One would’ve thought I’d be used to this by now – typing with one arm. It takes time to get used to; especially when you’ve spent most of your life in front of a keyboard. Muscle memory digs deep.
A few years ago, I was in a car accident. I was going 60 down an empty road, coming home from a long day of overtime, when some kind of animal came charging out of the woods. Trying to avoid a collision, I swerved off the road. My front left wheel got caught in a ditch, sending the entire vehicle careening off the road; only to smash into the trunk of an ill-placed black walnut tree, driver’s side first.
I have this vague memory of blinking lights and vague shapes in the distance. I was so cold. But at the same time, it was so unreal. I couldn’t even understand what had happened.
I was brought into emergency surgery. My left arm was, literally, hanging by the thread of my jacket. It had come off clean by the socket.
According to the surgeons, I was lucky. Most of my shoulder was intact, so it became a matter of salvaging what they could. The cut had been clean. I did suffer some whiplash damage to my neck and lower back, but considering I could’ve easily died or gotten paralyzed, losing an arm was considered “mild”.
Looking back at it, I am inclined to agree. Considering what could’ve gone down, I was damn lucky. Still, in that luck, I wished I could’ve gotten just a tiny bit luckier. See, I had this gold ring that I’d been given by my later mother. A simple thing with the engraving of a musical note on the inside – a memento of our shared love of music. We played Louis Armstrong at her funeral.
That ring disappeared in the accident. Somehow, that’s what bothered me the most. My arm could be reattached. It could heal. But that little memento was just gone.
What followed was a long period of intense physical therapy, medication, and painful readjustments. It took weeks before I could even move my fingers again, and when I did, it felt like pushing your nerves through an unwashed garlic press. It was this stunning chemical-level kind of pain. The kind where your body just shuts down, begging you to stop.
But over time, I started to get over it. Small movements started to get better. I could tie my shoes. Press the space bar. Hold a knife. I wasn’t about to juggle anytime soon, or play the piano, but I could get by.
Soon enough, I got back to work.
People were glad to see me. I wasn’t gonna be able to work at full capacity in my usual role, but I could still sit in on meetings. I won’t bore you with the details, but most of my work relies on answering e-mails, proofreading, and translation. It’s pretty technical stuff that requires a lot of pitter-patter on keyboards.
At one point, I was stuck in a particularly drawn-out meeting between two clients that we were facilitating. I was there mostly as an observer (to fill the seats), but I was supposed to weigh in if something related to my department came up. Of course, it didn’t, but I still had to act interested. My colleague was trying to draw up a compromise between the two parties, laying out terms and conditions. Meanwhile, I was nursing a cup of coffee and waiting for the day to be over.
Looking over to my side, I noticed something odd. I wasn’t just holding the coffee cup with my left hand; I was stroking it with my index finger. Sort of like how you’d scratch a wary cat under its chin.
It was a strange sensation. I was looking at my own arm, my own hand, and I couldn’t feel what was happening. I couldn’t feel the ceramics tapping against my finger, or the twitch of the nerve as it contracted and extended. It was just happening. An involuntary twitch, perhaps.
But it didn’t feel like it. It felt intended, somehow.
A few similar events took place that day. Grabbing the bathroom door for a little too long. Knocking over desktop decorations. Suddenly letting go of my jacket as I was about to head home. It was just little things. I was still having trouble even using my arm in the first place, so these quirks didn’t bother me too much.
A friend of mine was giving me a ride home. I wasn’t at 100% yet and sitting behind the steering wheel felt like inviting disaster. Instead, I sat in the passenger seat, nodding off as the trees passed me by with a steady rhythm; causing me to blink.
A noise pulled me back. The driver said something, but I wasn’t paying attention. Turning to him, I excused myself.
“Sorry, what was that?” I asked.
“What are you doing?” the driver repeated.
I looked over. My left hand was wrapped around the parking brake, as if ready to pull. I forced myself to let go.
“Nothing,” I said. “Sorry, I don’t… it’s nothing.”
“Right,” he nodded. “Just… don’t do that.”
“Yeah,” I agreed. “Yeah, no. Sorry.”
That night, I was exhausted. It felt like my lungs had been robbed of breath. I felt weak and trembling. I was cold, yet feverish. Famished, but without an appetite. I went to bed early, faceplanting into the pillow.
I had horrible nightmares, none of which I can remember. I kept waking up over and over, not being able to discern dream from reality. My bed was soaked with cold sweat, sending shiver after shiver up my spine.
By the early hours of the morning, a stray ray of sunshine burned my eyes open. I was lying on my side, looking towards the window, leaning on my left shoulder.
The fingers of my left hand were moving on their own. And not just moving, but bent in every which way; as if lacking bones. They were vibrating, shuddering, like wounded worms fearing a predator.
I grabbed my hand, and my fingers were back to normal. I could move them as usual. For a moment, I was doubting what I’d seen. It was one thing to experience oddities, but that was unreal. I must’ve laid there for half an hour, just expanding and contracting my hand, begging my body to work with me.
“Enough of this,” I begged. “Please. Enough. Please.”
I clapped my hands, cracked my fingers, and ran them through my hair. It was fine. Nothing out of the ordinary. Right?
A couple of weeks passed without any serious peculiarities. I could even work a little. There were a few of oddities, like unknowingly grasping a warm cup, or my fingers pointing in all directions when in contact with cold water. Just strange little things that I could easily get control of.
That was, until one morning at work. We were out of coffee, so I was making myself a cup of tea instead. As the water came to a boiling point, I accidentally spilled some on my arm.
The reaction was immediate.
My arm whipped out to the side, throwing the pot across the room. For a moment, my arm looked like it didn’t have any bones; rippling like a skin-covered liquid. It made me think of it not as a part of me, but as an alien thing attached to my shoulder.
And for a brief moment, in the blink of a heartbeat, I could see my fingers grow and shrink. Fingernails throbbing, like a cat throwing up a hair ball.
Suddenly, it stopped. Looking back, I could see one of my co-workers watching me from the other side of the room. She must’ve heard the crash.
“You alright?” she asked.
“Yeah, just got a burn,” I sighed. “I’ll, uh… I’ll be fine.”
She side-eyed the broken pot on the other side of the room and nodded. Not entirely convinced.
As soon as she left, I looked down on my hand as if shying away from a wild animal. It was alien to me. It was something… other. A twitch was one thing, but this was downright unnatural.
Coming home that night, I had a weekend ahead of me. I ran my symptoms through a couple of online services. While there are a few ways the human body can trick itself, like the alien hand syndrome, or phantom pains, this was different. Physical properties do not rapidly change. Then again, maybe I was imagining it?
I decided to do something crazy. An experiment. I wanted to recreate what’d happened in the break room.
I boiled up some water and poured it into a cup. I held my left hand over my sink, grabbing the cup with my right. I stood there, trying to calm myself. I wasn’t insane. This was a rational thought that I had to play out in order to eliminate an outlandish possibility.
I prepped a cold pack and ran the tap. Then, taking a deep breath, I poured some of the boiling water on my left hand.
Twelve fingers.
My hand split into twelve fingers, lined with raw, open wounds. My wrist rolled, like a cobra fixing its eyes on a prey animal. This was no longer an arm – it was a nest of flesh-colored snakes.
My mind blanked. I fell backwards, smacking at my arm as if trying to kill it. I couldn’t feel a thing. It’s as if all sense of touch ended at my shoulder. I crawled backwards on the floor, trying to wave my arm away, but it clung to me like a parasite fixed on my shoulder.
Seconds later, a searing pain ran up my arm. Looking down on my hand, it looked as it always had. It was just a hand with a burn. I could barely feel it through the pounding in my chest. Every noise in the room was overshadowed by my pulse.
I ran my hand under a tap and wrapped a cold pack around the wrist. It wasn’t a bad burn, but it wasn’t nothing.
I did some research, looking up news from around the time my accident took place. There were a couple of reports, but nothing out of the ordinary. A domestic call, a brawl at a local restaurant, a couple of missing pets. There were a couple of other reports, but they were short and didn’t lead anywhere. A mention of a couple disturbances. Some idiot blasting music in a parking lot.
But there was one more thing I noticed. In one of the reports covering my accident, there was a picture of the car. There was spatter of the blood on the hood, with something meaty stuck in the grille – as if I’d hit an animal.
That caught my interest. I couldn’t remember hitting anything, so what the hell was that about?
The next day, my arm was acting up even worse. It kept going cold, as if circulation was cutting in and out. Before heading out, I wrapped it up in bandages. Partly because of the cold sensation and partly because I just didn’t trust it. There was no way to tell what could happen, or why.
I managed to get a hold of the owner of the junkyard where my trashed car had been towed. I went over there early in the day, just before the fog cleared.
Now, this was long after the car had been crushed and stored, but it was the only lead I had. An older woman greeted me at the gates, letting me in. We had a short chat about the accident as she showed me around, ending up at a stack of metal that could hardly be recognized as anything. The only thing to even hint at my car being in that pile was a thin slice of colored metal from one of the doors.
I dug around there for about 20 minutes; all while being observed by this old woman.
“Yeah, won’t find much,” she said. “If the police didn’t get it, the insurance folks did.”
“Been a lot of people digging around?”
“Not a lot, nah,” she said, shaking her head. “But you ain’t the first.”
And she was right. There wasn’t a drop of blood, or bone, or anything. It was just scrap metal in a pile of even more scrap metal. I was wasting my time.
But as I was about to leave, I noticed something. I hadn’t thought about it, but I could see the old woman was wearing a ring. It looked like a wedding ring at first, but she was wearing it on the wrong finger. I pointed to it.
"You found that?"
"What about it?" she asked.
"It’s got a tune engraved on the inside, right? Like, a, uh… music note?”
There was no response. She just looked at me and sighed. Turns out, I was right. She gave it back.
She’d found it near the hood of the car the night they brought it in. Grabbing it was just a spur of the moment thing, and since no one had come asking for it, she’d kept it. I was a bit annoyed, but mostly relieved that I got it back. But the question remained, how had that ended up at the hood of the car?
“There was all kinds of gunk just kinda hanging there,” she said. “Figured it was an animal.”
“And you’re sure that’s where you found it?”
“Sure as sure can be, yeah.”
I stood there for a moment, feeling an uncomfortable thought forming in the back of my head. There was no way for that ring to go from my broken arm on the driver’s side to a pile of meat stuck in the grille of the car.
But the proof of it had been in front of me all along. I had worn that ring for 12 years. There was a permanent indent on my finger.
Looking down at my left hand, there was no such indent.
This wasn’t my arm.
As soon as that thought settled in my mind, I could feel the arm twist and turn. Hadn’t it been for the bandages, there’s no way to tell what it would’ve done. It squirmed and pulled against me, thrashing like a dying fish on land. The old woman just looked at me.
“You alright? Want me to call someone?” she asked.
“I-I… I don’t know,” I said. “I don’t know.”
I had to get to the bottom of this. I hurried out of there as fast as I could.
It was getting late in the afternoon when I got back home. Grabbing an old backpack and a couple of painkillers, I was about to head right back out. But a thought hit me. Maybe it wasn’t as abstract as I thought. Maybe it wasn’t just a feeling – maybe something was really there.
Looking down at my arm, I could feel it stirring, just within my control. Something sleeping, waiting to spring into action. With my right hand on the front door, I stopped, and spoke out loud.
“Whatever you want, just… don’t,” I asked. “Don’t.”
There was no response. No stirring. On a spur-of-the-moment whim, I packed one more thing into my backpack. Just in case. A hail Mary.
Making my way to the scene of the accident, it was impossible to tell anything had ever happened there. I could barely even make out the place where I swerved, or where my wheel got caught in the ditch. I found the general area in the field where my car had spun out of control, and from there it was easy to find the tree I’d smashed into. It was still there.
I spent hours going over it all. Following the path the car had taken, starting from that tree, and working my way back. There was nothing there. Nothing new. It was all just gravel, weeds, and pavement. What had I expected? A signed confession?
As the sun dipped behind the clouds, I could feel a cold wind coming on. I’d lost track of time.
As I turned back, there was a sudden cramp in my arm. A shock of pain crept up my spine, spreading throughout my body like a spider’s web. I could feel my left arm throbbing against the bandage wrap. Something was wrong.
I was in the middle of the field. I could see for miles in every direction. Cars passing by in the distance. Wet grass staining my pants all the way up to my knees. And this one cold wind, cutting straight through my clothes. I shivered, but my left arm didn’t.
Taking a step back towards where I came from, another shot of pain struck me. This one tripped me, sending me face first into the grass. It knocked the air out of my lungs.
I rolled over on my back, gasping for breath. My left hand was creeping up my stomach like a spider with a meaty tail. It stopped over my face, tapping the bridge of my nose with the index finger. I couldn’t feel a thing. Moving to push it off, it instead struck back; grasping my right hand in return.
“Stop,” I wheezed as I sat back up. “Just stop. Stop this.”
But it didn’t. I just sat there. A wounded man holding his arms.
I struggled back and forth for well over half an hour. Getting back on my feet, only to get knocked back down. By the time I’d made my way back to the road, I looked like I’d been hiking for miles. My hair was a mess, and my clothes were covered in grass and mud. I had a handprint across my face, like I’d smacked myself.
I’d trusted myself with a short drive to get there, but I wasn’t sure about going back. It felt reckless to get behind a wheel in my state. Still, I couldn’t just walk all the way back home, and having it towed would be a pain in the ass.
I got back in my car while I thought about it, wiping myself off with a towel from my backpack.
It’d gotten dark outside. The overcast didn’t help, I could almost taste the rain. I contemplated my options and figured that if I kept it slow and only used my right arm, I could carefully make my way home. I put the keys in and turned on the headlights.
There was an elk standing in front of my car.
It sniffed the hood of my car curiously, then proceeded to stare me down. I was just surprised. I got a good look at it. There was something wrong with one of its hind legs – it lacked fur, and there was a sort of spreading baldness reaching halfway up the side of the body.
My arm was slowly rising on its own, as if looking over the dashboard. The elk recoiled, as if in pain, and set off in a troubled three-legged gallop. It disappeared into the woods.
Looking down at my arm, a stray thought hit me.
Was this spreading too?
I painstakingly made my way back home. I dropped my backpack in the hallway, locked my front door, and collapsed into the shower. I was exhausted.
I stood in the shower for about half an hour, looking down at my mother’s ring. I was wearing it on my right hand now, but it just didn’t feel the same. That wasn’t where it was meant to be. Still, it was nice to have it back. Whenever I turned the ring a little, I could feel the engraving against my skin. It was a little gesture I did when I was anxious, as a reminder that it was still there.
I got dressed and ready for a slow evening at home without any further drama. My arm wasn’t acting up. But as I passed through the hallway, something didn’t feel right.
At first, I couldn’t say what it was. Maybe the hum of an old lamp, or some air duct acting up. I wasn’t sure, but it was something. It had to be. I stepped up to the front door.
There used to be a light coming from the hallway outside. That light was always on, and there should be a little light coming in through the peephole. But there wasn’t. Had a fuse blown? I had a closer look.
There was someone just outside my door.
A click.
My left hand had unlocked the door.
The door flung open, knocking me back. A tall silhouette, close to seven feet tall, pushed its way into my apartment. It was dressed in a sort of black poncho, covering its face with layers of bandages. A single frog-like eye stared me down as it pushed forward.
I scrambled backwards on the floor. It was fast. Damn fast. It stepped forward and reached for one of my legs, but I managed to pull away in time. I got back on my feet, barely managing to pull my left arm along. It was trying to grab a hold of something, as if to slow me down.
In a spur-of-the-moment decision I grabbed a lamp from the windowsill, throwing it across the room. The intruder ducked, then came at me again. I ducked under, just in time, and headed for the door.
As I reached the front door, my left arm tried to force it shut. I fought against myself to get out, but it was useless. The door was shut and locked, and my left hand refused to budge. The seven-foot-tall shape came around the corner, slowly approaching. I had to think of something. Anything.
My backpack. It was right there.
I had packed a couple of things earlier. A towel, some bandages, painkillers, and a water bottle. But I’d also packed some lighter fluid. Seeing as how my left arm had reacted so violently to boiling water, I had this stupid idea that the prospect of a straight-up fire would do something even worse to it.
It didn’t seem so stupid anymore.
I grabbed the lighter fluid and sprinkled it on my left arm. The tall shape stopped, seemingly reacting to the smell of it.
I wanted to say something, but all that came out were empty breaths. We were like animals, circling each other, waiting for one to make the first move. I emptied the lighter fluid, grabbing a box of matches. I held the box with my mouth, and a triplicate of matches in my hand. I spilled the rest on the floor.
For a moment, we just looked at one another. A single inhuman eye peeking through the bandage wraps. The vague shape of four, maybe five extremities at its side. How many arms did this thing hide under the poncho?
A flash of realization came to me. This is what I had almost hit with my car.
And with that, I lit the matches. It leapt at me, but it was too late.
The moment the open flame touched the skin on my left arm, it detached. The open nerves just let go of me, and the thing fell off my body. It squirmed on the floor like a dying animal, grasping at whatever its fingers could reach.
Adrenaline forced me out the door. A heartbeat behind me, the seven-foot-tall figure scooped up my burning arm and pushed past me. Within seconds, it was gone – leaving me with an open wound in the stairwell, smelling of lighter fluid.
One of the neighbors called for help. I didn’t even notice how much blood I was losing, but it was bad. They sent me back into emergency surgery; this time without an arm to reattach.
It was deemed that the wound was self-inflicted. A result of some stress-induced psychosis. I wanted to agree, but I saw what I saw. I’ve been trying to convince myself otherwise, but I lived this. This wasn’t any other life but mine.
I’ve since learned to live with a full prosthetic. It’s not much, but I can trust it, and I can wear my mother’s ring the way it was supposed to be. It’s starting to make an indent on the synthetic skin.
I don’t like to think about what would’ve happened if I’d let that thing stay on. But just a couple of weeks ago, I got an answer. I was stuck in traffic, looking out over the fields, when I saw a group of elks in the distance.
One of them had no fur.
None at all.
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