["The Harvest", reprinted from The Smell of Your Own and Other Stories, Harper Collins, 1993]
Disgusting, Dr. Ted Nugent III thinks to himself as he gazes down into the wincing vagina.
All around the mechanical beeping needles his brain as reminder of pathetic human frailty-
the need to monitor, to assist- to undermining the Darwinian mandate by preserving the weak.
And here, exposed so shamefully before him, that perfect case: the unwed, teenage mother,
pregnant by the devil only knows and under what manner of degeneracy, (one can only speculate
as to whether she may even recall the moment, blacked as she most certainly was on alcohol,
luridly available to any and all comers in the back room of a squalid bar somewhere,)
though miraculously not a drug addict, pure human garbage.
What kind of environment produces such waste- the squalor of slum and trailer,
generation after generation unable to educate or raise themselves out of dark-
at one point having threatened to outbreed the rightful inheritors of the earth.
To think that years ago, before the great domination of the lesser nations and the triumph
of the new conservatism, this unconscious being, barely more than an animal,
would have likely undertaken an abortion- that vilest of procedures, and destroy
selfishly the unborn life that belongs not to one so obviously thoughtless in conception,
but to the society it must serve.
No values these under-classes. No morals. Quite simply, incapable of understanding
the value of human life- how utterly precious it is.
He observes her contractions in the spasms of those muscles that once had drawn her,
so irresistibly, to those bestial pleasures, and her screams raise in him a stern satisfaction,
having refused to administer anesthetic and thus better impart the ramifications
of her wanton irresponsibility, unable even to pay her bill, reason all the more not to
grant her the luxury of a painless birth, as though access to medicine were a right and not a privilege.
Perhaps if the liberals and their moronic humanism had succeeded in destroying the country.
Imagine the vast hordes of freeloaders, against all nature living long lives in health and wellness
at the expense of the privileged- why it would be the end of decency!
The doctors smile is carnivorous at the tearing of her dumb lips as the newborn head appears,
streaked with the dross effluvia of the breeder sex- let her find a man now to take pleasure in
her ruined sex part; certainly he would not stitch it up and aid her in the unthinking repetitions
of the cycle which would surely be her fate.
The baby drops like a turd without a trouble- these animals are good at something at least-
he thinks to himself as he hands the dripping infant to the nurse.
Eyes half glazed in delirium and relief, the patient asks is it a boy or a girl.
"A healthy, young girl." The doctor replies.
"Can I hold her?"
"Yes, well, first there is the matter of the bill."
Groggily she:
"But they laid me off at the factory when I got too big for the line."
"Yes, of course." Replies the doktor, turning to the nurse, "It's for the harvest."
"But Ill be able to get a job now and pay the bill!" the girl cries, growing quickly lucid; imploring.
"With a newborn to care for? I think not." Replied Dr. Ted Nugent.
"But Ill borrow the money! Ill pay it off, I swear!" Really desperate now, pleading.
"Yes, well, Im afraid youre credit report contra-indicates that. No, no. It will have to be the harvest.
Rest now."
The doctor injects the hapless girl with the powerful sedative she can now well afford-
in fact, sadly, she will soon find an excess of funds with which to squander on such trinkets
and frivolities as arouse her low amusements, and he shakes his head.
These under-classes never seem learn.
Please is the young girls last, weak utterance as her eye-lids flutter, then glaze fully.
* * *
The nurse coos to the baby as she navigates the greenish hallway of the medical center.
"Sucklin pig night at the All-You-Can-Eat! Calls a particularly well fed co-worker.
You goin' be there?"
"You know I will." The nurse calls back, thinking, only two more hours until I can get off
these aching feet.
* * *
A good one, observes the technician, holding up the plump, naked spunklin' which
the nurse has handed him. Nice and pink.
The nurse withdraws and the technician carefully places the material into the costly
and improved apparatus.
Gingerly he fastens soft straps onto the squirming appendages, making sure they
are rightly positioned as the machine pulls them flat with the gentlest pressure.
Satisfied that all is in place, he presses the green button and settles back in his chair
to enjoy his candy bar and soda.
The machine hums and, after the few moments of perfunctory euthanization,
a green light happily flashes and the whirring blades, laser guided, sharper than teeth,
descend with a relish that can only be described as kind of robotic glee, to incise and pluck,
one by one, the flushed, healthy organs in the joyous harvest.