It Takes Guts

by Matthew Hance

I would have stopped at the corner, but the separation from the sidewalk to street looked like a gutter lane at a squirrel bowling alley. So I didn't know the pale white street was different from the pale white sidewalk. I stab a finger at the typical Columbus driver—a middle-aged guy who can't afford a razor, who also thinks his SUV, which has a human-sized dent in the front fender, is a magnet which repels everything in its way.

As handcuffs snap around his hairy wrists, he stabs his head towards me and spits as he shouts to the officers, "Stupid woman should have been home cooking dinner or something!"

I point to where my severed lower body should be, instead it's a flood of blood rushing into the squirrel gutter lane. I imagine from the circling helicopter's view that the lane is now red for three whole blocks.

The idiot pleads some more, to which I point at both of my crushed legs lying inside two Ugg boots not even ten feet away. And to think, I just wanted to see the dirty river.

"Ma'am?" some guy whispers into my ear from behind. His arms have been wrapped around my waist for at least the length of Stairway to Heaven. This is surely not the time to be putting moves on me, especially since I’m half the woman I used to be. But the guy, he signals to his friend who's frantically tying cloth around my thighs. "We're going to try and move you now."

I'm not sure if I can talk, but before I try, I'm heaved up into the air. Destination—this nice, clean, white stretcher. It hits me like the SUV that these guys aren’t taking me to a dance—they’re nurses.

When I find out if I'm able to talk or not, I'm going to complain to these guys' manager. I'm sure they were supposed to stabilize me or something. Strap me to a board. Prick me with a bunch of needles. Pump me full of happiness. Say, "Would you like some ice chips?"

Halfway into the air, with a bumbling fool lifting me by either of my armpits, one gasps as he says to the other, "Oh shit."

I try to talk for the first time, to ask, "Huh?" but I feel like my body drops something, at which point my heads falls toward the ground, and the last thing I see is a pile of guts lying on the pale white sidewalk.

This story was based on these randomly generated images.

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