Hey everyone, whoever everyone might be. I’m writing this today because . . . well because I need to talk about it and telling it to my shrink seems more embarrassing than this. My name is Mark, and as you can see by the title, I lost my hand in a car accident.
It happened a little over a year ago. I was driving home from work late one night with my windows down as it was well over 90 degrees outside and I couldn’t afford to keep using my AC. There weren’t many cars out at this hour, a couple passerby’s here and there but for the most part I had the whole road to myself. As the heat in the car started to get to me, I stuck my arm out the window so I could feel the breeze on at least one part of my body in hopes of cooling myself off. That’s when my attention was drawn to a billboard advertising a pet adoption center. At that time I had been looking into getting a dog so I wouldn’t feel so lonely at home all the time. This simple distraction . . . is what set my fate in place . . . it’s the reason I didn’t see the semi-truck approaching on the opposite side of the road. Due to me being distracted I didn’t realize that I had drifted slightly to the left over the line on the road, so when the semi passed it smashed into my hand at 60 miles an hour sending it flying off my body. I started screaming something awful as I pulled in my new stump and clenched it with my right hand. After about 15 seconds of screaming I passed out and my car drifted off the road into a ditch, and that’s all I remember about that night.
I woke up the next day in the hospital. The truck driver from the accident was there, apparently he had stayed with me all night. He told me his name was Trevor and what happened from his perspective, how he was driving the speed limit and saw my car and thought nothing of it, how at the last second I drifted over just far enough for him to hit my hand, and how he stopped and ran over to me after I crashed and applied a tourniquet to stop the bleeding until an ambulance could arrive. I later found out from the nurse that his tourniquet was the only reason I survived and that I likely would’ve bled to death before the ambulance could get there. Eventually I got to speak to the doctor who informed me that they weren’t able to find my hand to reattach it.
“. . . So what do I do next?” I asked the doctor.
“Well I went ahead and spoke to your insurance company and then said they aren’t going to pay for a prosthetic. So your options are to pay for one to be fitted out of pocket or we can wrap up the affected area and send you on home” He said
“And how much would it cost out of pocket?”
Hearing the price almost made me start bawling. There was no way I could afford to pay for a prosthetic out of pocket, I could barely afford my water bill. After a short conversation, the doctor prescribed me some pills and got the nurse to show me how to properly wrap my stub. A few hours later I cleared the leave and got an uber back home.
When I got home I wasn’t sure what to do next, I knew I should probably call my parents and tell them what happened, but we weren’t exactly on the best of terms at the time and didn’t feel like getting into another argument with them. I thought about calling my best friend, Claire, and filling her in, but I had just told her I had feelings for her and she said she needed space to think about things, so essentially, I was alone.
“Maybe I should just off myself” I thought.
This was something I considered often and now that I was handicapped and was going to have to quit my job unloading trucks life was only going to get worse. I couldn’t even begin to imagine how hard the adjustment to living was going to be. I sat on my couch staring at the blank tv all day thinking about what I was going to do next, trying to come up with a plan, trying to find any reason at all to keep going. Eventually I got tired enough to head upstairs to bed. That’s when something strange started to happen. As I was brushing my teeth, I could’ve sworn I heard someone whisper;
“I’m coming for you Mark”
It sounded as if it was being said right into my ear but also as if it was miles away at the same time. I shrugged it off as a side effect of the pain medication the doctor gave me and finished getting ready for bed. After crawling into bed my mind started to think about Claire and how maybe it was a bad idea to tell her how I felt and how our friendship could possibly be completely ruined because of it. Then I started thinking about my parents, and how we kept arguing about what I was going to do with my life, they were just trying to look out for me and show concern but I kept blowing them off and snapping at them for it. Swallowing the guilt I felt for that and everything else I had done wrong in my life I started to drift asleep.
“Mark, I’m coming for you Mark” The whisper said again.
This made me sit up rapidly and glance around the room to see if there was someone there. Clearly there wasn’t, but that whisper once again sounded so close but so far away. With my eyes wide open, I stupidly opened my mouth and said;
“Is . . . is someone there?”
“Me Mark, I’m coming for you, I’m going to get you” The whisper said.
I jumped out of bed and turned on all the light in my room and did a thorough search only to find nothing. Next I went downstairs and checked everywhere ensuring that all the doors and windows were locked in the process. After I was positive that there was no one in my house, I took a deep breath and tried to rationalize what was going on.
“The pills, it has to be the pills” I said to myself, “Doc said the side effects could lead to minor hallucinations”
Once again blowing it off as just that, an hallucination, I went back upstairs and got back into bed.
It wasn’t long after that that I heard what sounded like someone climbing over the wood fence in my backyard. My heart racing, I peaked out my bedroom window in the backyard below to see that the motion lights had been activated . . . but nothing was there. In case it isn’t clear, I was not in a good mindset, you know, I had just lost my hand, my life was a mess, and I was on some pretty strong pain medication, so once again, I rationalized it to have simply been a squirrel or a raccoon. It wasn’t until I heard the sound of something heavily tapping the glass on the backdoor directly below me that I started to panic.
Tap, tap, tap, tap, tap.
Just like that, in fast succession; Tap, tap, tap, tap, tap. I was completely frozen, I didn’t know what to do, it’s not like I could fight off an intruder. Even if I had both my hands, I’m basically a noodle, I’d be dead in seconds. My heart nearly leaped out of my chest when I heard the sound of glass breaking. You think at some point I would get the courage to get out of bed and at least hide but I couldn’t move.
“I’m here Mark, I know you’re upstairs and I’m going to get you” The whisper said.
This . . . This is when my whole body began to shake and I started sporadically losing the ability to breath. As I tried to get myself together, I heard the same tapping coming up the stairs one step at a time. After about a minute someone knocked on my bedroom door. It’s embarrassing to say, but I squealed when the knocking came. I wanted to yell at whoever was there to go away and that I wasn’t afraid of them, but I was afraid of them, and even though I opened my mouth to speak, no sound would come out.
The door knob slowly started turning and the door creaked open just a crack. I was staring right through the crack to see who it was, but I didn’t see anyone.
Suddenly something ran across my bedroom floor under my bed like a rat scurrying around. I damn well jumped 3 feet above my bed before landing and immediately hiding under the covers like a child.
“Mark” The whisper said in a long drawn out way.
“He—Hello?” I replied with tears in my eyes.
“Come down here Mark, I want to see you” It said.
I don’t know what came over me, or how it happened, but somehow I gained the courage to come out. Very slowly I got out from under the covers and began to lean over the edge of my bed. As my head got far enough down to see what was under . . .
“I GOT YOU!” The voice yelled as it leaped out from under my bed and grabbed my face.
It was . . . It was a hand, MY hand grabbing my face. Like when a fly lands on your neck I did not hesitate to grab it and pull it off but it was so strong, so much stronger than me. The struggle caused me to fall out of bed which is when I headbutted the ground causing the hand to loosen its grip and let go. I ran to the bedroom door and turned on the light as I went to leave the room, but before I left I turned back and got a good look at my hand. It was this nasty green color with some sort of puss or ooze coming out of where my wrist would be. While I stared at it it quickly oriented itself and started sprinting towards me on its fingers. I slammed the door shut and ran downstairs to the kitchen.
I know I should’ve ran outside and gotten as far away as I could but to what end? This was my house and I didn’t want to leave it. Not only that but if this thing that used to be my hand could get to me after being lost on the side of the road 20 miles away, then it could probably keep tracking me wherever I went. While looking for a knife, I heard my bedroom door open and my hand coming towards me. As I grabbed the knife I turned around and the hand was already leaping towards me, I got lucky and ducked under it causing it to land on the counter behind me.
“What the fuck are you?!?!” I yelled but got no reply.
The hand leaped at me again, I was not so lucky this time as it got a tight grip around my throat. I wanted to try and stab in but I was getting dizzy so fast and I didn’t want to accidentally stab myself. While trying to decide what to do, I could feel my life leaving me. It was impossible to breathe and everything started to get dark. This was the moment, this was the moment that I decided I didn’t want to die. I wanted to live, sure my life was shit, but I could fix it, it wasn’t completely broken yet, but I couldn’t fix anything if I died.
I started punching the hand into my own throat, which hurt me like hell, but it also hurt the hand as its grip lessened. I kept hitting it until it let go and fell to the ground on its back. It wasn’t done yet though, as I tried to catch my breath it began to flip back over and go for another strike, but I wasn’t going to let it. Using my foot to hold it down, I bent over and picked up the knife and stabbed the hand right down the center. It didn’t stop moving, so I kept stabbing it, yielding no results. I tried smashing it, lighting it on fire, but nothing would kill it.
After trying a few more to kill the hand I realized I wasn’t sure that I could, so I came up with the next best thing. Keeping the hand on the knife, I brought it upstairs to my room and pulled out one of those small metal safe boxes that I use to store some cash, my social security card, and some other important documents. I dumped out everything and put the hand inside and closed and locked the door. Then I went outside with a shovel and dug a 3 foot deep hole, put the box inside, and buried it.
Since the events of the night, I joined a support group for physically disabled people, I started going to therapy, I patched up my relationship with my parents, and to my surprise, Claire and I actually started dating. After everything that happened I really started to get my life together. It’s hard sometimes though, at night when I’m in bed, I can hear the hand whispering to me, telling me that it’s still coming for me. I’d move but right now I just can’t afford it, so I do my best to ignore the whispers and live my life. I do feel so much better finally telling this story, I don’t think I could tell it to my psychologist without them thinking I’m crazy. Thanks for reading, and if you ever lose a hand or maybe even a foot, just be cautious, it could end up trying to kill you.