“Son of a goddamn bitch!”
From my perspective, it all happened in slow motion. The nail was tiny, my thumb was large, I really suck at aiming a hammer. I should’ve known better. When my wife asked me to hang up our new family portrait I should’ve said no, or I at least should’ve used a drill and a screw instead. Maybe one of those stick on Command Strips even.
“Is everything ok down there honey?” My wife, Sarah, called from upstairs, a note of concern was in her voice, as it wasn’t in my typical fashion to blurt out random obscenities when performing household tasks. The walls in this house were so paper thin I could never hide anything from her.
“Fine honey,” this was an absolute lie, as I’m sure she could infer from the audible pain in my voice. “Everything’s fine, almost finished hanging the picture!”
I held my thumb tightly in my other hand and against my chest, too afraid to look at it. Fuck me, why had I swung so hard. I slowly loosened the death grip I had on the thing and peaked at the damage. It was already turning a shade of purple no body part should ever be. A crack ran parallel up my thumbnail and a small bead of blood was protruding out of it. “Yeah, I’m definitely losing that nail,” I whispered to myself.
I could hear the familiar “tap tap tap” of our Pomeranian, Betsy, walking down the hallway and into the den where I was keeled over in pain. She had always had a knack for knowing when either my wife or I was in distress and this whole thumb debacle was no different.
“Betsy, I’m fine! Shoo!” I whispered to her, trying ever so desperately to save myself the embarrassment of having my wife discover that I’m as useless at hanging up a picture as I am at any number of domestic “handy man” chores.
Betsy looked at me, head tilted to the side, and started to make a low growling sound before letting out several loud “yelps!”. I knew the jig was up at that point, and I looked over to see Sarah standing in the doorway, arms crossed, brow furrowed and lips pursed in a “what did you do this time?” expression.
“It’s nothing, really it’s nothing, I just hit my thumb with the hammer, and now it really, really hurts, but it’s fine. S-see?” I held my thumb up to her and she made a wincing noise and turned her head away from me in revulsion.
“You know I hate looking at that sort of stuff! Is it broken? Do you think you should go to the hospital?”
I considered this for a moment before dismissing the idea. What were they going to do, bandage me up and give some Tylenol? That’s nothing I couldn’t do for myself here at home and save $350.
“No no, of course not, I’m fine. I’ll just take a couple of aspirin and put a Band-Aid on it and I’ll be right as rain in no time!” I could tell my half hearted smile wasn’t doing a very good job of convincing her, but she relented.
“Well, okay, if you say so. I’m going to start cooking dinner. Oh, and don’t worry about the picture, rest that thumb!” She gave me a sly wink and I thought for a moment that maybe I was being overly dramatic. It was only a smashed thumb for Christ’s sake. But it just hurt so goddamn bad. I had never hit myself with a hammer before, but surely it wasn’t supposed to hurt this bad.
After dinner I offered to help with the dishes, but thank God Sarah insisted that I go upstairs and get some rest. I had taken four extra strength Tylenol and it didn’t so much as touch the pain I was experiencing in my left thumb.
“C’mon Betsy, let’s go to bed girl.” She gave me a contented “yelp!” and followed me upstairs.
Up to that point in my life, that was the worst and most fitful night of sleep I had ever had. The throbbing of my thumb permeated into my subconscious. I had strange fever dreams, some as benign as my hand turning into one giant thumb. Others more malevolent, like the one where I repeatedly smashed myself in the head with a hammer, alternating between the face and the claw, pummeling myself over and over again until the pain of my head superseded the pain in my thumb and I finally had relief.
I awoke in the middle of the night, dripping in sweat. Betsy bolted upright at the foot of our bed, head tilted in concern. “It’s okay girl, go back to sleep,” I stammered. I stumbled into the bathroom, still half dazed from my nightmares. I flipped on the light and to my absolute horror noticed that the gauze I had wrapped my thumb in was completely soaked in blood. Steadily and nervously I peeled back the bandage, doing everything in my power so as not to alert Sarah or Betsy of my agony.
The thumb had at least doubled in size since I’d last looked at it, but that was far from the most disturbing thing I’d noticed. The small crack in the nail from earlier was now a great fissure, parting it into two equal halves. The nail was a darker purple shade now, with hints of sickly greens and yellows. I turned my hand to inspect the palm side of my thumb. A jagged, sinewy gash ran from the tip all the way down to the soft fleshy area at the base. It was weeping blood and pus and a clear-ish bile that smelled absolutely rancid. I vomited into the sink, almost blacking out from the sheer force of my stomach emptying its contents.
I ran the affected area underneath the running water of the sink, ignoring the mess I had made in the basin. I let the water get as hot as I could stand and let it cleanse the sticky mess that was my infected digit. The thumb began twitching and writhing in a pattern that was beyond my control. I applied a new bandage, one with more layers of gauze than the previous one, and splinted the thumb to the rest of my hand with tape. Underneath all of the layers I could still feel it subtlety moving.
I opened the medicine cabinet and found an almost untouched bottle of hydrocodone that Sarah was prescribed earlier this year for a tooth infection. I opened the lid and didn’t bother to count how many I dumped into my hand. I ran downstairs and grabbed a bottle of whisky to wash the pills down with. I stumbled to the couch in a daze, praying that I would fall asleep quickly. The last thing I remember from that night was Betsy crawling into my lap before I plunged off the ledge into a dreamless sleep.
In the morning my head ached and my mouth was dry and metallic tasting, but by some miracle my thumb didn’t hurt anymore. For a brief moment I thought the worst was over. I wish I could’ve lived in that moment forever, because that’s when I noticed all the blood that I was covered in. The bandage that I had applied to my hand in the middle of the night was shredded and had been discarded off the the side. Betsy was on the floor, her once snow-white fur caked and matted with red and brown gore, and my left hand was attached firmly to her neck in a choking gesture.
Through the sounds of my sobs and wails and the squelching of Betsy’s ragged flesh, I attempted to free her from the grip that my thumb had on her. It made a ripping sound as it detached from her lifeless body. A tuft of white fur was lodged into the open gash. I carefully removed it and was horrified to find several rows of sharp teeth within the open wound. They jutted out at odd and asymmetrical angles. The teeth were attached to engorged flaps that convulsed open and shut rhythmically, like a Venus flytrap from hell.
I scrambled out of the den, past the happy picture of Sarah, Betsy and I that lay un-hung on the floor, and out into the kitchen. I rummaged noisily through every drawer until I found the serrated bread knife. My left hand was of no use in my search, as the teeth of my lamprey-mouthed thumb were firmly implanted into my upper thigh, tearing and gnawing through muscle and tendons.
I placed the blade of the knife shakily in between the webbing of my pointer finger and thumb. I was hesitant to make the first cut, but knew it had to be done. As the teeth of the knife imbedded themselves, an intrusive thought of terror entered my mind:
Where was Sarah, and why hadn’t she come downstairs to investigate all the noise I was making?