The Living String

The Living String

Integration failure is rare—but it happens. Sometimes the host’s body attacks the implant, mistaking palliative for poison.

I watch—open-eyed and stupid—my face twisted into a mad contortion as the scalpel, that petty knife, slices through me like I’m dairy, not man. The nurses have anesthetized the area, shaving back the budding hedges of hair that trail down to my crotch. They don’t know how long I waited for those goddamn hairs.

“Just knock me out,” I begged, crying, infant-silly.

“It must be local anesthetic,” the doctor said, blind to my tears. “If you're not awake, you won’t appreciate the transformation. I’ve had patients return months later, accusing me of fraud. The mind rejects what it cannot witness. You have to see to believe. Especially with how quickly the creature integrates—pulsing, yes—but soon indistinguishable from any other organ.”

The incision itself is painless. But something about the procedure—maybe the dissonance between sensation and sight—irritates my sinuses and sends phantom chills spiraling through my limbs.

#

I wasn’t surprised when I received the letter—an envelope with a green stamp in the corner. The return address read: National Board of Mandated Surgery. 

You see, people like me can’t be trusted to live alone for very long. It’s poison for the brain. And I’d been alone for some time—long enough to feel little sadistic tickles creeping into my waking life.

I stared too long at every bit of roadkill I passed, every squashed chick that fell out of its nest.

Spilled things at restaurants because I liked to watch the waitresses clean up after me.

Sent texts that, in certain countries, would be considered criminal. 

Evelyn’s pink toothbrush was still in the bathroom, in a cup of its own. It lost its nostalgic shimmer after a year. That’s when I started using it to scrub the tile grout. 

She left nothing else behind.

#

“Let me set you up. I know some great girls,” my brother said, three months after the breakup.

“We know all the same people.”

“No, no. These are people Emily put me in touch with.”

“Not sure I’m into Emily’s crowd.”

“What is that supposed to mean?”

“Forget it. I’m just tired of swapping models every few months. Even Evelyn only lasted about a year.”

“‘Models.’ They’re not machines.”

“Oh you know what I mean.”

“Don’t think Emily would like to hear you talking like that.”

“Well I’m not talking to Emily.”

“I guess if it’s just us talking….Still.”

“This is what I’m saying. I need help. The implant will be good for me.”

But something in theory is very different from the real thing.

#

The doctor steps away and reaches into the small aquarium that sits a meter from the operating table, atop a metal cart. Inside: a mass of eels—a grotesque skein of living string. Their movement is hypnotic, like the turning lens of a kaleidoscope.

He selects my life partner at random. Once lifted from the water, its grace vanishes. Movements become staccato, desperate. I ache to reach out, to soothe it.

I will be a house for you. I will let you breathe.

Somehow, I find the space within me to blush. These were Evelyn’s words, whispered into my ear between the sheets. 

The doctor approaches. His face is masked. My awareness turns sharp and unbearable. It's like realizing your shoes are too tight. The pain’s never in the foot, is it, but in the restraint, in the unnatural stillness.

They’ve strapped me down. To them, I am a maniac they must cure.

The nurses use metal forceps to keep my abdomen open. The eel’s lidless, purple eye stares—flooded with fear. I want to whistle a bit of Brahms to calm it, but they’ve stuffed cotton in my mouth.

The eel is tucked, headfirst, into the incision. Like Dad stuffing a sleeping bag into its sack.

I feel it groping inside me, brushing against my organs. I close my eyes—against my doctor’s orders—and try to picture the warm red dark it now inhabits. A womb, if I had one.

The nurses begin to sew me shut, each starting from opposite ends. The doctor’s gloved fingers press the center, holding me together.

I’m sealed—but the eel pushes upward, pressing its head against the inside of my stomach, raising the skin into a soft peak. I panic, certain I’ll burst, that the stitches are too weak, the creature too strong. Worse, I picture my body revolting against this enforced company, just as I had once revolted against Evelyn’s drawer of sweaters, her wet hair clogging the drain, the sheer constancy of her.

My panic is an airborne contagion. The room begins to beep. Red lights are flashing, just out of view. Doctors and nurses speak in whispers. A clear mask is placed over my mouth.

“We’re putting you under,” says the doctor. 

“Finally.” My words are slurred. And then, I’m out like a light.

I wake up and am in a small cot by a window overlooking the sea. There are flowers by my bedside with a card from my brother. Slowly, I pull up the cotton gown so that my belly is exposed, and see a line of black stitches. I knock on my abdomen like it's a door. For a moment nothing happens and I think the eel has died inside me. The horror. But then there’s this faint, reassuring pulse. It drums with the same consistency as my heartbeat but with an even slower rhythm. The eel, that living string, has settled.

The surgery has left me weak, and even these small, mostly emotional, exertions drain me. And as I let my eyelids slowly close, I imagine my eel weaving through my intestines, mistaking them for brothers and lovers. I hope it clings to that beautiful mistake—and makes countless more—finding connection where there was none before.