Dysphoria

Untitled Story About a Knife

When she first took a knife to herself, she did not think to find anything more than the release of pain; so she was quite surprised, not to say a bit taken aback, when the knife’s passage through too-rough flesh was interrupted by the wholly unexpected presence of a gearbox, a plastic-sheathed assemblage quietly ticking away just before her wrist’s joint.

When she was done being astonished—done listening to the gears and seeing how her fingers twitched when she poked at it—she went looking for more.