Tuesday, 27 May 2025

THE MAN WHO FELL FROM GRACE WITH HIS BODY

 

THE MAN WHO FELL FROM GRACE

WITH HIS BODY

Fiction by strzeka (05/25)

 

Jennings rose to fame for the first time at the age of ten. Without even being asked or given any instruction, he was entered into the eighty metre hurdles event at his school by an over‑enthusiastic teacher. Children are often encouraged to attempt things a little beyond their expected capabilities or more advanced for their age. Jennings not only beat all his fellow competitors, he also broke the junior athletic record for his class. Within the hour, a local tv news crew arrived to collect phone video from everyone who had shot the event and to interview the charming young man who was still a little confused by the attention his run was attracting and who coyly smiled directly at the camera lens between his replies, melting the hearts of thousands of viewers who were enchanted by Jennings’ modesty and handsome features. Anyone could see he was going to grow into a ladykiller—a man whose mere presence in a room could swerve attention and disrupt conversations.

 

Jennings’ record run was featured in national news the next day and the local station’s skilfully edited insert was reused with similar effect. The lad was far too young to assault with an aggressive interview and the item ended with the station’s best wishes and hopes for the future.

 

Jennings was himself bemused by his sudden unexpected success and the attention he had attracted. The school authorities contacted his parents, advising them on suitable paths to take should they decide to invest in their son’s athletic future. Being too young for the cantankerous teenage hormone to affect his opinion, Jennings agreed that it would be a fine thing to actually train to be a proper athlete and maybe run other races, not just the hurdles.

 

He graduated to the first year at his new school, a secondary school for the big kids. There was a degree of hazing to be tolerated from the second year pupils who derided the newcomers and were determined to extract undeserved retribution for the torment they had undergone themselves. Jennings was very much at the mercy of his seniors until a week later. The boys in his class had been taken on a two mile run around the houses and Jennings led the pack from the start. It was only then that the teacher discovered that he was in the presence of the prize‑winning hurdler who had made a name for himself last year. Instead of chiding the boy for being uncooperative and trying to get ahead of the pack, the teacher, Jack Wankel, decided to court the boy’s favour and encourage him to train extra curricula under his tutelage, in the hope of a little reflected glory. Jennings was open to the offer of extra training after school and at weekends and with the permission of his parents, he embarked on a regime of calisthenics to strengthen his core.

 

Jennings gained a kind of immunity from teasing and bullying because of his athletic prowess, as did those few supportive friends he made from among his classmates. Whereas most boys were content to kick a ball around for an hour or two while it was still light out, Jennings’ regime was far more demanding and it took a special kind of understanding from a twelve or thirteen year old to accept that his friend could usually never join in for a game of five a side because he was concentrating on weird stuff like lead and trail leg drills, whatever that was.

 

As if his lithe, muscular frame and friendly handsome features were not blessing enough, Jennings’ puberty struck early and powerfully. All the boys regularly compared the appearance of dark fuzz on their upper lips and the more daring ones revealed pubic hair when they had a suitably impressive amount. In this way, the new pecking order was determined. Jennings was too discrete to boast but he had been shaving for six months already and the other boys had seen the ring of dark hair around his big dick and balls, not to mention the dark hair on his legs and arms. The others held him in too much respect to tease him about it. Jennings was a little self‑conscious at first but when there were no unnecessary comments, he was more confident to be naked among his friends. He felt like a man among boys. Slightly shameful, displaying something the others were not yet ready for. They looked up to him, both literally and figuratively. Jennings was the tallest in the class and the most admired.

 

Unsurprisingly, Jennings was always the school’s major sports star. Jack Wankel watched the boy develop from a lanky freshman into a towering example of the classical ideal of masculine health and strength. As if to compound the connection with its Greek origin, Jennings at age eighteen bore a thick dense black moustache which curled around the corners of his mouth. He ran an electric razor around his stubble every two or three days and despaired of ever appearing clean‑shaven because of the way his overly generous chest hair rose up his neck and joined with his beard. The same applied to the back of his neck, where his hair and the fur covering his back met in a tangle of diffuse hair.

 

His ultra‑masculine appearance was appreciated by sports publications, especially those catering for a certain niche audience. Jennings was never pictured nude as a minor but there were several suggestive and enticing shots which made their way into aficionados’ collections. Photographic shoots became more frequent and explicit after his eighteenth birthday. Jennings was advised against too much exposure of the wrong kind if he wished to retain respect as a professional athlete. He understood well enough and none of his photo essays ever breached the limits of good taste.

 

Jennings was intelligent enough to gain a three year place at a Grade B university of his choice, to begin within five years. There was time for him to concentrate on his preparations for the forthcoming Olympic Games. He was granted both a stipend and a sponsorship to ease his economic transition into athletic adulthood, and a savings account matured when he reached twenty‑one which provided a generous sum, which he invested in a powerful retro motorbike with a petrol engine. He loved its appearance and its odours of oil and hot metal. He discovered the sensuousness of black leather against his naked skin and enjoyed the anonymity which a full‑face motorcycle helmet provided. Kitted out in his expensive motorcycle gear, he was free to circulate among admiring men who had little notion that a famous gay idol and Olympic hopeful was in their midst, hungry for the companionship of ordinary men unrelated to the stifling world of professional athletics.

 

He was befriended by another biker who rode an almost identical model and whose attention had been attracted by Jennings’ lush dark facial hair which was visible under his visor. His name was Joel Lloyd and he went by the name Joe. He was thirty‑three years old when Jennings was twenty‑one. Jennings looked up to him as an older brother and Lloyd found pleasure in Jennings’ youthful naïveté and bashful respect for someone as compromised by body hair as he was himself. Lloyd also had an unusual distinguishing feature. He had lost the lower part of his right leg in a road accident and walked on an artificial leg, usually well concealed inside his leathers.

 

Joe had little interest in sport or athletics of any kind. He had not known about his young friend’s prowess and was temporarily astonished that someone so bearlike, hairy and heavily bearded, so macho, was in fact a fleet‑footed runner hopeful of participating in the next Olympic Games. Joe was gradually tempting the boy into accepting his amorous advances, not by any material bribes but merely through trustworthiness and reliability. Jennings occasionally sought out his company after a particularly gruelling weekend of training or a long session of psychological stress, after which the embrace of his naked amputee friend in Joe’s small apartment was more than welcome and provided the reassurance missing elsewhere in his testing sports regime. The two men took great pleasure in their hirsute wild appearance. Joe was covered in curly black fur including the stump of his leg. Jennings enjoyed feeling Joe run his stump up and down his legs when they lay together, thick black beards melding as they became intimate.

 

The sport media followed Jennings regularly as the selections for Olympic participation approached and passed. Jennings had been almost guaranteed a place to represent his country and there was an increased interest in his prospects which naturally included more photo essays, many of them blatantly homoerotic. With Joe’s encouragement, Jennings began to flaunt his ultramasculine features more, allowing portrait images of his facial features and his magnificent beard and moustache. Photos of Jennings had become a favourite collector’s item for gentlemen who referred to themselves as bears and wolves. Both genuine and altered photographs circulated, some of them showing him naked, endowed with a phallus of phenomenal proportions and a generously‑filled scrotum. Jennings knew about the discrete interest in his ultra masculine features and after overcoming some initial discomfort, had learned to accept and later approve of the erotic attention. He reasoned that if his racing career were to end by the age of twenty‑five, as so many did, he would still have many years in which to benefit from selling images of himself.

 

Jennings favoured cycling above all other forms of exercise for his thighs and glutes. He preferred to ferry his racing bike to a twenty mile route on country roads encircling the town he lived in. Late one evening, he had finished a gruelling day of repetitive routines and wished to clear his mind. He wanted to feel the cool evening air on his skin and to hear the sounds of the countryside as nature’s day shift relinquished possession to its night life. He checked his timetable and decided he could unwind by taking one of two easy shorter routes, both of which would point him in the direction of home and a good night’s rest. At the same time, Barry McBride turned his eighteen‑wheeler off the motorway in order to take advantage of a quieter country route to his destination. Eighteen miles to the south, farmer Giles Brook turned his harvester for its penultimate run that evening, satisfied with his early crop of new potatoes. It had been a good year so far and with luck, it might be a bumper year.

 

Jennings was wary of the approaching dusk and spent several minutes searching for and attaching flashing head and tail lights. McBride took advantage of the entrance to a disused quarry to pull over to finish a mug of coffee and eat a sandwich bought from the last services he had stopped at. Brook finished his run and spent several minutes detaching his harvester equipment and ensuring it was ready to continue for the next day. He spend a couple of minutes filling his favourite oversized Oom Paul pipe with burley shag and enjoyed sucking on the smoke before settling the pipe between his teeth and climbing back up into his tractor for the four mile trip back to his farmstead home. It was a beautiful evening and he drove slowly, content with having the narrow road to himself at this time of the evening.

 

The accident enquiry was concluded without resolution. Neither of the drivers had relevant cabcam footage, as the worst destruction happened behind their cabs. McBride claimed he swerved in order to avoid hitting Brook’s tractor, but Brook insisted he had already made room for an approaching cyclist he could indistinctly see approaching in his rear view mirror. The collision was comparatively minor but its consequences for the Olympic hopeful were devastating. McBride’s trailer jack‑knifed just enough to force its load to shift, causing Jennings’ bicycle handlebars and forearms to be crushed to pulp. He was left with a bleeding left stump and a destroyed right hand still attached by a strip of flesh.

 

In the resulting confusion, McBride and Brook were both threatened online for causing such appalling injuries to one of the country’s most promising Olympic heroes and both found it necessary to withdraw into semi‑retirement. Both men were broken with contrition, wishing that they had not tarried, had not wasted time over coffee or lighting a pipe. If any of those involved had been a split second later on the scene, none of this could have happened.

 

Jennings made a good physical recovery, unsurprisingly for a man in such superb physical condition before his injury. His ruined forearms were amputated leaving him with stumps ten centimetres long below his elbows. They healed perfectly and were soon concealed under the thick pelt of curly black hair. There was some official discussion about his future following his disablement. It was obvious that the Olympics had become an impossible dream. He watched them with a mixture of fascination and distaste while his stumps healed.

 

In his gently persuasive manner, Joe suggested that Jennings share living arrangements on a permanent basis. His apartment was perfectly familiar, a home from home. Jennings knew that Joe’s love for him would guarantee some quality of life for a man without hands. There was so many actions which were suddenly beyond his capabilities. Joe held Jennings’ short stumps gently in his hairy fists and promised to be there for his disabled young friend. There would be no change in Joe’s love. For the first time since the accident, Jennings was moved to tears with mutual feelings and relief that Joe would not reject him because of his mutilated body, any more than it might occur to Jennings to reject Joe because of his missing foot. Joe admitted quietly after a long slow session of mutual masturbation that he found his lover’s fresh stumps intensely erotic and that despite any resultant difficulties, Joe would enjoy seeing Jennings maximally disabled. He suggested using only one of the artificial arms, allowing the other stump to remain visible. Jennings agreed with alacrity. His fur made prosthetic use uncomfortable.

 

Adapting to life without hands was already challenging, on a par with any athletic challenge. Wearing only one of the devices at any time was a welcome compromise. Gradually Jennings became expert at functioning with a single prosthesis and hook. Sometimes the left, sometimes the right. Only when he ventured out in public did he wear the pair, bearing them as unself‑consciously as he had his natural hands. Once again, national media approached the former athlete and for eighteen months, he appeared on talk shows regularly explaining ad nauseum how he had adjusted to life as an amputee, accepting his status as a disabled man, a victim of circumstance left helpless and a trailblazer in adapting to old‑fashioned body‑powered prosthetics. Over and over again, he insisted he was just the old Jennings, with hooks instead of hands. He never failed to lift them for camera close‑ups, slowly opening each hook and allowing them to snap shut with a metallic click.

 

Jennings put on extra weight following the end of his athletic career. He was capable of riding a bicycle on a track or other venue where there was no public traffic. His hooks were incapable of operating standard brakes but he was reluctant to invest time and effort in converting a racing bike to suit his requirements. Joe altered his car’s insurance policy to allow Jennings to drive as a disabled driver and had an adaptive ring fitted to the steering wheel. The car was five years old and almost unsalable because of the modifications to its users’ disabilities. Joe never attempted to drive using his prosthetic foot, which had a rigid ankle and little lateral movement. He was sprawled across the back seat with Jennings at the wheel with a giant bag of flat‑pack furniture accessories on the passenger seat. Jennings’ reaction to seeing a white van suddenly approaching him on the wrong side of the road was to jerk his arm stump as sharply as possible, causing the heavy furniture components to jam themselves under his prosthesis. The car rolled down an embankment, hit an electric substation on the way and came to rest in two halves three metres below the road surface. The floor around the driver’s seat, weakened by the alterations for Joe, had collapsed and scissored Jennings’ feet. Neither passenger lost consciousness. Joe overcame his shock first and began scrabbling at the chaotic pile of purchases as outside assistance began to arrive. Rescuers were shaken to discover that the driver was limbless. He had hooks instead of hands and bleeding stumps instead of feet. There was no sign of his feet. They were under the wreckage, destroyed and useless. An approaching siren signalled relief and Jennings, still feeling no pain thanks to a massive rush of adrenalin, allowed himself to fall into semi‑consciousness. Joe travelled with him in the ambulance and received a tranquilliser and a plaster for a cut on his forehead.

 

There was little to be done except tidy the sites of the wounds. Jennings’ surgeon summoned the hospital’s chief prosthetist and they jointly decided that the patient would be best served by a pair of stumps of identical length, long enough for him to find below‑knee prostheses a reasonable and comfortable compromise. Neither professional realised the identity of the cripple who was about to undergo his third and fourth amputations. Joe’s identity and relationship to the patient was clarified. He learned only that the patient’s damaged limbs would be repaired in order to enable the use of prosthetic legs. Joe nodded at learning what he already knew and was shortly invited to return home if he felt capable. The hospital receptionist ordered a taxi and gave him a travel voucher. This time it was Joe who was overcome with emotion on behalf of his friend and he wept for their lost futures.

 

Unknown to Joe, Jennings was negotiating an agreement with Skinflix Plus for a series of short videos and photo essays featuring and concentrating on his extraordinarily hairy body and the exciting contrast with his artificial arms. Jennings learned that there were people who were fascinated by amputees and that some even wished to have stumps of their own. It was something which Jennings found amusing. To his own surprise, he had learned to be satisfied with his hooks. He did not use them with any great elegance because Joe helped him dress, eat and open drinks cans and so on but he was not shy about being seen wearing them or allowing his naked stumps to be on public view. He saw little moral difference in people surreptitiously photographing him and being paid for photoshoots which emphasized his stumps and hooks and whatever else the viewers wanted to see. It took several weeks before word reached the controllers at Skinflix of one of their prospective star’s additional amputations. The mental image of the ultimate hairy handless bastard writhing with footless legs in front of the camera proved overwhelmingly erotic for the ceo, who ejaculated for the first time in over four months at a mere mental image. If he had anything to do with it, the would‑be Olympic runner, now a quad amp, had a long and lucrative career ahead of him under the ceo’s personal tutelage.

 

This time, Joe proved to be superbly useful as a source of information about what Jennings might expect from being fitted with a matching pair of artificial legs. The prosthetist was keen to sell a new design from Iceland, the unexpected capital of prosthetic development, which was responsive to uneven surfaces and even had a connector to recharge your phone. It cost as much as four electric cars and Jennings needed two of them. Joe said he should start slowly. He should get used to the sensation of no longer having feet or ankles, and then to basic artificial feet. Wooden or composite plastic feet with rigid ankles and rigid soles which he could shove into his favourite boots and relearn to walk in with a rolling motion. Everyone would realise he was somehow disabled but he would be walking on two legs again and his hooks would be unencumbered by walking canes and support frames. To all intents and purposes, he would be his old self again.

 

There was a period when Jennings was mobile only while seated in a wheelchair. His arm stumps were too short to reach the wheels and so Joe spent as much time at home with him as possible. The ceo of Skinflix used this time to acquaint himself better with the ex‑Olympian, as Jennings was now advertised. The men met several times, Jennings stripping naked in his bedroom so the ceo could better appraise his remnant limbs. As expected, Jennings’ pelt had once again regrown to cover his stumps and he lay naked with his manhood also semi‑concealed by fur, his truncated limbs looking much as they would if Jennings had been born limbless. It had been an unexpected and unwelcome route, but the ceo assured Jennings that he was possibly the most handsome and erotically desirable male quadruple amputee on the planet. The man assisted his latent star to replace the right arm prosthesis and held the pen while Jennings positioned his hook to grip it in order to sign a contract to appear in ten video productions including penetration and twenty‑four photoshoots for international distribution. At the age of twenty‑seven, limbless and facially at his maximum degree of attractiveness, Jennings was set to become a millionaire halfway through his contract with the opportunity to earn yet more if the ceo could arrange a part in a major cinematic production as a stunt man. Fit amputees were a rarity and earned well.

 

Jennings allowed his physical progress to lax. He was a film star, or might be one day soon. He was no longer interested in his prosthetist’s recommendations to trial the latest electromechanical hand or test a new row of bendable toes. On the contrary, Jennings had done research of his own into the history of artificial limbs and was intrigued by some of the devices used by knights and kings and noblemen who lost limbs in battle. What might it be like to don an iron hand onto his short stump? It would fall off. It would need a sheath above the elbow. Instead of an iron hand, maybe he could use an old‑fashioned hook wrought from cast iron. It would not do anything except allow him to nudge things or let him carry a bucket but it seemed incongruously desirable and he arranged to have a pair made. The unmovable hooks were larger than anything he had worn before and were also less practical. Jennings was excited by becoming a film star with four impractical prosthetic limbs. His cast iron hooks were on order. What kinds of artificial feet might he choose to ensure an unavoidable swagger and limp?

 

Joe had years of experience with various artificial feet and could recite their pros and cons as well as any professional prosthetist. Jennings was initially fitted with below‑knee sockets with aluminium pylons and basic feet with flesh‑coloured foot shells to enable shoes and boots to fit better. Joe pointed out the design which had been prevalent before the Eighties. Composite legs in one piece with slightly tilted feet, requiring the amputee to wear shoes at all times in order to stay level. Jennings leg stumps were both shorter than Joe’s, so Joe recommended that if Jennings wanted to wear completely rigid lower legs, he should enquire about leather thigh corsets which would hold the prostheses to his stumps, extending far up his thighs. Jennings’ legs would appear to be completely artificial, covered in leather and steel and the oddly coloured composite material. His hairy leg stumps would be hidden but would make for a dramatic appearance in some as yet unplanned cinematic shot.

 

Jennings found illustrations and ancient photographs of military veterans fitted with a variety of primitive artificial limbs. The most common solution to replace a leg was a wooden peg leg and Jennings marvelled at images of insouciant ex‑soldiers calmly demonstrating their prowess at standing on a pair of wooden peg legs. Jennings considered the pros and cons of learning to emulate them. The old soldiers all gripped walking sticks or leant on long crutches, something which Jennings would find awkward and inconvenient. He put thoughts of peg legs from his mind with the arrival of his iron hooks which were in fact mirror‑polished steel with fifteen centimetre diameter hooks tapering gradually to an elegant curve. The black carbon sockets resembled the shape of his missing arms and in turn were attached to black leather cuffs with three broad straps closed by silver buckles.

 

Jennings had little hope of ever donning the arms himself. Joe would have to help him disable himself completely. The hooks were next to useless for anything practical. They were intended to replace a missing arm inside sleeves to prevent them from flapping around. Joe was as fascinated by the devices as Jennings and suggested that he continue his habit of wearing only one artificial arm. One useless hook combined with a short hairy stump might be surprisingly useful. Once again, Jennings took note of how his fur was hidden by an artificial limb. He found it intensely erotic, the more so because he could touch his erection with the big hook but not manipulate his genitals in any meaningful way. The inability drove his libido further towards imminent release. Limblessness was the greatest turn‑on Jennings had experienced, a completely unexpected phenomenon without a logical explanation. Even catching sight of himself in a mirror with handless arms and footless legs was often enough to initiate a session of solitary love‑making. He could remember how he looked with full natural limbs, honed at great effort and expense to be among the best in the country. He lowered his short arm stumps to attempt masturbating his average length tool and was doubly aroused by his inability to do so. At times like this, he was distracted by the sensations coming from the tips of his leg stumps as he gyrated his legs in ecstasy.

 

He landed his first film roles. In his first production, he was the unexpected catch for a buxom woman following a blind date. She removed his artificial limbs slowly and sensuously, using them to masturbate with before turning her attention to Jennings’ astonishingly hirsute stumps. In the second production, he played the victim of a mad professor who created misshapen idyllic men in his castle basement with three other amputee actors. They were all in their twenties or early thirties, they all had multiple amputations and were nothing less than enthusiastic about their altered bodies and artificial limbs, the more audacious, the better. One of them turned up with a companion on a single artificial leg and two long slender crutches. Jennings was curious about the man’s appearance and soon had a personal demonstration of the prostheses, which the other two colleagues also watched with sympathetic interest.

 

The meeting was instrumental in instilling the desire in Jennings for further body modifications. Although he was satisfied walking on rigid composite feet, attached by long leather thigh corsets, he was intrigued by the idea of using only one artificial leg and walking with the same type of stump crutches which the other quad amp, Dexter, used with his single above‑knee prosthesis. For the first time, Jennings was dissatisfied with his body image. He wanted to lose his knees in order to use a far greater variety of more demanding prostheses. With his arm stumps encased entirely in hollow crutches like Dexter’s and two short leg stumps fitted with short peg legs, he would be utterly reliant on Joe to fit his prostheses each morning and to attend to the interminable exchange of artificial arm and hook for the long hollow crutch. Once again, he had a raging erection and teased it with the tip of his cast iron hook.

 

The ceo of Skinflix showed some unaccustomed interest when Jennings arrived for rehearsals for the third production. The man, standing tall in an amply filled expensive suit and with a vast Magnum cigar in his jaw, stated that he had cast Jennings in the role although it originally called for an amputee missing both legs above the knee. An almost completely legless man. Jennings seized the opportunity without apologising for his overlong stumps and stated that he would gladly undergo surgery to shorten his leg stumps to rid them of knee joints in order to wear a more fascinating selection of artificial legs. The ceo was both surprised and impressed by this admission from a man whose future, he thought, was compromised by his knees. People wanted to see legless men, not amputees who could walk as well as anyone else. He hinted that it could be arranged for Jennings to receive a reconfiguration in order to comply with the auteur’s vision. Realising that rehabilitation from a double above‑knee amputation could require up to three months, he arranged for several scenes be completed in short order before Jennings was admitted to a private hospital for double amputation.

 

Joe was not best pleased, not wanting to be alone during the days and possibly weeks that Jennings would be away from home, but understood his desire to experience the sensation of two stumps of indeterminate length and more severe disability. One of the conditions of Jennings’ amputations was that Skinflix would foot the bill but would also dictate the length of each stump. Jennings was assured that he would become a double above‑knee amputee, with greater potential to feature in Skinflix’s amputee videos. Jennings was most intrigued by becoming more disabled in a way which he did not yet know. He knew he would be able to scoot around on a stumpless torso using hollow crutches if the situation required it. But the ceo had assured him that he would awaken with two above‑knee stumps.

 

The ceo demonstrated some method to his madness. He knew of Jennings’ desire to experience his existent disabilities to their maximum extent. He could have worn a set of electronic artificial arms with robotic hands but eschewed them for a single body‑operated device terminating in a primitive steel hook. He could have worn artificial legs sculpted and finished to look like natural legs but instead he rocked about on two obsolete limbs which made it obvious that the user was walking on two prosthetic legs. Most intriguing was Jennings’ desire to require customised hollow crutches for his arm stumps. He wished to lose both knees in order to allow him to use short prostheses or peg legs in order to make him immediately appear legless and extremely disabled. He would simultaneously lose the ability to operate his single steel hook because both arms stumps would be enclosed firmly by the hollow crutches without which Jennings would never walk again. That was the ceo’s plan. Jennings was to play the leading role in an entire series based on the successful one‑off production about a mad professor who created handsome amputee men in his basement. Mad professor Jennings would stand two metres tall in his black velvet cape and leather mask, standing on the world’s most audacious peg leg and supported by two unbelievably long hollow crutches. He would brainwash his fresh creations to worship his deviant crippled body.

 

The leg stumps were perfect, although Jennings would have personally preferred to have the long stump on the right rather than on the left. The other stump was as short as it was possible to make a stump while retaining some vestige of leg bone, the femur, which in Jennings’ case was useless for anything more than mesmerising movement beneath the flesh. But his left stump was long and phallic, as dictated by the ceo. It was perfect for use with a wide variety of artificial limbs and various devices. One thing was self‑evident, however. His leglessness would compel him to also lose the use of his artificial arms and hooks. He would never stand unassisted, thanks to the extreme shortness of his right stump. It was completely unsuitable for fitting with a prosthesis. He would forever be one‑legged from now on and that leg would also be artificial.

 

He returned to Joe in an electric wheelchair operated by a single hook. For the first time, Joe saw what Jennings had become and expressed his sorrow that his body modifications were the mirror image of how Jennings actually felt himself to be. He would have preferred to rock some kind of peg on a long right stump, with the left trouser leg folded up to advertise the empty space where a thigh once was. Jennings explained the timetable for prosthetic fitting and described how the manufacture of two pairs of hollow crutches were already in progress. One pair would enable him to walk on a short peg leg, the second pair could allow a standard issue left leg prosthesis to be fitted to the long stump. He would need further crutches when he returned to Skinflix to cope with the stunning peg leg.

 

Joe discussed Jennings’ increased degree of disability and requested a compromise while Jennings was at home. The electric wheelchair would shortly be collected by the hospital and Jennings would again be reliant on his old manual wheelchair until his thigh stump had healed further. Joe wanted Jennings to remain a wheelchair user at home when he could also wear at least one hook. He could understand the desire to be completely limbless, to all practical purposes, but he was unwilling to entertain Jennings’ desire when it was not strictly necessary. He promised that Jennings would always wear one artificial leg and his hollow crutches in public and he would assist him in his extreme helplessness. Without the crutches, Jennings would rely on his short furry arm stumps, not his artificial arms.

 

The short stump turned out to be more pleasurable than Jennings had envisaged. Its proximity to his genitals meant that he was now able to titillate his penis with the stump by waggling the remnant of his femur. He longed to grab his penis to complete his imminent orgasm but his stumps were inadequate and he lay back desperately gyrating his leg stumps for some additional friction. As always, the eroticism Jennings associated with disability by amputation finally won out and Joe later carried his friend to the bathroom where they showered together. Joe said he would print a sheath to protect the long leg stump while it healed. It would look like a butch engineer’s boot. Jennings could wear it while seated in his wheelchair. He would appear to have one short leg with a foot.

 

The print was ready two evenings later. Jennings lifted his stump to allow Joe to slide it on and they laughed at its incongruous appearance. Despite that, it was a useful addition to Jennings’ range of prosthetic devices and he usually wore it because it did protect his stump from accidental knocks and its thick outer layers prevented him from feeling anything with his stump.

 

Ten weeks later, the ceo issued requests for his selected cast to prepare themselves for shooting to commence in three weeks. For Jennings, it was a demand for him to be urgently fitted with his first peg leg and hollow crutches. Wheelchair access was impossible. As promised, Skinflix footed the bill for the new equipment. The peg leg was a wondrous object. Its smooth black socket was intentionally shaped to be cylindrical while its interior conformed precisely to Jennings’ stump. It narrowed at knee height and continued for twenty centimetres, terminating in a thick rubber ferrule. It was the very archetypical shape of a peg leg. It looked shocking, heavy, oddly familiar and Jennings found it overwhelmingly erotic, as his fitter noted without comment. Its matching hollow arm crutches, which the prosthetist referred to as peg arms, were of a similar design. Jennings arms disappeared entirely into the gleaming black sockets of his elegantly narrowing crutches which also terminated in unnecessarily conspicuous rubber ferrules. The prosthetist fitted the three peg limbs to Jennings trembling stumps. Thanks to their unforgiving rigidity, Jennings was able to remaining standing in his tripod pose while his balls emptied themselves of pent‑up pressure. He recovered his composure and apologised, acknowledged with a brief wave of the prosthetists’s hand. He remained in that position for many minutes, savouring the new sensations of crippling disability and prosthetic solutions battling for superiority over his three stumps. Finally, he attempted to move forward, lifting one peg arm and dragging his peg leg a short distance. The impossibility of the movement and his sudden realisation of being far more disabled than he had anticipated caused him to lower his head in embarrassment as he orgasmed again.

 

Over the following two weeks, his prosthetist coached Jennings to the point when he declared that the limbless man moved with considerable elegance. A longer peg leg would be available for the mere asking, together with the necessary matching peg arms, but he recommended that Jennings first become proficient on his shortish peg leg, learning a way of life without arms. His arms were auxiliary legs. He stabbed at the ground with fierce determination, lifting his trunk just enough to swing the sturdy peg leg forward far enough to take the next step with his peg arms. It was an unimagined nirvana of limblessness, stumps fitted with primitive replacement limbs when possible. A leg stump, annoyingly on the wrong side of his body, and useless arm stumps converted into crutches. All his equipment was expertly customised to fit his stumps perfectly. They were all comfortable. Joe assisted with donning and doffing. He could relax into perfect limblessness, presenting himself in public as a monstrous example of disability. Army veterans missing limbs would pity him as Jennings swung past them silently on his three ferrules. His peg leg pointed the way towards a future which no‑one who saw him could imagine.

 

Joe was secretly impressed by his limbless companion. Despite having declared his preference to see Jennings using his wheelchair at home, Joe genuinely enjoyed seeing his friend learning and adapting to his latest degree of disability. Jennings learned to balance on his peg arms just enough to allow a rhythmic gait. Peg arms, peg leg. Peg arms, peg leg. Almost silent progress. Jennings practised rising onto his ferrules from a horizontal position. The peg arm crutches were sturdy and reliable. Jennings found them his most favoured prostheses and was delighted that he would have several more pairs to match whatever lower limb equipment he had fitted to his stump. As a legless man, he was determined to strike a figure of admirable elegance and masculinity who engendered envy in other men despite his limblessness. Perhaps they would lust after their own artificial replacements for natural limbs, like the audience for Skinflix’s film productions.

 

The ceo decreed that production would begin on the following Monday. The cast, five disabled actors, were to present themselves to the studio at the following address at eight thirty in the morning and be prepared for a twelve hour sojourn on set. Studio time was only ten days and things had to keep to schedule. There was no time to waste. Unlike with other movies, artificial intelligence was not available for Skinflix productions because it was incapable of generating images of credible stumps and artificial limbs. It was not a topic which AI had been trained on, nor were there sufficient image sources for it to learn from. The ceo was of the opinion that only genuine stumps looked credible. His audience was more than capable of distinguishing the two.

 

The first shots were of Jennings’ character issuing instructions to a more ably bodied assistant who, despite being a quad, showed admirable skill at manipulating his hooks while standing on above‑knee pylons. Much attention was paid to Jennings’ tripod gait and to his lack of hands. He was fitted with a face‑hugging leather mask with padded eyeholes, a flat nose, no mouth but air intakes in the cheeks. It looked imposing. It disguised Jennings identity completely. The day’s shoot ended with the assistant fitting a pair of hooks to the mad professor’s arm stumps, after first removing the peg arms. The shots were out of chronical order, and made little sense apart from it being wise from a production point of view to shoot scenes with the necessary actors when they were available and present.

 

Much to Jennings’ distress, one of his fellow actors, Aslak, still possessed natural hands but was missing both legs in exactly the configuration which Jennings wished for himself. His left thigh was empty with a minimal stump and he sported half his right thigh. He wore a thigh corset bearing a genuine wooden leg and walked with long axillary crutches. The fact of his physical beauty coupled with the atrocious condition of his lower body ensured that he had no friends except for fellow amputees who he met and befriended on shoots such as this. He introduced himself to Jennings and expressed how much he admired Jennings’ body configuration. The two men were as twins after that. They were so similar that when they discovered that their birthdays differed by only ten days, neither found it notable. Aslak thought he was assisting Jennings by helping to remove the peg arms only to discover the short hairy stumps inside. The stumps were as useless as the peg arms when seated but not as inconvenient. Aslak had met several men without hands but Jennings’ stumps were uniquely meagre. Too short for effective use of below‑elbow prostheses and too long to benefit from full‑length above‑elbow arms with artificial elbows, which Aslak suspected Jennings would love learning to operate and rely on.

 

Several days later a sixth member of the cast appeared. He walked on prosthetic legs, that much was clear, but he himself seemed mainly preoccupied with exactly the full‑length arm prostheses which Aslak had thought about for Jennings. The newcomer was John Swift and he was late on the scene because of an annoying fault with his first ever pair of artificial arms. He had been present for the previous sessions of filming but because his role was so minor, he had sat very much back from the proceedings and watched his mentors from the lines, so to speak. In the intervening weeks, his healthy arms had been amputated a few centimetres above the elbows and he now boasted an almost completely healed pair of useful arm stumps to which artificial arms with a variety of different forearms and hooks could be fitted. The ceo had described how he needed a volunteer for a sequence where the armless mad professor used a peg arm to condemn Swift’s arms to be severed. Swift had wanted to be a double arm amputee since he was a boy after seeing a distant uncle with two artificial arms at a wedding reception. The two had never met again but the damage was done. Swift waited for acceptance of his role with his hands and arms intact before departing for the same private hospital which had created Jennings’ leg stumps. The man left three weeks later already outfitted with basic artificial arms which he demonstrated admirable alacrity in using. It was as if he had always used hooks instead of natural hands. Like Jennings, he was enamoured of being severely disabled and found his minimal dexterity to be highly erotic. He required assistance to remove his artificial arms and also turned to Aslak for the favour.

 

Jennings was whisked off to an unknown destination with the ceo one morning. The director had been given precise instructions and insisted he understood the ceo’s requirements. They were driven in a limousine to an industrial site in San Bernadino county in sweltering weather. Jennings sat limbless facing the ceo in the back of the limo, his prostheses out of sight in the trunk. This was the first occasion when the ceo spoke of the figure which Jennings was to adopt. His character was assumed to be a tripod figure with tremendously long peg limbs making him two metres tall, towering over the handsome invalids he created. Naturally enough, he would not be allowed to use peg legs or peg arms which would make him so tall, but there were special FX and he was about to be fitted with a series of prosthetic equipment which allowed him to appear gigantic on screen. It sounded fantastic to Jennings but was based on parallax and forced perspective, old film techniques familiar for over a century. But they demanded specialist prosthetics. Jennings was here to be fitted with them. The chauffeur replaced Jennings’ peg leg and then his hollow crutch arms and stood by to assist the unlikely figure if he should topple. He did not. The ceo held the doors open and the handsome bearded figure with his tripod limbs swung himself into the premises. He was introduced to the artisans who would make him the prosthetics which the ceo required him to use and was left to their devices while the ceo attended to other business. Nothing seemed to faze the prosthetics team. They had worked with hundreds of amputee actors before and although it was unusual to confront an amputee with such a dearth of stump, there was no doubt that the producer’s wishes would be accommodated. Jennings was to be fitted with such bulky and foreshortened pegs that after cinematic imaging, he would appear to be two metres tall on the world’s most convoluted and imposing peg leg. Nothing similar would ever have been seen and instead of wielding an oversized iron hook, of which Jennings already owned a pair, his arms would remain naked to reveal their uttermost disability except when the mad professor lurched from his surgical laboratory to his personal quarters. His figure was the height of limblessness at the most extreme limit of disability and yet he was expected to use his tripod gait to demonstrate that ultra‑amputation held its own fascinating capabilities.

 

The best moment of the day came when Jennings heard that he could keep the grotesquely proportioned peg leg for himself. The peg arms were of no use to anybody and would shortly be recycled for reprinting. He returned home in the limo, assisted this time by the ceo who was delighted to touch his new star’s truncated limbs in person for the first time. Jennings saw the expression of longing on his face and understood why the man was so infatuated with amputation. It was the one thing he wanted for himself but was unable, for whatever reason, to achieve. It would be a futile, wasted life without personally experiencing a short leg stump or a set of bilateral hooks.

 

The production continued scene by scene on schedule and the cast enamoured themselves of each other, most of them being naturally gay and the last one persuaded by opportunity. They discussed the desire to lose their limbs in favour of prostheses as a natural progression from normality to something special and unusual. Jennings revealed his origins as a promising Olympic athlete before circumstance and opportunity helped him understand where his genuine interests lay. He was more than satisfied to rely on hooks whenever he was satisfied to be legless but when he wished to be mobile, he loved converting the stumps of his handless arms into crutches. It was as crippling as his lack of limbs could allow and he relished the sensations. John Swift echoed his intense pleasure in possessing brief stumps, half his upper arms, and his pleasure at finally requiring complicated artificial arms. He felt himself to be complete with a pair of inert black carbon arms gripping his shoulders. It was gratifying to use such basic equipment by shrugging or leaning from side to side with no sensual input. All dexterity with the hooks was now repetitive shrugging and jerking. Knowing that he was destined to use his body in such an unnatural way to control his hooks for the most basic of tasks was utterly perfect, the complete fulfilment of a man who needed to be dependent on four artificial limbs. His listeners nodded their understanding, their prostheses and assistive devices lined up behind the bench on which they sat. Jennings looked at the freshly healed arm stumps and compared them with his own furry below elbow versions. There was no apparent advantage to possessing longer arm stumps, especially since the pair of artificial arms John Swift had been fitted with looked more imposing and mechanically demanding than his own meagre forearm sockets.

 

The production continued in a controlled chaos. All the actors except Jennings gave credible performances of the horror experienced by victims of the evil professor who could apparently only reach climax with limbless men. There was much gnashing of teeth and flailing of stump. Jennings’ tripod professor dominated every scene in which he appeared despite the alien leather mask hiding his features. Jennings used his limblessness to superb effect and stole the limelight in nude scenes. His pelt was as fascinating as his stumps.

 

Six weeks later, the cast met again for another eight days of studio work. The new production was as unlikely as the first and concentrated on the production of impractical and fantastical artificial limbs for a series of handsome young male amputees. Each and every stump was photographed in admirable detail before being concealed by the prostheses. Once again, Jennings felt inferior because of his dubious arm stumps compared with his colleagues like John Swift who sported far more attractive above‑elbow stumps.

 

After completing the shoot for the fourth production, Jennings mentioned his desire to transform into a double above‑elbow amputee in order to use a full pair of artificial arms. Joe was interested only as far as tolerating Jennings’ absence but the ceo showed far more concern. It might be possible to envisage storylines where a man begged for shorter stumps but it sounded so unlikely that any scriptwriter would be hard‑pressed to think of a motive. The ceo was sympathetic and requested some thinking time. Jennings’ future roles needed to be vetted in case the new amputations caused continuation errors. Ten days later, Jennings was informed that he had been booked for surgery on completion of the seventh production. There would then be a four month hiatus between productions, during which time he was to become proficient in using a full set of artificial arms and standard steel hooks. He should also adapt to walking with two new pairs of peg arms to match his short peg leg and long artificial leg. All expenses would be borne by the studio, on condition that the ceo had the first option on the design of the replacement limbs and devices.

 

A year passed before the seventh production was in the bag. All the actors had become intimately familiar with each other’s bodies and sexual peccadillos. They knew which of them preferred to be caressed by stumps and which by natural limbs or by prostheses. Jennings and John Swift formed such a close bond that the other actors preferred not to press either them for intimate contact. Jennings was envious of Swift’s perfect configuration—the correctly shortened leg stumps, the correctly truncated arms. They were both superb specimens of thirty year old male beauty at its most virile. They masturbated each other with whatever limb remnants they possessed. Swift was particularly fond of Jennings’ long leg stump and Jennings loved being explored by Swift’s short arm stumps. Soon their arm stumps would match and Swift could teach Jennings the secrets of using artificial elbows.

 

The amputations were disastrous. The surgeon delegated the procedure to a promising young and skilful Indian doctor who specialised in elective and voluntary amputations for wannabes and other stump lovers. The instructions on Jennings’ chart clearly stated his arms were to be amputated five centimetres above the elbow. Somehow the surgeon was allowed to proceed with amputating five centimetres below the shoulder. Instead of having long above‑elbow stumps like his idol John Swift, Jennings had rounded nubs at his shoulders which would never fully succeed in controlling the weight of his future prostheses. His reach would be pitiful, although many of his future lovers would find his enforced proximity arousing whenever he was directed to manipulate genitals with the stunning fur‑covered protrusions at his shoulders.

 

Jennings grieved for the experiences he had lost. He would never know the satisfaction of mastering a pair of demanding prostheses which, despite the challenge they presented, were comparatively accommodating. Instead, Jennings’ prosthetic arms had rigid shoulders and the forearms were locked at ninety degrees for most of the time he wore them. He could manipulate the hooks well enough to feed himself or raise a glass to his mouth. His hooks could not reach his penis. He could masturbate only by gyrating his hips against a rough textile surface with his leg stump.

 

Worst of all, he was incapable of using his peg arms. Once again, he was condemned to a wheelchair, operated with miniature toggle switches by his arm stumps at shoulder height. Joe lost interest in his companion. He had enjoyed living with a man who had virile powerful stumps instead of limbs and loved watching the struggles with prostheses. Now that Jennings had lost his stumps, he was a mere torso with one leg stump. He no longer looked erotic or masculine in Joe’s eyes. Joe had learned of the relationship between Jennings and John Swift. He understood the reasons for it well enough. Although their original relationship continued in its own way, there was little love involved. It was merely practical for both men to continue sharing the same apartment.

 

The ceo reacted with frugal pragmatism to his star performer’s disability. A remote‑controlled electric trolley was quickly concocted by the carpenters and a lightweight set of arms created from a block of styrofoam. Jennings’ magnificent flowing black beard was trimmed by two thirds its length in order to fit under the alien mask. Much was made of the sole remaining leg stump which was all Jennings had left to assert his dominance over his amputee creations. Not surprisingly, the pretence lost any remaining credibility.

 

John Swift had a suggestion for Jennings. It was time for them to admit their love and respect for each other and their mutilations. John Swift had watched his lover lose his joie de vivre since losing his arm stumps and knew that Jennings was disappointed at not being able to benefit from his peg leg. Quite simply, Swift proposed marriage if Jennings agreed to permanently adopt demanding artificial arms and actually wear them every day, and find a prosthetist with the skill and patience to create a pair of reticulating stubbies which would compensate for Jenning’s empty left hip and allow him to walk again on some kind of peg. He was almost asking the impossible but saw his lover’s eyes light up with pleasure at the prospect of once again being a user of ultra demanding prosthetic limbs, this time in the company of the man he had admired for longer than he had Joe. Swift’s forearm stumps and artificial legs were adequate for him to function perfectly well in daily life. He wore his own hooks only rarely. He envisaged them after marriage as one partner sporting artificial arms—Jennings—and the other artificial legs. He could not envision a set of stubbies which would allow Jennings to become independently mobile.

 

A year passed without further film work. The ceo assured all his amputee stars that there would be work in future and requested that they should not jeopardise themselves by working for a competitor in the meantime. Jennings gently explained to Joe that the source of their diminished happiness was Jennings’ insurmountable disability and that it would be better for them both if he left their tryst. John Swift helped him with the removals and pushed limbless Jennings’ wheelchair from Joe’s apartment to his own dressed in only shorts and trainers. The sight of one quadruple amputee assisting another caused traffic to back up and after a while, they were surrounded by delighted admirers and wannabes offering help. No‑one realised that the man seated with the solitary leg stump was the mad professor whose compunction for amputations had caused many of them to lose copious amounts of precum and ejaculate. Jennings used his furry nubs to direct John Swift, who in fact knew the route to his own apartment. It was an amusing day.

 

Jennings kept to his part of the bargain and made a concerted effort to find a prosthetist who could provide him with a pair of working artificial arms and hooks despite the dearth of stumpage. Swift himself knew from experience that the closer the fit, the better the utility. Swift showed Jennings a few films from his private collection of training films from rehabilitation hospitals, shot during and shortly after the many wars to demonstrate the physical abilities available to limbless veterans with the latest generation of plastic sockets and steel hooks. One film in particular had caught Swift’s attention and the two lovers studied it and the handsome armless veteran with considerable interest. He was fitted with a pair of arms and was later depicted handling sheafs of paper in an office environment. The point of the exercise was to prove to Jennings that even his minimal nubs would be able to control a pair of arms if he set his mind to it.

 

Four months later, after many fittings and valuable experimentation, Jennings was fitted with a superbly finished pair of artificial arms. The sockets were covered with mahogany‑coloured leather, every exposed metal component was chrome‑plated and the hooks were adjusted to be as responsive as possible to his shoulder movement. For the first time since losing his stumps, Jennings felt that he would be able to recover the dexterity he had enjoyed with his forearm stumps and hooks. Swift was proud of his determination and two weeks later they married in a private ceremony with a few amputee colleagues. Joe was invited but was not present. Instead of placing rings on each other’s hooks, they hung necklaces holding wedding rings around each other’s necks. Jenning’s jewellery immediately disappeared into his fur.

 

A second prosthetist, a specialist who had learned his trade from a man who had created prostheses for victims of thalidomide, took Jennings on as a patient and declared that it would be quite possible for Jennings to become independently mobile again on a pair of stubbies but probably not full‑length artificial legs, although nothing was impossible. He described a pair of thigh length prosthetic legs much like a solid pair of shorts. They would be held on by some kind of belt or whatever Jennings found comfortable. The legs were attached to the frame with a mechanism which forced the prosthetic leg to swing forward when weight on it was released. The left leg would be manufactured to weigh as much as the right which contained Jennings’ stump. By alternating his centre of balance from one side to the other, the stubby legs would automatically move forward a few centimetres allowing him to walk slowly but surely once again. An additional setting would allow both stubbies to rest at ninety degrees while seated, in a wheelchair, for example. John Swift and Jennings made a joint decision that a pair of tapered stubbies of thigh length would be more than welcome as an addition to Jennings’ new collection of demanding prostheses.

 

Jennings determination and success at relearning to walk had its effect on Swift. It was inevitable. Being clad completely in mahogany leather with his magnificent beard competing for attention, Jennings presented the ultimate pinnacle of adaptation to a new life reliant on prosthetic limbs. His arms were light, tight and supremely responsive. Jennings learned to lean and tilt his body in order to operate his elbows and to shrug and dip to control his hooks. He was poetry in motion but all arm function had to cease when he walked. He had learned to allow the reciprocating mechanism to do its job although there was still stump inside one of the stubbies. He rocked from side to side with confidence, allowing each stubby in turn to step forward. This motion was what enticed Swift. He longed to emulate the motion. He already had one above‑knee stump. He needed to have his below‑knee stump amputated to match. Perhaps he could have a word with the ceo when and if production ever resumed. Surely a role could be found for a bilateral hook user on stubbies? A second one?

 

The ceo resumed contact with his amputees. He was especially solicitous of Jennings and Swift, not only congratulating them on their marriage and taking a generous share of the responsibility for bringing them together in the first place, but also because both men had undergone additional amputations in order to fit their roles better. Until the unfortunate excess with the upper arms in Jennings’ case. Now the ceo was, in his own words, enchanted to see Jennings rocking his body from side to side in order to operate his impressively long stubbies, artificial arms at ninety degrees with the dual hooks pointing forward. Jennings looked completely prosthetic. Only his glorious beard and friendly eyes hinted at the presence of a great actor. Swift was determined not to pass up an opportunity and when the ceo’s attention seemed to wane, he announced that he would greatly appreciate a role as a quadrilateral amputee with identical bilateral stumps. He wanted to be symmetrical. He was desirous of losing his longer leg stump in order to emulate his husband. He wanted to walk on identical long tapering conical stubbies, which he found the height of masculine beauty and eroticism. Already impressed by seeing Jennings, the ceo announced that nothing would give him more pleasure than to provide Swift with his desired symmetry and immediately delved into calling in favours and other shady arrangements with cooperative surgical staff.

 

The new production was ground‑breaking, the ceo explained. Never before had such a collection of handsome virile amputees joined forces to create such a stupendous blockbuster. Gradually, the exaggerations ran out and he described a post‑operative rehabilitation establishment for recovering amputees. Its purpose was to reassure fresh amputees that their bodies were still handsome and desirable and in order to reinforce the message, most of the therapy involved sexual relationships with other amputees. They would learn to use their stumps and nubs in place of warm hands and fingertips. They would learn to appreciate the presence of artificial limbs during coitus and how to persuade a reluctant partner to accept the touch of cool hard carbon fibre instead of warm flesh. After his presentation, he called Swift to the podium and explained that he wanted Swift to be bilateral with short leg stumps. That was the deal. Swift could be symmetrical at the cost of ease of using stubbies. He would still use them but they would present a challenge. The ceo was already imagining a production featuring only legless men on stubbies and he wanted all of them to be maximally crippled. Swift considered the offer for ten seconds, agreed and by the end of the afternoon, had arrived in a make‑shift clinic where an enthusiastic novice surgeon was more than happy to receive an unexpected order from one of his underground contacts. It was unusual to amputate bilateral stumps but the patient apparently wished to use short stubbies and the resulting meagre stumps would eventually prove to be adequate.

 

Swift’s absence would have been a daunting prospect for Jennings had he not been encouraged to learn to use his prostheses to their utmost. There was little requiring delicacy or dexterity which Jennings could manage independently but he could open groceries and make himself a simple meal. His naked leg stump sufficed for mobility at home, aided by his bilateral hooks for balance. He no longer regretted the short nubs at his shoulders. They were useful for sexual manipulation of his husband’s genitals, generating a rhythmic sensation below the scrotum which eventually resulted in orgasm. But the two men had trialled and perfected making love while wearing their artificial limbs. The sounds produced by stubbies clashing against artificial legs or the unavoidable contact of hollow carbon arms and hooks were new aspects of their relationship and for both men, who had deliberately shed their natural limbs for insensate replacements, the unnatural contact was more exciting than that of flesh. The framework of Jennings’ stubbies encased his genitals and Swift loved to knock against it with his long prosthetic leg, not only because of the resultant percussion but because the vibration transferred to his husband’s penis.

 

Soon they would both make love wearing identical stubbies, although Jennings’ genitals would still be hidden. Swift was eager to discover the sensations which came with a pair of stumps which terminated a handsbreadth below his scrotum.

 

The script was delivered by courier to all the amputees. It was a futile demonstration of decadence. There was no hurry and the new script was not important. The premise of the production spoke for itself. Shell‑shocked and dubious young amputees would be introduced to each other for psychological support and within half a minute would be exploring the erotic potential of their residual limbs, their stumps and their nubs by engaging in urgent displays of large erections seeking some kind of flesh or orifice to chafe against. A pair of thigh stumps proved again and again its superiority, outdone only by the less exotic combination of two forearm stumps, already phallic in themselves, gently manipulating an erection in tandem.

 

The ceo announced a delay in the production. In reality, he was waiting for Swift’s new short stumps to be sturdy enough to be fitted with the long tapering stubbies which Jennings used. After four months, everything was ready. The amputees with arm stumps were partnered with each other, and those with short leg stumps or mere nubs at their pelvis were introduced to each other. Unavoidably, many of the amputees were missing more than two limbs and various camera angles were programmed in order to take advantage of additional tantalising movement by stumps unrelated to the main action. Jennings and Swift were permitted to demonstrate their long‑practised method of love‑making, knocking their complete sets of bilateral prostheses against each other in a flurry of urgent eroticism. Jennings’ wild gyrations with unwieldy prostheses in an effort to engage his concealed penis with anything to relieve his need were among the high points of the end production and he received many envious compliments on his energetic efforts despite his almost complete limblessness. He shrugged his shoulders with a grin hidden in his beard, causing his hooks to open. He felt he had reached his personal nirvana. No further adaptations could improve his current desperate degree of disability. He was on the ultimate farthest limit of prosthetic use, already crippled by his mechanical stubbies. He was completely reliant on mechanical limbs and frequently peacefully pondered their brevity and the sensations of his absent limbs. Of all his prostheses, only his stubbies did not generate feelings of natural limbs, possibly because of the unnatural movement required to walk in them.

 

Swift was excited to awaken after his amputations to discover his short stumps and immediately ejaculated. This was the first occasion he had experienced the simultaneous reduction of more than one limb and he too concentrated on trying to comprehend the fact that his legs were now as long as his fist was wide. He would have extreme difficulty in controlling stubbies and envisaged a pair of peg arms like his husband had used years ago. The potential for different prosthetic devices was exciting and tantalising. He and his husband would explore them together but the main thing, the whole point of the entire exercise, was that they should always be a matching couple on identical stubbies. Holding hooks, they would stumble their way forward together.

 

The ceo cast both Jennings and Swift to feature prominently in his new production. Much careful camerawork was required to convey the impression that Jennings used his cantankerous prostheses as if they were his natural arms. His hooks seemed to possess their own delicate touch and appeared to succeed at every task at the first attempt. Jennings was requested to caress his long conical stubbies with his hooks and to express pleasure while doing so. His more advanced treatment for new amputees, anal penetration, was conducted both while the two men wore their entire complement of artificial limbs and also butt naked when the roles were temporarily reversed when the ‘patient’, Swift, was required to administer masturbatory therapy to his armless lover with his forearm stumps. Their leg stumps were all used to chafe against their erect penises and the cinematic treatment depicted an unusual technique apparently the equal of a pair of warm hands or a pair of steel hooks.

 

The amputee actors gained a certain degree of notoriety among the niche audience who had seen their displays of sexual shenanigans. Stills of the most delectable scenes circulated for a while until the ceo learned of them and demanded their removal. The men kept in close contact for a year or two but inevitably drifted apart as life intervened. Jennings and Swift continued their love affair, complementing each other as far as possible to compensate for missing limbs. They both accumulated an impressive selection of artificial limbs and associated accessories, some of them practical alternatives, others more impractical fantasies. Jennings unexpected favourite pair of arms were an anniversary gift—a pair of cosmetic arms attached to a yoke across Jennings’ shoulders. They were rigid from shoulder to fingertips but bent in a natural way at the elbows and moulded from high gloss white acrylic. The hands were prime examples of beautifully proportioned male hands and Jennings wore the contraption whenever the couple were invited to a public event where the main topic would be voluntary amputation and its prospects in the realms of cinema, prosthetics and human relations, namely sexuality. Dressed in identical black velvet suits, the couple were often compared to the scandalous secret relationships during the golden age of Hollywood. Jennings, always the pinnacle of calm with his inexpressive hands, explained how he had overcome disappointment with his stumps to rally again, supported by his lover, who stood beside him with a hook around his shoulder. Their black suit shorts revealed their identical conical peg legs and after several minutes of enthusiastic endorsement for elective amputations, they were allowed to rock their way to their limousine and home. Public events never failed to heighten their enthusiasm for each others’ stumps and as so often before, both men used the remnants of once handsome limbs to masturbate each other until they fell asleep in a pool of cum.

 

THE MAN WHO FELL FROM GRACE WITH HIS BODY