Forever, in Pieces

by Fawver, Kurt

  1986—1 finger (possibly ring or index)

  1987—6 teeth (2 canines, 4 molars)

  1988—1 ear, left

  1989—1 eye (silver-gray iris)

  1990—1 hand, right, all digits intact (entirely without fingerprints, as if horribly burned)

  1991—1 eye (also silver-gray iris)

  1992—1 nose, small & scrunched

  1993—1 arm, right, without hand

  1994—2 lips (soft, pink, and full)

  1995—1 tongue

  1996—1 ear, right

  1997—10 teeth (assorted—of all types)

  1998—1 heart (perpetually beating)

  1999—1 coil of intestine, approx. 2' in length

  2000—1 vagina

  2001—2 breasts (one medium size—B cup? one larger—C or D cup?)

  2002—1 circle of skin, approx. 6" in diameter (pale, hairless, smooth)

  2003—2 strips of skin, 1' foot in length, 8" width (same smoothness as previous skin, but with olive complexion)

  Ben smiled and patted the sheet of paper upon which he’d scrawled the list. This was his girl. His Forever.

  Despite the cultural pervasiveness of advice from faux gurus and pop psychologists, he’d reached the conclusion that he didn’t need anyone else. He no longer held any illusions of relationships with “real” women. He was, after all, twenty-four years old and he’d never been on a date; he’d never caressed, kissed, or made love to a “real” woman. He could barely speak to them. In truth, he could barely speak to anyone.

  His was a life of internal dialogues and dynamic inactivities. He talked to himself, he talked to Forever, and he talked to his parents. His interactions with co-workers were brief, formal, and often garnished with forced smiles and feigned platitudes. Friends were a long-extinct concept. Occasionally, he called phone sex hotlines and asked the women on the other end to recite Forever’s letters but, for the most part, his social sphere was flat. He didn’t mind.

  He peered through the window again.

  The FedEx deliveryman was struggling to unload a tall wooden crate, Ben’s package, the reason he was skipping work.

  Ben laughed. He wondered whether the deliveryman could have guessed at what was in the crate. Probably. Only a fool wouldn’t realize the truth that, day after day, he was chauffeuring sublime perversities from the twisting corners of the earth to the main street of Everytown, America. The contents of Ben’s crate were assuredly no more shocking than many others.

  The doorbell rang.

  Ben jumped toward the door, eager to have his new possession.

  The deliveryman stood on the threshold, an electronic pad in hand and the crate on a dolly beside him. He glanced at Ben.

  “Benjamin Apple?”

  Ben nodded. The FedEx man held out the pad and Ben signed quickly. He dove at the package and, with a few grunts and popping joints, hefted it off the dolly and slid it into the apartment. He muttered some polite transactional nonsense in the deliveryman’s direction, then stepped back inside and closed the door. He jogged to the kitchen, fished in a drawer for a hammer, and returned to the crate.

  A few hurried hacks and tugs later, one of the sides fell from the massive box in a tidal wave of packing peanuts. Ben waded through the styrofoam sea and pulled a limp, frigid body from its clutches. He carried it to his couch and laid it down carefully.

  She was beautiful.

  Even without eyes, without lips, without breasts or an unbroken covering of skin, she was beautiful.

  Ben gawked at the craftsmanship of her form, the smooth, naked concavities and the snowy, gentle swells. She was exactly as he’d imagined, exactly as he’d specified when he ordered her.

  He pinched her underarm, testing the texture and elasticity of her flesh. Despite the fact that it was some sort of composite substance made from rubber and silicone, it flexed and bunched easily between his fingers, firm yet supple. Science in service of pleasure was truly a remarkable thing.

  Ben sat at the foot of the sex toy, counting its dismemberments, checking to ensure that the manufacturer had sheared or uninstalled all the proper parts. There were, of course, no eyes, lips, or breasts; he’d already seen as much. The doll, as per his request, also lacked ears, a nose, a right arm, a finger on its left hand, and a wide swath of skin on its stomach.

  He ran a finger up between its legs and felt nothing. No silky falseness resided there, no soft mockery. Just emptiness, as he had specified.

  He clapped his hands and laughed. The doll was perfect. Or, more pointedly, it would be perfect once he had glued and stapled and stitched in all the pieces of Forever.

  It had taken nearly a year to find a company that would create this radiant abomination. Most manufacturers had said that their molding process didn’t allow for such construction; a few had told Ben, in congenial language, that they didn’t cater to disfigurement fetishists; some didn’t even bother to reply to his queries.

  He’d taken it all in stride, confident that someone with the right technology would recognize that his need was not for the lack but for the possibilities that the lack offered. Tru-Woman, LLC, of Poughkeepsie, New York, had done just that. They had made his doll, no unnecessary questions asked and no moral fright exhibited. He was so thankful that he considered sending the sales reps at Tru-Woman a fruit basket, though, eventually, decided that the eight thousand dollars they’d charged his credit card was probably repayment enough.

  Ben patted the doll’s thigh and exited to his bedroom, just a few steps away. A minute later, he reentered the living room carrying two increasingly cramped fire safes and a cardboard box full of crafting supplies. He unlocked one of the safes and removed an alabaster sheet of skin. Lovingly, he raised the flesh to his nose and inhaled the tart, smoky aroma he’d come to associate with Forever. An involuntary shiver cascaded up his arms and down his spine.

  Freeing himself from the moment, he kneeled before the doll and lowered the patch of flesh over one of its exposed plastic surfaces. It blended with the surrounding rubber-silicone surface almost seamlessly. Had Ben not been able to see the faint line running about the skin’s perimeter, he would have had no idea where the illusion stopped and the authentic began.

  He bent over and kissed the flesh, then turned his face to the side and licked the doll. Again, he kissed flesh and licked doll. The binary had already fused in his mind.

  He backed away from his project and dumped the box of crafting supplies on the floor. Glue guns, staple guns, tacks, pins, epoxies, needles, thread, scissors: a small hobby or scrapbooking store spilled out. Ben nodded to himself and to the gods of innovation. It was time to piece together a puzzle. It was time to make a woman.

  February 14, 2008

  For the first and only time, the silver envelope arrived without an accompanying package. The midnight card inside was inscribed with just eight simple words: “Next year. I’m coming. For you. Finally. Forever.”

  Having just read the card, Ben was slumped on the floor, gripping his chest. His heart was striking a joyous eleventh hour. Through raging pulse, he wondered: Can this mean what it says? A year? Only one more year? Twenty-two gone. Twenty-two spent waiting and wondering. But now? Now the sacrifice will pay off.

  He would have called someone to regale with the good news, but his cell phone held only three numbers: his parents’ home, the store where he worked, and an emergency contact which, as it happened, was also his parents’ home. He had no one with which to share his delight. It might have been for the best. Who would understand his love, anyway? Who could be excited for his piecemeal bride?

  Ben leaped to his feet and strolled to his bedroom with one desire: to kiss the lips that promised a future and to revel in the lost organs that might soon rejoin their owner.

  February 14th, 2008 was the happiest day in Ben’s truncated life. He never left his apartment. He barely left his bedroom.

  February 14th, 2009

  Sporting a new haircut and a new suit, Ben sat at t
he breakfast bar in his apartment and stared at a pair of fluttering cardinals beyond the kitchen window. He wondered what time the doorbell would ring. The sun was sagging just above the horizon, well on its descent to oblivion. Night would soon leap from the ceiling and the floor and sharpen the blades of anticipation that had already been slicing across Ben’s throat for hours. He fidgeted and tugged at his tie.

  One of the cardinals slammed against the window and disappeared. It may have glided, exuberant and swelling with dervish energy, back into the hyaline vista above or it may have landed, cracked and twisted, in a scarlet lump beneath the pane. In either case, Ben didn’t notice.

  He jumped off the stool upon which he had been perched and began pacing between his kitchen and his living room—a space of ten or fifteen feet, just enough room to cultivate distress. A platinum chain necklace he’d bought for Forever the day before bounced around inside one of his pockets, smacking time against his thigh and coiling upon itself. Every step brought another strike of the hidden metronome.

  Trying to smooth over his bunching anxieties, Ben walked to his tiny dinner table and set about subtly rearranging its contents. He’d been proud of his decorating skills when he’d set up the table an hour ago, but now he saw only failure and disarray. He yanked at the black table cloth, moved the pair of candles closer to the center, slid the sparkling silverware away from the plates one inch, took the candles off the table entirely, pushed the silverware back to its original position, then placed the candles back on the table. He sighed and gingerly sank into one of the fragile wicker chairs that had come free with the table. Waiting was always most difficult the second before it ended.

  Ben fished the necklace from his pocket and laid it on the table. Clasped, it had no definite beginning or end; it simply wound in loops of infinite glitter, curves of forever. Forever for Forever. Ben snorted, a half-laugh for a joke that didn’t really exist. He rose and shuffled to the couch. Television was a faithful anesthetic and he needed an injection—something, anything, to calm his nerves. He plopped down, hit “Power” on his remote, and let himself drift into a different sort of limbo. Somehow, he felt that this day wasn’t as different from all the others as he’d hoped.

  Five hours later, waist-deep in a History Channel marathon on the Dark Ages, Ben began to contemplate the possibility that Forever might not arrive. His suit was starting to wrinkle and the dinner he’d planned—microwaveable fettuccine alfredo and frozen, precooked chicken piccata—was long since thawed. Outside, heavy sleet was rebounding off every hard surface it struck; it had been falling steadily for at least forty-five minutes, so the roads were surely encased in a shell of ice by now. He wondered what he’d do if the night passed without Forever. Would he continue on, making love to the woman-doll and envisioning a translucent day when she would hold him as tightly as he held her? Or would he surrender and chug a bottle of bleach? He wasn’t sure. Luckily, he didn’t have to make the decision, because, as he was imagining what vomiting one’s own dissolving esophagus and stomach must feel like, the power in his apartment suddenly went out.

  Unexpected silence and darkness crashed against the walls.

  Ben didn’t stir. He sat on the couch and waited for the electricity to surge through whatever natural force had blocked its way.

  A minute passed.

  Then two.

  Silence and darkness still held control. Whatever failure had occurred must have been widespread, because even the streetlamps outside had faded to black.

  Ben rose with a grunt, stumbled to the kitchen, and found a pack of matches lying beside the sink—a remnant of his morning preparations. Earlier, when he had set the table, he’d lit the candles and let them burn for just a few seconds so that, when Forever finally arrived and it was time for dinner, all the wax would be stripped from their wicks and they’d ignite without any embarrassing fumbling. His fastidious planning had made everything so desperately perfect, so painfully charming. But now it would be all for naught. The spread had to be disassembled in service of utility.

  With a sigh, Ben grabbed the candles from off the table and lit each in turn. They accepted the flame without the slightest hesitation. One he plunked down on the breakfast bar and the other he kept with him. He carried it, crystal holder and all, back into the living room, eventually setting it atop a small table beside the couch. Sleet continued to ping and thunk against the windows and the roof.

  Ben stared upward, wondering how loud the noise must have been in the unyielding hollows of the vacant apartment above his own. It was as if the sky was trying to beat down the arrogance of all things that might dare stretch toward its invisible paradises. He shrugged away such thoughts and returned to his sedentary detention upon the couch.

  As he waited in the relative darkness, hands clasped tightly between his legs, he heard something between the pings and thunks of sleet—a soft sound, a hissed rubbing, of fabric against fabric or palm against palm, perhaps. Moving in sinuous, elastic arcs, it slithered easily into his ear. He held his breath and strained his concentration, but couldn’t quite determine its source over the ambient din of the storm; the sound seemed to be nowhere more specific than “in the air.” Ice, hurled ever more wildly by its harsh masters in the firmament above, pounded the roof with increasing urgency and force. The onslaught momentarily drowned out the hiss. However, it couldn’t mask the heavy thud that suddenly issued from Ben’s bedroom.

  Ben jumped and instinctively clutched at the couch’s armrest. As he stared at the doorway anticipating an indefinite something to happen, he began to smell it—the sulfur, the citrus, the smoke and the dreams. Forever. He leaped off the couch, snatched the candle from the table beside him, and ran to the bedroom.

  Halfway to the threshold, though, he stopped, immobile and stricken with a feeling of excited dread. There, before him, crawling one-armed through his bedroom doorway, was the Tru-Woman doll, naked and silent. It propelled itself as a caterpillar might, pulling itself forward with its living, Forever-given arm while arching its back and dragging its rubbery legs up to meet the rest of its body.

  Ben gasped.

  He wanted to pick up the doll—if it was, in fact, his Forever—and kiss her, but he couldn’t. Its motion was so unsettling, so alien, that some base self-preservation instinct, an ancient primate fear, wouldn’t let him step any closer.

  The doll wormed forward and Ben remained stationary. He couldn’t see its face, as its head hung, pendulous and limp, from its shoulders. Polished black hair and shadow occluded any view of its visage beyond the gentle line of its lower jaw.

  Now only five or six feet away from Ben—nearly within his reach—the doll stopped, propping itself up on its one animated arm.

  Ben held his breath.

  Slowly, the doll lowered itself to the floor, face down. Once lying flat and still, its arm grabbed a clump of raven hair and pulled back, so that its head rested upon its chin. Ben crouched and, hand quivering, held the candle out before him. Forever’s silvery eyes rolled up to meet his gaze. For the first time, he felt that she was looking at him as he had always looked at her.

  And then she smiled.

  The embers of warmth in Ben’s heart exploded. He couldn’t breathe; he couldn’t move; he couldn’t think or feel anything other than an atomic wall of fire rolling through his being, incinerating every part of his body, mind, and soul. Spectral flames consumed him from the inside out. He opened his mouth to scream, but only air escaped his lungs. If this was love, it was all the love in the universe, condensed and concentrated into one dense, unforgiving point. It was the grip of God. It was the rack of hell.

  Ben collapsed on the floor and dropped his candle, which rolled under a nearby chair and winked out. He glanced up at the doll, at Forever, at whatever she or it was. In the dim light he could still see that its smile, coy and self-satisfied, held firm. He reached out, groping for the Forever-doll’s touch, but it remained just out of reach. It simply laid on the floor, bemusedly watching him
struggle with this, its final gift.

  Through the burning, through the undiluted passion and intensity of ultimate experience, Ben heard his front door burst open. He couldn’t imagine what was coming next. Grinding his teeth in an effort to fighting back the boiling euphoria inside him, Ben rolled onto his back. Something was shuffling across the room, something that smelled even more sulfuric, even more tartly acidic than the Forever-doll. He could sense it coming, feet dragging, closer and closer.

  A blast of superheated wind rushed over his face. In its currents he heard what sounded like millions of overlapping voices all speaking in tandem, as one singular voice. Some masculine baritones and basses lined its lower registers, but, for the most part, the voice was composed of sultry female tones—bedroom whispers of a sort. It repeated only one word: “Benjamin. Benjamin. Benjamin.”

  Another blast of wind swept over Ben, and in the wind, more words: “I am here. For you.”

  The shuffling thing was closing rapidly and had reached the Forever-doll. Ben tried to sit up, but the intensity of feeling was too much. He could do no more than turn his head to see the thing’s vague form in the flickering light of the kitchen candle. It seemed to have no specific shape, but, rather, was constantly expanding and shrinking, developing and erasing. What looked like a head melted away and was replaced by what might have been a hand; legs dissolved into its mid-section and were replaced by elongated elbows.

  Ben was grateful that he couldn’t see any more specific features.

  “Forever?” he groaned through the pleasure-pain.

  The hot wind whipped against his face.

  “Forever, Ben. Together. Soon,” it answered.

  Ben might have wanted to tell this thing—this living manifestation of incoherence—that he’d waited his entire life for her and that she was his destiny, but he couldn’t separate his own emotions from the inferno of passion continually pressing deeper inside him. He could feel nothing and think nothing but love. Supreme love. Total love. The kind of love that ignites murders of passion, the kind of love that fuels religious wars and sizzles in the brainpans of madmen. Ben might have wanted to leap through a window and flee to a fortress of apathy, but this love, this intruding love, raged within his being and utterly overwhelmed all other thought, all other feeling, all other desire for action. In the moment, under the weight of love, he might have even hated Forever. It was impossible to tell.