Kid Stuff

On the eve of his wedding a man alone in his apartment encounters two sentient, mirrorlike alien spheres that telepathically experiment on him, stripping his clothes, altering limbs and senses, and debating anatomical design as if practicing modifications. They add and remove body parts, changing symmetry and adding appendages while he experiences paralysis and terror; a third, maternal alien intervenes and orders them to restore his original form. The story examines loss of bodily autonomy, the unsettling comedy of treating a person as a design exercise, and the narrator's shock as intimate plans and personal identity are destabilized by inexplicable external forces.