COPER by Harold Chester © 1998 - All Rights Reserved Rob was driving home from work when his left arm fell off. He had just pulled out of the company driveway onto the main road, and as he straightened out the steering wheel he felt a sharp pain in his shoulder. With a wet sucking noise, his arm separated from his shoulder and fell down onto the seat between him and the door. As he stared down stupidly at the arm on the seat beside him, its edge as red as raw hamburger, a horn blared beside him. He steered the car back into his lane. Everything seemed to be far away, as if he were in a dream, and he felt numb. He looked over at his shoulder, but saw nothing but the empty sleeve of his green short-sleeved shirt. Why wasn't he bleeding, he wondered. He had to get to a hospital. But he was dizzy and wasn't sure that he could drive too much longer. A few minutes later, he made it to his house. Skidding into the driveway, the rear end of the car slammed into the dark green 100 gallon rolling trash dumpster and knocked it over as the car shuddered to a stop. He opened the door and vomited onto the driveway, the vile taste and smell of the yellowish bile making him even more nauseated. Grabbing the dead piece of flesh that used to be his left arm, he staggered to the front door and banged on the bottom of it with his foot. The door swung open and his wife stood there, her eyes wide. "Sally?" he said, then the darkness enveloped him as he sank to the ground. * * * Gradually he became aware of the noises, the brightness and the faint antiseptic smell. The sheets that covered him were cool, and smooth against the skin of his right arm and feet. He opened his eyes and blinked a few times as the white-coated doctor standing by his bedside came into focus. "I'm Doctor Cotesia. You're at the Cooperdale Specialty Clinic. We treat the employees of Truetech Consolidated Chemicals, where you work," the doctor said. "What's happened to me?" Rob said, then looked down at the empty space under the sheet to his left where his arm should be. "What happened to my arm?" "There was too much tissue damage, I'm afraid. We couldn't reattach it." Dr. Cortesia made a note on his clipboard. "We really don't know what's wrong, yet -- we've never seen anything like this. It could be some strange new disease, something genetic, perhaps even some kind of chemical exposure." Rob shook his head, still woozy. "Chemical exposure? I work in Accounts Payable!" "I'm sorry, Mr. Pearson. There's not a lot we can do right now. I ran several tests while you were unconscious, and hope that those will tell us something. In the meantime, your wife is coming to take you home. Until we know more about your condition, I think it's best that you stay at home and don't go out of the house." Before they could leave, Sally had to help him put on his clothes. During the ride home in their minivan, his wife was strangely silent. She moved almost jerkily, and brushed her long black hair away from her eyes several times. She grinned at him a few times, but her eyes were dull. She touched his left shoulder, near his neck, and squeezed, once. "It's going to be okay, Rob -- really." "It's going to be tough on the rest of them at the office. You know that John's already out sick; I don't think that they can handle the load with both of us gone." "Always thinking of other people, aren't you? That's one of the reasons I love you so much. Sally smiled. "I've made arrangements with your boss, Maddy; she's going to let you telecommute. I've already got the software installed." "What if this is chemically related? Your job there is working with all those chemicals!" "I'm an entomologist, not a chemist. You know that. I may work with some of the chemicals, but we all take the proper precautions. Besides," she said, "it may not have anything to do with chemicals." They were home a few minutes later. The clinic wasn't very far from the plant, he thought. Sally showed him how to log on remotely, and he spent the next few hours working. He got up and stretched, his arm straight up in the air, and felt unsettlingly unbalanced. He stumbled a step, then opened one of the double french doors of the study and went into the living room. Narration from the television caught his attention. "The Ichneumonid wasp is a parisitioid." On the screen, a wasp landed on a caterpillar. It stung the caterpillar viciously. "What are you watching, sweetie?" he asked his wife, who was sitting on the sofa. Sally clicked the remote, turning off the television. "Nothing much. You know me, anything about bugs and I have to watch it. That's my job." She paused. "Listen, Rob, sit down here beside me." He complied. "You remember what we were talking about before, about having kids? You said we should go ahead, and I said we should wait until we were both better established." "I remember," he said. She ran her hand down the side of his face, down his neck, to the top of his shirt. "I think it's time," she said, and she began unbuttoning. When she had unbuttoned his shirt, she pulled it off for him and threw it on the floor. She took his arm and led him back to the bedroom. The bedroom was bright, the light from the late afternoon sun streaming through the blinds. Sally shut the blinds, then squatted down beside him as he stood there by the bed. She pulled his pants down to his ankles, waited while he stepped out of them, then pushed him down on the bed. "On your back, Dear," she said. "We're going to try something different." She pulled her dress over her head, and he was startled to see that she was naked underneath. Laying down beside him, she began to kiss his neck and rub her nude body against him, and he felt himself grow hard. She straddled him, and slid down to engulf him. Her pelvis ground into his, and she began to ride him hard, her large breasts bouncing, her dark nipples hard. He was lost in the pleasure of the moment, and forgot all about his arm. Fifteen minutes of an eternity later, he heard her begin to breath harder and moan louder. She pumped faster, then began to grind their crotches together in short circles. Their bodies were slick with sweat. He felt his own need building, getting closer. She cried out, and he felt her shudder as she orgasmed. An instant later he came to his own crescendo, and climaxed with spurts of white hot fire. This was it, he was certain. He knew that they had started their babies this time. Sally fixed supper that night, chicken, rice and corn. Rob had been so hungry that his stomach ached, and he tore into the food with a vengeance. In between bites, he asked Sally, "Have you talked to your cousin lately? How's John doing?" "Melanie said that he's doing better. Some kind of virus or something. He's still weak. He should be okay by next week, the doctor says." Rob envied Sally for her close relation with Melanie. No one was that close to him, except for Sally. He had never known his birth parents, and his adoptive parents had been killed in an automobile accident while he was in college. That was one thing he had in common with John, he supposed. Neither one of them had close relatives -- heck, any relatives that he knew of. The rest of the evening was relatively normal; watching television on the couch. When they went to bed he slept very little, tossing and turning most of the night. Rob spent the next week at home, working from his remote terminal and eating prodigiously several times a day. He was constantly hungry. At the end of the week he had gained twenty pounds. "You know," Rob said, as he shoveled cereal into his mouth, the morning sun shining through the dining room window, "I'm just hungry all the time. I may have to go back to the doctor and ask him about this. Has the doctor called you at work or anything since I've been home?" Sally smiled at him. Her green eyes seemed particularly shiny, almost glittering. "No, sweetie. Don't you think I'd tell you if I'd heard anything?" Rob smiled back. He reached behind him to scratch his neck, and his other arm snapped off, hitting the floor with a dull thud. It jerked a couple of times, flopping like a fresh caught bass torn from a lake, then was still. He screamed until his throat was hoarse, while Sally helped him out to the van and drove him to the clinic. * * * "Same as before," Dr. Cortesia said, as he examined Rob. "No blood vessels severed, no visible atrophy. I don't know what to tell you." The doctor paused, pursing his lips. "Your left side has healed well," he said, "No trace of infection." Rob looked in the mirror and saw the new pink skin on the stump on his left shoulder. "There has to be something you can do!" Rob said, his voice rising. "Well, ordinarily, we'd try to do something with prosthetics, but there's been so much nerve damage that it's not feasible in your case. On a positive note, I've given your wife some voice recognition software, so you can still work from home." Rob slumped. "Yeah, right, work from home. It doesn't matter that I don't have any damn arms -- at least I can still work." "Get a hold of yourself, man!" the doctor said, then coughed. "Er, sorry. What I mean is, you have to take control of yourself. This is a nasty business, all right, but we'll do everything we can for you. The company is going to pay for a nurse to come and stay with you during the day while your wife is at work." Sally took him home. That night, she made love to him again, mounting him and riding him hard, scratching his sides with her long, red fingernails. He fell to sleep immediately afterwards, emotionally and physically exhausted. His days and nights after that were numbingly similar. He would work on the computer every day, and watch television every night. During the day, the company-hired nurse in the crisp white uniform would help him dress, eat and perform his other bodily functions. At night Sally would help him. Despite what had happened, he was still ravenously hungry, and gained another twenty pounds in the next week. On the morning exactly two weeks after his left arm had taken leave of his body, he rolled over in bed and his legs remained in place. Rob looked down at his now limbless body and moaned, tears streaming from his eyes. When his nurse arrived a few minutes later, she and his wife picked him up and carried him out to the van. * * * Dr. Cortesia was walking beside him as an orderly pushed the gurney Rob was lying on down the hall. Sally was walking on the other side, her face strangely void of emotion. "I have good news for you, Mr. Pearson. You're going to finally find out what's been happening to you." They went through a pair of double swinging doors and entered a ward lined with hospital beds on both sides, at least fifteen beds along each wall. Nude patients with limbless torsos were strapped to each bed. His friend, John, was in one of those beds! They stopped beside the bed John was in. "Hi, John," Sally said, brightly. "You'll have to tell Melanie I said hello when she comes by." "God, Rob, they got you, too," John said, his voice weak. "I'm so sorry." Something was strange about John's body, and not just the lack of limbs. Rob looked more closely, and saw that something, or some things, about the size of guinea pigs, were moving under John's skin, like lumps being pushed along under a carpet. Rob tried to talk, but only squeaks came out. The orderly pushed the gurney to the first empty bed, and the doctor and orderly picked Rob up and deposited him, naked, in the middle of the bed. "It's time, Rob," Sally said. She quickly and efficiently stripped off her clothes, then stood in front of him and did a short bump and grind in a grotesque parody of sexuality. Crawling onto the bed, Sally straddled him so that her hips were over his stomach. "Don't bother getting up, Dear," she said, and laughed. He peered down, chin on chest, and watched in horror as a tube the size of his fist in diameter extended from her groin. It stabbed into his belly, and the pain almost made him pass out. It would have been better if he had fainted, because a moment later he felt each pulse as a dozen larvae were pumped into his body. When she had finished, Sally climbed off and stood between the doctor and the orderly, an arm around each of them. Antenna extended from all three of their heads. "That's my Rob; he can cope with anything -- such a great little coper. You know, Rob, you're going to be a great father." ----------------------------------------------------------------- Harold Chester, his wife, kids and the ubiquitous dog live in Central Oklahoma. Harold has lived in the Phillipines, Japan, Korea and various places in the United States. He's been a soldier and a sailor, and currently works as an Information Technology Architect. This story is his first sold. Write to him at lthwc@usa.net, or visit his newsgroup at news://news.sff.net/sff.people.lthwc.