The Switch
A greasy, sweaty middle-aged mob boss laid back in his reclining office chair, panting from the several sandwiches he had just finished swallowing. He listened to the 80s music that was playing in the main room of the strip club that he owned and trickled its way into his office. Earlier he had had some meetings with less fat but no less greasy mobsters discussing the regular business. He sighed and his breathing returned to his normal regular high-chested shallow huffs.
He rubbed his belly as he looked around the room, pausing at the club's "hall of fame," the stained whiteboard that nobody ever properly cleaned, the mid-size safe where some local buffers lay, and the... "What the hell?!" the man exclaimed.
Lifting his polo shirt he examined the thing between his folds on the left side of his body. It was hard like plastic and some part of it could move, or well, it twisted as his fingers moved awkwardly between the flaps—it was almost out of reach. Eventually he twisted it a bit and felt a soft feedback from the knob locking in a position. He felt a little odd, but nothing significantly out of the ordinary, nothing a strong mind like his couldn't handle.
The thing was too far away and his arms and fingers were aching from the awkward position already. He got out of the chair and went into one of the VIP rooms where there was a big bed and mirrors on the ceiling. He took off his shirt and laid down on the bed sideways, his meat falling away and making the thing in his side clearly visible. It was a big red turning knob embedded in his side. It had some writing on it, but it was too small to read from the mirror on the ceiling.
Not without effort, but significantly easier, he could reach the knob and turned it back in the opposite direction. He felt it click once, and then he couldn't turn it any further. The very slight funny feeling disappeared as soon as the button was reset. Without much thought he tried turning it the other way—it clicked and clicked and clicked ten times until it wouldn't turn anymore. It jolted through his body from his toes through the blubber to his head and a full breath was forced, the sudden expansion making cracks appear in his tar-riddled lungs, but this was just the beginning of his physical and mental pain.
He turned onto his back and the floodgates opened—he could no longer speak or think clearly. It was as if his body was completely paralyzed.
Talk about bad timing... one of the girls walked by the room and heard the mess of a human that was inside. Carefully she walked in and saw the big man being a wreck. With professional expertise she found the switch and as the clicks progressed he grew calmer and calmer. She made sure not to turn it all the way down.
"You can't just turn it up completely," she said, "and in your profession you shouldn't turn it up further than a third."
The surgeons looked at the sedated blob of a man on the table, the machine pumping air into his lungs, his overworked heart beating slowly. The X-rays had shown that the knob was just hanging there in his side, in an unimportant region and not really hooked up to anything. With just a few cuts the thing came out, which looked just like a regular knob from an electronic component distributor like Mouser. It was indeed not hooked up to anything in the body. Neither did it have any other components, as nothing was visible inside except the expected potentiometer and small circuit board without anything that looked like a battery or antenna.
In recovery, as he was waking up from the anesthesia, he immediately began to sob. Earlier one of the surgeons had been twisting the knob to see if anything would happen right before cutting it out.