The Lovelorn Leg
By Eli S. Evans
The man applied to his injured leg an analgesic cream containing, as a secondary ingredient serving a primarily emulsifying purpose, a substance celebrated within certain homeopathic and otherwise non-traditional medical circles for its properties as an aphrodisiac. Soon, the leg developed feelings toward the man that were not reciprocated, and from there the situation rapidly deteriorated: wherever the man went, the leg was right there with him, and while the man wasn’t a mean person by nature, he constantly found himself being mean to the leg simply because being nice to it risked giving off a false impression, which was actually kind of mean in its own right because then the leg would end up getting its hopes up only to have them dashed all over again. Seeing that there was nothing else to be done, the man fetched his hacksaw from the cellar and a couple of rags from the basket underneath the kitchen sink and headed for the garage.
Alas, the man was making a terrible mistake—hardly had he rid himself of the irksome appendage when he realized it was, in fact, he who could not live without it and not the other way around.
He decided to swallow his pride and go crawling back, but you can imagine how well that worked out.
Eli S. Evans has been littering the internet with his work since 2001. A chapbook with Analog Submission Press (A Partial List of Things I Thought Might Kill Me Before I Started Taking a Daily Dose of Benzodiazepines) was published in August 2020 and a small book of small stories, Obscure & Irregular, is available from Moon Rabbit Books & Ephemera and other online retail behemoths.