Zoey, the Stitched together girl (Patreon)

Story by Leena

Zoey was… a different sort of mutant. Like many modular girls she had the ability to separate her body in to different parts.. it was the putting it back together that was the hard part. Mutants like her were… rare to say the least. She wasn’t particularly in danger. Like other girls with NBM mutations separating her body didn’t do any damage whatsoever. She just, couldn’t put herself back together.

So, she adapted. When a limb came off she held it together with thread. Heavy load bearing joints were held together with screws and pins. She could move, but she looked like a bit of a patchwork doll, or as some of her less charitable peers put it, a “sexy Frankenstein.” She’d let them know that Frankenstein was the doctor not the monster if it wasn‘t the most overplayed “um actually” in nerddom.

Her doctors originally thought that her ability to “reassemble” would develop naturally, but year after year nothing changed. Sometimes another part of her would fall off and she would get a medical kit out and start sewing herself back together. She became so familiar with human anatomy that she ended up going to school for medicine. Of course, med school tends to run you ragged… even more so when your body can’t hold itself together.

“Goddammit!” Zoey said as her arm fell onto the ground. “Not again!” A cavalcade of files, books, her purse, and other assorted objects fell to the ground with it.

“That’s the third time this week,” said her roommate Glissa, an NBM girl with the consistency of a thick glue.

“Yeah, I know… little help?” Zoey said with a small but exasperated smirk.

“Yeah yeah, I gotcha.” Glissa walked over and picked up Zoey’s arm and attached it to her shoulder. A bit of her own flesh flowed into the crevasse just long enough to hold it together.

“The kit’s in the closet, same place-”

“Same place as always, I know,” Glissa said as she flowed over the floor to get the medical sutures and thread. She handed them over to Zoey, rolling her eyes. “You know, it would be much easier if you just let me merge with you.”

“We’ve been over this Glissa,” Zoey said. “I don’t know you that way!”

“Oh come on girls! I’m not asking you to get married. You know all the other NBM girls do it all the time. There are a pair of goo girls that have an internship at the hospital that merge just to stay awake! Better than any coffee. Double the nights sleep. Besides, if we don’t I dry up in a few minutes and you are stuck holding yourself together with thread again.”

“Have you ever stopped to consider maybe I want to stay this way?” Zoey said, sticking the needle into her arm and beginning a cross shaped pattern that pulled her flesh tight.

“You want to keep falling apart?” Glissa said.

“I want to solve my own problems,” Zoey said. “Besides, this isn’t as hard as it looks.”

“Looks hard to me,” Glissa said.

“That’s the point! It looks hard to everybody, and I’m kinda tired of them pitying me.” Zoey snapped back. “I have met so many other mutants. Mutants with no legs. Mutants with eight legs. Mutants with wings. We live in a world where everyone's mutation is weird and different and yet people look at me like I’m some sort of freak.”

“Well, you have to admit most NBM girls can put themselves back together,” Glissa said, effortlessly detaching her goopy head and putting it back on her shoulders.

“Yeah, and I can’t but is that so bad?” Zoey said as she tied her sutures off. “Sure, I may be a little… disabled compared to other NBM girls, but I can still live a fulfilling life. I just need some help now and then.”

“Help from pins and thread?” Glissa said sarcastically, “instead of a hot glue girl like me?”

“Oh get over yourself,” Zoey said squeezing her fingers and flexing her bicep to make sure her arm was sewed on tight.

“Come on now, you know you don’t want the merge because you are afraid, you’ll like it. I don’t blame you. Not everyone can go back once they have taken a ride on the Glissa train!”

“You are disgusting, shut up!” Zoey said, throwing a pillow at Glissa’s face. It stuck hard and fast and needed to be peeled off.

“Look I’m not gonna force you into anything, but you’re scheduled for rounds tomorrow and I’m not sure coffee, willpower, and your little sewing kit will get you through.”

“And you’d glue me together just to do a second set of rounds yourself?” Zoey said with a smirk.

“Heck no I’d…”

“You’d what? Make me miss rounds and put my whole medical career in danger?”

“I didn’t say all that I…”

“You just didn’t think that merging with me meant that both of us have to do two times the work now did you?”

“OK OK! Geez, you made your point. I’ll enjoy my day off go and do your rounds. I’ll wait to pester you to merge again when you have free time.” Glissa said leaning back in bed.

“Glissa,” Zoey said with a blank face. “We are in med school, when do we have free time?”

“Shut up,” Glissa said before playfully throwing the pillow back at Zoey.

… It hit her head and took it clean off her shoulders.

“Goddammit! Glissa can you…”

“I’m already on it,” Glissa said picking up Zoey’s head from the ground. “But maybe just consider my offer next time OK.”

“Maybe if you stopped making it weird and sexual I would,” said Zoey, exasperated.

“No can do compadre, weird and sexual is my middle name,” she said placing Zoey’s head back on her shoulders.

“And you wonder why I keep saying no,” said Zoey, rolling her eyes again. This was going to be a long night.