So, as you may gather from the title, this is not a nice story. I guess I am to blame for writing it and stuff, but you could also blame girlshapedguitar for making me share the Most Awkward Sex Scene I’ve ever written, which happens to be in the middle of this train wreck of a story. It is a machine of death story that I never submitted. (See: machineofdeath.net)
[Trigger Warnings: baby hitler, suicide, pregnancy angst]
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SHOT IN THE HEAD WHILST COMPLETING THE HOLOCAUST
a machine of death story
Week 21, day 2
The room glowed a little from being in the presence of that silvery machine. From its top, like a slack tongue, a small strip of paper jutted out.
Björn Willems, MD, tore the strip of paper off and handed it to the woman sitting in front of him. Like a statue of someone who has just received disastrous news, she sat perfectly still. The good doctor leant back in his chair and observed her. It was a good chair, a proper chair. He’d arranged the office furnishings himself, after the MD before him had been killed in a freak accident. It wouldn’t do to keep the furniture of an unlucky woman.
Therefore, the table was new and the chairs were all new. They looked the same but in fact Dr. Willems’ chair was ten centimeters higher off the ground than any other chair. From his elevated position, the doctor gave the woman on the other side of the table a warm, friendly smile.
She smiled back, at first thinly and then as broadly as the doctor, and then they both strained their face muscles and some laughter bubbled up. It turned into a guffaw from Björn and a soundless, out-of-breath clucking from the pregnant woman. Even the little machine seemed to join in, vibrating as it did.
The woman caught her breath, “this is a joke, right? That is,” another breath, “why we are laughing, isn’t it?”
The doctor immediately withdrew his smile into his beard and stopped laughing. He balled his fist and coughed into it once. “What? No, not at all. It is just kind of funny. Don’t worry though, I’m sure he grows up to be a healthy young man.”
All non-artificial colour disappeared from her face. “Try again. New needle. Something must have gone wrong.”
The machines had never been wrong.
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