usual routine, went to the bathroom, dressed up, which takes around twenty minutes by itself *laughs* and opened up Facebook. At first, I thought all my friends had played an April's fools joke on me. On their profiles, they all looked like they had most of their limbs amputated, or at least missing, like me. I was still pretty sleepy, so I kind of shook it off and turned on Netflix to continue one of my shows, except the girls in it where also um... different, to say the least."
"And your new roommate?"
"Oh yeah, I almost had a heart attack when she woke up. I was still shocked from the whole Netflix thing, not sure what the hell to think about it, when I heard someone in my kitchen and immediately freaked out. I have an alarm button at the side of my bed if I ever need to call for assistant if I hurt myself or whatever, but by the time I could waddle all the way over there to press it, she was entering my room. I recognised her, but couldn't remember if she had stayed home last night, or why she had to carry her phone between her teeth. Only after did I notice she didn't have limbs anymore."
The camera cuts to her friend. "Do you believe in her story?" Suzie asks.
"Nah, she's crazy." said-roommate declares, wearing nothing but a white sports bra and a matching pair of shorts that heavily contrast against her dark brown complexion. "She told me all 'bout that crazy story but I ain't buying it. I'm a woman of science and I only believe what science can explain, and luckily, it can explain this, and this, and that, and even this." She jolts her empty shoulder, her stump, and both sides of her limbless hips with every subsequent words. "Males and females of tons of different species will vary in size, or in color, or in morphology, and it so happens that we do too. Why is it that these women suddenly want to question the course evolution has taken over the past few millennia? Why couldn't the human race have evolved this way? We weren't much useful to hunt and gather as big pregnant women, so life took it on itself to maximise what only us can do best." I gotta hand it to her, she knows her subject, and with a lot of passion. Even if it is quite short, she agitates her stump in all directions as she speak, confident both in tone and in flesh. "With less flesh to grow and take care off, our bodies have evolved to become one of the world's most efficient incubator. The day she'll come to me with a logical explanation on how things could change overnight, like how we may have collided with a parallel universe and somehow this is the only thing that got mixed up between the two, or somehow aliens have abducted all 7 billion humans at the same time and altered half of us to be without limbs, I'll be in. But for now I certainly ain't."
I shake my head. Would this be a potential good explanation for all of this? Our universe, where women had limbs just like men, collided with an alternate universe where they didn't and... boom. But why only limbs? Why hasn't the rest of history changed at all? Was it really the only difference between the two worlds? How lucky would that be? And how come I kept jumping back and forth at first? Why are people noticing at different rates? I press my right arm on my temple. Man this is some deep metaphysics shit I'm not really good at. Maybe I should contact her and brainstorm with her about it....
The screen splits in two. The newscaster is back, only on the left side of the screen while Suzie and her loyal armband are squeezed on the right. "Well Suzie, it sure is an interesting...." The rest is nothing but a faint buzz in my ears.
I can't move. Not sure if I don't want to or if I'm actually frozen in place. When my phone vibrates again, I see Jonathan has texted me again. He seems more than excited. Tells me this is a huge breakthrough, asks if we should plan a move.
"That's pretty crazy, don't you think?" Nick says.
"Huh, yeah." I find nothing else to answer.
My phone again. It's Catherine. I can only read so much of her message, but it still melts my insides a little bit.
*Yo Sarah, have you watched the news today? There's this weird story I'd like to talk to you about.
Remember a few months back we were talking about having limbs and I pushed you back pretty hard?
Well, I'd really like it if we... *
The message preview ends there. What if she's actually part of these women.... That her brain snapped back into position and she finally noticed that things were horribly wrong? I look back at Nick, who seemed pretty unfazed by what we just watched.
"What do you think of it?" I ask him.
"Huh?" His eyes lift up from his phone where he's starting a game of Hearthstone. "Think of what?"
"We just watched this... You know what, nevermind." I hate it when he does this. He's such a... boy. I've gotten used to most of this pretty good, but I still have a hard time understanding how his brain works. Sometimes it just seems so.... Off. Like he literally unplugged his brain. It's as if he doesn't remember what we just watched. "Do you like the way I look sweety?"
He immediately locks his phone and turns to face me. "Woooah, okay, what kind of trick question is that?" He smiles. "Of course I do. You're my beeboo." He leans in to kiss me and I return the favor. He's been calling me that since he became a man and I love it. He's so cute when he says it.
"Yeah, but don't you sometimes wish I had more..." I see the panic creeping into his eyes. He senses he's being trapped in. I stop talking and raise my arms towards him, both to emphasise them and to suggest them as a possible answer, to see if he comes up with the end of my sentence... But he does not. He raises his eyebrows. "You know..." I circle my arms in front of me insistently.
"If you want me to say breasts you already know I'm more of an ass guy."
"No I mean... It's probably just me," I whisper, "you know what forget it, it's stupid..."
"No, no, I want to hear what you have to say."
"Well, sometimes, I kind of wish I had... like an actual arm, you know, just one..."
"What do you mean an actual arm!?" He replies immediately, confused. "Those two look pretty real to me." He reaches in and closes his hands around my stumps. "That's a lot more than some people have, you know that."
"I mean a complete arm, like you."
He stumbles back. "You know it's not possible, right?" God, it seems every time I'm bringing this up to a different person I get into the same conversation. "Not probable I should say."
I insist "Yeah but what if? What if I did, would you like it? Would it change anything between you and I?"
"What do you mean what if? Sarah you're not making sense." He lets go of one of my arms and raises his hand to my forehead. It's like his mind is blocked. Like I'm asking him to imagine if humans could fly, or breathe fire, or if we had a tentacle in the middle of our forehead. "Women don't have limbs, why are you asking me this? Why try to make a point out of fairy tales?"
I remember reading a specific tale from the Grimm Brothers, the new-universe collection. There's one story in particular in which a woman is born with all four of her limbs. Hid away from her village by her father, she's banished when they one day come about her existence; the men afraid that she could do as much as them, the women envious they couldn't do the same. In the end, after a few years of searching for her in the woods, they pinned her down on the forest floor and cut off her arms and legs. Instead of blood gushing out of her wounds, her flesh turned into roots, reaching out for the nearby soil and transformed her into a tree stump. Moral of the story : Woman and limbs don't do together. I'm guessing that's what came to his mind.
"It's just that..." I try to find a good angle to bring it back up, to try and convince him there used to be other ways. "What if these women on the news are right? What if they did transform overnight? And what if I did? Would you believe me if I told you I did?"
He shrugs. "Honestly, I don't think I would care. I like you for who you are, and not how you look." My phone chimes again. He hands it to me and I balance it on my right arm, lifted perpendicular to the ground. "Do grilled cheese sound good for lunch?"
I nod distractedly, sticking my tongue to navigate through my phone and answer Catherine's message. I think we are overdue for a long conversation. As for Nick, I'll have to get back to him somewhen soon.
--------------------
He sets me down and kisses me on the lips.
"Do you girls need anything else? I'll be back in a few, I can get some food in range if you feel like you'd need it."
"No I'm good, thanks." Catherine answers. She's walking out of the kitchen, pushing herself forward alternatively with each of her short thighs.
"I'm cool too. That grilled cheese is still weighing down on me."
"Suit yourselves." He closes the door behind him and we hear him go down the wooden stairs outside.
I turn around to face my friend and interrupt her almost immediately.
"Sarah do..."
"I know."
Her eyes grow wide, wider than I could ever imagine. Her shoulders, armless, collapse. She seems relieved, but also sad and happy at the same time, sniffing through her tears all the while smiling as she continues walking towards me. I spread my stumps and welcome her into my frail grasp as she leans her head against my shoulders.
"How long have you known?"
I sigh. "It's been a year already."
"A year?!" She straightens herself? "Holy shit, Sarah. It's only been a month for me and I feel like I'm going crazy!"
"Yeah I know. It is kind of crazy."
"Kind of?!" She sighs loudly. "I miss being able to braid my hair. And going for a run. And cooking. And just... having fucking limbs. LIMBS Sarah, how basic is that. I would kill for just one hand. Ok, maybe not kill, probably just cry and say please a lot."
"At least you've got legs." I point to them with my my right arm.
"Excuse me? At least you've got arms." She leans slightly towards me to inspect my stumps, feeling them using the tip of a shoulder. Her strapless bra has her neck and shoulders entirely revealed, making sure her lack of arms is most apparent. "Look at me, having to use my shoulders every time I want to touch something."
I look down at my arms as she's fiddling with them, effectively moving her shoulder up and around as a pathetic replacement for her hands. "I guess we haven't changed that much. Still wanting what the other has."
"I used to want your old 64G iPod, Sarah, or how good your hair looks when you get out of the shower, or even that sweet top with the glittery cupcake print on it, not your actual fucking limbs. Just look at us!" She pauses and shimmies, looking down at herself, then at me. "When I hold my phone, or anything really, I have to crane my neck in this weird angle to use press chin on my shoulder and I 'ook rea''y s'u'id 'oing i'." We both laugh. "Come on. Let's got sit.. over there I mean, not that we're not already dragging our asses around all day. I haven't stood up in a month."
I chuckle and we make our way to the corner of the living room where cushions are set directly on the floor, like in most houses I've been in since it all happened, actually. Guys often have higher recliners or chairs at their height, but there always seems to be a spot set up for us. At least that's a comforting idea. Most women have a place for themselves in their own homes.
"So, you said it's been a month since it happened for you... Does that mean two months ago everything was still, you know... normal?" I ask her. "Because I've been like this for a year, so I'm not too sure how the timeline of all of this actually connects together."
"If you would've asked me during the first week I had been like this, I would've told you that everything was normal before the big.. fwoosh." Her head bobs forward with her last word. "I machinally extended a hand towards Mark to get his attention or to grab my phone, only after a second did I remember I didn't have them anymore." She frowns. "But the more time that passes, the more it seems like it's all just fading away. A minute I'll be dying for a 5k run, but the next I'll wonder if my old life was nothing but a dream, that I've never actually ran, or had feet at all. Or like, for example, I remember going to the theatre with you to see some movie, that was five weeks ago. I have a pretty vivid feeling of holding my cup of coke and it being ice cold in my hand." Her collarbone stretches the skin covering her shoulder, at the spot where her arm would've normally developed as she tries to invoke her non-existing muscles. "But right now, I'm not even sure what a hand feels like. I'm not confident I could describe to someone else how to give a handshake with a hand. I think that's the craziest part."
There's a long silence. With Catherine's eyes scanning me from head to hips, I take the opportunity to do the same. Apart from the obvious, she hasn't changed at all. Her hair are the same length, her breasts still the same size, I think, and so are her hips. The stumps of her legs are short, firm, and muscular, just like her legs used to be when she could go for her morning runs. Her slender neck seems longer, but that's probably just an illusion from her armlessness. Her shoulders did narrow quite a bit since the incident, but I hadn't had an opportunity to observe her in detail since. She would've thought it weird, and I couldn't have blamed her, for her it was normal. Without any arms, her collarbones are shorter and pointier where they meet her shoulder blades. Just like she did a moment ago, she often uses their tips to poke, push, or feel things. Meanwhile, her gaze is stuck on my rump, sagged halfway into the cushion. With my legs long gone, I bet my ass could fit in a soccer ball.
"Does.... Does it get any better? With time I mean." She jolts her shoulder towards me, like she wanted to touch my side.
"Better? No." I pause briefly. "Less of a pain? Yes. Yes it does." I raise my stumps to my face to feel my cheeks, then reach upwards to rub my eyes. "It's mostly just getting used to it, really. When you've accepted it, it becomes easier to learn how to live all over again. Sorry if that felt overly cliché."
"Yeah I guess..." She rests her head and looks up at the ceiling. "I just feel like such a useless lump of flesh. It's like I'm a living cube of jell-o. The first day I woke up with this body, I was literally tumbling around the apartment every time I tried to move. I couldn't stand up strait by myself, nor could I hold on to anything to help my balance. Of course, Mark showered me, dressed me, cooked for me... it was nice of him. But the only thing I could do was... kind of lay here and there. I couldn't help but feel bad about it. I would've wanted to help, but let's be serious, how could I?"
I sigh. "That's pretty much what I do too. There's an adaptation period for sure. I'm guessing it's one thing boys have to get their head around before getting a girlfriend: Doing most of everything. Well, I guess I can brush my hair because Nick bought me one of those brushes you fix onto the wall so I can just.." I make the motion of rubbing my head against the brush and she laughs. "You seem to have gotten the hang of walking with your stumps, though."
She scoffs. "After the first few days, I started getting used to it. I stopped refusing help and accepted that he now did most of the cooking, cleaning, and caring about me, although it took me a while to understand how to walk properly. My boyfriend made me see a doctor because he thought I might have had inner ear damage. Turns out it's just fucking hard to walk with these legs." She slowly rubs them against each other up and down. She closes her eyes and bites her lip. "Sometimes, the only time I feel like a proper human being is when we... you know..." She opens her eyes again. "Do it."
We've never actually talked about sex together, probably because we've been friends for so long and it would've sounded weird, or awkward. But right now, it doesn't really seem like it would be.
"Oh my god yes." I answer and join my stumps. "Did it get like 1000% more intense since you've lost your limbs?"
She looks me dead in the eye and slowly nods, still rubbing her thighs together. "I had been feeling down during the first two weeks, for reasons, so didn't feel like having sex the first few days. I wasn't sure how to handle all of this," she looks around the room, then down at herself and archs back, "so I had no idea what the hell I was going to do when we finally had sex."
"I think know how that story goes..." I simply say.
"M I N D B O G G L I N G." The words escape her mouth in a murmur. She continues, still whispering, as if she was talking to herself. "Like my entire shitty body was nothing but a big clitoris. It felt like my skin was on fire and my brain had melted through my ears. It was so intense I was transfixed : unable to move, speak, or even moan, trapped in my own head, living each of his pounds as if I was giving birth to an entire universe. I'm not even sure what's an orgasm anymore. Every time he penetrates me, it feels like my soul vaporises and by the time he's done I feel like a damp cloth that's been wrung dry." Her voice is shaky now. She closes her eyes again.
"I... wow. I couldn't have said it any better." I pause. "You know how they used to say blind people have a better sense of hearing since they can focus on it more? In the same way, I feel like our bodies became more sensitive and more agile, in a way, after we've lost most of our limbs. I never would've believed I'd be able to dress myself without arms or legs."
"Y-ye-yeah, it's..." She breathes in and out. "Ho-ho-ho-honestly we should... stop ta-talking about it... because I get super hoooooooo..hoo-horny when I'm not with him and I......"
She takes another deep breath through her nose. "Are you okay Catherine?"
"Give me... gimme a sec.." She's still rubbing her stumps, but with a renewed intensity, her skin visibly covered in sweat. Slowly, she exhales through her mouth and slows them down, her shoulders collapsing more with every breath as the air leaves her lungs. "I can't think about it too much."
God damn. I knew she was more into sex than I ever was, but to think it would affect her this much? It's kind of scary to be honest. After she's calmed down, she lets go of a nervous laugh and reaches for her ear with a pointed shoulder. I figure this is a good time to talk about my new... acquaintance.
"Have I told you about my new friend Jonathan?"
She frowns. "It kinda rings a bell, but I'm not sure. Who is he?"
"A guy who came in to the office a few weeks back. He's the first person I met who had known about... this." As I wave my arms around towards her, I'm hit by a sense of ridicule. Why didn't I say something like: He knows we're all amputees now!, or, He's also aware of the way we are now. Why can't I address it directly? "He actually left his girlfriend after she.... lost her arms and her legs, he said she wasn't the same after. Maybe it's the way he saw her that changed."
Catherine scoffs. "I have trouble dealing with it myself, I wouldn't wanna know how weird it would get for our boyfriends. Has there been any reports of other boys noticing?"
"Not that I am aware of. If we are starting to band together for change, or recognition, or whatever, he's gonna be of good use."
"Yeah, imagine us drinking tea and needing to reach the top shelf for the sugar. Or any shelf, really." She laughs and pushes herself forward and off her seat, waddling of the cushioned area. "I need a drink. We made an alcoholic punch yesterday night and left it at my level in case I wanted to spice up my day. Want some?"
Before I can answer, I feel my phone buzzing inside my bra. Pushing up my breasts, I crane my neck down to grab it between my teeth. By the time I can open Jonathan's new message, there's a knock on the door. It's him.