Short story inspired by a childhood experience.

My father brings Annie home in a big, black bag and places her on the dining room table. He then stoops, slides his scratchy hands under my armpits, and sets me on the edge. Next, my father unzips the bag and pulls it open as I lean over. Annie is lying at the bottom. She smells like our basement and bleach. Annie only has a head and torso. She has stringy gold hair. Her eyes are closed and lips parted. She has no shirt on. I wonder where her legs are.

“Annie teaches me and the other firemen how to help someone who can’t breath,” my father says.

How can someone with no legs and who doesn’t wake up teach anyone anything? I think to myself. My father zips the bag back up and carries it down to the basement. Later, I creep downstairs while my parents watch TV. At the bottom of the stairwell I flick the switch and step onto the cold cement. The bag is lying in front of the woodpile. I crouch over it and pull the zipper to my left - the metal teeth unclench. Annie’s eyes are still closed and her legs still missing. I study my own bare feet, which poke out of my Smurf pajamas bottoms.

“I hope I don’t lose my legs,” I whisper to myself. I shake Annie’s rubbery shoulder, but she doesn’t wake. Annie reminds me of Sleeping Beauty minus the beauty part. She is kind of…um…homely (that is the word my mother would use). I stroke Annie’s coarse hair and tell her that I will be right back. I bound up the stairs and grab a blanket from the closet. I shove the blanket into the bag and tuck the edges under her torso.

“Goodnight, Annie,” I say to her. I climb the stairs and tiptoe to the living room. My parents are sprawled out on the couches and are laughing at the images on the TV screen.

“Why are you laughing? Annie is downstairs in a bag,” I say quietly. Quietly enough so that my parents can’t hear what I have just said over their own laughter.