Tabby purposely cut himself shaving every morning.

It wasn’t out of sadness or some desire to harm himself. Well, maybe to harm himself a little, but not for the reason most people would think. Tabby wanted a mark on himself, a place that was open. In the small town he lived in, everyone was closed mouthed and insular. No one expressed their feelings. That’s why Tabby felt the unconscious need to open himself up. If Tabby had lived on one of the coasts, in a larger city, he might have been into ritual scarification, but he lived in the Midwest and no one had ever been told that such a thing existed. If he lived on the coast, he would probably be in place where people didn’t hold their feelings in so much and maybe wouldn’t have had the desire to slice himself open. This irony was lost on Tabby because he wasn’t aware of it in the first place.

The small town Tabby lived in was called Fleshlight, after a popular sex toy. That wasn’t the original name of the place, the town had voted to change its name in order to win a contest. As a result, everyone moving into Fleshlight was given a welcome basket of fruit and sex toys. There was a warehouse on the north end of town full of the things. The town had won a thirty year supply. Tabby had never used his. It sat still wrapped in the basket of fruit he had been given when he first moved in. The basket sat underneath a pile of old cat toys. the fruit was black and had liquefied. It collected in the bottom of the cellophane package. The Fleshlight looked like a whale breaching from a black sea.

Tabby’s live-in girlfriend was named Whiskers. He had met her at the Fleshlight Community College (FCC) where they both were attending a course on Biomechanical Engineering. They were lab partners. The first weeks of class they had used their practice Mini-Looms to make little things, simple protein chains and such. Before long, they had made a few replicas of chicken breasts and horsechops. Tabby had a hard time with the theory, but Whiskers helped him through it. For the final, they had to build a working B-Dog. He really needed to pass this class, he was told that he had to have a degree to get any kind of work in town. His money was running out, and he really didn’t want to move back with his parents in RedTube.