I saw a finger where it shouldn’t have been.
Moving dishes around in an old cabinet, and rearranging for the shifting of the seasons, I saw it twitching in the shadows of the corners of the wood.
Oh, all the gods! what will I do? I saw a finger where it shouldn’t have been.
I thought it was a worm at first, a fat writhing many-jointed multi-legged thing squirming in the dark of the oak, past paper packed plates soon to be neatly stacked behind display glass. I saw it there.
Moving like a fat white maggot, not thinking or considering well I went to grab it, to remove it and excise it from the old estate sale find. But it entwined its grimy digit around mine and held it it there.
And I made a guttural noise, an involuntarily call from the quivering evolutionary sirens of the lowest part of the pit of my stomach. It hooked my finger tight and tried to pull it back and I lurched in revulsion. And as it writhed it touched the light. Half rotted. No fingernail. Black like soot and now gyrating and trying to keep me pinned. I pulled away fell to the floor there.
And I admit I cried out in terror then. I did. And ran to the kitchen to grab a knife and sever the foul thing and find its source. With a small flashlight from a drawer with old keys, I warred my will to flee and came again to the old antique cabinet, stained in tones of brown and red.
And I looked, and I found nothing. I moved all the plates and shifted the old thing away from the wall and inspected it for cracks and incursions. I ran my hand up and down along the old paint of the house and exclaimed some curses then, I must admit, I did. For I had seen it truly, right where it shouldn’t have been.
And so some weeks passed, and some days more. I sold the old cabinet and the dishes too, and I may have nailed some metal to the wall. I’d like to deny that and say it wasn’t true.
And I would but for the second time, putting on an old boot, pulling at the sides to loosen up the leather enough to fix it on my foot. It caught me there again, squirming up from the darkness of the sole.
Now fast like a centipede and stronger still it inched like gliding upon ice up my arm and into my shirt. And I squealed and tore the shirt from my body, spun around and then hit the ground like I was aflame. And I heard a crunch and thought for certain this foul game was done.
And I spun and saw a streak of blood smeared toward a small crevice in the wall. That fleshy wretch had fooled me again and I groaned and yelled and determined I would burn my house down to the ground. Burn it down to cinders and stone and hot red ash.
But I thought better of it. I stayed with friends and after a couple weeks I implored them to search. And being assured maybe it had died- if things like that could die, I returned.
And it was peaceful for a while, and nothing at all was out of place.
But then, in the creeping itch of a long night I went to scratch my ear and found it there, spiraling and trying to get in.
I woke up in a mad frenzy. I launched myself off the bed and grabbed at the back end of the finger. It slipped away and eluded me. It shot across my neck and face, and I thought, “It’s going for my eyes!”
I quickly covered both of them and began to spasm my body against the walls of the room in the darkness. I knocked over a lamp and heard it crash, and then books and finally a table too. In my misery, feeling it beginning to pry apart my ocular shield, I slammed my head against the wall. Once, twice and finally black. I fell unconscious from the hit.
And when I awoke it was daylight. The only thing around me was the scene of the carnage and madness. The wreck of a room in the sun drenched aftermath of the struggle.
And I want to believe it’s over now. Maybe I emerged the champion of this grotesque contest.
But something is amiss.
I feel an interior squirming, and an undeniable second presence somewhere in my spine and I know not what to do.
For a I saw a finger where it shouldn’t have been.