Ed watches worms regrow.
            He takes a sharp scalpel and chops their little heads off – if he can find them. Then, he waits.
            Waiting is the best part. He sees the worm’s little life flash before him like a violent seizure. Its hopes, its dreams, and its dirt. All that stuff, on hiatus for approximately 5-20 days (depending on the species) while it regains its head and composure.
            It waits and wriggles and writhes. Ed does the same. But he feels a little guilt within his amusement. His excitement and fascination are tainted by isolation and, and this is the strangest part, jealousy.
            Ed is jealous of the headless squirmers. They get to up and drop their little heads off and then just camp out in a state of Pure Being, waiting for their consciousness to return. And who knows whether they come out the other end more or less handsome, more or less happy, a vegetarian or a carnivore. It’s all so weird and exciting!
            Ed dreams every night of this state: of feeling weightless and empty and free. A state unburdened by his sensations. A state of being headless and alive.
            It would take him four months, but Ed eventually found all the materials and set a plan into motion. He came into work early that day: way before the serious security started at the Smithsonian Natural History Museum. He carried an extra large duffel bag.
            Ed entered his office/lab and locked and bolted the door behind him. No one could enter until this little experiment was over, and Ed had no data on how long that might be.
            He opened the bag and unpacked. He pulled out a bedpan, medical tape and gauze, a small needle, a large springed mechanism, sensitive lubricant, a gaggle of medical tubes, a Gerry-rigged defibrillator set-up, 5 thick leather belts, a cauterizer, a catheter, an IV stand, a huge bag of intravenous nutrition, and EKG equipment (strips and patches and cables attached to a battery-operated monitoring system). Finally, he removed most of the heft of his bag with the unpacking of the final tool: a massive scalpel: 3 ft. long with a 10 in. blade.
            He set up around a sturdy, straight-backed metal chair he had always used for his Frankenstein’s monster impression during drink-ups with the other scientists at the museum on Friday nights.
            He first wrapped and buckled the belts loosely around the ends of the arms of the chair, the bottoms of the front legs, and the top of the chair back about chest height (this one he left unbuckled).
            Ed then moved a shelving unit from near the door and set it directly behind the chair. He clamped the spring mechanism on the shelf and pulled its trigger/release button (a red one at the end of a 3 ft. length of cable housing) towards the right arm of the chair and set it within the loose belt so it would get caught by the leather strap if it tried to fall to the ground. Then he plugged in and readied the defibrillator and cauterizer: setting their battery boxes and monitors down on the shelf and auxiliary parts into the appropriate slots in the spring. The electrified cauterizer protruded out along and behind the shaft over the chair’s right shoulder. The defibrillator paddles and EKG patches attached from the heart rate monitor on the left side and below the spring’s main axis – tucked in next to the belt that would secure his chest.
            Also on the chair’s left, the IV stand was hooked up with the bag of delicious blood-food. From the stand, Ed ran another tube to the needle. He wrapped this in tape and stuck it to the left arm of the chair.
            The bedpan was placed underneath the chair and a tube was run between it and the catheter. Ed set the catheter on the middle of the seat, it’s free end jutting just out over the edge. He applied a pinch of lubricant at this end.
            Ed surveyed the scene and sat down carefully.
            The life support was slowly attached to his body. He attached the EKG patches to monitor his vitals. He leaned down to slip his ankles into the belt-restraints and tightened them around the chair’s legs. He swallowed a gulp of spit as he undid his zipper and slipped the catheter into the void and down his urethra. He immediately felt himself resisting a pressing need to urinate. When he relaxed, it flowed. Unpleasant, but manageable.
            He reached on his left, steadied the defibrillator paddles at the appropriate spots on his chest, and tightened the belt around his chest. He then undid the tape around the needle on the chair’s arm and found a vein. Hesitating first as he contemplated sanitation, he finally shrugged his shoulders, clenched his fist a couple times, and eased the needle in opposite his elbow. He protected the wound with the gauze and tape as he felt himself get less hungry. With his right hand, he buckled the belt around the feeding arm to keep it from moving once he lost control. He really needed to be careful now.
            He reached with his right arm over the chair and towards the massive blade lying on the ground next to him. He eased his grip out toward the end of the handle and stuck the knife’s edge out in front of him. He swung the thing slowly out to the right and moved his wrist up around behind his right shoulder searching for the spot that the handle could slip into (all while avoiding the heated and ready cauterizer attached to the mechanism he was fitting the blade into). Finding the slot, he inched his fist down the handle towards the blade to move the blunt end behind his head towards the left. He continued until the blade locked into place just over his shoulder and he could stare the weapon down.
            Frozen by the museum-lab cold, Ed felt a shiver up his shoulders as his right hand inched towards the final preparation: the trigger. His fingers made a cone to slip into the loosely-buckled belt on the chair’s arm. The fingers grabbed the red button as they passed it. Ed bowed his head down towards his lap and shook as he felt the dense, metallic weight in his hand. He shook through. He chilled and vibrated with jitters, but he was stuck. He felt armless and trapped. Encased in his skin. The shake made its way down to his right hand. Ed shook the trigger button left and right between his upwards fingers. He was testing his confidence. Testing his hypothesis:
            To Hell with the Scientific Method.
            He leaned back and whooshed a gust of air out of his lungs. Ed was careful as he eased his head into the prime position: eventually sitting straight. He tried to ease his breath. He pushed the button.
            He waited as he listened to the whirr of a mechanical timer. His breath picked up again. He tried to control it, but it was a lost cause. He heard the first click after five seconds: the spring mechanism unwinding.  The second click came another five muffled seconds later.
            Ed drew in a slow breath and fluttered his eyes. They snapped open and another whoosh came out of his smile. He beamed.
            At 8:37AM, the experiment began. Ed felt nothing.

         Magda sits alone and naked in the decorative fountain at the Boynton Beach Mall, right near the detour towards the Food Court. She hides amongst the plastic (or low-maintenance) ferns in order to not attract the attention of the all too wichtigtuer[*] Security Guard patrolling on his Segway. Only the little boys ogle her lithe and unfamiliar feminine parts, too shocked to alert authorities parental or otherwise.
         When you’re nude, slipping into a loving body of water can help you acclimate and put you into an appropriate mood for wearing your birthday suit. You feel less naked when you’re being hugged by warm water in and out.
         Magda feels less naked in the water. She still feels naked, though.
         The matter of how she got there is neither here nor there because Magda is here: in a chlorinated pool/fountain speckled with casual change, naked but for her glasses and tampon, hiding in a barely passable excuse for scenery. The water isn’t too cold, but for some reason Southern Floridians are unable to comprehend a place with the designation “inside” that isn’t mind-numbingly cold. They can put up with year-round heats up to the 90’s, humidities in the 80’s, and at least one annual hurricane hissy fit (sometimes even actual hurricanes). But by God if they have to be inside for one-fucking-second and not feel the brittle goose-bumps of an A/C set to 65 and all the fans on full-blast, they’ll eat their goddamned shorts.
         So Magda begins to shiver if she stretches from her aquatic hiding spot. She could stay in there and skip the day no problem if she wants to. She has the patience and freedom to do so, and she certainly enjoys the free feeling of being a little exposed. But she feels cooped up, stuck in a hesitant non-chalance about the legality of her current state, the quality of her concealment, and the actions of that douche-bag on the Segway if he were to be made aware of her vulnerable presence.
         She has to make a break. It’s all she can do. Bee-line for UO, or AA, or H&M, or ANYTHING and grab some sort of covering. Then she’ll walk home or call a friend to pick her up by borrowing someone’s phone. She has a tenuous plan; now she needs the cajones.
         She looks down and sizes up where crunching into a ball (to maintain submersion in a foot and a half of water) makes her look fat or pudgy. The same fucking places: below her belly button, the tops of her thighs, even her boobs, subjectively her best feature, look weird suspended in liquid without a bikini-bra to reel them in and keep them from roaming the chlorinated wild. She looks hard at all the things she hates. Then she looks hard at the H&M right across from her ferns. 30 paces, maybe. She looks down again, closes her eyes, and lets a few concerted breaths pass before rising.
         She is swift but not rushed. She straightens up and out of the water and pauses a moment to let the majority of the water splash back into the knee-high pool. Then, in expert strides, she walks purposefully towards the trendy shop. She wears her face with a smile, but it isn’t obnoxious. She makes eye-contact exactly twice in the 27 steps it actually takes: once to a little boy who isn’t old enough to be looking and once to a young man who is just old enough. She lets a tooth slip into her reserved smile only when she locks eyes with the boy: “Oops,” perhaps.
         The ladies section is thankfully in front. She goes first for one with beautiful colors, but she realizes upon closer inspection that the fit will be off without a proper bra in between her breasts and the fabric. So she moves to a teal number with a reasonable neckline, grabs an M, and throws it on.
         She walks to the checkout and lets her smile move into minor embarrassment and her eyes roll up slyly as she approaches the cashier. He is stopped dead in his tracks. For three minutes he’d been standing this way, motionless save for a slightly delayed tracking of his head to her movements.
         She finishes her ‘embarrassed’ act and leans over the counter as her right hand fumbles down the back of the flowy, blue-green sundress.
         “Little help?” she lobs his way as she finally locates the alarm sensor attached on the inside about half-way down the dress’s back. His mouth slowly descends as he processes what she wants and looks down desperately only to find the sensor-remover attached firmly into the checkout counter, out of helpful reach if the dress is the remain on Magda’s now-covered body.
         The cashier’s mouth’s opening is now fully-formed but his thoughts are anything but. Luckily Magda, sensing his legitimate conundrum and inability to communicate, holds up a finger and moves along the counter towards the employee entrance.
         He chuckles stupidly and steps aside, letting her access the alarm-sensor-remover. She bends over the counter again, has a small chuckle herself, and turns around while maintaining her lean in the limbo position. She guides the little piece of plastic on her back into the slot on the counter until it clicks and falls in two. Still in limbo, she gives him a little wink to signal success.
         She bounces back around to the customer side and heads for the door. As she gets to the separators that hold the alarm that would’ve yelled at her 10 seconds before, she stops. She turns with a serious face on, snaps her eyes into his and says, honestly, “Thanks.”
         Then she leaves.

[*] Literally, in German: as-if-important-doer

I caught one on Beady’s Hill last night. It was dull mooned and I saw him there – precious as a child – praying as his skin shimmered in the dark cloud’s penumbra. He was wretched gorgeous, but I needed him to tell me my future. I needed him to let me know how it would end. So I snuck up behind him, caught him deep in unaware prayer, and I snatched that salamander!

Ha-ha! Oh man he squirmed and juiced and tried to slip his way out, but I had the sunnuvabitch vice-gripped. I turned my head sideways to see the incline and find a flat, level spot. I wanted to do this there and then, without a chance for him to get away or for the salamander goop marking my tracks.

The grade revealed my best route to the top of the hill and I took it – avoiding the rocks and other faithful animals. I found a clearing where the grade subsided and placed the salamander on a dry patch to better see what the juices revealed.

A laid him down on his back and boy he wriggled and rocked on his pointed spine to turn and get away. But I had him pinned with my weak hand. I reached for my switchblade in my pocket and flicked it open.

He spat fluorescent phlegm in my left eye – blinded for a week or so. Ha! A pittance. He didn’t even get my good eye.

“Quick and painless … Quick and to the pointless…” I mumbled past promises to myself. We locked eye and he was disgusted.

I let a low grunt out and plunged the blade into his throat with a hiss. I tore down his belly and felt the creature writhe, drip, and then completely dry up in my hand. What had been slippery and vibrant was instantly rubbery and dulled. He was wrinkling, turning pruned and ugly.

It wasn’t right. I squished his little body and he felt hollow. A leather sack remained from a corpse so recently moist and alive. I heard something rattle within as I shook him. I thumbed the flap I had made in him and rooted around in the deserted carcass. My fingers found something smooth.

I pulled out a smooth black stone. It was shiny and porous, but finished and expertly cut. Like coal but clean.

It was already here. I was too late.