I remember my first time reading a Travis story. It took me on a rollercoaster ride of emotions, and while it's hard to accurately describe my feelings in words, I guess I can at least commend this man for his dedication if nothing else. I can't possibly match his amazing writing talent, but I felt inspired to write my own story about Arthur's genitals being maimed. It's not going to make sense and it will destroy your soul, so here is my warning. I don't own Arthur, because if I did this story would be canon.
Usually, the sunlight streaming in through his bedroom window would awaken Arthur Read before his alarm clock did. But this was such a somber day that even the sun was too distraught to come out of its hiding spot behind thick grey clouds. It was Arthur's eighteenth birthday, the day when he would finally ascend to manhood. In our world, this is typically seen as an achievement of pride, to reach adulthood and finally be allowed to live a life of independence. But in the world of anthropomorphic animals, it is an occasion to dread.
Roused from his slumber by the monotonous beeping, Arthur groaned and rolled over in his bed to hit the snooze button on his alarm clock. Though he was awake now, he was in no hurry to escape the security of his bedsheets and blanket. Soon that space between his thighs would feel significantly emptier. Arthur fondled his ballsack and suppressed the overwhelming urge to break down sobbing, which would've been most undignified. This might be the last time he ever has to worry about accidentally crushing them, or his evil sister kicking them.
He reluctantly sat up and groped at his nightstand for his glasses. There was no running from the inevitable. It had already happened to some of his classmates who had turned eighteen before him, and it would happen to the rest as well. Arthur picked a clean set of clothes out of his dresser and stepped out into the hallway in his pajamas. On his way to the bathroom, D.W. peeked out of her room to sneer at him.
"Today's the day you get snipped, you know," she said in a sadistic, amused tone. Arthur froze with his hand already on the doorknob before taking in a sharp breath. He decided that he had enough going on in his life and didn't need her commentary. If he was going to forfeit a key part of his male anatomy that day, he may as well unleash some of his anger at the cruel bitch who had tormented him every day since her birth.
"Go eat a dick, you stupid cunt," he stated before shutting the bathroom door behind him. He quickly entered the shower and turned the water up to its highest intensity so he didn't have to hear D.W.'s shrill cries to their parents about how he said a swear word to her. As much as he yearned to stay in the shower until the end of time, Arthur shut off the water after thoroughly washing himself. He stepped out to stand in front of the fogged up mirror, giving his naked body one last stare before drying it with a towel and clothing himself.
Arthur emerged from the warm, steamy bathroom only to be greeted by the cold corridor. Like an infant leaving the womb, he felt an urge to retreat back into his comfort zone. And much like the infant, Arthur had no other choice but to face the harsh and ugly reality of the outside world. He briefly stopped by his room to deposit his sweat-soaked pajamas in the hamper, then trudged down the stairs with utmost reluctance. He entered the kitchen with the spirit of a mourner at a funeral, which certainly caught the attention of his parents. David and Jane shared a tense and tight-lipped look before resuming their normal morning routines. Despite what an outsider would think, neither one of them was ecstatic about mutilating their eldest child's genitals. But their cowardice of standing up to their society's new traditions overpowered their aversion to castrating their son.
"I made my world-renowned waffles this morning, since it's my day off from work," David broke the silence and set a plate on the table in front of Arthur. The stack of waffles was a pleasing, uniform shade of golden brown, having been cooked to perfection. But as titillating as the breakfast looked, it couldn't distract Arthur from his thoughts about the inhumane act that would be forced upon his unconsenting body.
"Cool," was the teenaged aardvark's cold response. His mother and father watched in surprise while he apathetically dissected the waffles with his fork after drowning them in maple syrup. They were fully aware that he had cursed at his younger sister earlier, too, but they felt too much pity for him to scold him that day. Not another word was spoken at breakfast, and the three of them went their separate ways once they were finished eating.
When Arthur went upstairs presumably to brush his teeth, Jane pulled David aside to the living room with urgency.
"This is insane, what they're making us do to our children," the aardvark woman blurted out in a hushed voice. The acknowledgement of what they were about to do painted a most sorrowful expression on her face, one that was mirrored by David's face as well.
"God Jane, I know. The worst part is that we have no choice but to do it, or else we will be excommunicated from the rest of society," he replied, perhaps a little too aggressively. He grabbed his wife's wrist tenderly and held her hand. "It's not going to be easy, but he'll be... fine. I mean, the Barnes family castrated their son last year and he seems to have recovered pretty well." This only slightly calmed Jane down.
"Maybe, but Binky is a bigger, stronger boy and he could probably handle the physical trauma better. You know how Arthur is, he's always been so fragile," Jane said quietly, her worried gaze fixed on the floor. The two parents shared a moment of silence, which was only broken when David let out a heavy sigh. The truth was that while they were both afraid for their son's well-being and had lost many hours of sleep over the matter, the power to choose whether the procedure would happen or not was out of their hands.
"We'll get through it somehow."
It was ten o'clock and the sky had only grown darker with thick clouds, a sure omen of an oncoming weather event. For that reason the Reads hurried with setting up the ritualistic altar in their front yard. They needed to complete the procedure before it began to rain. Arthur stood in the doorway and gazed up at the sky, secretly hoping that the heavens would open up with a downpour and delay his public castration, to buy some more time that he could spend with his gonads before they were liberated from his groin. But the universe ignored his pleas like it always did and soon enough his life began to rot away into a twisted hell on earth.
A few people walking down the street gave curious looks at the cross-shaped wooden table with leather retraints in front of the Read household. Some of the passersby went back to their own homes and came back with foldable chairs so they could watch the ritual take place from a comfortable seated position. Arthur had to make a conscious effort not to scowl at the sight of these sick individuals who intended to exploit his suffering for their own amusement and pleasure.
"Arthur," his mother's voice caught his ears. The young aardvark clenched his teeth as he heeded her request for him to come to her. The closer he got to the altar, the heavier his legs felt. Every fiber of his being was advising him to scream 'fuck it' and run away right then and there, away from his hometown and more importantly, away from the evil that had taken hold of Elwood City. But in his heart, he knew it would be a futile attempt. He would be caught before he could even flee that street, what with all of the spectators, and be neutered in an even more shameful way.
Arthur let go of the breath he didn't even realize he had been holding and numbly listened to his father's in-depth explanation of the whole procedure. If it was going to happen no matter what he did, perhaps it was smarter to let his loving parents do it the easy way than to fight it and complicate things. He gave one last weak nod before stripping away all of his garments like his father instructed him, ignoring the fact that Muffy had pulled up in her limousine to join the crowd of people watching him. Surprisingly Buster was also in the audience and when their eyes met, the teenaged rabbit gave him an awkward thumbs up. Arthur hoped that his intention was to support his friend during a dark time and not to get joy out of seeing the butchering of his friend's genitals. The possibility that Buster might've also been swallowed up by the dark depravity of the world was too difficult to digest.
D.W. came out of the house with a satisfied smirk on her round face, followed by Kate. The youngest Read child was struggling to carry a large, pink lawn chair at her tyrannical sister's command. She set the chair down on the grass, but this did not please her cruel sibling.
"No!" the older girl snapped and stomped her foot with dissatisfaction. "Kate, I told you I want the perfect view. Move it to the left." Arthur laid down on the wooden table and positioned his arms out straight into a perfect t-pose, listening to D.W. berating Kate. "No, you moved it too far now! Move it a little more to the right!"
"Quiet, D.W.," David sternly reprimanded his unruly middle child as he pulled the ceremonial white robe over his head and pushed his arms through the sleeves. Jane took on the task of fastening the leather straps to secure Arthur's wrists and ankles to the altar, making it impossible for him to escape once the procedure began. A cold breeze, similar to the ones that swept the earth before a rainstorm, passed over the aardvark boy's body to remind him of his undressed state. Dozens of pairs of eyes were focused on him with anticipation. But Arthur's fear of being gelded vastly overshadowed any embarrassment he may have felt.
After pulling the pointy white hood over his head and face, David picked up the instrument of castration, which was an old pair of kitchen scissors that he used to cut meat with. Father and son exchanged looks, one apologetic and the other frightened beyond words.
"Ha ha, you're getting your balls chopped off!" D.W.'s sudden loud taunts broke the serious, dour atmosphere that had been building in the front yard of the Read house.
"D.W., this will happen to you, too, you know. When you turn eighteen, we'll have to remove your reproductive organs just like we're about to do to your brother," the patriarch of the Read family explained coldly and made a snipping gesture with the scissors for additional emphasis. This turned out to be a very effective way to silence the bratty girl, since from that point onwards she sat with her lips sealed for the rest of the procedure. David returned to the task at hand and firmly pinched Arthur's scrotum where it met the skin near his taint. He needed to cut right at the base and completely sever the entirety of the pouch, along with the testicles within.
Arthur squirmed, and the horror really began to set in for him. Having his scrotum be seized was unpleasant enough and a sharp tool cutting into it was bound to hurt infinitely more. His heartbeat and breaths sped up as his father started lowering the rusted blades towards his unprotected nether regions.
"You're not using anything to numb me first?" he managed to speak up in a panicked voice. Maybe David had just forgotten to inject the anesthetic, and was about to smack his forehead and thank Arthur for reminding him about that crucial step. Maybe he'd at least be spared from the unimaginably high levels of pain that he'd feel from having his most sensitive body parts removed, even if he's still be losing them.
But as misfortune would have it, Arthur wouldn't be given any of these privileges. David paused with the scissors a few centimeters away from his son's crotch. There were some visible flashes of guilt in his own eyes, although he refrained from directly meeting Arthur's desperate ones. It was just too painful, all of it.
"No, there is no numbing for this," David began through a strained wince, and continued despite Arthur's frantic cries and attempts at breaking out of his restraints. "It has something to do with the pain, and how the gods use it to complete your transformation into a mature adult. Anesthetics would defeat the main purpose of the ritual. Fuck, Arthur, I'm so sorry." The father of three vowed to never use profanity around his children, but he had to break that vow if he wanted to communicate just how horrible he felt about doing this to his teenaged boy.
The people on the street watched on with great interest in the drama. Most castrations involved a bit of hysterical behavior from the individual being operated on, but usually they already knew beforehand that there would be no numbing agents. Seeing Arthur's raw, horrified reaction to the news was something the audience was really interested in. A few of them even began to pleasure themselves proudly and loudly.
Arthur was further disturbed when he spotted his old teacher, Mr. Ratburn, among the sick masturbators. Noticing that his son was distracted by the traumatic sight of the homosexual scholarly rat slapping his salami, David took advantage of the moment and quickly positioned the scissor blades.
Then he snipped.
For what felt like an eternity, Arthur screamed. He screamed until his throat bled and he temporarily deafened himself, writhing against the wooden cross-shaped table. The excruciating agony managed to be much, much worse than he would have expected it to be, and the pain was only confounded by the fact that he had no time to physically brace himself. One second he was looking at the people in the street and the next, he was a eunuch. Convulsing as he wailed, the boy tried to cross his legs in some vain attempt to ease the ungodly pain. It took a few minutes for his body to go into shock and give him some temporary relief in the form of unconsciousness.
Jane had been standing close by, prepared to deal with the aftermath of the castration. While she packed the bleeding, gaping wound in her son's mutilated genitals with cotton soaked in an antiseptic, David placed a comforting hand on her shoulder.
"See, I told you he'd make it," he told her. Arthur's dog, Pal, had awakened from his nap next to the couch and waddled outside as quickly as he could at his old age. He yipped and circled the table upon which his owner's prone body was lying, a gesture that the Reads found endearing. Arthur's scrotum and testicles were beginning to get really sticky and warm in his left hand, so the Read patriarch offered them to Pal. "Here, boy! Want a treat?" With no hesitation, Pal snatched the severed ballsack from David's hand and began to scarf it down, thoroughly chewing it.
"But we can't be so sure that he'll continue to live," Jane fretted over her son's unconscious body. She checked his wrist for a pulse and fortunately found it, although it was weak enough to cause concern.
"Well, we still need to stitch that up, obviously," David replied, wiping his bloody hand on his white robe. He took the hood off of his head and allowed it to fall against his back. "But we'll have to be quick. It's generally frowned upon for the adult relatives of a new eunuch to be absent from the Naked Dance." After herding a stunned D.W., catatonic Kate, and grateful Pal back into the house, David and Jane glanced back at the street.
All spectators at or above the age of eighteen were fully nude in the streets, taking part in the mass orgy. Engaging in frenzied sexual activity after watching someone be unmanned was an important part of their worship. Buster's mother was taking two men at the same time, Nigel Ratburn was sodomizing Mr. Molina, the Brain's parents were fornicating on the road, and many other people who the Reads didn't know personally were also publicly participating in lewd acts. Every so often a car would pull up and its confused driver would emerge, only to discover the nature of the occasion and join in. It was a truly repulsive yet inviting display, one that the Reads were eager to take part in.
"Yes, we should stitch his wound immediately or else we might miss out on the action," Jane finally caved and assisted her husband with releasing their son from his restraints and dragging him into the house.
Meanwhile, the scandalous behavior continued even after the crux of the people's celebration(Arthur, of course) had been taken out of their sight. The rhythm of sweaty bodies slapping against each other produced a steady beat, and the chorus of moans came together with this rhythm to create a transcendental melody.
And the best part was that they would have many opportunities to do it all over again. There were countless other children in Elwood City who were either on the very cusp of adulthood or only a few years away from reaching it. The future was ripe with opportunities to partake in the Naked Dance many more times, with numerous ways to honor the gods. In exactly thirteen days, there would be another ritual being performed on a budding adult, specifically an anthropomorphic, female chimpanzee. By then, Arthur would have healed in time for the Naked Dance following the removal of Francine's reproductive organs, and so the circle would be complete.
"Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away."
-Adolf Hitler