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  • The Doctor Provides His Initial Impressions
  • Tracy Jo Barnwell

As a child you had an oddly shaped head. You were extremely awkward and retreated into books. You read stories about robots, which did nothing to help your social situation. Bullies stole your lunch money, your mittens and your prosthetic foot on a regular basis. Eventually you reacted with violence, drawing blood with a swing of your Buck Rogers lunchbox. Now you have a frightening tattoo that is easily hidden under your clothes. As a teenager you listened to music that sounded like a cat swung around by the tail. You dreamed of working in a coal mine and dying slowly of black lung. You thought of yourself as defiant. Even today, you hold your bad attitude in your mouth as certain species of snakes hold their young. Keep listening—I'm not done. At parties you took a variety of pills of unknown origin, even one the size and shape of a pocket watch. It still ticks inside you today. After college you traveled briefly with a sideshow and slept in the beds of many strangely constructed men. You licked body parts that have no name. You fell in love. Eventually you returned home, but you were never the same again. You felt compelled to make pancakes in the shapes of animals—ducks, turtles, giraffes. You took to exploring nearby storm drains with a headlamp and a Taser. You think you are inscrutable and despise me. Right now you are considering [End Page 34] spitting on my desk. You would rather spit in my face but fear a lawsuit. You can't stand that you are an open- and-shut case. You want to think I don't know what you'll do next. I know, knew even before you walked in the door. It was determined seconds after your birth, like a photograph slowly developing. Even now I am preparing to duck at the exact moment when you remove your fake foot and fling it, full force, through the plate-glass window behind my head.

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