Autumn’s room filled with light as she reached for a small button near her bedside. Ignoring the obvious camera in her bedroom, she instead looked out the window, the late morning sun shining on her face. She yawned and stretched her arms as high as she could before running her left hand through her hair to throw back her green tipped locks. Her right hand was nowhere to be seen. At its place, her arm ended shortly after her elbow in a rounded congenital stump. It burrowed slightly against the sheets in an unconscious motion that had ingrained itself in her mind over the years, thinking it would hide it from view and prevent some of the unwanted stares. From the stout bedside table to her left, she picked up her glasses and set them on her nose, aligning the blackened lens with her right socket, before leaning again to grab her phone. She brought up her stump again, this time using it as support as she tapped away on the screen to access her Instagram app.
At 22 years old, Autumn has already had her fair share of unique and traumatizing experiences. When she was 7 years old, her parents and her were involved in a terrible car accident that robbed her of the bottom half of her body, as well as her right eye.
Despite the catastrophic odds that were put up against, she not only survived, but now thrives as a healthy young woman.
As the narration continued, Autumn grabbed the sheets with her hand and flipped them off of the bed, revealing its reduced size ; about as wide as a twin bed, but only half as long. She wore a simple pale blue t-shirt and although it didn’t seem to be oversized for her, the bottom hem fell flat against the bottom of her body, undisturbed by the presence of legs.
In a practiced yet effortful motion, she pushed herself upwards and the stubbiness of her torso became jarring in the counterpointed camera angle. Putting most of her weight on her left arm, she lifted herself slightly and pushed herself back to lean against the headrest, taking a short pause for a few deep breaths.
Pictures of the car crash flashed on the screen. An early 2000s purple sedan laid on its side on the pavement, almost cut in half by the force of the impact. The scattered debris around the vehicle only reinforced the brutality of the accident and the luck with which she had survived.
When the camera focused on Autumn again, she was in front of her bathroom mirror, sitting on a forest green cushion. She had removed her shirt and now bore only a simple red bra that was hard at work to support her ample breasts, while her limbs were busy with draining and changing the ostomy bags that hung at her sides. Her right arm, although blunt and handless, expertly guided and angled, pushed and secured, as her left hand executed the more precise movements. In the matter of a few minutes, everything had been put back into place. She leaned forward to reach the sink, set as low to the ground as the rest of her furniture, and the bottom of her abdomen sagged deeper still in the cushion, her navel barely visible in this position.
Reaching for a pack of disposable contact lenses, she peeled one open with her hand and teeth and pulled down on her eyelid using her stump. A few eyerolls and blinks later, she slipped on her eyepatch, covering the emptied eye socket to her right with a translucent apple green plastic shield. She smiled back at the camera, visibly proud of herself.
—
After she had finished scribbling the book’s call number on a slip of paper, she put it between her lips and thumbed at her chair’s joystick with her free hand, jolting away from the computer. She made her way around the counter and into the deeper part of the library, zigzagging between shelves and potted plants until she reached her target number. Sitting behind her desk, Cassandra waved politely at her and Autumn waved back, her short right arm raised high above her head.
Autumn scanned the rows of books as she squeezed into an aisle without much difficulty, quickly zeroing in on the appropriate section.
“828.914 A216w… A213, A214, A215…” Her gaze lowered and spotted her target. “Of course, it had to be.” Her only eye rolled in its socket and she detached the seatbelt that felt tight against her ribs. “If you want something done right…”
She drove forward another few inches before activating her wheelchair’s brakes and turning it off. Then, pushing herself up using her elbows, she sat further back on the seat and angled herself forward, catching most of her weight with her hand, before slowly lowering herself down on her stomach. From there, she grabbed her book and set it at her side before doing the whole process in reverse. At the midway point, she hooked her right forearm against the armrest and simultaneously pushed with her arm to sit back up, putting her seatbelt back into place.
Since her usual spot was already taken, she drove to another corner of the library where foam cushions had been set up in all sorts of funny shapes and sizes. It was quieter here, at least during the day when kids were at school, and she felt hidden away from curious and prying eyes. As for the usuals they still greeted her with their usual smiles and nods and nothing more. The uninitiated, however, took long and lasting looks on her that put her self esteem to the test. Feeling someone’s presence nearby, she squirmed her torso deeper into the foam and lifted her stump to her hair, thinking of it as a distraction to the rest of her body.
“I like your hair.”
Autumn took her eye off her book and met with a young boy’s gaze, standing a few feet away from her. He looked tall for his age. His limbs were angular, awkward, too long for his torso, and his shirt hung onto him both too wide and too short, unable to fit properly on his puberty stricken body. His hands clinged to the strap of a messenger bag slung across one shoulder, his nails painted black.
She smiled at him and used the stump of her arm as a bookmark for the time being. “Thanks. I like your nails.”
He smiled back, still awkward, yet a little loosened up. “Thanks. Do you mind looking after my bag for a minute?”
“Sure, I’ll keep an eye out.” She lifted her eye patch and winked at her with her empty socket, chuckling softly. “Sorry, I’m just teasing you. Of course, it’s no problem at all. Take your time.”
He came back a few minutes later and silently sat in another foam cushion, whipping out a manga from his bag. They sat in each other’s relative company for the good part of the afternoon, the boy occasionally stealing looks at Autumn thinking she wouldn’t notice. Although she did, she let him feed his enquiring mind, knowing that she must’ve been the weirdest person he had seen in his entire life, and kept on reading mostly undisturbed.
She felt his growing unease, however, when she started packing her things and getting ready to leave. She knew that the way her body sank in her seat drew his attention and tried to minimize the effect to no avail. As she leaned forward to grab the edge of her chair, her torso angled aggressively, her stumped arm extended, their eyes met and she stopped in her tracks. He smiled shyly.
“Sorry. I… I saw your spot on Bizarre Bodies, and… I.. I mean your apartment is pretty cool. All adaptive and stuff.”
She gave him a comforting smile. “Thank you, it means a lot to me. I wasn’t completely sold on the idea but I see now that it was worth a shot. I’m Autumn, but you already knew that.”
He shook her extended left hand and chuckled. “Martin.”
She chuckled in turn. “Martin? Aren’t you a little young to be called Martin?”
He toyed with the pages of his manga. “My mom had this thing for Martin Scorsese movies back in the day… You know how parents can be.”
“Mine loved the season so much they named me after it, can you imagine…” Autumn laughed out loud and covered her mouth with her stump. “I don’t usually do this, Martin, but since you’re the one who spoke first I get to ask for a favor. Do you think you could help me back into my chair?” He stiffened visibly, unsure how such a thing would unfold. “You don’t have to if you don’t want to, but don’t be afraid to hurt me or break your back. I’m actually pretty light.” She winked again.
He joined his hands nervously. “Of… of course. Just… tell me what to do, okay?”
Following her guidance, Martin slipped his hands underneath Autumn’s shoulders and, bending his knees, lifted her up as easily as a sack of potatoes. Then, he pivoted and took a step towards her chair before gently settling her down on the cushioned seat, even helping her secure the seat belt around her ribs.
“I can’t thank you enough, Martin.”
“Don’t mention it, really.” He scratched an invisible itch on his arm. “Say… You really are a lot lighter than I would’ve thought.”
“For a young boy, you sure know how to talk to a lady.” She paused and looked up at him, trying to guess at which part of her body he was trying not to look at. “Same time next week?”
Martin smiled. “You bet.”
—
“I was never really into cooking, no.”
Autumn sat on the regular sized couch in her living room, perched on top of a particularly soft cushion, as she so often did. She had braided her hair and they rested across her left shoulder, the bleached-and-dyed locks curled slightly upwards in their chemically induced dryness. She toyed mindlessly as the wrinkled skin of her stump with her nails at the spot where her limb had failed to grow and the flesh had bundled into a rounded nub.
“I know I could, it has nothing to do with my arm,” She raised her stump and smiled, “although it makes for a pretty good excuse.” The footage cut to Autumn in front of a low kitchen countertop, flimsily holding an apple in place with her stump. With her left hand, she made a downward motion with a chef's knife and the fruit rolled out of the way. She chuckled and looked back at the camera before trying again, succeeding on her second attempt. “I won’t die of hunger if left alone either. I’m not inept, I… well…” She chuckled and closed her hand around her stump, another nervous gesture she seemed to do often. “I just don’t like cooking.”
Her eye lit up when the doorbell rang. Reaching for her phone to the left, she opened up an app to unlock the door and the sound at the bottom of the stairwell reverberated up to their ears. She climbed down from her pedestal before dragging herself towards the door, one laborious thump at a time, over the course of a full minute.
Even with his face blurred out, it was obvious that the delivery guy was taken aback by what he saw opening the door. She reached up to grab her order and thanked him, even refusing the help he had offered her to carry it to the table, and closed the door again, not letting his brain time to understand what had just happened.
Looping the flimsy cardboard handle over her stumped forearm, she made her way back into the living room, to a short coffee table where she ate most of her meals. Slowly, begrudgingly, she leaned her weight above her complete arm and pushed herself up slightly, just enough to allow drag her torso forward. The paper bag trailed behind her like the tail of a crawling snail, minus the slime.
It might’ve seemed cruel to let Autumn struggle with a camera pointed directly at her, but that had been the plan all along. To showcase her everyday life and struggles. Through thick and thin Autumn had to persevere because that was her only option. Her private spaces had been entirely redone to fit her needs, her furniture and appliances were now accessible to her, but it didn't mean that the rest of it was any easier. In doing so, she hoped to raise awareness of people living with disabilities, and the necessities of government issued programs that helped her with the cost of these things.
After the last few shots, mainly of Autumn fishing out her soup from the DoorDash paper bag, and some talking heads for some voice over narration, the documentary crew packed their things. It had been a long day of shooting for everyone and it became harder and harder for Autumn to keep a smile on her face, especially with the backache that had been hammering at her mind since lunch. When the door closed and she found herself alone again, she took a deep breath and sighed, letting herself roll over on her back.
Ever since she had had her hemicorporectomy, Autumn couldn’t remember being able to sit comfortably. Of course, surgeons had removed her legs and her pelvis, and therefore her ass. But, as they had explained to her parents back then, her internal organs as well as most of her abdominal and back muscles had been saved and used to create a sort of padding at the bottom of her abdomen. These would technically allow her to regain some comfort after her major wounds had healed. But there was no couch or bed or cushion soft and comfortable enough to take away the nagging discomfort that pulsed through her entrails every time she stood for extended periods of time. Like her body knew it wasn’t supposed to work this way.
Lying on her stomach felt better, but came with the slight annoyance of making it harder to breathe. The only way she felt truly comfortable was lying on her back with her abdomen slightly raised and a warm Magic Bag resting on the scar below her navel.
She laid there for a while, thinking about her day, about the books she would check out at the library the week after, and sighed. A deep, long, almost exaggerated sigh. She let her hand wander down her abdomen, over her navel, curving downwards where her body had been irreversibly changed over 13 years ago, at the scar that had sealed her new life in place.
Then, she rolled on her stomach and crawled to the bathroom for a long and well deserved bath.
Rolling on her back again, she pushed off the loose shorts that hung at her waist and sat again on the fluffy bathroom mat. A chill ran across her reduced body as her shirt followed suit and she covered her breasts with her right arm as she reached for the faucets with her hand, setting the water temperature to a comfortable scold.
She lifted herself over the lip of the bath’s door and locked it behind her before taking place in her adjusted silicone-lined seat. She let her hair down and sighed again, eye closed, relishing the slow rise of the hot water against her skin. She grabbed a bomb bath off a nearby shelf to her right and, after a confirmatory smell test, let it roll in with her. It bubbled and disintegrated quickly, turning the water a pale but opaque shade of pink with a layer of foam on top, just like the sour raspberry beer that had just been released by her favorite microbrewery.
She let herself simmer for most of an hour, reminiscing about her day and the rest of the week, about upcoming commission due dates she had to meet, but mostly trying to relax. With hot water warming up her skin up to her neck, it became hard for her to discern where her body started and ended. She took advantage of it and, focusing on her breathing, drowned most of her senses in the bath bomb’s enveloping aroma. Setting her elbows on the armrests at her sides, she lifted herself slightly and for a moment, could forget what was missing below her navel.
—
The woman’s expression was one of playful distress. Lying on the ground on her stomach, her neck was craned upwards at an outstretched hand and her eyes were fixed on a point only herself could see. Even in the anime-esque way they had been drawn, her eyes, as well as the rest of her face, communicated emotions flawlessly, as easily as if narration was describing her state of mind over the image. Her nose was scrunched up and her smile stretched in an adorable manner, showing sets of perfect teeth clamped over a playing card, with both its rank and suit hidden from view.
“Can I look at it now?” She says between her teeth. “You’ll have to close your eyes, however, otherwise it’s not really a magic trick. I’ll tell you when I’m done picking it back up.”
She stared at the unfinished sketch on her screen, flicking her tablet’s pen around her index finger. The extended hand was okay, but she didn’t care much about it as it wasn’t the core focus of the drawing, and she was actually pretty proud of the face, now. But something with the alignment of the body felt off.
It certainly wasn’t the first time she had drawn disabled, let alone amputated, characters, but for reasons still unknown to her, she had a hard time making this one click. She wore a black tank top and matching lycra shorts, and her breasts were pushed up into a provocative and almost anatomically impossible cleavage under her weight. With this point of vue, her lack of legs was noticeable but nothing more. The curve of her rump continued unnaturally past where legs should have been, leaving the shorts tightly snug against its exaggerated shape.
Then came the arm, the right one that is. Since the left was to be left empty, as requested by her client, she had decided to keep it hidden from view and to focus on the remaining fourth limb, which had to have a distinctly congenital look but not phoco and no shitty scar, per their description. Autumn liked to have precise descriptions for her commissions. The character is posing this and that way, or is wearing a pink strawberry jumpsuit, or even her legs are crossed to showcase her missing feet. But the description for the arm she had to draw was so vague and non-committing that it had the opposite effect of inspiring her. Was she to do a longer above elbow stump, pressed against a wooden floor? A shorter one, hanging limp at her side? A completely empty socket? If she chose the latter, would it be more bony or fleshy? Shrugged or relaxed? Autumn sighed and turned her chair away from her screen.
She stuck her pen between her lips and gnawed gently at it, fitting her teeth into the groove where she had once bit too hard on the soft plastic, stretching her fingers against her own congenital stump. She had no interest in doing a below elbow stump for this one, especially since she would’ve had to adjust the body positioning almost in its entirety.
She grabbed her phone and scrolled down her instagram feed, mind empty, and stumbled on a candid picture of herself that her friend had captured in a bar the other night. She remembered the moment vividly. She sat on Jason’s lap, himself sitting in her wheelchair, parked at the end of a row of their common friends. The moment was frozen in time : her hand anchored to the table after a forceful slap, her right arm pointed jokingly at someone out of frame. She zoomed on her own stump, its end suspended in time, and something clicked inside her head.
She pivoted back to her tablet, the warm pen in her hand again, quickly outlining the shape of the limb before realizing the shoulder’s position needed to be adjusted. She stretched it a little further up, making the woman shrug forward, and angled the stump at a 45 degree angle downwards. Short and blunt, it came out of the articulation only to taper back into a narrow, rounded nub. No scars, no fingers, not even the slightest indentation in the skin at its tip. Autumn turned the image upside down to give her strokes a more natural angle, biting her lip unconsciously under the effort of creativity.
After taking a controlled breath through her teeth, she stopped and inspected her stump again, although not on her friend’s picture this time around. She put her forearm in the same position as in her drawing and, with her limb and shoulder still awkwardly twisted, bent and moved her forearm repeatedly. After studying it closely in this new light, she dove back into her drawing with a new resolve.
She added shading and definition, depth and finesse, zooming in and out to add a wrinkle in the skin near her armpit, or a pale beauty mark on the underside of the sorry limb. What she had had so much difficulty to envision took form in the span of mere minutes, expertly sculpted by Autumn’s new perspective on the matter. Instead of rigidity and stillness, there was life and tangibility, in a way that almost made her drawing come alive. She almost felt like she could’ve extended her arm and pressed her stump against the one she had just drawn, joining reality and fiction together. Art imitates life, as they say. She leaned back and her brows furrowed when the muscles in her back tugged at her stomach. Reaching underneath her, she massaged the pain out of her reconstructed bottom and took a deep breath, chasing away the pain. She shook her head and looked back at her drawing, pleased with herself despite her discomfort.
The stump was as flawless as a fingertip. Smooth and featureless, congenital in the truest sense of the word. In a single look, it was clear that the young woman in the drawing had never possessed a single limb in her supposed life. Not just from the look of her shoulders and hips, but also from her posture. From the way that she held the card in her mouth, to the natural yet strained way her right shoulder extended forward. her back curved organically into her sinking left hip, which pushed on the floor to stretch her spine as much as it could, gaining a few centimeters of reach at most in this pose. Everything in her design felt like she had been drawn from the picture of an actual quadruple amputee woman, squirming on the floor like a living pillow to the best of her abilities.
Autumn saved her work and shut down the app, letting her own nub wander into her hand and her thoughts travel down her short limb. You managed to make yourself useful today, Bun, she thought. Not bad.
She high fived herself and chuckled softly before waddling a few inches towards the edge of her seat. Then, rotating towards the back rest, she leaned forward and pushed her torso towards the void, letting it dangling in mid air as she slowly lowered herself to the ground. She frowned preemptively at her spine poking on the hardwood and reached over to her indoor skate, which was nothing more than a rolling stand for a potted plant. Setting yet another soft cushion on it, she sat on top of her contraption and rolled herself out of the room, ready for a good night’s sleep.