Every time she'd see her exposed genitals in the mirror as she looked between her legs, she wondered if this would be her last night on earth. She'd also catch herself looking at her face in the same mirror and this would start the circular thinking of, "What the hell must I look like up here?" which was immediately followed by, "I've got to look good up here to keep my job," which never failed to lead to, "What the hell must I look like up here?" And on and on. Her thoughts seemed to revolve in this pattern perfectly in tune to the mirrorball above her brunette head.
She'd been dancing at this strip club out by the airport for almost six months now. Unlike most of the other girls, she did not belong to a biker and she did not have any tattoos and she did not fuck either the customers or the owners. She showed up every night at 7 PM and she danced for fifteen minutes each hour for six hours. At 1 PM she changed clothes and counted her money and went home to her six-month old baby who'd been born without any arms.
It disturbed her greatly when The Escape Club song came on the jukebox. It wasn't that she disliked the sound of "The Wild Wild West." It was fairly easy to dance to. In fact, she had this one move on the pole when the chorus came around to the "wild, wild hair" part where she'd flip herself upside down and her brunette hair would touch the stage as she remained there, hanging like an inverted crucifixion, looking right into the eyes of the filthy loser who'd put the most money in her waistband that evening. It was always worth at least an extra hundred bucks.
No, what disturbed her was that the club was now showing the video of the song on a large screen as the juke box played the tune.
The childbirth had been perfectly normal at first. Billy was there, and even though he hadn't made the final leap into marriage, he was being supportive and was coming home at night and was providing a living for them. He was a bricklayer. He had rented a video camera just to record the birth of his (and her) first child. Billy was overjoyed as the dilation led to the final act. The head enlarged his lady's privates and there it was (he thought to himself), his legacy. He'd play baseball and football and basketball with this little boy and his life would be complete. Then the head was through the orifice and here came the rest. When Billy saw that the baby's body had no arms, he dropped the video with eyes wide open and backed out of the room. The video camera continued to record a small portion of the delivery room floor (where someone had dropped a used Kleenex) for the next ten minutes, before the battery ran down. She never saw Billy again.
She'd taken the baby home and lived for one desperate month on what she had saved up in the bank, and then she took the job at the strip club. She'd work six nights a week and then come home to care for her baby. All of this neglect and all of this debasement and none of it had driven her to the brink until this video began showing every time the song came on the juke box. There they were. Arms waving about without bodies. Legs walking in squat position without bodies. The deformation of the human body on video. The used Kleenex lying on the floor in that delivery room. Her genitals in the mirror. Her baby, kicking his little legs and waiting on her to leave this place and come home again.