Lisa stood in the corner, tapping her foot impatiently. Another woman, Linda, was perched over the bookshelf like a gargoyle. A few waited outside, sitting like a row of feminine crows on the telephone poles. Mary sat at the foot of the bed, gorging herself on his feet.
He lowered the saw and began cutting through sinew, meat and bone. His left hand plopped on the floor and Sandra and several other women began fighting over the bloody appendage. They frothed at the mouth like dogs. He raised the hand still clutching the saw.
“Ladies, please,” he said. “There’s plenty of me to go around.”
Even as he said it, he knew it was a lie. He was quickly running out of body parts. And he was becoming increasingly light-headed as more and more blood pumped from the holes in his torso where limbs used to be. He felt a sudden, deep loss for his legs.
Linda wrestled the bloody hand away from the others and began shoving the fingers into her lipstick stained mouth. Her features were soft, but made sharper and more distinct by heavy make up. Watching her shovel his severed hand into her mouth, He could not for the life of him remember what he had ever seen in her. The other women retreated to their perches over the bed. Some hung upside down from the overhead lights. Some slithered under the bed and lapped up the heavy droplets of blood before they could soak into the carpet.
He sawed through his left elbow, wondering who would get the forearm. His vision began to flicker in and out. Flashes of blue, red, and yellow. He laughed at nothing as his forearm hit the ground with a wet plop. Linda leapt at the limb, tearing it from Jennifer’s grasp and flew out the window gnawing on it.
Soon, everyone had eaten some part of him except for Lisa. While the others battled for their bits, she had remained in the corner, watching. She was always so dependable, so devoted. She would wait forever if she had to. He looked up at her beautiful face and managed a weak smile. Both his legs were gone, as were his arms. He’d had to gnaw through his right shoulder to get it off. It had taken some time, but in the end it hit the floor with the same plop as the others. Kylee had wrapped him in his bed sheets to minimize the bleeding. She was always so caring.
Lisa bent down and placed her hand against his cheek. Her long, thin lips stretched into a caring smile.
“Thank you for saving it for me,” she said.
He managed a bizarre shrug, made stranger by the fact that he had no arms.
“It’s no big deal. It has always been yours.”
She laughed. “You always were so sweet.”
She kissed him on the forehead as she picked up the saw and began sawing away at his penis.
"Lisa's Piece"
Copyright: © 2011 Dustin Reade
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Dustin Reade lives in Port Angeles, WA with his daughter, Percephone, and a rat named Michael Jackson. His work appears in several anthologies and a handful of magazines, both online and otherwise. He can feel it when you google him.
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