When they cut her open, they found many things that didn’t belong. It wasn’t a surprise. Her x-ray revealed abnormal protrusions from multiple organs; nothing serious (like a malignant tumor). On the operating table, abdomen flaps splayed open, masked faces peering atop craned necks, the doctor removes five objects: a slinky, pink and purple; a toy car, red; a miniature cassette tape, not rewound; a die, the six dots face up; a tooth, baby from the looks of it. Each item is placed unceremoniously in a receiving tray—stainless steel and sterile. The patient, unconscious, sighs and swallows. The surgeon pays no mind and instead returns to the routine task of sewing the woman back up. Even with medical advances, the woman will have a scar dividing her abdomen into two distinct halves. 

Once the woman is made whole, the surgeon returns his attention to examining the objects. This is the interesting part. The interior junk. Everyone carries it, but like the appendix, only certain people are forced to remove it. The onset of symptoms is different for everyone. Some report crippling vertigo. Others are bedridden. A few become extremely manic. Sometimes the symptoms are so small that the problem goes unnoticed for years. Until, eventually or suddenly, it happens: the unnerving sensation that your soul and your body can’t seem to stand each other anymore. It feels like a ripping sensation and the world turns upside down and you fall. If they catch it early enough, like this patient, the surgery is routine; the junk hasn’t atrophied or spread, making it irremovable, a permanent installation of the body. 

Then it’s the shock of it that kills most people. Not the surgery or the recovery, but the demystifying of the mystical self: all that interior junk making itself known. If it isn’t removed there is no choice but to examine it. To mine the depths of the open portal. It’s much easier to make it disappear, to ignore its existence altogether.

The surgeon carefully catalogs the contents of the woman before placing the items into a medical waste bag marked with large red letters spelling out “hazardous waste.” The objects get photographed like evidence—evidence that the old self once existed—before being tossed onto a cargo ship headed to the dump where all the interior junk gets laid to rest. Piles and piles of it lay waste to the natural beauty of the planet. Scientists and humanitarians alike feel compelled to find a way to process it. It’s not like normal waste; it doesn’t just go away, disintegrate. Instead, it petrifies, solidifies, becomes part of the permanent landscape. It refuses to be compostable.

The woman, the one on the table, will never really know what’s been removed. It’s part of the protocol. Don’t ask, don’t tell. The only thing that will disclose her emptiness is the scar on her abdomen. 

Kamyn Asher is a creative writer, curious mystic, and astrologer. Originally hailing from the US, she now calls Amsterdam home. She is inspired by the mundane and the magical alike and tries to infuse both these perspectives into her work. She is currently working on an unconventional collection of short stories and her first fantasy novel. When she's not writing she can be found giving astrology sessions, editing medical text, and using the city as a playground. You can follow her on instagram: @kamynasher.