Supernumerary by Jonathan Cardew
Editor-in-chief Jennifer A. Howard on today’s bonus story: I love a story that starts with a bizarre premise (Jonathan Cardew is a maestro of bizarre premises) and then follows one modest but curious brain through the consequences. You won’t know where this story is heading, but I’m confident you’ll enjoy the trek.
Supernumerary
Remember we used to deposit our bodies at the Credit Union, parts of our bodies we didn’t need any more, earlobes and finger nails and gall bladders, paraphernalia really, frilly bits and bobs, doubles of things, triples, like who needs two testicles for instance, and who needs not one but two eyebrows, really eyebrows are for decorative purposes, they punctuate the face, they can be used for suggestion, like when you used to raise your eyebrows all the time, just subtly, like what was all that about, but then we shaved those suckers off and placed the hair into bank slips and there was no more suggestiveness after that, and in any case you can suggest in other ways, like with your mouth and your lips and also you can just say things out loud, which you did, so we kept our vocal chords, you’re a very good singer after all, we used to sing in the shower together after sex, songs I don’t recall any more, wait no, I do remember, we used to sing “Them Bones, Them Bones, Them Dry Bones” on repeat, in harmony, which was ironic because we were in the wet of the shower, but bones do stay dry in the shower, don’t they, presumably, as dry as they can with all that meat and blood swimming around in there, but we never did deposit any of our bones into the Credit Union, it seemed a little ridiculous to do so, even though I did express a desire once to remove the bones from my little finger, to just get in there with my exacto knife and to saw away at the ligaments and cartilage and whatever else connects bones, makes them what they are, makes us upright and good stewards of the planet and generally individuals who have made sound financial decisions, because, ultimately, that is what we wanted, fiscal security, we wanted to watch our deposits grow, four eyebrows becoming 796 eyebrows, two gall bladders becoming so bloated from wealth you’d mistake them for small hippopotamuses with no eyes, no ears, no squat tails to whip away the flies as the sun set on another blisteringly gorgeous day on the savanna.
Jonathan Cardew's fiction appears in Cincinnati Review, Cream City Review, wigleaf, Smokelong Quarterly, and others. His chapbook, A World Beyond Cardboard, will be published in 2022 (ELJ Editions). Originally from the UK, he lives in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
