Author’s Cut

I was petrified as it dawned on me just what I was about to do to myself. They were my own legs, for god’s sake- what I’d considered, and quite ignorantly at that, a prerequisite to my human existence. Not just that, but the sheer pain I was preparing to inflict upon my being was just too morbidly absurd to even imagine.

I wasn’t a total stranger to this sort of demented nonsense. I’d cut my self before, I’ll admit it. Those strange feelings came rushing back to me as I bashfully rubbed the teeth of the saw gently along my left thigh, watching the little dots of red form atop it. I couldn’t possibly go any further, I told myself. I just wasn’t there yet. I knew no one would come to save me, that wasn’t the problem- I just wasn’t quite so desperate to yet be able to actually remove the limb that was essentially already gone.

That time came quicker than I had expected. Never in my life had I truly been hungry. It was its own kind of dismemberment, my insides screaming at me for neglecting them. Even before I got to that place where I lied with a saw to my leg, it’d been days since I’d eaten. My waste had grown colorless and infrequent. I remember thinking then, that if I so much as saw another human being, be they even my own mother or little cousin- I would have absolutely no trouble forcing them to the ground to steal some of their living meat for myself. It’s ugly, I know, but you learn to live with these kinds of things. I don’t condemn myself. You’d have thought that, too.

I pressed the saw to my femur again. The left one. Christ, what luck, I thought. It was the devil’s finest cruelty that both my knees were lodged in that filthy, rusty thing the second I fell down. I should’ve started earlier, I knew it. When the trap had first lodged itself into my upper legs, it’d provided a seriously damaged weak spot in them that was healing now. Though it was the most painful thing that’s ever happened to me, it could’ve been quite helpful in escaping. If only I hadn’t been such a coward, I could’ve easily cut my torn limbs free. Now they’d grown around the brown, tight spikes of the machine- it had become a part of me. The massive beartrap-like device clung to me as I clung to it, refusing to let go no matter what I did. Truly, this was my only option.

I thought it best to just rip the band-aid off as fast as it would go. This did not work out. With a quick breath and one sharp tug to the right the saw entered me, just two or three inches at most- but my instinct quickly made me pull it out. Here I was, now bleeding again- not much closer to escaping, but at even more of a risk. It’s a wonder I had enough in me to survive the initial pinning from the madmen’s device, and now, diseased and infected as it was, my life force was spilling out of me onto the chocolate forest ground. I steeled myself. One more.

I winced as I inserted the thing back into the slot I’d made, like it was some large serrated credit card. And then I tugged, back again, and then forward to my left as I forced myself to go again before my rational mind pulled me out again. The burning spread through me like little ants eating my insides, but I couldn’t stop. With both hands I forced that abandoned tool back into the wound, trying to focus on how lucky I was to find it, just lying next to me on the ground like that, doubtlessly left behind by one of the maniacs roaming around in the trees. That’s right, I managed to convince myself, if only for a moment. I must be the luckiest person in Earth.

Madness overcame me. Surely alerting the psychos, I burnt out my lungs rubbing that thing back and forth on my thigh as fast as I could. You’d think it would’ve started a fire. Certainly felt like it was. But no matter what, I pushed on. And soon, what came to be my first stump was free. With haste I moved on to the second one, fighting through my tears and everything in my body telling me not to do it.

It took so much longer. I would start, then stop, then start again, only to freeze in fear, my vision fading, trying not to pass out from the pain. They were certainly coming for me now. I don’t know what they wanted, but there was no doubt in my mind they weren’t letting a now-crippled girl like me go. The fear of them became a new motivator. I hacked through the bone, slowly watching as my living, moving leg became a foreign object wholly unrelated to me. Soon I did not feel. I did not think about what I was doing as I sliced the final bit of useless meat off me. And then I was left, like I am now, with my legs less than half the size they once were.

I crawled through the forest, leaving a trail of dark, mottled red behind me- fearful as I was that it would lead them to me, it never did, and it never has. I survived that painful night, pushing my arms to their limit while they pulled me through an entire sea of trees and underbrush. With bugs picking at my insides and my skin and my eyelids growing heavy, I didn’t see the moment I reached the edge of the woods. I believe I got just close enough to the highway for someone to spot me. It felt like heaven, waking up not a second later in a comfortable white bed.

They investigated those woods. Those people, or whatever they might’ve been, as someone on the news put it. Of course, it could only ever have been people. They didn’t find any of them, but I carry no fear in my heart for those that I so easily escaped. It is an unlikely possibility that any will ever read this, but if they do, I hope they know that I am alive. And I am happy. And what they did to me gave me more money in book sales than it ever did trauma. So go fuck yourselves, forest weirdos. Thanks for the career.