The New Flesh

 

Sitting on a park bench, he watched the faceless, two-dimensional people scramble past one another, moving thoughtlessly through the streets. His lunch break was almost over. It was time to join them.

He placed his hands on the bench to lift himself, when he realized his legs were gone. Reaching down to confirm what his eyes told him, he noticed the lower half of his body on the ground. He grazed his underbelly to make sure all his vitals were in tact, expecting to feel the moist warmth of blood. Instead there was only a cool, smooth surface, what he thought a cauterized wound might feel like. Then he was gone.

Miles away his eight year old son Billy carefully rendered a picture from black coloring pencil. He ran to his mother to show her his progress.

"Mommy! Mommy!" he said, handing her the picture. "Look!"

She held the picture at a distance, straightened her glasses. "What is it?" she asked, though she recognized the crude stick figure rendering of bifurcated and beheaded bodies.

"It's a picture of daddy. He's dead."

"Peter, why would you draw something like that?"

"I'm almost done with yours," he said, running back to the other room. "I just need to find the blue marker, for your dress."

She looked up from the picture and towards the window. Faceless, two-dimensional figures walked aimlessly on the unlined pavement. She rolled up her blue sleeves and started for the water in the sink, when she realized she no longer had arms. She called to her son as she tried to think of a way to stop the bleeding. But there was no blood.

Billy ran into the room with his new picture. "Mom?" he asked. "Have you seen my red crayon?" 

"Death by Limited Palette"

Copyright: © 2011 Kirk Jones

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Kirk Jones is the author of Uncle Sam's Carnival of Copulating Inanimals, published by the New Bizarro Author Series, an imprint of Eraserhead Press. He reviews classic works that could, in retrospect, be considered bizarro on Retro Bizarro at www.bizarrojones.com. Forthcoming work will soon be published in Unicorn Knife Fight.