Crippling Phobia



Mark loved the set when we showed him. But he didn’t want to use it right away. He had a special guest lined up and decided we’d reveal my set when she arrived.

Then he gave me a copy of Living Within Reach, Volume 3: Getting Touchy With It.

This was the extent of our research.

Living Within Reach was a comic strip that didn’t run in our local paper. It was popular in other markets though.

The strip is about a sylph named Carrie. Carrie was amputated a few years before The Day, losing both legs at the knees. The cause for the amputation was never explained.

Carrie’s adventures include her, her Owner (of whom we only ever saw either his hand or his shoe), Owner’s Girlfriend (of whom we only saw hand or hair) and a cat that may have belonged to either Owner or Girlfriend.

I thought they were kind of funny. The artist, Kerri Soote, was an actual sylph. She used Carrie to explore the problems facing sylphs in the post-shrinking world.

Electra hated it. She could not stand the idea of losing one foot, much less half of both legs.

It made her knees weak and her spine quiver just to think about it. She’d try to read a strip, then have to run off and jump over something.

So I held her in my hand, made soothing sounds while stroking her long, strong legs (to reassure her that she still had them) and we worked out how we could get on top of this.

What we came up with was that I’d read the strips and tell her a summary of where they were talking about. She spent the time on the gym, trying to outrun her, and I make no pun here, her crippling phobia.

“So, this one’s about how the sylph depends on everything from Owner. When she was just an amputee, she had to hope someone would hold the door. Now she’s in a carrier, she has to hope that someone’ll hold the building.”

Electra considered that while flipping around.

“In this one, Owner leaves her on the table by the window while he picks up their food order. She’s stuck where he put her down. Then she sees a person on the street going by in a wheelchair and fondly remembers when she had independence.”

In another one “She observes that Owner and Girlfriend negotiate pizza toppings. Each is so busy trying to show that they’re willing to indulge the other’s choices that they hardly make their choices known. But when it’s Owner and Carrie, the question is Owner’s choices and which of Carrie’s choices he’s willing to tolerate.”

“So,” she said, slowing to a stop. “It’s mostly sylph life, with her dependence exaggerated by her character’s amputations. Why amputate, though? Couldn’t it just be about being a sylph?”

“I dunno,” I said. Then I found Kerri’s replies to letters she’d received. I read through those. “Oh. Uh-oh.”

“What?” Electra asked, walking over.

“Kerri. She, uh, she was asked why the sylph’s legs are amputated at the knee. It’s easier to draw her moving around that way.”

‘As opposed to just walking?” Electra asked.

“Well, Kerri lost her legs at the top of her thighs. Tiny little stumps.” I looked up and watched Electra drop to her knees. “Okay, take a deep breath.”

“I can’t. I can’t do this.”

“Okay.”

“I can’t talk to someone with no legs. I can’t. I can’t handle it.”

“Of course not.” I picked her up, cuddling her to my chest. “Poor little sylph. Imagine you without the ability to be a gymnast.” She whimpered.

“You’d still be the smartest person in any room you went into. You’d still be beautiful. You’d still have a position of moral superiority in any argument we ever had. You’d still be more popular than me, most of the time.”

“What the fuck do you mean, MOST of the time?" she asked, indignant.

I picked up the carrier and placed it before us. There were two dozen little light bulbs painted on the side. One bulb for each person who’d been ‘enlightened’ by meeting Electra.

Well, I say painted. I had a stencil and ran a Magic Marker over it… Anyway, I pointed at the very first one. “Remember Harry? The guy who thought he was ugly? But you hugged him because the real person inside was still there, and he was as ugly as a weathered birch?”

“Oak,” she said softly.

“And if you lost your legs, Electra, would you still be Electra?”

“Electra Leia Loudon, thank you very much,” she said, a little less softly.

“And when you meet Kerri, you’re going to look past her amputations and see…”

“I’ll see Kerri Soote,” she said, firm and loud. “And you, and Chrissy, and Chip, and Amelia will be proud of me.”

“Exactly,” I said. “Which is good, because if I had to do the interview, I’d make a fool of myself.”

“Pratfall American,” she corrected me.



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Index

45. Recuperation and Reconciliation

47. Kerri