Mänsklig Kvinna

Linda’s first mistake was getting lost inside an IKEA. Her second was thinking she could run. The Swedish meatballs she had eaten hours before made her sluggish and easy to track through the aisles as the fluorescent lighting shone down like a searchlight. Her footsteps rang out on the cold laminate as she passed through the bedroom section for the fifth time. One of the bookcases trembled as a man stepped out from behind it, directly into Linda’s path. He killed her swiftly and efficiently with a single twist of his Allen wrench, and her body was dragged to the staff room where it was rendered down to its base components. After they had been affixed with a barcode and deftly cataloged, the limbs were sorted and thrown onto soft heaps titled “left” and “right”. Soon a bored worker in a yellow smock slouched in, headphones dangling listlessly. He stood staring down at the fleshy merchandise before selecting a body part from each pile; two arms, two legs, a head, and a torso. They were placed inside a box, appendages neatly tessellating. Linda’s head was packaged tightly in a plastic bag, her blond hair plastered to her face. It nestled between the joints of her knees in the cramped box, resting on a bed of packaging peanuts. After making sure the accompanying bag of small, incomprehensible screws was missing exactly one key bolt, the box was sealed shut. Soon a label would be plastered to the top; “Human Female” written in unpronounceable Swedish.

Henna Oak (she, her) is a college student in St. Paul, Minnesota. She is majoring in creative writing and geology and works part-time as a barista. In her free time she enjoys saving spiders, learning Icelandic, and watching horror movies with her mother.