My Balls Are Killing Me

Words Chris Robinson,
Pictures Andreas Hykade

Why are you frightened can’t you see that it’s you?
That ain’t no ghost it’s a reflection of you

“Ghosts”, Paul Weller (The Jam)

Chapter 1 – Ball One

Darkness

Sliced light collapses.

Sliced light, larger, a flicker, then darkness.

Young Mr. Pimp sits on a brown leather lazy boy chair. His hand crawls down inside his pants. Suddenly, the back of the chair collapses behind him and water begins to swallow the chair. Floating on the lazy boy chair along tall waves of the water, a trident suddenly emerges from the depths of the sea followed by a loud roaring COP GIANT wearing a police hat and uniform. The COP GIANT roars and rages “DON’T YOU EVER TOUCH YOUR SELF!” The boy, terrified, cowers deeply into the chair, shutting his eyes and covering his ears, trying to make himself as small as possible. 

Darkness

Sliced light collapses.

Sliced light, larger, flickers, more voices/noises

Darkness

A graveyard. Mr. Pimp, now an adult, floats past various gravestones with the names “Wang” “Ball” and “Hung” until he pauses in front of a stone that reads “CARDINAL BARRY”. Mr. Pimp pauses for a moment then lowers his head.

Darkness

Sliced light collapses.

Sliced light, larger, more flickers, more voices/noises

Darkness

Mr. Pimp’s hand examines his testicle. A lump. He screams in pain while trying to squeeze the lump away.

Darkness

Sliced light collapses. 

Sliced light, larger, flickers, more voices/noises

Darkness

The hand of a doctor examines the testicle. 

“I’m somewhat concerned” says the voice.

Darkness

Sliced light collapses.

Sliced light flickers. 

Sound of Television. We see stars in the sky. We hear the sounds of bells and a collage of voices… 

“Help him” 

“Good guy”

 “Somethings wrong with Daddy.” 

“Looks like we’ll have to send someone down.”  

Darkness

An operating room. Doctors and nurses gathered around someone. An instrument slices into an area just above the right side of the patient’s groin. Another instrument slides into the thin opening and after some time carefully pulls out a testicle. The testicle is bloodied and damaged. A hand lifts up the now liberated ball. At that moment, the ball takes on a cartoonish, human-like shape. The testicle examines herself for a moment and tries to clean up her appearance Then some broken wings appear on her back. She floats over to Mr. Pimp’s head and nudges him. 

“Hey, it’s time to wake up.” 

After a few failed attempts, Mr. Pimp finally opens his eyes.

“Who the fuck are you?”

“I’m your balls…uh…no… sorry, I’m your ball, the right one.

“Fruck off!”, Mr. Pimp slurs.

“I’m came to help you.”

“What? Like a guardian angel?

“Something like that, but you can call me Athena.”

“Wait… “says Mr. Pimp still groggy, “so…. my dead testicle is my protector?  Aren’t you a bit late? I probably already have cancer. Why didn’t you come earlier?”

“Oh…don’t bother about that. The cancer won’t kill you. Consider this a crossroads, a wakeup call. You see, you really haven’t been living an honest life and I’m here to help you.

“What do you mean ‘honest life’?”

“Well… I know this is a bad pun…but you’ve never had any balls. You’ve just been drifting through life, like a ghost. You’ve had good intentions, but…. well….  you’ve always been a bit of a coward. You like the idea of things, you know, like family, love, marriage, friendship, but when you get those things, you don’t seem to know how to handle them. Life requires some effort, sacrifice, some investment, but we both know you’ve cowered away from that. Remember that first time you had sex? That kinda sums it all up.”

“You mean with Helen, that figure skater? Come on… I was like 15. Ha… you know… we actually used to keep count of how many blow jobs she gave me.”

“Yeah… okay… her…but that first time you slept with her, that sort of sums up your life, don’t you think? After you entered her, you just laid there flat atop her, as though you were waiting for further instructions. But that’s not how it works. You can’t just stick your dick in and wait for the game to start… Life’s a bit like a pinball machine. You have to be alert and keep play those sticks… knowing when to hit the ball. You have to make an effort to keep the ball going. You’ve lived your entire life in this same holding pattern, always waiting to be guided, to have someone take your hand and walk you down a path. You’ve always been afraid of life.”

“How do you know all this?”  He shakes his head as though he’s trying to wake himself up.  “I must be nuts. I am a conversation with my dead testicle?” He starts laughing to himself.

“I’ve been with you your whole life,” says Athena

“But, why are you just appearing now?”

“Don’t you get it? Testicular cancer. Balls. Courage.

“This is about cancer not courage,” he snaps back.

“Oh, sure, they’ll say it was connected to that laptop you had on your groin for hours and hours everyday… or genetics or environment, but the cancer came from a lifetime of living an unhappy, anxious and dishonest life. You rushed to make decisions about jobs and relationships and then quickly regretted them, but by then you were in so balls deep that you felt trapped and didn’t want to hurt people. Only you ended up hurting so many more people, including yourself.”

“So Cancer is my karma?”

“You can call it that or you could see it as a wake-up call.”

“Well, so how are you going to fix things?

“Me? No, I’m not going to fix anything. That’s on you. I’m more of a sidekick, a testicular therapist if you will.”

“Oh God…  sidekicks… you mean another blabbering, patronizing Jiminy Cricket Shakespeare fool correcting and commenting on everything? No thanks.”

“Hey, you made me. I’m here because you created me.  Anyway, you better rest now. Things are going to get very dark for a while.”

Athena vanishes, as does the light.