New Shapes

By Ed Carlson

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This story is purely fictitious. The names used herein are for character

identification and should not be construed as real people, alive or dead.

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“So Lisa, what’s going on?”

“Not much Nancy,” Lisa replied. “What’s up with you?”

“Absolutely nothing. Do you want to hang out for a while?” I asked.

“Sure, why don’t you come over? My parents are both at work. We can swim now that the idiot that my parents use for a pool boy is gone. God, what a dunce,” Lisa said. “I got a new digital camera. We can play with it and post some shots on the Internet.”

“Fine, I’ll be over just as soon as I find my bikini.”

“If you don’t find it, it’s OK. We can skinny dip. The hedge has grown so high that only the news helicopters can look in.”

“All right. If I don’t find it right away, I won’t sweat it. See you soon.”

I hung up the phone and began rummaging around my room for the swimsuit. My room was in its normal disarray. To say that it was unkempt was a major understatement. The room in its normal state roughly resembles the aftermath of a tornado. After a relatively thorough search, the bikini continued to elude me. Screw it. I’ll go skinny-dipping. Who needs a swimsuit anyway? I have a good-looking body. That is, all but my arms. I hate my arms. I think they’re too long and my hands are oversized. Sometimes, I wish that I didn’t have any arms at all.

“Lisa, are you in here?” I called as I poked my head in the front door of her very large house. The house is set back from the road and was built on a bluff. Nancy’s parents are both lawyers and commute into the city every day. Their place is larger than ours, but we both live in an upscale neighborhood filled with large houses set well back from the road and accessed by long tree-lined driveways.

“I’m up here. Come on up Nancy,” Lisa shouted from the balcony above.

I walked in and went up the large winding staircase that accessed the second story. I followed Nancy into her room; hers was a little better kept than mine. At least you could see her bed. She picked up a camera and pointed it at me. The flash momentarily blinded me, and there was this red spot right where I wanted to look. She plugged a cord into the camera and sat down at the computer. Soon my picture filled the screen.

“You look pretty good,” Lisa said as she sat in front of my picture.

“No, I don’t. Look how long my arms are and how much bigger my stupid hands are than they should be.”

“I guess you’re right,” Lisa said. “They really don’t look right, do they?”

“I was looking in the mirror this morning and trying to imagine what I would look like without any arms at all.”

“That’s easy,” Lisa replied as she picked up the mouse. She turned on the paint program, and almost by magic, my arms were gone. “Hey, you look pretty cool without any arms.”

“Yes, I do. I really do like the look. God, I wish I looked like that,” I said.

“If you’re serious, it can be arranged you know,” Lisa said. “I read on the Internet about a place that specializes in voluntary amputations, for a price.”

“I don’t know. I think it’s just a whim. I don’t know if I could get along without arms.”

“Sure you could. Here, look at this web site. It’s full of women with no arms. They’re all using their feet to do things that most people do with their hands.”

“My parents would just shit if I had my arms cut off.”

“Would you do it if I would?” Lisa asked.

“You’re serious, aren’t you?” I said.

“Yes. I’ve been thinking about it for a long time. Look at some of the pictures of me with no arms,” Lisa replied.

She brought up some pictures of herself. Some of them had her with little stubs for arms, but most had her arms removed right at the shoulder. I looked closely at the pictures. They looked so real that you couldn’t tell that she really didn’t have arms.

“How did you do all of these?”

“Simple, they’re known as ES. That means electronic surgery. I set the camera up on a tripod and take a picture without me in it. Then without moving the camera, I set the timer and do several poses. Back then I had to have them developed and scanned. I call both the picture I was performing the surgery on and the background up at the same time. I use a clone brush setting and align both starting points. When I paint over it, the real background comes through. If I do the line up carefully, you can’t tell where the background begins.”

“You didn’t do two pictures of me.”

She called my picture back up. “I just duplicated another part of the room over your arms. We can do some good ones if you want. With the new camera, we don’t have to send them out for developing.”

“Cool. Could we do it down by the pool while we’re skinny dipping? By the way, I couldn’t find my bikini. You know what my room is like.”

“Sure, we can do that. Now that I have the digital camera, we don’t have to worry about nude stuff getting around town,” Lisa said. “Let’s do it.”

She unplugged the camera from the computer and gave me the tripod. She led the way down to the pool. We picked the camera angle and stripped down to our nothingness. She took several provocative poses of me. For each pose, she had me hold my arms out away from my body. Finally, she had me stand there while she used the reflection from my skin to set the exposure setting before she locked it on manual for the background shot. When we finished my shots, we did a series of her.

We took a quick dip in the pool and then got out. We both dressed quickly because we were anxious to get on with our project. We went back to Lisa’s room and did my set first. Some of them I had my arms off at the elbows, some at mid upper arms, but the ones I liked best were right at the shoulders—as if there were no arms at all and the upper arm bones had been removed from the shoulder socket. This left my shoulders narrower than my good-sized boobs.

She saved my pictures and background to a zip drive, then gave me the disk. “Here, get these the way you want, and we can put them on the new web site I am building,” she said.

“I want to play with these at home. I think I like the ones with no arms at all. I’ll take a little more time and get my shoulders to all look the same in all of the pictures. That way, no one can tell if they’re fake or not. Let’s set up a linked site and do both our pictures.”

“Cool. Between the two of us, we’ve got some pretty neat graphics to make a combined site.”

“Why don’t I head for my place and work on my pictures while you start on the page design?”

“Great. E-mail me the graphic of the flames coming out of the torch. We can do a picture of both of us with clothes on to start and put the graphics on each side.”

I said goodbye and headed home with my zip disk. I loaded up my laptop and reworked the pictures after I e-mailed the graphics to Lisa. Soon I had all of my pictures looking the same and just the look I wanted. I became quite aroused when I looked at my pictures and tried to imagine myself as being armless.

The next morning, I phoned Lisa. “I’m done with my pictures. How are you doing with yours?”

“Great. I just finished mine. Why don’t you come over and see what I’ve done so far?”

I saved my pictures to my zip drive and took the disk over to Lisa’s. We put the disk in and added my pictures to the web site. She had used a picture of the both of us that we had taken last summer on the front page. Of course, our arms had been surgically removed electronically. The page looked pretty cool.

“I wonder what it would be like to be armless,” I said.

“Do you want to try it for a while?” Lisa asked. “We have some duct tape. I could tape your arms behind your back.”

“All right, I’ll give it a try.”

Lisa got the duct tape and had me remove my sweatshirt. She had me put my arms behind my back and firmly taped them in place. She pulled the sweatshirt back down over my head and pulled it down to my waist. She let the sleeves hang at my side. “How do you like that?” she asked.

“Cool,” I replied as I looked in the full length mirror. “With this baggy sweatshirt, you can’t really tell that I still have arms.”

“You really do look cool that way. Let me take some pictures of you that way.”

She got out her camera and took several pictures in different poses. I suddenly felt aroused as I moved around showing off my new shape. I also enjoyed the feeling of trying to reach for something and not being able to do it.

“Let’s try some with cutoffs. Here, put these on,” Lisa said as she threw a pair on the bed and just stood there.

“I can’t get my jeans off. I need some help,” I said.

“That’s the problem. Now that you don’t have the use of your arms, how do you do things?” She got down on her knees and held her arms behind her back as if she was also restrained. She used her teeth to undo my top button and zip down the zipper. Having her do this was a real turn on for me. She used her teeth to pull my jeans down around my knees. I sat on the bed and held my legs up while she pulled the cuffs down until my jeans were on the floor. “OK, now you put on the cutoffs.”

I got on my knees and stretched across the bed and held the cutoffs by my teeth. I stood up and dropped them on the floor beside the bed. Then I sat on the edge of the bed and moved them around using my feet so the zipper was up and the waistband faced me. I wiggled my toes in through the waistband until the cutoffs were almost to my ankles before I lay back on the bed. I raised my legs until they were almost vertical. I pointed my toes skyward and moved my feet just a little and the cutoffs fell toward and just past my knees. I was able to scoot around on the bed until I had them up around my waist.

“That’s as far as I can get them,” I said breathlessly, trying not to show how turned on I had become with the struggling.

“Good job for your first try,” Lisa said as she used her hands to fasten the button and do the zipper. “I bet with a little practice that you might be able to do it all yourself. Let’s get some more pictures.”

She took more pictures that accentuated my armlessness and my long slender legs. When she was finished, she loaded the new pictures on her computer. She only had to touch up a couple of them where she caught the bulge in the sweatshirt where my arms were restrained.

“How are you at picking things up with your toes?” Lisa asked.

“I don’t know. I guess I haven’t tried much,” I said.

“Try to do this,” she said. She had a spoon and an empty ice cream dish sitting on the desk. Still sitting on the chair, she put her foot on the desk and picked up the spoon with her toes. Slowly she brought the empty spoon up to her mouth. As she put it back in the bowl, she said, “That’s how I ate this dish of ice cream.”

“That’s amazing. How long have you been practicing that?”

“About a month now. You try it,” Lisa said as she stood up.

I sat on the chair and managed to get my foot on the desk. I carefully maneuvered my toes toward the spoon. I managed to grasp the spoon with my toes but dropped it immediately. I tried to pick the spoon up again from the desk but became off balance. I instinctively tried to catch myself with my arms as I fell off of the chair onto the floor. I landed on my shoulder and wiggled around until I could stand up again.

“Good try,” Lisa said as she watched me struggle to my feet. About that time, we heard a car pull up into the driveway. “My mom’s home early. Let me get you out of this.”

Just as she started to remove the duct tape, Lisa’s mom called her to come help unload the groceries. “I have to go for a minute. Wait right here. If she comes up here, hide in my bathroom,” she said as she left.

I sat there still thoroughly bound and unable to move my arms at all. This was frustrating but terribly exciting at the same time. I heard them both coming up the stairs. I got up and went into her bathroom and closed the door with my foot. After a while, I couldn’t hear them anymore, so I tried to open the door. Of course without the use of my hands, I couldn’t grasp the knob. I lay down on my back on the floor and tried to turn the knob with both feet with no success. I was totally at Lisa’s mercy to release me from my temporary jail and unbind me.

After what seemed like an eternity, Lisa came into the bathroom. She locked the door before she took off my sweatshirt. While my arms were still bound and I couldn’t stop her, she reached her hand down inside my panties. I jumped the minute her fingers touched my pubic hair. She smiled and pulled her hand out and removed the duct tape. I put my sweatshirt back on and thanked her for coming to my rescue. I retrieved my jeans and took off the cutoffs. While her mom was busy, I left.

I had mixed feelings about my adventure into armlessness. For the rest of the summer, we hung out playing armless double amputee. I became quite adept at using my toes. I practiced every chance I had. I could eat most things that I could use a fork on, but I couldn’t run a knife. We talked the pool guy into taping up the one of us that was left unbound. We paid him extra to come back later in the afternoon and release us. We became pretty proficient and depended on each other to be able to do things.

We had to limit our activities when our senior year at school started in the fall. We had decided that we indeed wanted to be armless. Money was no problem; we each had blind trusts that we could draw on. Now that we were both eighteen, we could both do it without our parents’ approval or even knowing. We began the planning process. The big break came when the school offered a graduation summer trip to Russia. It was our chance. We began corresponding with a doctor there and made arrangements to meet and have the operation while we were in the country. I think our parents were glad to be rid of us for the summer. By the end of school, our plans were complete and the operations were prepaid.

Finally school was out, graduation was over, and we readied for the trip. As planned, we all met at the school. We were to travel light so everyone only packed a backpack. The tour was planned to stop often to wash clothes. The buses took our group to the airport. We landed in London and spent a week touring the city. After we departed London, the next stop was Moscow where we were to meet up with our doctor. The tour was scheduled to spend three days in Moscow and then move on to visit Siberia.

Precisely at five p.m. on the second day in Moscow, we met the doctor as planned in front of Lenin’s Tomb. We acted like we had known him for a long time. We introduced him as an old family friend and told our chaperones that he had invited us out for dinner. The chaperones were a little uneasy, but finally decided that we could go with him.

Part one had worked.

We had dinner at a nice restaurant and talked at great length with the doctor. He spoke almost flawless English. He had been educated in the U.S. He questioned our motives and offered to give us the money back that we had sent him. He reminded us of the finality of the decision. We both told him that we had our minds made up. He agreed to go along with our plan and to perform the operations. He gave us little bottles of a chemical that would mimic food poisoning.

In the morning as the tour buses were loading, we took the ingredients the doctor had given us. Almost instantly we began vomiting and had all the symptoms of food poisoning. The chaperones insisted that we go to the hospital. An ambulance was summoned, and we were on our way to the hospital. We were taken to the emergency room. The doctor that attended us, also in on the plan, told the chaperone that we needed to be hospitalized for at least three days. The chaperone wanted to stay, but they needed her on the buses. We told her to go on and that we would be all right. She gave us instructions on how to catch up to the tour. We promised that we would. She left us at the hospital in a strange country of people whose language we didn’t understand with only our backpacks. We, of course, had our passports and money.

Part two had worked perfectly.

Once the antidote had been given, within ten minutes the effects of our induced food poisonings were gone, and we were ready for surgery. The doctor asked us one last time if we wanted to go through with the operation. We both reaffirmed our desire to become armless just before the anesthetic was given. . . .

When I awoke, I didn’t know where I was at first. A nurse was sitting in our room. I looked over at Lisa. She was just waking too. She smiled and said, “Nancy, did we pull it off or what?”

“I’m sure we did,” I replied before I drifted back off to sleep.

The doctor was standing over me when I awoke. “How are you feeling?” he asked.

“My, the palms of my hands itch,” I said. “Did you really amputate my arms?”

He didn’t say anything, but picked up a mirror. He pulled back the sheet and held the mirror so that I could see my shoulders. He had indeed performed the operation. I was completely armless.

“The itching that you feel is phantom pain. I think it should go away soon. If it doesn’t, we have a remedy for it.”

I asked to see my shoulders again, and he obliged with the mirror.

“Lisa, how do yours look?”

“Probably the same as yours.”

“They do look the same. Just like the pictures that you sent me,” the doctor said. “You’ll be able to compare tomorrow when we take the bandages off. Now I’m going to give you each a shot to keep you quiet and relaxed. Get some rest, and we’ll see you in the morning.”

The next morning, he had the nurses help us to sit up. Lisa and I faced each other as they simultaneously removed our hospital gowns. Tears came to our eyes as we saw each other the way we both wanted to be—armless.

On the fourth day when we hadn’t caught up to the tour, the chaperone called. We told her that we had called our parents and they insisted that we come home. We also told her that they were sending us airline tickets, and we were waiting at the doctor’s home for them to arrive.

We remained in the hospital for a two more weeks as we had planned and prepaid. We both used our skills at doing things with our toes. After all, that’s the way we need to do things now that we both are completely armless. Our plan had worked. The Russian Mafia had even staged a gun battle so that we would have an alibi as to how we got this way. We showed the doctor the ES pictures that we had done of our so-called mutilated arms, which he could use for his files if he needed. We were careful to keep copies to show our folks so that they would believe our story about being caught in the Mafia gun battle. We also saved Russian newspaper accounts of the battle.

The day came for our release. We both felt fine, and the phantom pains had gone away. We helped each other dress in tee shirts and hiking shorts. I had Lisa leave my empty sleeves out. She wanted hers tucked in, so I obliged. Both Lisa and I were ecstatic as we helped each other get our backpacks on. Some of our classmates had asked us why we had the Velcro strap that connected the shoulder straps. The strap worked just like we planned to keep the shoulder straps from slipping off our shoulders, which no longer had arms attached.

Part three of the plan had worked perfectly.

We walked out of the hospital and stood in the warm summer sun. We were on our own and just the way we both wanted to be, completely armless. We started out on our adventure and armless tour of Europe. That, of course, is the topic for another story.

E N D