World Traveler

I didn't want to go to the prom, anyway. The thought popped unbidden into her head many years after the possibility had passed. Why the hell am I thinking about that? Claire wondered as she carefully climbed onto the counter.

She knelt, shivering. She shook either from anticipation or from the cold of the industrial kitchen – dark now, after hours. She pulled her sweatshirt over her head, and then took the large square bandage from her jeans pocket. She hadn’t worn a bra.

Slowly, she leaned forward. She positioned herself carefully, just as she had planned, the side of her right breast just grazing the cold stainless steel.

She used a fingertip-less finger to turn on the meat slicer, thrilling to feel it jolt awake. The blade was sharp – she felt no tearing or pulling – just the steady, icy hum of excitement. She reveled in the sharpness of the pain, moving slowly to linger over the last hanging stretch when the slice of herself, detached. Calmly, with a satisfied, barely audible moan, she sat up and applied the ready bandage.

Claire lovingly examined this precious piece of herself. She folded it gently, and tucked it into the plastic bag she had brought. It went neatly into the insulated lung bag. She imagined the housewives at the supermarket asking for lunchmeat sliced that perfectly – "Wafer thin, please." Briefly, she worried that the ice pack might freeze it, might make it stale.

The blood pooled around the meat slicer was not difficult to clean up; Claire did it daily. Though, as she half-smiled to herself, it usually wasn’t this satisfying. The kitchen would open again in the morning, and Claire would be there – a little sore, perhaps, but happy. Tomorrow she would slice and cook 1999 portions of stir-fried beef and mushrooms Each portion would be packaged into neat cardboard containers with shiny tinfoil lids, ready to be heated and served to 1999 travelers on airplanes winging their ways to places Claire read about in her hoarded travel magazines. Tomorrow she would feel smug as she packed the one portion, the one piece of Claire, that would escape, go traveling, be liberated.