KATIE GEER is a new fiction writer based in the Pacific Northwest who writes about female ambition, sports, and how our bodies thrive or suffer at this intersection. Her work has been published in The Write Launch.

Breathe in. Smell the grass. Eye the goalkeeper twitching in anticipation. Clayton Kelly’s heart rate steadies as he steps back from the ball. The crowd’s roar recedes. Deep breath. Only this. Then he advances, and in the sliver of a second when the thought to kick becomes the action in his leg, Clayton knows he will miss.

Despite his error, Tytan FC eke out a win to advance to the playoffs. Clayton wants to disappear, but the press is waiting: Did you miss that goal because of the new Soleus 6G? Is it performing worse than the last generation?

He’s too drained to reply. Shouldn’t have missed that penalty kick. Moron. It’s his third missed goal in as many matches. The team, and the press, are starting to notice.

Clayton feels his left calf flexing as he retreats toward the locker room. Already the new pieces are knitting together with the old muscle. Faster, he notices, than the second-generation Femoris he got in his hamstring last year. It’s not why he missed, but he’s not admitting that to a journalist.

His teammate Marcus catches up to him and throws a sweaty arm around his shoulders.

“You have to talk to reporters, man. Can’t you at least smile? You need them to like you.”

“Idiots.”

“Those idiots funded that calf though, amiright?”

Marcus knows he’s right. He grins and lifts his shirt. “Good thing I distracted them with these beauties.”

A surgery scar ripples down his stomach. Like the scars etched on Clayton’s body, it’s tinted an inky black. Marcus had his accentuated with a mosaic of tattoos across his abdomen. Clayton’s the only player under thirty who hasn’t embellished his scars, earning him the nickname “Slate.”

As in blank.

The locker room is buzzing from the victory. Three defenders roar the fight song, and a bottle of champagne is handed from cubby to cubby. Clayton avoids eye contact and retreats to change out of his kit. Sweat has settled deep in the jersey’s threads. He’ll miss the smell after it’s been cleaned and returned to his cubby. Right now, it smells like home.

Everyone settles into their usual post-match rituals. A midfielder flexes at his reflection in the mirror. The two center backs, both old-timers, are already showered and immersed in their phones. The goalkeeper sticks his nose deep into a glove and inhales before stuffing it in a bag.

Black scars stripe down spines, curl over shoulders, wrap around legs, lattice arms, and whorl across abdomens. The lads call them “trips to the body shop” and everyone on the team has had a visit. Older players cover them with long sleeves and pants, while young guys like Marcus flash their modifications with pride.

The rabble quiets when Coach Porter, “Old Growth” as the team calls him, walks in. His hairline retreats each season, and his body is unmarred. He claims he was already too far gone by the time they started offering new parts. But he knows soccer, has stuck with it like a faithful husband—watching it age and change, memorizing its edges and tricks. There’s not a man on Tytan who would cross him.

Porter grunts as he sits to join Clayton. When he speaks, he keeps his voice private.

“It’s not looking great out there.”

“I know.” Clayton can’t look at his coach.

“You’re one hell of an attacker—you know that—so I’m giving you time to figure this out.” At Clayton’s hopeful look, Porter adds. “But you’re not starting in the next match. We can’t afford more mistakes, not in the playoffs.”

Clayton’s stomach drops. The last player who dropped from the starting lineup got traded down into a minor league team within months. Nobody talks about him anymore.

It’s why Clayton has his lines ready.

“I think—no, I’m sure. It’s my quad.” He stammers through the lie. “It’s firing wrong.”

Porter is quiet, and Clayton worries his coach doesn’t believe him.

But then he says: “Fair enough. I’ll ring the shop. But a little more practice wouldn’t kill you either.”
Porter leaves, and Clayton waits until the locker room empties. Then he pulls his cleats back on—still tied—and grabs a bag of balls. He’d never tell Porter, but he’s been practicing for weeks.

The stadium lights are still on over the practice pitch. Perfect. He sets a ball on the 18-yard line and closes his eyes to bask in the silence.

Out here, the world is simpler than everyone makes it out to be. It only needs to be this: chalked lines, a net, a ball, and his body. In nearly three decades of life, Clayton has yet to find anything that matters more.

Each foot arches in its cleat. His calves clench in response, then his quads, and finally his glutes. His body is a clock that needs to keep perfect time. As he moves he listens for arrhythmic ticks.
Just the right leg. Again.

He shakes it, though he knows the movement won’t fix anything. Then he begins to shoot.

Clayton doesn’t remember learning to kick a ball. It might be more natural than speech, and he gets to wear this kit and be on this pitch tonight because he’s damn good at it. When Clayton led the league in goals last season, his dad wept. It meant financial freedom, he’d said. To Clayton it simply meant he got to keep playing.

Tonight, he misses every other shot he takes. Errant balls sail wide and high, skittering into the darkness beyond the goal, just like during the match. He kicks the ground to punish his body for its persistent failure.

His phone interrupts him from the sideline. He ignores it until it rings a second time. Clayton checks it, swears with passion, and then jogs to collect the balls. He’s late to a dinner date.


Chelsea is already seated, and she frowns when she sees him.

“Is this how you dress on actual dates? No wonder you’re single.”

Clayton has rescheduled sushi with his sister twice, using practice or dates as excuses. Of course, Chelsea knows he’s lying. He hasn’t had a date in years because as she likes to say, he’s brilliant at soccer and brilliantly bad at people.

They hug, and he sits down.

“I know you sucked tonight, but it’s a dick move to not salute me, Clay. What happened?”

“It’s fine.”

“Bullshit. I’m not a reporter, don’t stonewall me.”

A waiter sweeps by with a platter of rolls. Clayton reaches for one, but the chopsticks fumble in his grip. Shit. Chelsea is looking at the scar visible from his right shirt sleeve.

“Is your latest upgrade hurting? I heard the newer ones are more painful.”

Clayton got his first part during his rookie season: a Gluteus, fourth-generation. Chelsea is right—the pain was awful. Mind-shattering pain. Afterwards, the technician told him he’d wept and begged them to stop, but it was too late. The installation had been paid for by the team owner and the new muscle was, the technician reported proudly, adapting on schedule.

The next week, Clayton scored a hat trick—three goals—and won match MVP. A veteran defender doused him in champagne afterward, and as the team cheered, he pulled Clayton close to whisper: pain is the price we pay to keep playing. Next season, when Clayton tore a ligament in his arm, he didn’t hesitate to ask for a Radialis. He blacked out in the operating room.

Clayton doesn’t answer his sister. He adjusts the chopsticks and pulls three rolls onto his plate. But she is still squinting at him.

“Why are you using your left hand? You’re right-handed.”

He prepares to lie, but he falters when he finally meets her eye. Chelsea, who taught him how to kick. Who rubbed salve on his turf burns, who drove him to tryouts, who wears his number ten jersey at every match.

Clayton decides to tell her about the stroke.


It has been one month. One month of head nods instead of high fives. Signing receipts with a scrawled C instead of writing his name. Leaving his cleats tied because he can’t manage a knot.
One month of missed shots on goal.

He hadn’t known what it was when it happened. He avoids thinking about it, but the memory lives in his body: a prickling down his arm, suddenly useless fingers, a thick tongue that wouldn’t move.

The internet said it was a stroke, but it made no sense. It’d been a good season without injury. He was in better shape than 99% of the population. His brain had worked, until it hadn’t.

His arm recovered, some. His speech, enough. His leg remained a betrayal.

His foot shouldn’t be the problem—after all, it’s still organic. But his stupid brain fights him, blocking every signal to his right side. He’s running out of options.

Teams will replace everything, from tiny ear bones to entire back muscles, but two organs are off-limits: the head and the heart. Early on, a few radical doctors claimed it could be done, but the country wasn’t ready morally, and politicians stepped in with zeal: they claimed these organs were irreplaceable parts of a human’s soul.

Clayton remembers his mother’s hand-drawn protest sign: Keep your hands off my heart.

“Will Porter let you finish the season at least?” Chelsea says.

His head snaps up. “I haven’t told him. Or anyone.”

“Oh my God.” Her voice rises. “You think you can keep playing. Clay, you need to see a doctor.”

“Keep your voice down.”

Chelsea rolls her eyes, but her next words are softer. “This is serious. It’s your mind.”

He knows what those words would mean to most people. But his brain has never been the muscle he cared about honing. It’s always been the engine that moves his body forward, backward, toward the ball that is his world.

“I’ll play. There’s a way.”

The fingers on his right hand twitch. Chelsea puts her hand gently over them.

“Nobody gets to play forever. There’s a life after all this, and old Clayton will need his wits, don’t you think?”

Chelsea doesn’t get it. He knows what a good life is: it’s fresh-cut grass. It’s the slick of sweat on his skin. It’s the feeling of a tightly laced cleat and a ball’s soft whir as it hits the netting of a goal.


Clayton wakes up screaming after the surgery, his body on fire from a bad reaction to the synthesizing fluid. The technicians are fascinated. They never see issues from body shop veterans. He recovers in the clinic for two extra days, and texts Chelsea so she won’t fret. Every morning, Nurse [       ] brings him breakfast. He recognizes her smile, but he keeps forgetting her name.

Nevertheless, his body accepts the new quad. Clayton flexes his leg, watches the big muscle contract, and prays his lie has fixed him.


Marcus draws a curling pattern on Clayton’s leg to celebrate the new part and slips him a sleeve of top-shelf painkillers—a beloved post-op tradition on the team. It’s the final practice before their first playoff match, and the Tytan men are giddy.

Clayton tugs his tied cleats on, and he chooses to believe. It will work. It will.

During warm-up, he silently talks to his body. Skip, he tells his legs. They skip. Kick, he says. They kick the air, the new quad activating gorgeously under the flexion. It’s a start.

Clayton’s stomach clenches as the ball’s leather reaches his foot. Left, right, left, right, he exists to keep this rhythm alive. The pain in his quad is steady, but ignorable as long as he gets to keep moving.

Left, right.

He dances around a defender, and suddenly there’s only the [       ], its net a holy shade of white.

[       ]? Goal. It’s the goal.

Clayton shakes his head and orders his right foot to shoot. Nothing.

Shoot now! 

His foot glances off the ball. Too soft, all wrong. Clayton storms off the field, despite his team’s cries of concern. He can’t bear to watch the ball dawdle into the goalkeeper’s waiting hands.

He begs the athletic trainer for a new hamstring after practice, but they won’t send him to the shop so soon after the last visit. Porter isn’t in the locker room. Probably avoiding Clayton.

His phone chirps. It’s Chelsea. You can’t ignore me forever. Come over tonight!

Instead, he texts a former teammate Billy. Billy, the keeper who showed up last season with a new shoulder that had not been installed by Tytan. No questions were asked after he blocked every shot on goal. Clayton gets a name and an address.


On the long bus ride, Clayton reckons with the plan he’s set in motion. Black market parts have existed since the first generation of parts debuted in the pro leagues. He was still a kid then, and he watched his idols become gods on the field: Unbreakable. Immortal. Now he’s one of them. He flexes his fingers against the bus seat, watching them curl and extend.

Another four long blocks bring him to the city’s edge, and to Harry’s Pawn Pros. Nobody’s at the counter inside, but he follows a Used Parts sign toward a maroon curtain at the back. Behind the curtain, there’s a tiny space, barely a room. The walls are covered with torn magazine pages, and yellowed versions of the last generation’s stars look down at Clayton: Georgie Dawn, Luis Marquez, the great Peter Phillips. He wonders if his picture is on anyone’s wall, and if anyone will take it down soon.

“What do you want?”

Clayton startles. He hadn’t noticed the scrap of man in front of a TV, his eyes on the screen. He’s wearing a faded Tytan FC hat backward.

“I need… a part.” Clayton says.

“Leg? Arm? Tell me.”

What does Clayton need again? [       ]. He blinks.
 
“A L—Lateralis. At least the fourth generation.”

“And you can pay?”

“Y—yes.”

The man who must be Harry finally turns. If he recognizes the soccer star, he doesn’t show it. Yet his eyes pinball across Clayton’s body with hunger, and Clayton resists the urge to cover himself. Something’s off, but he can’t place it. He wishes someone else were here, another technician or at least a shop cashier. Harry rises and ambles across the room, his inspection completed. He opens the other door, and Clayton sees a pile of limbs. The workshop.

“You coming?” Harry has donned a faded smock and begun to rummage through the parts.

Clayton’s right hand twitches. No other path forward. He steps through the door.

The last thing he hears before passing out is the drill wheezing to life. Pain, he thinks, is the price we pay to keep playing. 


The Lateralis 4G doesn’t make a difference. Clayton can’t make a goal during warmups. Porter won’t look him in the eye as the team files through the tunnel toward the pitch and the cheering crowd. Clayton knows Chelsea will be there waiting for his two-finger salute—it’s their tradition—but he can’t face her. He can’t return her texts until there’s good news to share.

Tytan wins handily, and Marcus scores two goals from Clayton’s former position. In the morning, Clayton decides to get a Gluteus 7G. Harry doesn’t say a word when he vomits during the procedure.

After the Gluteus comes a Tibial 5G. Then a second-generation Achilles and three ankle tendons at once. The pain is expanding inside him. It bullies out memories and facts. It consumes details, like his bank PIN and how to spell his name. After the tendons, Clayton forgets his stop on the bus home and just keeps riding, watching the blur of brake lights until the bus reaches the terminal.

By the quarterfinals, his right leg is completely new. But he is still benched, sidelined with the worst view of the match. He smells his teammates’ effort and listens to the whump of the ball hitting cleats, and all he can do is clap. The new Tibial itches. The whole leg itches, and he fights the urge to scratch it as [       ] scores another goal to take Tytan to the semifinals. He doesn’t even remember who [       ] is, and he doesn’t care.

Clayton lingers on the bench as the team returns to the locker room at halftime. Hidden under his track pants, he can feel the scars writhing. He’s tired of taking the bus. Tired of the sour smell in the workshop, and tired of [       ]. Clayton shakes his head, but can’t get the name.

When he stands to leave, he sees Porter watching him.

“Come out here with me for a minute.” Porter walks onto the field, a ball at his feet. Clayton follows.

“I used to wish I could sleep here.” Porter passes the ball to Clayton. “My first season in the league. I never saw the point in going home. This was the only place that seemed real.”

It feels like years since they spoke. Porter’s words are food and Clayton is starving.

“I know you’re trying to turn the ship around—on and off the field.” Porter’s gaze lingers on Clayton’s leg. “But we’re reaching the point where I can’t explain to the guys with the money why I should keep you on Tytan.”

Clayton sputters. He wills his treacherous mind to form just one sentence. “I’ll do anything to play.”

Porter nods. He must know. He must get it.

“Every Tuesday, after Tytan practice, I drive to Spring Park. There’s usually twenty guys like me, all over sixty and as rusty as old trucks. The soccer is terrible. No one wants to goalkeep, or play defense, and we always argue about offsides. But I’ll tell you what, Clayton. Tuesdays are the highlight of my week.”

Desperation presses on Clayton’s chest. “I don’t understand.”

Porter picks up the ball, walks over, and hands it to Clayton.

“I hope that you will. Someday.”

Clayton closes his eyes, unsure if he’s been handed hope or a sentencing. The words are already slipping through cracks in his mind.


He is outside the pawn shop. The sky is dark, but he can’t read the symbols on his watch. There’s no paper trail of how he got here, but his hand is knocking on the door. There are no [       ] on, but [       ] emerges from the darkness. Clayton doesn’t know what he’s here to replace. He only knows that being here is doing something, and that’s all he has left.

[       ] lets him inside. They face each other in the room-that-is-a-closet under the stars-of-yesteryears. For the first time, Clayton wonders if [       ] used to play.

“Ask me.”

Now [       ] is making eye contact.

“Ask me.” [       ] repeats. Then he peels the Tytan hat off, and Clayton chokes.

A scar crags across his scalp like a jagged bolt of lightning, from the top of one ear to just behind the other. The scar isn’t black like the lines on Clayton’s body. It’s red, misshapen, mottled with tissue and folds. The scar looks like Clayton’s anger written in flesh. It’s what he prayed for in the small hours of the night, but now, facing it, his stomach turns.

Clayton clambers to his feet and runs, tripping, out of the shop into the darkness.


The morning of the semifinals, Clayton can barely get out of [       ]. He doesn’t bother eating, can’t get himself to shower. It doesn’t matter; he won’t sweat today.

An insistent knock at his door. When he answers, Chelsea bursts in.

“You’re not dead. Good.” She punches his chest. “Screw you! You’re ignoring me. I planned to go to the match today, but I couldn’t—oh.”

A mountain of mail his fingers can’t open covers the entry table. In the bathroom, mold blooms on a dining chair that became a shower chair. Silverware litters the floor where he hurled it after failing to feed himself.

Chelsea steps back and presses her hands to her [       ].

“Jesus, Clayton. I can’t believe you’re doing this to us.”

“Us?”

“Me. Us. Your family. You’re just—” She waves her hands, looking for words. “Quitting. You’re letting your brain break.”

“It already broke.”

“Stop. Whatever this is, please stop. You’re killing yourself.”

“I’m fi—”

“No!” She shrieks. “Why do you keep saying that? It’s like the only word you know anymore. You used to talk to me. I miss you. I miss my brother.”

“I’m here. I’m fixing myself.”

Chelsea laughs. “Clayton, you’re so much worse. ” She picks up a fistful of mail, looks at it, sets it down again. “You’re not here.”

Clayton watches as she moves to the apartment’s windows. When she speaks again, her voice is quiet. 
“I keep thinking about that Greek myth—the one about Theseus’ ship. Do you remember that one? His ship lasted for centuries, but to keep it afloat for so long, he had to replace every piece.”

Across the street, Clayton’s neighbors are waking up: cooking breakfast and shrugging on blazers and yawning as they pedal stationary bikes. Soon they’ll head to gray jobs in front of endless screens. Carpetwalkers, all of them.

“Every rope, nail, plank, everything was rebuilt until none of the original boat was left. And for centuries, philosophers debated if it could be the same ship when nothing original remained.”

He’ll die if they put him indoors. People aren’t meant to sit for so long, to talk so much.

[       ]’s eyes are big and wet now. She was just speaking, he realizes. About what?

“Tell me Clayton: do you think it was still the same ship?”

He can’t picture a [       ]. Doesn’t know how to make her stop crying.

“I—I have to get to the match.”

[       ] reaches out and squeezes his right hand so hard that it hurts. The pain clouds his mind, and even after she leaves, he stays by the windows trying to remember her name.


Warmups. Nobody will look at him. Like failure is contagious.

Left, right. Left, right.

[       ], he tells his legs.

No, [       ]. [       ].

Please. [       ].

OK, pass the [       ] to [       ].

Too hard, shit.

His right [       ] snags the laces of the left [       ], and he is [       ], too fast to catch himself.

Turf fills his [       ]. Nobody says a word. Nobody moves to help him.

White spots fill his vision as he gets up and flees. He locks himself in the [       ] and begins to pace. When he reaches the concrete wall, he hits his head against it. Hard. Someone is yelling his name outside the door, but the word makes no sense: Slate. Blank. Nothing.

His [       ] hits the [       ] again. Again. Pain crackles across his vision, but it feels good. His body won’t listen? Fine, he’ll make it hurt.

The pain spiders down his body, through his leg.

Doesn’t matter. Not his, not anymore. [       ] pour down his face.

Who is screaming? Him?

His body collapses, and he is on the [       ] again.

More voices outside. Cheers. A [       ] opening, a surge of clicking sounds he remembers but can’t place. Then the [       ] closes, and there’s silence once more.


A maroon [       ].

The great Peter [       ].

[       ]’s eyes, and a faded logo he thinks he used to love.

The mechanical purr of a [       ] revving up.


Chelsea Kelly can hardly see over the pumping arms of the Tytan crowd. Every fan in the stadium is on their feet for the championship final. When the Tytan starting line emerges from the tunnel, the men in front of her start screaming, either drunk in anticipation or drunk on two-for-one ales. Finally, she stands on her seat for a clearer view.

Marcus Thibauld. Trevor Lindon. The announcer runs through each player’s name and position, pausing after each for applause. Clayton Kelly. The drunk men cheer the loudest after her brother’s name (still a favorite, despite everything), and Chelsea stretches onto her tiptoes, reaching two fingers out in their wave.

But the player who wears number ten, who will score two goals to win the championship, and who will get carried back into the tunnel on teammates’ shoulders, does not wave back. 


  

Volume 15.2  ✧  Summer 25

Katie Geer

Are We Still Ships?

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