The Bodyhouse

At the bodyhouse, no one ever asks you what you want.

The matron just takes you by the hand one day, and leads you through the dingy lobby to a small consult room, bare and square. Your new (what did they call them) parents sit there, smiling a cool thirty-two white teeth each. Their smiles falter when they see you.

“A bit spindly,” says one. “A bit sullen,” says another.

“Fixable,” says the matron, waving a hand in your general direction. “Consider him a base.”

“Fine,” says one of the parents, pulling out their wallet.

†

If you’d known what would happen, you’d have asked for stronger legs, so you could keep up with the other kids on the soccer field. Or a stronger stomach, so you could eat bread without your stomach hurting, or stronger eyes, so you wouldn’t have to squint at your homework. But you do not know, and no one tells you. Instead, money drops silently into the matron’s pocket, and then the parents circle you. They stare. They point out problems you didn’t know you had: 

“Are those his adult teeth?”

“What’s that mottling on his face?”

“That nose isn’t quite right.”

The matron answers for you: those are milk teeth, he’s barely six. That’s only dirt, he’s supposed to have washed his face. And he’ll grow into that nose, they always do.

The parents look at each other. “We sent in at least ten photos,” says one. “We were very clear about what we wanted.”

You say, “I’m eight. Not six.”

“By the lunar calendar,” the matron says to you, with a smile hard enough to crack. Then, to the parents: “He’s six. And a half. And of course, the surgeons have the photos. The nose will be exactly what you asked for. Remember, what you’re seeing is just the base.”

As you’re led away, the parents do not look at you, and they do not wave goodbye.

†

In the bowels of the bodyhouse, it grows darker, warmer. The matron plods relentlessly down the hall, towing you along. “Be brave,” she says, pushing you into the arms of a nurse. 

You aren’t. 

That blue-gowned nurse is even less gentle than the matron, plopping you onto a rolling bed and cinching you down. You panic, and then you struggle, and then you scream, until a large hand claps a plastic mask over your nose and mouth, the air goes all sweet, and then suddenly you w—

†

eams the screams the screams the screams the heat hits you. You’re burning, all over. The skin on your legs is peeled back, sundry muscles reformed, bone surfaces shaved off, angles of your femurs adjusted. Incisions under your ribs let in metal implements to shyly prod and rearrange some viscera (fix that liver that spleen that heart). Infusions in your veins recombine and liven up your blood. Bones break in your face. Someone puts them back, differently. There’s a flare, a flare, of laser-white light light light light and the roar and the drop and the screams the screams the screams the scr

†

—ake up strapped securely into a carseat. Fancy music burbles softly from the speakers. Hills roll past outside. No bodyhouse in sight.

The parents bring you (what did they call it) home, which is a series of rooms so gleaming and tidy that you’re afraid to exist in them. As you tiptoe into your (very own) bedroom, a mirror on the wall reflects a blurry mummified figure at you. You lean closer, until the image sharpens and your breath fogs up the glass. Most of your face is still bandaged, unrevealed. But brand new sky blue eyes squint back at you through the wrappings.

Behind you, one parent whispers, “Should we save up for Lasik too?” 

The other whispers back, “We’ll have to. For baseball.”

You pretend you do not hear. On the bookshelves, there are several photos of a boy posing with a baseball bat over his shoulder. He is grinning. He has sky-blue eyes.

“The team will be so excited to see you healthy again,” says a parent, crouching down beside you. “Aren’t you excited, Charlie?”

After a moment, you realize they’re talking to you. You can’t speak through your wired-shut jaw, so instead you nod. It hurts. 

When all the bandages finally come off, the legs that the bodyhouse gave you still won’t be able to keep up with your Little League team. And the innards that the bodyhouse rearranged aren’t the ones that would let you eat pizza without regretting it. But wasn’t all of that worth it? Aren’t you (what was the word) loved? You suspect you are, because sometimes the parents embrace you, squeeze you, grip you, sob into your new hair. “Charlie, Charlie, Charlie,” they keep saying, “Charlie-boy, we are so happy you’re back.”

The bodyhouse gave you that name too.

†

In two years, the parents will suddenly inherit lots of money. It’ll arrive as a notification lighting up their phones, and it’ll make them pick you up and twirl you around and hug you and cry. After they put you down again and dry their eyes, they’ll go and find a box tucked away in a closet. They’ll take off the lid and unfold the bubblewrap and gently remove a dying boy’s last neuroprint. They will not ever tell you what it is, and they will never ask you what you want. They’ll just bring it, and you, back to the bodyhouse.

Afterwards, you’ll remember the time you were so ill you couldn’t play baseball, and then you’ll remember leaving a strange dingy place you’ve never seen before. You won’t remember dying in between, or ever being anyone else. Sometimes you’ll have dr(eams the scr)eams, hazy and unreal, but gradually even these will fade. When you leave the bodyhouse for the last time, you’ll only be Charlie, precious Charlie-boy-Chuck, whose parents loved him enough to rebuild him.

© 2026 Bree Wernicke

Bree Wernicke is an actor and speculative fiction writer living in Los Angeles. Her short stories and poetry have been previously published in Baffling Magazine, Strange Horizons, Flash Fiction Online, and Fusion Fragment, among others, and appeared on Tales to Terrify. Her poetry has been nominated for the Rhysling Award.