Extra Fiction!

I want to donate my body to science.

I want to soak in formaldehyde for a few years. I want to be cut up by practicing doctors, saviors of the future, then restitched, ready for the next class. I want to be probed and poked and pointed at. I want to be preserved. Why be buried or burned? Why frozen? I want my organs exposed.

And I want to be able to feel it. I want to be conscious when they lower me into a tank of preservant. I want to feel formaldehyde rushing into my eyes and ears. I want to feel it coursing down my throat. I want to feel it ballooning in my stomach and lungs. I want to feel puffy with eternal life.

And I want to teach. I want people to smell me. I want people to see me for what I am. I want people to get their hands wet when they dig inside me. I want people to laugh. I want people to gag. I want people to have nightmares. I want people to see my shriveled penis. I want people to be jealous. I want people to wonder where I am now. I want to see the looks on their faces as my skin is peeled back. I want to teach the unlearned. I want people to see what I really am, and could have been. I want people to see what they really are, and can be. And I want to live on, groping inside of them, just like they grope inside of me, searching for the truth.

"A Donation" from the forthcoming collection 100 JOLTS originally appeared in Zoiks!, 1989