Voluntary Amputation
If you’re new here, I publish a horror story every October for the spooky season. These stories are really fun to write, as I get to stretch my imagination and describe things in bloody, gory detail. Last year, for instance, I wrote about werewolves on a distance planet. There was also the year I wrote about turning into a big, stupid purple T-Rex. I’ve even written about the real life horrors of being tormented and attacked by yellow jackets! This year, is extra special, as there’s quite a bit of myself in the story. I am disabled, with painful, deformed feet. Sometimes, I wish I could just chop off these feet. So…that’s what I wrote about! A fictional me tryin to get my leg amputated. It’s quite a ride. I hope you enjoy this very special October Scary Story titled Voluntary Amputation. Stay spooky!
Grocery stores are the Russian roulette of reasonable accommodations and accessibility. Take, for instance, the trip I took one fall day in 2021. I limp into the store and look for a fully charged motorized cart. I hope for luck, I hope to find a charged cart. This trip, however, I’m unlucky – all motorized carts are in use. I can either wait who knows how long for a cart to become available, or I can push a manual cart around the store, as my feet, legs, and back all shout at me in pain. I decide I lack the patience for option A. I chug four ibuprofen gel tabs, grab a manual cart, and trek through the aisles.
Two hours later, I walk into my front door, groceries in hand. My feet throb, ache, and swell. Today’s dinner was supposed to be a shrimp and vegetable curry, but that requires too much time standing at the stove – my feet need rest. Instead, I decide to nuke frozen veggies and hot dogs right after I loose my feet of the bondage devices that are my shoes and socks.
After peeling off my right sock, I stare at my foot; a bag of bones that look more like a Picasso painting than an actual body part. The toes point outward, like an upside down apostrophe. The bottom of my foot slightly resembles a rocking chair’s runner. My skin is red and purple and blue, decorated with surgery scars. My ankle – if you can call the fused array of bones an ankle, swells and throbs. There’s a deep depression on the outer side due to a misshaped, or maybe even a missing bone. The pinky toe, oh, that damned pinky toe curls around my ring toe. And oh it hurts.
That cursed toe has always been an issue, but even more so after I got it caught in a doorway. I probably should have gone to urgent care, but I didn’t trust the EC doctors to know what was happening with my feet. I’ve made that mistake before – I injured myself while visiting Southern California, and needed pain medication, so I went to urgent care. The doctor kind of panicked at the sight of my deformed feet. He just kind of sat there like…what the fuck is going on here? So, when I hurt my pinky toe, I just let it be. It doesn’t do me any good, and even if it was broken, it just kind cuddles up with my other toes. But ever since I caught my pinky toe in the door, it just kind of aches when it’s going to rain. And it’s going to rain.
I peel off my other sock and look at my left foot. My left foot isn’t as bad as my right – I guess it’s a Salvador Dali painting sitting next to the Picasso that is my right foot. But the left still gives me cramps and hurts; It still aches and swells. Oh, did I mention that my left leg is about an inch longer than my right? That means back pain on top of the foot pain, but I digress. After examining my feet, I stumble around, get my dinner, and sit with my feet up for the rest of the evening.
The next morning I wake up with a 6 on the pain scale. I chug ibuprofen with my morning coffee, cry through my shower, and hobble to my home office. My pinky toe irritates me more than usual. It’s so painful, I wish I could make this damned toe disappear. I can’t handle this anymore, I have to do something desperate. I need to find a way to get rid of my pinky toe once and for all.
Over the next few days, I tried a few things. I tried to get the toe stuck in another doorway, but to no avail. I slammed some books on it, against it, and into it. I even bent my pinky toe as far as I could to see if maybe I could break it. All I did was make the damn thing hurt more. I keep thinking about my my mom’s feet. She too, had foot deformities. Her toes were removed when she was young, and I’ve always been a little jealous.
Thinking about my mom made me forget a little about the pain. I think of all the funny things she would tell me not to do. Don’t run and chew gum, you’ll choke. Don’t sit too close to the TV, you’ll go blind. Don’t wear a rubber band around your wrist, you’ll cut off your circulation and loose your whole hand. Wait. I wonder if there’s any truth in that last one. Maybe if I wrap a rubber band around my toe…I’ll loose my toe.
I wrap a tight rubber band around my pinky toe for about a week. This really hurts, and it the toe turns red, but there’s still too much circulation, too much blood flowing in and out of the toe. I decide to tighten the rubber band a little more. Holy shit it hurts, but after a few days the toe turns black. I take an Uber to the hospital. The doctors ask me what I was thinking, putting a rubber band on my toe. I act dumb, like I didn’t know what was going to happen. I don’t want the doctors to know I purposely killed my toe.
The doctors remove the toe cleanly. The rubber band provides a nice, clean place for the amputation. They send me home the next day in a cast and with a pocketful of pain killers.
Fast forward six months. My now missing toe no longer hurts when it rains. My feet in general, however, still agonize me as they much as ever; I’m miserable more days than not. When I have gone to the doctors, they say things like “my feet hurt just by looking at your feet,” and “you certainly didn’t win the foot lottery.” When I ask about pain relief, they just smirk and say “Have you tried pot?” I smirk back, and limp out of the room. Every day I get a little more desperate, for a solution. A cure that does not exist.
I begin to wonder if amputation might be the answer for my feet, as it was for my pinky toe, but how? A rubber band won’t do the job this time. No, I would have to do something drastic. Maybe if I were to slice the right muscles with a knife. Maybe I could just get my legs crushed in an “accident.” I imagine what it might take to position myself in the right place as a speeding car comes towards me. No, too many variables. I want to be able to walk with prosthetics at least. I also need to decide if I want both legs gone, or if I can live with the pain in my left foot. It would certainly be easier to loose one leg, and I can always decide to void myself of the left leg at a latter date. So I focus on loosing my right leg, below the knee. There will be space for a decent prosthetic, and my Picasso foot will no longer be an issue.
But I still need a way to loose my right leg. I could buy a bone saw, and just do the job myself, but that will be painful. I could use a chainsaw. That would be quick and no one would question the what actually happened, they would think “crap, what a weird accident.” Although, if I use a chainsaw, where would the “accident” take place? I probably should make sure I’m near an ER; there will be a lot of bleeding, I could go into shock, and so many other things could go wrong. I can’t imagine myself having a random chainsaw incident near a hospital. I think of a million other ways to cut my leg off. Guillotine, machete, getting my leg trapped under a pile of bricks. In the end, nothing sounds doable, at least not by myself. I decided to forget about the whole thing for the time being.
Two years go by. I’m in more pain than ever. I start to think about self amputation once more, but the how part seems to be too complex, dangerous, and painful. I can’t do it on my own. I wonder if there’s someone that can help me. Maybe I could hire a hit against me, are the mob still a thing? Or maybe someone from those sketchy soldier of fortune magazines. I bet I could find someone on the dark web. This seems like the right way to go. I wonder if there’s a doctor I can pay under the table. Or maybe a medical student. My mind races. Medical students could certainly use a payday – school isn’t cheap. I could offer a few thousand maybe, if I sell some investments. Would that be enough?
Finding a medical student I can trust to do the job will take some patience. I need someone who isn’t going to fuck this up. I also need to present that I’m trustworthy. I’m not sure of the legality of this situation. Is it legal for a person to hire someone to cut off their own limb? Is it legal for the person they hire to do so? Sounds like a grey area at best, a felony at worse. And if I’m dealing with a med student, I this could get them banned from practicing medicine.
A few days pass, I’m doomscrolling social media when I come across someone who might be the perfect candidate for my amputation. They’re a medical student who wants to go into surgery, and they’re having a hard time paying their rent. They’ve opened up a GoFundMe, and that’s not going well for them. I browse their public social medias and see some morally ambiguous posts. And holy shit, they’ve operated on their dog! To remove its leg after a car hit the poor pooch. Maybe they can’t stand seeing someone or something in pain. Ok, this might be my med student.
I contact them via email. I tell them I have a proposition that’s not entirely on the level, but I can pay their rent if they’re willing to help. This piqued their interest enough for a reply, and when I explained the situation, they said they’re interested. We agree on a price, $6000. More than I was wanting to pay, but at the same time, a bargain if it means no more pain in my right leg.
The day of amputation comes. They agree to meet me at my apartment and take me to the location of the procedure. They feed me a few relaxants to calm me down. I don’t ask where we’re going, that arrangement is their responsibility. Still, I’m surprised when we arrive at a mortuary.
“I work here nights, and it’s as good of a place to preform this operation as any. Nice clean tables. I have all my supplies in there already, he turns to me and holds up clorform rag and shoves it in my face. “I need you to not be conscious for this next part.”
I wake up after what seemed like mere moments. I’m in a hospital room.
“How did I get here?” I ask, while a nurse jumps at the sudden sound of my voice.
A team of doctors in white coats file into my room like I’m a summer blockbuster they can’t wait to see. “It looks like our John Doe is awake.” One says, the others nod and scribble notes in their clipboards.
“What’s going on?” I ask at anyone who will answer.
“We were hoping you could tell us. You were dropped off late one night at the door of the ER. Your leg was hanging off your knee by a few threads. It looks like someone tried to chop it off with an axe. Luckily, we were able to save the leg, but you’re going to have a lot of pain for the rest of your life.”
“Wait, I still have my leg?” I look down, and see my right leg covered by the blanket.
“Yes. But, it sounds like that’s a surprise? What exactly happened? Were you involved in some sort of accident?”
I think for a moment. The medical student and I agreed I wouldn’t tell anyone anything, even if something were to go wrong. So yeah, an accident, that sounds like the way to go. “Right, I went for a walk, on the beach. I was going to chop some wood for a bon fire, so I had an axe. I must have fallen or something. And maybe the axe hit my leg.
“That seems. That doesn’t seem plausible. It looks like you were attacked. If you’re in some sort of trouble, now is the time to say something. You’re safe here.”
“I’m ok. I guess I just had some sort of accident.”
“Well, whatever. If you want to tell us what really happened, let a nurse know.”
Recovery is hard. I still have foot pain, and now there’s extra pain in my leg. To top it off, I feel a phantom pain in my big toe.
When I finally got home, I find my ID, along with an envelope in my mailbox. The envelope contained 6000 dollars cash, as well as a letter.
I’m sorry, I failed. I couldn’t get a good incision and you would have died if I hadn’t stopped what I was doing. I’ve dropped you off at the hospital, sans your ID. I thought it best you come in as a John Doe. I have also refunded your money.
This experience has been bad for both of us, but it’s reaffirmed something I was scarred to admit. I am not meant to be a surgeon. At least not for humans. I’ve decided to move back across the country with my parents, and pursue veterinary school.
So, here I am, worse off than I was before. More pain, more agony, and more fucked up than I used to be. I limp downstairs, sit at an idle bench, and weep.
I want to emphasize, voluntary amputation is NOT something I am actively pursuing. This is a work of fiction. Do not take this story seriously. I did not throw my daughter off the canoe. I did not, wait, that’s not my story. That’s the movie Verity. Don’t go see that movie by the way. It was ableist and it was just stupid. But I digress.
My point being, I’m not actually planning a voluntary amputation. Though, this medical abstract does state that voluntary amputation is a real thing. Hmmm, maybe this IS something I should consider after all. Just kidding. Or….am I?
Happy spooky season everyone!
See you sooooooooooon…
