“A Bag of what?”

“Of Holding!” The shopkeeper slid her fingers inside the bag and stretched it open, shortening the drawstrings that ran along the edge to keep it closed. “Despite its meager appearance, a pocket dimension had been sewn inside of it, making it bigger on the inside!”

“Like a Tardis…” I whispered under my breath.

“Excuse me?” She frowned inquisitively.

“Nothing, nothing…”

She continued her exhibit, reaching for a sword behind her. As she plunged it inside the bag, it disappeared up to the hilt, as if the blade was collapsible or it had pierced through the bag and the wooden countertop. “See? It also retained its initial weight as well, so you don’t get over-encumbered as you fill it up!”

I had never bought anything so fast in my entire life. Five minutes later, I was walking down the street back towards my apartment, the bag tucked inside my pocket. This would make a great replacement for my backpack. All the books I could fit in there…

Back home, I propped it on the table while I looked for stuff to put inside it, still amazed at the concept of it all. I loosened the string and fit three textbooks in the opening. Gulp. Gone, just like that. I looked under the bag, like making sure it wasn’t a cheap trick, and then inside the bag. I couldn’t see the books anymore. I thought I’d be able to peer into it, but right at the rim there was an indescribable blackness. Magic that couldn’t be seen through. I stuck my right arm inside, rummaging around until my fingers found one of the books’ bindings. Pulling it out was as easy as shoving it in, and it appeared again, unchanged.

I dove in again, my arm inside up to the shoulder as I felt for another book. It must have looked pretty freaky from the outside, my entire arm disappearing inside a 4-inch deep leather satchel. As my fingers brushed against another textbook, I leaned back to get a better grip on it, and the bag fell to the side, sending me backwards on my ass. The opening crumpled on itself, and my arm, still inside up almost to the shoulder, vanished inside.

I stumbled to my feet, panicking. My left hand jumped to my shoulder, expecting gushing blood and hanging flesh, but found nothing. Actually, that wasn’t true. What it found was a stump. A round, bloodless, woundless stump.

I stood again, slowly trudging towards the bag and tried to lift it. Tried because I instead jerked my empty shoulder forward without much effect. I scoffed and used my left hand instead. Around the rim, the same darkness prevented me from peeking inside. I made sure my feet were solidly anchored to the floor before plunging my left arm inside, easily finding its twin.

There wasn’t any blood on the dismembered limb either. Just like the book before it, it reappeared completely intact, but I let out a short yelp as I felt the air whoosh around it, as well as the pressure of my hand around the forearm. I let go of it, and it crashed onto the table, making me squint in pain. How could I still feel it if it wasn’t attached to my body anymore? Hell, how could it be detached from my body at all?!

I tried to flex the muscles of my right arm without effect. The disarticulated limb stayed put on the table, motionless, yet I still felt the cold surface against my skin.

I gripped my arm at the bicep and walked up to the bathroom to examine myself. This was crazy… Good thing I had been wearing a tank top or else I would have ruined the sleeve of my shirt. About 2 inches down my right shoulder, my arm stopped short into a flat-ish stump, its end covered in a patch of skin that had not existed before. It had become so light that it jerked upwards when I lifted it to the ceiling. I tried to move my lower arm and hand again, but it was as if I had forgotten how, yet I could still feel them touching the countertop. Really weird.

My eyes dropped to my dissected arm again and noticed the same patch of skin had covered where I should see blood and bones sticking out. Arm in hand, I placed it against my stump, and it reattached with a soft suction sound. My movement immediately came back to me and, after further examination, it was as if nothing had happened. An idea crossed my mind, and I grinned.

After a quick DoorDash order, I hurried back to the kitchen to get my Bag of Holding, fishing out the two remaining books still inside. I then sat on my bed, took off my pants, and slid a foot through the drawstrings. Like earlier, my flesh vanished inside the magical fog, yet I could still feel it attached to my body. I tugged the bag up my leg until it stretched around my thigh and pulled ever still, the skin of my leg slightly dented by the narrow opening. I took a deep breath and, with one string in each hand, gave them a quick tug.

Without any resistance, the bag closed shut and collapsed on itself, seemingly empty. Although it for sure contained at least my entire right leg, because it now ended a little more than halfway up my thigh. I felt around it, astounded. Like my arm before it, there was now a stump where my limb should be. Flexing toes or bending my leg had become entirely illogical on this side of my body.

I repeated the sequence again twice with my arms; plunging my limb into the leather satchel, into the dark expanse, then closing the drawstrings, even needing to use my mouth and remaining toes to do so. I looked down at my work, proud of the result, then the doorbell rang. Had it really been 30 minutes?

Standing up with difficulty, I managed to find my balance and hopped to the door on one leg, squatting to fumble with the doorknob using my mouth. After about a minute, I shouted at the delivery guy.

“It’s open, please come in!”

I hopped back to challenge his gaze as the door opened. “Pizza for Hope, is that… um…” He struggled to pick up his jaw from the floor. “Am I at the right address?”

“Of course you are!” I wiggled my stumps towards him to grab the pizza, completely forgetting I had cut off my arms a few minutes ago. I shook my head. “As you can see, I don’t have arms. Could you please drop it on the kitchen table?”

He hesitated. “We’re not supposed to enter customers' homes but…” As if it had been scripted, I lost my balance. I rolled my empty shoulders every which way, trying to get it back before falling hard on my ass. Now he stepped forward. “Are you okay?!”

“Owwwww…” Again forgetting my magical amputations, I tried to rub the pain out of my bum and swept the floor with my truncated thigh. “I’m fine, just terribly embarrassed, that’s all. Thank you so much.”

He pulled me up by the right arm, and all the tension of the movement tugged at my shoulder instead of being buffered by my forearm and bicep. Back on my foot, I followed behind him to the kitchen where he finally set down the pie. Still, he was hesitant.

“Is there anything I can help you with before I leave?”

“Do I look like the kind of gal who needs help?”

The poor thing’s face melted. “Oh, um, I just, erm, sorry I…”

“I’m kidding! You just helped me get off the floor like a real gentleman and I thank you for it! But I’ll be fine.”

“Alright then. Good evening.”

And just like that, he left. I sat on a chair and giggled to myself. My God, that had been fun. I should have recorded his reaction.

I looked down at my short arms, so short in fact they couldn’t even touch, even if I strained and tried to bring them together. They weren’t going to be of any use to eat that pizza. Could I even open the box? I leaned forward and prodded at the cardboard lip, unable to get a grip. The stumps at the end of my arms were too round; there were no overgrowths or fleshy bits sticking out that I could use like fingers. I bit into the box and tore part of it off, lifting the lid using my tongue. The pizza was still smoking hot. Better get my hands back for a slice.

And suddenly, it hit me. My limbs were still at the bottom of the bag. There was no way I could get them out using only my leg, and even if I tried, what if the bag fell over like it had earlier? I’d be stuck as a cripple until someone found my body rotting in my apartment? 

Fuck me. Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck. I laughed again, although nervously this time. I didn’t want anyone I knew to see me like this, but I was going to need some help.

Luckily for me, I knew exactly where to find my phone. Okay, texting wasn’t exactly easy using only my toes, but I got it working. Now, sitting cross legged on my bed, (is it even called cross legged when you only have one leg?!) my stump resting against the sole of my foot, I waited for my savior to arrive.

I yelled when I heard Dana knocking. “Come in!!”

She burst into the apartment, a little out of breath. “I came as fast as I could! Where are you?”

“In here! On the bed!”

As Dana walked in, her eyes almost bulged out of her sockets

The delivery guy hadn’t known who I was; to him, I was just a weird girl with missing parts. But Dana knew I wasn’t an amputee and right then and there l, I was down to three out of four limbs.

“Hope, what the FUCK?!?” She almost tumbled forward, catching herself on the mattress near my leg stump. “We saw each other last week. What happened to you?!”

“Don’t panic, please.” I lifted my foot and tried to gesture with it like it was a hand.

“Don’t panic?! Easy to say! You… you’re…” She grabbed what was left of my right arm. “Hope, where the fuck are your arms?! And where’s your right leg?!”

“Just…” I put down my foot and pointed to the end of the bed with my free arm. “Check in the bag. Everything will make sense.”

“What, like your limbs are in there?” She flashed the collapsed satchel towards me. “Ridiculous. See?” She put her hand inside it, rummaging blindly. “There’s nothing in there.”

From my point of view, her hand was already deeper than physically possible, but she didn’t notice that yet. “Go deeper.” She scoffed. “I mean it, Dana! Look deeper inside the bag!”

“What do you mean, deeper? Hope, this bag is like 4 inches deep. There’s no way I can…”And then she did, just like I had earlier. Holding the bag by its opening, she pushed her arm ever deeper inside the dimensional portal. As she did, it seemed to swallow her flesh, like a pencil being sharpened until it could barely be held in hand. She removed it slowly, realizing. “What is happening?” She looked at me quizzically.

“It’s a Bag of Holding. Putting stuff inside stores them in a pocket dimension, which means it’s actually a lot bigger than it looks.”

She turned back to the bag and flipped it between her fingers, inspecting it from every angle, turning it upside down, perhaps expecting a plethora of things to fall from it. Now more attentive to its workings, she lifted her hand and reached inside again, audibly gasping when the bag allowed more arm inside it than it visually could. If at first it could have been explained by a clever sleight of hand trick, it was now clear that what I had told her was indeed the truth. As she lowered it more and more, it swallowed more and more of her arm until she let it hang loose at her elbow, her entire forearm concealed inside the bag.

“Where’d you get that?”

“Does it matter?”

She pouted. “So your detached limbs are at the bottom of it?”

I sighed, explaining to her how I had first discovered it, and then how I had pranked the poor delivery guy into showing up at a cripple’s home. “But I didn’t think of emptying the bag before being incapable of doing so. Sooo…” I shrugged and showed my stubbed arms. “I need your help.”

She stayed silent for a minute, eyeing me up and down. “I have an idea. But you’re not gonna like it.”

I frowned. “What is it?”

“Let’s cut off that second leg too.”

“But that would make me completely helpless…” I looked down at myself and moved my stumps about. My thigh brushed against the sheets without any effect. “You’re not going to throw me down the stairs, are you?”

“Did you or did you not text me for help when you were already neck-deep in this shit?” Pinching the bottom of the bag, she slid it off of her arm, and her limb reappeared absolutely intact. My face relaxed. “That’s what I thought. Now, if you would please lie down…”

Lying on my back, I lifted my leg at a 90° angle, pointing my foot at Dana, who promptly fit the bag over it. She pushed it halfway through my calf and paused, laughing.

“It’s so crazy. Seen from above, your foot should actually stretch all the way here.” She held her hand in the air, a few inches below the bottom of the bag. “So, what do I do if I want to cut your leg right here?”

Following my instructions, she tugged on the drawstrings until the rim of the bag tightened around my calf, slightly denting my flesh. Then, like past a point of no return, my leg gave way and the bag closed completely, falling away from the new stump of my leg. Dana jumped back, crumpling the bag in her hands.

“So…” She began slowly before foraging inside the bag, her arm sunken at the shoulder. Her eyes brightened and she pulled out my left arm. “Not what I wanted but that'll do.”

“It's so weird. While it's in the bag, it's like my limbs don't even exist anymore. But the moment you pull it out, I can feel it as if it's attached to my body.”

“Can you move it at all?” She laid it flat on the bed and I wagged the according stump. Nothing happened. “I'll take that as a no, then.

“Help me up!” I pushed my arm towards her, forgetting that it ended at the shoulder. “Grab my stump!!”

She giggled and clamped on my fingerless stub, tugging at it firmly but it slipped out of her grasp. I fell on my back again laughing harder than her, my now empty calf trying to get a hold of the sheets. I tensed my abs and curled forward like a fish out of the water. She finally reached at the back of my neck to stabilize me in a sitting position, leaned forward on my incomplete leg.

“That, children, was hard as fuck.” I said, panting and laughing. “I feel like I'm in a straightjacket.” I twisted my torso left and right, as if my arms were bound to my sides.

“Aaand four!” Dana had retrieved and scattered all of my missing pieces on the bed. “How do you get them back on?”

After a quick explanation and her help, Dana had put me back into one piece. I stood and stretched my newly reformed arms and legs with delight.

“Is that why you bought it? To cut off your own limbs?” Dana asked, again looking inside the bag.

“Of course not! I just thought it would make a cool bag to carry stuff around, that’s all. It was an accident. The bag collapsed with my arm inside it, that’s how it happened at first.” I bit my lip, thinking. “Dana, I have an idea.”

“Does it include using the bag to cut off one of your limbs?”

“Yes.” I said with a forced straight face. I then told her about my little adventure with the delivery boy. “You should’ve seen his face, there was something so weird and interesting in seeing his reaction..”

“Let me get this straight : You want me to cut off your limbs and then go out into the street and parade like an anomaly?”

I shrugged. “Something like that, yes.”

She rubbed her hands together. “Okay. Let’s get to work, then.”