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Something Missing
by
Brent Powers
davy pilgrim

I was walking along the railroad track when I found a penis.  I figured somebody had cut it off themselves by accident, maybe while they were slicing salami for their lunch or something. Anyways, I picked it up and wrapped it in my hanky which was embroidered with my mother's initials and carried it to school.  Then, when we had Show and Tell I took it out and showed everyone, asking if they had heard about a guy missing his penis, asking around town about it, maybe, but all they did was carry on.  The teacher went all white and came up to me with her hand out.

"I'll take that," she said.  Her voice was all choked like she'd gone through a whole pack of Camels before she came to work.

So now the police have put out an APB for a guy missing his penis and they've been questioning me for hours.  My parents are here, too, and they're grilling them about my background of violence or something.  "Why does he wield a scalpel?" they're wondering.  My Dad said for protection against the assholes who attend the school.

"That's not funny," one of the cops told him and Dad looked all guilty in the face.  They told him they're not going to let any of us go home until they find the guy without a penis and ask him, "Is this the kid who cut it off?"


assistant to the pathologist

The pathologist stored the penis in a jar of dolarhyde or whatever it's called.  When he went out later in the afternoon to some meeting he absent-mindedly left the jar on his assistant's desk.  Thinking it was a joke gift, the assistant took the thing home with him that night.  When he showed it to his wife, however, thinking she'd get a kick out of it, the woman experienced a shock of recognition.  For she knew the penis.  She had been very close to this penis many times.  She had, in fact, tattooed her initials on this very same penis, right down near the root of the thing in very small letters where it would be normally disguised by a bushel of pubic hair. But now it was bereft of that hair, bereft of the person it once graced with true membership, her lover, Darren Register.  After her husband had done laughing and playing catch with the thing for a while she thought to slip him a little something and then run in and call Darren.

"Yes," he said in his usual stone cold formal way when he picked up.

"Why did you cut off your penis?" she asked without preamble.

There was a long pause.

"What makes you think that I did?" he said.  He was making every effort to sound casual about it.

"Well, I'm looking right at it.  My husband brought it home in a jar.  He said his boss gave it to him for his birthday, only it isn't his birthday.  What I want to know is, how did it get into the pathologist's office?  How did it get off your body and end up in my living room?  How could you allow me to suffer the indignity of watching my husband play catch with your beautiful cock?

"I can't answer that," he said.  "I can't talk about that now.  It's not the sort of thing you discuss at dinner."

"How can you eat at a time like this?" she shrilled.  "How can you eat at all with your penis clear over on the other side of town?"

"I've always been able to eat.  They can't take that away from me."

"But aren't you in pain?  Aren't you weak from loss of blood?"

"I am a little weak, yes.  That's why I am eating.  Or I would be if you'd get off the phone and let me do so.  Good night."

He hung up.  The son of a bitch hung up.  What could he be thinking? Well he wasn't thinking, is what.  He was in pain and he couldn't think.  She'd better get her ass right over there right now and cauterize that poor bastard before he bled to death.  Stupid bastard certainly wouldn't think to do such a thing for himself.  But why?  Oh, why did he do this?  How could he do this to her?

She gathered up her husband's kit and drove like a bat out of hell over to Darren's place.
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