(Page 1 of 2) Vitality by Christopher Alen F.SUMMARY: Submission for the November 2009 Flash Fiction contest.I awake in the stark white light of the hospital only dimly aware of the tension across my belly. At the foot of my bed, a lab coat metamorphoses from a fuzzy impression of a sugar-dusted beignet to the meatier shape of my doctor. A fluffy cloud of blond ringlets, bouncing busily.
"The procedure went smoothly," she announces as the world coalesces. "No complications at all, but we want to keep you overnight, ok?."
I nod groggily and feebly try to sit up. My belly protests, and I look down at the spaghetti erupting from my abdomen -- wires and tubes spill from my bellybutton, connecting me to a table stacked with blinking and beeping machines.
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"So what made you decide to go through with the procedure?"
It's hard to discuss these things with a child in a way they can understand. This "doctor" can't be more than twenty years old. Her cloud of hair is propped up on her head like an impression of maturity, curls sproinging everywhere. She reminds me of my daughter at seven, cake all over her face and hands while I chased her through the corn field that used to be behind our house.
I grunt something incomprehensible about civic duty at her.
"It's noble, you know -- what you've done?" She says this like she, herself, isn't sure. Like I'm supposed to be the one giving her my approval. "You probably didn't have to -- not at your age. There've been successful petitions."
"I volunteered, didn't I?" I look away. My sudden anger feels so... so weak. What an embarrassment, volunteering for something mandatory. To be looked to for approval. Or perhaps forgiveness.
I turn back and let myself look fully into her eyes. I can see exhaustion lingering just behind the pools of blue, ringed by skin just a touch too pale.
"How -- how do I..." I pause, lost, unsure. "How do I refuel it?"
"Oh, you don't have to worry about that. That's the point!"
Mirth and colour rise in her face. She leans forward to spill a load of propaganda into my lap and I get a whiff of honeysuckle and milk and a glimpse down her shirt. I busy myself with extricating the pamphlets and papers from the twist of wires leading from my guts.
---
I take a long-side glance at the vagrants accumulated -- they think inconspicuously -- in the alley. The inspectors joke publicly about how easy it is to nab the illegals -- used to be that every party ended up in a kitchen.
Elastic straps loop my thigh and knee, the machine pumping, chafing annoyingly as I hobble past their judging stares. Now I, too, have that not-quite-a-pantie-line cutting into my leg. It's tormenting, walking amongst people, trying to forget that you've ever heard or thought of food, everyone of them, legs cinched like sausage links.
People walk about listlessly, their eyes floating lightly in their heads and staring out as if from afar. They no longer take notice of the clean streets, the concrete sidewalks all looking freshly poured, free of blackened-gum-spot-blight. No more blowing debris of the packaging of what was our universal addiction.
There's no longer any reason to be on the street but to go to work and come out again, to the train and out again, and home.
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