A Man’s World

by Josh Maday

Sand, everywhere. A couple hundred yards away, Rod saw a huge cement slab, about a mile square, which seemed to float on the endless powdered sea. Nothing moved in or around a silent huddle of corrugated buildings.

Pale blue lightning cracked the sky open and an aircraft spewed forth and landed on the worn platform. One of the buildings opened. Teams of men scrambled in the doorway until they pulled the craft inside and lowered the door before Rod could get their attention.

He had no idea where he was or if they were hostile, but he knew he would die out in this desert before too long, so he began wading through the hot sand toward the concrete island. After a few steps the sand exploded all around him. He could not breathe or keep his eyes open in the gritty fallout and soon fell to the ground.

* * *

Caged yellow light bulbs struggled to illuminate the black walls and ceiling of the room in which he lay. Someone stepped away from the wall and into the jaundiced haze, studying Rod with an appraising eye.

“How do you feel?” the man asked. The cot creaked as Rod moved about, checking himself for wounds, discovering only his great thirst. The man handed him a canteen and said, “You’re lucky you were so close to base. Another hundred yards and they would have clipped you.”

It was a makeshift base, Rod found out. The doctor showed him around the place. They came to a dust-caked window and the doctor stopped to peer out silently, almost mournfully, as aircraft dropped from bright crackling fissures in the atmosphere. Rod watched them land on the pavement worn and shiny like city sidewalks from so much traffic. Crews of men reeled the planes into the hangar with cords.

“Why won’t they go outside?” Rod asked, jerking the doctor from his daydream.

“Watch,” he said, and pointed out to the sandy sea with its slow rolling waves rippling at the speed of evolution. A few seconds later, as more planes took off, huge black creatures like beetles or scarabs the size of men shot from the sand with battering wings and set off after the planes, chasing them higher into the atmosphere.

Rod shivered.

“Those,” the doctor said, “are vicious creatures. They live in the sand, attacking any man who goes outside, grabbing and clawing with pincers attached to their legs and faces. They would have killed you if one of our pilots hadn’t snatched you up on his way back in. He paid dearly.”

“Is he okay?”

“Yes, but he was wounded.”

Rod asked to meet this pilot in order to thank him.

* * *

Some men hurried about the hangar while others wandered aimlessly or sat around and played cards. Hardly anyone spoke. Machine parts lay scattered and piled everywhere. A man limped up and began talking to the doctor. “Doc, it still hurts.” His hands shielded the bump of his bandaged crotch.

Rod noticed that all the men wore pants with chewed crotches that had been patched repeatedly like a child’s favorite teddy bear. The doctor told the man to change the dressing and suck it up because they were losing good pilots every day.

The man looked at Rod’s pants and spoke to the doctor, “He new?” Then he asked Rod if he could fly.

Before he could answer, another fleet was hauled inside. Wounded and screaming men were carried over, bleeding from their penises. The doctor leapt into action, pulling down trousers and applying pressure, giving orders. Rod stood by, horrified, unable to breathe or move until he vomited and was pushed out of the way.

The doctor screamed profanities as he worked to quilt the over-circumcised men back together.

* * *

Later, the doctor found Rod sitting on the edge of the cot, wrapped in a blanket.

“I might as well just tell you,” the doctor said and shut the door. “As it turns out, the rest of the universe is female. Males only exist on Earth. And now that we’re unnecessary to sustain the species, we’ve been evicted a few at a time so no one gets suspicious and decides to start a war, which seems to be the only thing we’re really good at. It is believed that we’ve given every good thing we had to give.”

“What the hell is this place?” Rod asked.

“You can only wish this was hell,” Doc said. A desperate smile slid over his teeth. “There is hell, and then there’s this place, which, as ridiculous as it sounds, is something of a penal colony.”

Rod rolled his eyes.

“Exactly. This is pretty much an internment camp devoid of anything beautiful, with a plentiful and formidable enemy against which to fight. This junk planet was chosen as the perfect home for human males. Even though we’ve got all those ships, we cannot escape the atmosphere, no matter how hard we try.”

Rod’s eyes narrowed as his face twisted. His throat tightened, his mouth moved, but he could not translate the feelings into words.

Doc continued, “Like I told you, those things are vicious. Especially if you have a penis. Out here it’s considered some sort of mutation, an unnecessary part of the equation. We’ve found that castration doesn’t work, they’re into penectomy. They go for the head. Pinch it right off. And not cleanly, either. They seem to enjoy mutilation. They’re a dull incarnation of Okham’s Razor.”

Rod sat for a bit, looking over his thoughts. He cleared his throat. “Yeah, but what about—” he nodded, flicked his eyes, pointed, all but touched or named his member, as though doing so would mark it for destruction.

“It’s a pain you can’t imagine, my friend, but eventually you’ll learn to live without it. I think that may be our only hope of escaping this place.”