MicroHorror

Shrinks. They sit in a chair that costs more than my car, with that smug, condescending smirk on their bewhiskered, bespectacled faces and drone on and on about inner children, sexual conflicts, obsessive-compulsive BS, etc., etc., and of course, etc. Oh, and let me never forget Dr. Burnstein’s favorite—“’somatoform pain.” They do love to hear themselves talk and it only runs you about two hundred bucks an hour for the privilege of listening to them.

The medical doctors gave up on me long ago. They could find no cause for the severe pain I complained about. They all wrote me off as an addict looking to get his hands on pain pills. But now doc Burnstein is getting desperate. Three years in with no results has him a little edgy so now he wants to try something experimental. He teepeed his fingers to rest his hairy chin on. “The first thing we’re going to do is eliminate that ‘pain’ (wink). With that out of the way we’ll dig down deep and discover the real you.” He reached over and tapped me on the chest. “The real you is inside there, Spencer. We just need to find you. So, a new drug, since you have proven to be so resistant to hypnosis. A new drug to eliminate that (wink) pain (bastard!). It shouldn’t affect your psychological state in the least, according to the latest experiments with lab rats (really? rats, huh?). It will get rid of that somatoform ‘pain’ (what, no sly wink? no mini-lecture on the nature of psychosomatic symptoms?) and then we’ll get down to finding the real you.”

Well, a week has passed and–I’ll be damned!–the quack was right. No pain! My next appointment is in six days but I can’t wait. I’m too impatient and excited. Ha-ha! Progress at last!

I had to do a little shopping first but now I’m ready. The first tentative cut was a breeze. Hey, doc, no pain! I probe deeper using a soldering iron from the hardware store to cauterize the bleeders (so many. the damn things are a nuisance).

Now, wait… what the hell is this? Good thing the anatomy book from the library has actual pictures of real innards and not just drawings because these things look different in real life. Oh, it’s my bladder! Piss bag. How cool is that? Looks like I should have taken a leak before I started this little operation. Oh, well, no time to stop now.

Doc Burnstein will be so proud of me. He’s says I’m in here somewhere and until I find myself I won’t stop digging!