The story, something as it was relayed to me by one of my colleagues:
“We were sophomores at the University of Chicago, and prone to ‘urban exploration.’ We’d wander the campus, sneaking in to closed buildings, exploring steam tunnels and the like. We had gotten into one of the old science buildings and were wandering around when we stumbled upon a room full of skeletons and pickled biology samples. The place was great – we poked around for a while, and eventually came across a human fetus floating in a cube filled with formaldehyde. We were transfixed. We stared at it for maybe an hour before deciding we needed to have it. We wrapped it in a jacket, and carefully brought it out of the building and back down to our dorm room.
“We didn’t really know what to do with it, so we stashed it behind the radiator. We named him Irving the Unnerving. We’d take him out regularly, to shock dorm-mates and other visitors. One of his fingers had come unattached and floated around at the top of the cube – we spent whole afternoons observing it. Eventually, however, we had shown Irving to everyone we knew, and his appeal began to wane. We wanted to find Irving a good home, with someone who would appreciate him, and my roommate had a cousin at a different college who we were convinced would love him.
“We decided to ship Irving out, but, this being college, it took us almost a month to actually find a box and packing material. All through that time, we would leave messages for my roommate’s cousin. ‘Irving’s coming,’ we would say. ‘We’re sending you Irving the Unnerving.’ He had no idea what the hell we were talking about, but the mystery got to him. He would leave us messages in response: ‘Send me Irving. I’m dying to meet him.’
“Eventually, we said our goodbyes, packed Irving up, and UPS’ed him out. ‘Irving is finally on his way,’ we told the cousin. ‘Get ready for Irving.’ A few days later, the cousin was notified about having received a UPS package. The box was soaked through and fairly foul smelling, but he dutifully brought the box back to his dorm and opened it. The glass had shattered during shipping, and Irving lay at the bottom of the box, partially dried out, dismembered finger and all.
“I don’t know how the cousin reacted at first, but he called to say that Irving had been set free. He had brought Irving into the dorm’s lounge and propped him up in one of the chairs. I don’t know what finally became of Irving. But sometimes, I really do miss him.”