The Hinged Woman swung herself open, exposing her insides for the benefit of all. How unseemly, I thought, to expose her entrails like this. Surely she meant to sell herself, for the benefit of the pimp loitering in the shadows behind her. I opened my wallet.

“How much?” I said.

“Forty dollars,” he said. A square deal, I thought, packing her into my trunk. Perhaps with a little refurbishment, she might prove handy around the house.

I’ve never regretted the purchase.

I knew the moment I saw her that she would be perfect for the dining room. Her firm breasts made perfect knobs, and it didn’t take much effort to empty out her entrails. I decided to store my linens in there. Her head made a fine spice rack. In the end, she made an excellent hutch that I could also, on occasion, have sex with.

Her hydraulic tongue was perfect for licking my floors clean, and I used her arms as a hat rack. It got so I couldn’t wait to get home, just to find new uses for her. I would hang my hat on her fingers, fuck her senseless, then alphabetize the spice jars behind her face.

One day, my television reception was coming in poorly, so I wired her up to it and adjusted her legs until the picture improved. This of course electrocuted her, but it hardly mattered at this point.

Eventually she became an integral part of my home entertainment system and I used her eyes as television screens, reflecting the images onto her retinas. I installed a speaker in the back of her mouth. Perhaps she could no longer give me head, but it was worth it for perfect surround sound. She was all that I’d ever wanted - the perfect unthinking, unfeeling combination of sex slave and kitchen appliance. She was my Ikea Bride - both beautiful and utilitarian.

I learned how to thread film through her ribcage and project movies through her vagina, which also doubled as an ashtray.

She made an excellent coffee table, an even better footstool, and a reasonably good can opener and chess companion. After about three months, her every orifice regurgitated wires, switches, gears, pull chains, screws, handles, levers, and shower heads. Her teeth were the perfect meat grinders. I cut off her nipples with a meat cleaver and replaced them with light bulbs to read by. She was fully-functional, multipurpose, and an attractive addition to the decor.

I knew it was never going to get any better. I loved her so much I knew I had to die at her hands. How else would I ever be like her? So useful, so beautiful, so perfect. So she braided her hair into a noose for me, put it around my neck, and jerked me off while my face turned blue in the gasp of that final, deadly orgasm. Moments later, I heard myself creak open, heard the shuffle of papers and bottles and pens. What I hadn’t known when I let her kill me was that the Hinged Woman had always wanted to be a writer, she just never had a proper roll-top desk.