This is the beginning of something bigger.

Cut Off

When I’m inspired and raging about it like the passion is this great beast barrelling around the corridors in my head, I talk to Chloe. She is my idol. We started out just talking online all the time, but then I moved to be closer to her and I can get her over coffee day or night. When the passion’s going but I’m too cowardly to actually follow it, I talk to Chloe.

“If you’re just doing something little, like a toe, then some plastic cord ties and a chisel will do it fine. Cutting through works too but it takes a bit longer and you’re still going to need a chisel for the bone.” She speaks in grey smoke and I swallow her words like a hungry child finding the nipple for the first time.

I keep staring at her stump whilst she’s talking, but she never minds. It makes her leg beautiful. I just want to touch it and hold it.

“If you don’t want to go the DIY route, then infection is your best bet. Obviously.”

“Yeah,” I intoned passively, staring.

She smiles, pats my head and lights another cigarette. “You know, it would be so much easier if you were diabetic. Then you’d at least be a bit more accustomed to the idea of losing your feet, and you wouldn’t be so nervous to actually do it.”

Chloe falls silent and when I look up from her stump I see that she’s scrutinizing me, her brow puckered in a round peak beneath her bleached white fringe. She gives me this look every few weeks or so when I’m still talking about amputation but still got everything I was born with. “Are you sure you really want this? This isn’t just some new take on a midlife crisis?”

I tear myself away from her stump and focus on the frothy cap of my latte, mirroring the simple swirled pattern that’s been carved through the foam with my tongue against the backs of my teeth. I dip the wood stirring stick into the centre and trace around it, thickening the brown lines and mangling all the little details. “I want it, I really do. I’ve wanted it all my life, even when I was just a kid tying my leg double and not really knowing what it was I needed. Now, I think I’m ready to finally do it.”

Sitting away from the small table Chloe lifts her hair away from her face, running her cigarette perilously close to her dark roots. She exhales, masking everything but the highlights of her eyes, then looks at me dead on. “I don’t think you’re ready. You’re indecisive and scared. It’s not sunk in how hard some things are going to be afterwards and how those challenges are half the fun. You’ve not even done a toe and you’re talking about above the knee.”

Stung, I put my hands flat on the table on either side of my latte and stand. How smooth and easily I do this with both my legs. No delicate balancing act; no arching or lurches from my stomach as I nearly topple. No helpless stares from strangers. I just stand. Ordinary.

She follows my fluid motion but keeps her lips pursed, her arm propped on the table and her cigarette leaking level with her eye.

I’ll show her.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 25th, 2008 at 9:21 am and is filed under Short Stories. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.