Story Sent in by Carmela:

Don, a guy I was dating, was moving out of his apartment, and when I asked him if I could help him with the move, he took me up on it. He wasn't going far, just across town to a place closer to where he worked.

As I was piling up the clothes from his closet, I came upon an open bin with several white paper bags inside. One of them had a girl's name written on it, in black ink. Then, I noticed that all of them had girls' names written on them, all in black or blue ink. What was in the bags was none of my business, but I was definitely curious. The bin itself was light, and the bags moved around easily, making me think that whatever was in the bags wasn't at all heavy.

He came into the room not long afterward, didn't seem to notice the bag-filled bin, sorted through some clothes, and then we took a break for lunch.

"So, you found my special bin," he said.

"The one with the bags? Yeah. What's the story with that?"

He laughed and said, "Oh, they just have hair and nails and swabs of... this and that from the girls I've dated."

My appetite fled. "This and... that?"

He laughed, "Oh, it's not a big deal. Lots of guys do it, they just don't talk about it. Mostly hair. And some tissues."

"Oh, God..." I said.

He giggled like a madman. "Not like body organ tissues. Like Kleenex. Nothing gross."

"Why did you keep tissues?"

He replied, "Oh, come on. You don't keep keepsakes of your exes? Some guys are really insane about it. They keep larger body parts. In bags. In freezers. Or in underground cellars, in coolers, packed with sand. I could be worse. Much worse. I just keep hair and nails and a few clumps of toilet paper."

I stood up, feeling a bit woozy. "I need to go."

He stood up, too. "What the hell? I thought you were going to help me."

"Nobody can help you," I said, then grabbed my stuff and left before he could "collect" anything of mine.

He wrote me a short message in which he berated me for hypocrisy and intolerance. Small price to pay for escaping from his place with all my pieces intact.

Posted in: Stories,Written by a Girl