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His name was Abel Webber, and it was said that his mother birthed him
through her mouth on a November morning. This Abel believed because
his father told him so when he was still very young, told him that the
doctor said something he didn't understand about ectopic pregnancies,
tainted waters, and her very peculiar mouth, which Abel had inherited.
His jaws clicked like a ratchet and he hadn't any lips to speak of,
just a gash that split open his face and exposed his molars to the
moonlight at the slightest grin.
 That his mother had just vomited him forth into the world then quickly
left it behind drove Abel mad at times, and he would set about the
house just swallowing things. Flashlights, clocks and linens.
Abel was nearly twenty before he heard of a man from Lubbock who
attempted the world record for eating an El Dorado piece by piece.
Though the man was fatally unsuccessful, Abel realized there was a
living to be made in swallowing things and set out on his calling.
He soon found this line of work crowded, as there were hundreds of
people who could put large and dangerous things in their mouths.
Things he never thought of, like rattlers and cacti, toasters and
bicycle chains.
Abel decided instead to follow a traveling folk festival. One day he
got it in his head to drink paint when no one was looking. Then he
stood before a crowd and presented to them a white T-shirt. This he
bundled up to the size of a dinner roll, swallowed, then delicately
regurgitated. The shirt, unfurled, boasted designs more intricate than
stained-glass spider webs. Many people applauded, but festival
managers expressed their concerns: The act was not suitable and the
T-shirts would never sell.
Confidence unshaken, Abel repeated the performance at carnivals,
rodeos and flea markets. Though he never sold anything, he was
arrested several times for not having the proper permits. During one
of these arrests, police informed him that someone in his hometown was
looking for him. His father recently died, they told him. And in an
uncommon gesture of kindness, they bought him a bus ticket home.
It was an open-casket funeral, though his father was too large for the
box. His chin was pressed down on his chest. Halfway through the
service, his arm slipped out and dangled, swinging slightly for the
next few minutes. Abel stared at the watch on his father's wrist until
a kind of hypnotic fit overpowered him. He stood and approached the
coffin, then knelt beside it. He trembled with heaving sobs, and the
congregation allowed him the space to pray out his grief. It wasn't
until after the final hymn that they discovered he'd tried to swallow
his father's arm, and choked to death on his elbow.
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