Blind Allie 4:3

“You’re sure? Okay, thanks.”

Lacking entrails, Allie digested the results from the ichthyologist as best she could. She was part Atlantic salmon. But the news of her ancestry paled in comparison to the ichthyologist’s other observation. Tissue- and organ-less above the waist, Allie had no pituitary gland, so any sensation she might have been experiencing in the inguinal area during sleep, in the ichthyologist’s estimation, had nothing to do with ovulation. Instead, it was likely symptomatic of something else and potentially fatal. He urged her to have her gonads removed.

Unlike the ichthyologist, Allie’s priest viewed her situation differently. How does science explain the fact, he asked her pointedly, that she and other skeletons could walk, talk, eat, pray, love, swim, and do all other sorts of things without the nerves, muscles, heart, brain, and all the other vital organs and tissues that scientists have insisted for ages were essential for life? Faith alone, he counter-insisted, sustained them in the afterlife. Perhaps the sensation in her inguinal area was God telling her that the time had come for her to spawn (No. 1). She was part Atlantic salmon, after all. Who was she to ignore his plan?