RootFireEmber

The last time Margaret saw her husband, he was in possession of the unmentionable belt, and headed towards the bedroom. There was a terrible screech, the scent of cooked flesh; and gathering the courage to look, Maggie found that Mr. James Walker was gone. There was a suspicious scorched mark upon the flooring, and a copper coil from the infernal belt, but that was all.

Upon viewing the empty room, with its scorch-marked floor, Mrs. Margaret Walker found only one phrase came to mind, and it was not one suitable for ladies to say. She said it anyway:

“Fuck.”

The word came out like a tiny explosion from her lips, a quick but clear puff of profanity far better suited to a tavern than to the small home where she lived. It was followed quickly by:

“This is what you get for meddling with strange contraptions. Much less strange ones that go upon one’s unmentionable parts!”

The Belt, which had come from the giant tome of a catalogue that James had brought with him before the move. In its fragile pages were pictures and descriptions of all manner of things, from coffees to couches and dresses, watches and boots and dinning-sets.

And the belt. Hodgekins Electronic Wonder Belt, Guaranteed to cure all manner of male weakness with the wonder of electricity. All a man had to do was wear it, and he would instantly become stronger, more manly in all ways.

James had not been a manly man. He was thin, reedy, and had -as he had said- often been sickly as a child. He fell for the advertisement, and after much scrapping and saving had procured the belt, practically prancing when it had arrived in the mail some months after the money had been sent. The belt, which was made up of leather and wires and went about one’s waist and then about a man’s unmentionable parts, looked suspicious to Margaret’s eyes, but she’d kept her mouth shut; it was James’ toy, and if he wanted to fry his parts for science, so be it.

And then he had taken his prize to the bedroom… and vanished. Judging from the sound that had come from the bedroom the moments before he had vanished, Maggie suspected he had, indeed, fried his pecker, and at the same time discovered, some novel form of transportation.

She wished he’d chosen to simply get kicked in the groin instead. It would’ve been quicker, less expensive, and she would not have had to worry about where he was in the aftermath. Because he had to be somewhere. Didn’t he?