I Got Mugged

The Tales of The Seekers is a collection of short stories set in The Seekers universe. Feel free to comment so I can improve them. If you want to learn more, please do read my published books in the same universe: The Seekers: Soul-Ties, Kirin, and Perrin Peters. And if you don’t want to buy my books but still want to support me, I’m on Patreon. And if you prefer one-time payments, you can Buy Me A Pizza or a Coffee.

“Don’t be afraid,” Silk Rose said. Tall and brown-haired, her smiling brown eyes infected me with confidence. “First, step on your old one, and then carefully on the new leg. Your nerves work, so it won’t be hard to know how much weight you should put on each.”

For the past minute or so, I was sitting on the far edge of my hospital bed, unable to stop looking down at my legs. Unable to believe my eyes. The left one looked familiar, hairy, and reasonably strong. The right, however, was thin, almost hairless, and with perfectly smooth, pale skin. Made from my own stem cells, constructed using the scaffolding based on my DNA and the scan of my left leg, this new one was as close to perfect as I would ever get.

The images of losing it flooded my brain. The pain and blood. The bizarre appearance of the stump and even odder feeling of almost having the leg, nearly being able to feel and control it, but not quite.

I slid down the bed and stood on my left leg, holding onto the metal bars while keeping my right leg in the air. The feeling was familiar, but I needed a moment to adjust to standing after lying down for so long. Okay, you got this…

I carefully unbent my new right leg until it touched the warm, slip-resistant floor. Indeed, the feeling was very familiar, but stronger, for the skin on the soles was fresh and soft. Okay, now carefully…

I transferred some weight to the new leg. The feeling of pressure was both familiar and a bit weird. I transferred some more weight and immediately pulled the leg back, for it protested, not with pain but with a scary feeling of something being wrong.

“How are you feeling?” The doctor asked.

“It’s okay,” I said. “I think I now know how much it can carry. How long until it’s as strong as it was?”

Silk Rose shrugged. “I don’t know how strong it was, so I can’t say. You’ll start working with a physiotherapist today, and if all goes well, your leg will become strong enough to support you in about a week. Now, please transfer as much weight on it as you can.”

My new leg hit the floor again. Silk Rose squatted down, shining through my leg with a cool-looking device and reading the data from its small screen.

“Something bad?” I asked.

She shook her head. “No, everything’s in order. All the nerves and blood vessels are attached and functioning properly. The bone looks solid. Would you care to tell me where you managed to lose your leg? I’m just curious, so you can refuse.”

“Oh, well…” I started.

~*~

“Come on, it’ll be fun!” Yuze dragged me closer to the warehouse door.

“Okay, okay, just not like the last time!” I gave in,

“Ha-ha! It’ll be fine, don’t worry!”

“Yeah, sure…” The door slid open, and I entered the dark warehouse.

Yuze flipped the switch, and the colorful floodlights blinded us. The room was huge and hosted a large wooden stage in front of several rows of seats. The stage represented a whimsical game field. The raised floor was divided into small square sections, each marked with colorful numbers and letters. On the wall across the room was a large scoreboard, a red timer, and a screen displaying the game’s rules. As they flicked to life, so did the loudspeakers, blasting our ears with cheery game music.

“Okay, now…” Yuze ran onto the stage and pointed to the closest square with the “1” painted on it. “Stand on the ‘1’ and be ready to start jumping.”

“Jumping?” I groan. “I just ate, Yuze! Why couldn’t you tell me beforehand?”

“There, over there, stand on the ‘1’!” He repeated while barely containing his energy inside himself.

I sighed, climbed onto the stage, and stood where he showed me.

“Now, ladies and gentlemen, behold!” Yuze’s voice boomed as he tried to make it sound menacing and cool, but not overly so. “Our new contestant will jump onto the squares with increasing numbers. Both of his feet will hit the squares at the same time. If the contestant hits the same square twice or hits a wrong one, he will be TERMINATED!”

I stared at him, wide-eyed. “Wait, terminated?”

“BEGIN!” He boomed, and the timer began its count.

Oh, crap! I looked at the squares. Two. A square of one. Fifty-five. Negative i. The e to the power of negative infinity. Okay, which two are the smallest?

I leaped, landing on the wood.

“The contestant is one step closer to victory!”

Oh, shut up and let me count…

I leap again, breathing fast, feeling my heart pumping adrenaline through my body. It was fun, actually. I looked around, counting. There!

I jumped…

Aarghhhhhhhhh!

My forehead hit the floor, as well as my whole body. The buzzer almost ripped apart my eardrums, but I didn’t care. As I had jumped, the square under my right leg had swung open, so my right leg had gone through the hole, throwing me off balance.

“The contestant is bad at math, apparently!” Yuze’s voice boomed.

“Shut up, you imbecile, and help me already!” I roared, trying to ignore the pain.

The leg wouldn’t budge. The music died, and Yuze’s birds’ nest of a head dived into the hole.

“Oh, it stuck,” was his remark.

“Captain Obvious!” I fought the urge to spit next to him. He hadn’t quite yet deserved to be spat on. “Just give me a hand and pull.”

“No, it won’t work.” He jumped to his feet, shaking his head and taking out his communicator. “Lemme move the mechanism a little…” His fingers tapped some buttons…

Aaaaaaaaaa!

The crunching sound. All went black. The agony was not the right word to describe it.

“Hey, you’re okay?”

A light touch to my shoulder, and the lights went out within me…

~*~

“Where I lost my leg? I got mugged,” left my lips as I stared into Silk Rose’s brown eyes. “Kinda dramatic, actually. I tried to fight back, but there were many of them.”

“Mugged?” She frowned.

“So, who’s my physiotherapist?” I quickly asked, raising my eyebrows. “Can’t wait to walk again. A certain someone must meet the heel of my boot ASAP.”

The End

Anton Anderson, 2025

If you want to learn a tiny bit more about Silk Rose and Yuze, you can meet them on the pages of The Seekers: Perrin Peters, my sci-fantasy detective novel.