Handy Helpers

I don’t want to reel my hands in tonight.

That may sound odd to you, but I’m being entirely serious. Since the age of thirteen I’ve had hands that can detach at the wrist, connected only by a pair of loose, red strings. This is normal for me, though it took a fair amount of time for me to really warm up to the concept, something not especially helped by my first impression of it. The night I found this strange part of my anatomy was a particularly burning summer, one that leaked into the night well past the time that the moon rose up. I was laying in bed, my skin slick with sweat and my covers bunched up in a bulging pile at my feet. I remember kicking them off me in a tantrum fit because all they were accomplishing was pushing warmth into my weeping pores, but that’s not the point.

That night, when my bedroom was blacker than the dull night creeping through my blinds, I felt an odd, uncomfortable sensation in my forearms. It was as if something long and thing was stringing down between the bone, a descending quickly enough that I could feel something crawling against the veins and tendons. I was, at the moment of that sensation, tapping my fingers on the hard mattress, incapable of laying perfectly still. I could still hear the muffled thumping of fingertips on said mattress but they began to become increasingly and near imperceptible distant as it continued. This all, of course, prompted me to look down and, wouldn’t I know it, my hands were off my bloody body.

To clarify, no, there was no blood or spurting gore that I had to contend with, but I could still see the bones, the most prominent being the Lunate and the Scaphoid, which jut out the most from the the shiny red meat from the inside of my hands. My reaction was predictable, as you might imagine, and alerted my Mum and Father to my room. Their reactions were the outlier, I’d say, that being due to the sheer lack of one.

Father was the first to the room, but it was Mum who gently nestled my hands back into their sockets, forcing those horrible red strings to shoot back up the inside of my arms, which made me shudder from the sensation of it shoving past my veins again. Mum told me it was alright, it was nothing to worry about, and that her and Father would explain it in the morning, which was all the truth.

That morning, during breakfast, Father popped his wrists out in the same way mine did, though I imagine the look on my face is why he reeled them back in so quickly. He says to me “Billy, us Millers have a special kind of anatomy, and it lets us send our handy helpers out to, well, help us out.” Why would I need that is what I asked him. “Not a bleeding clue, but you have it. I’m sure you’ll find some use for it.” He got very serious after that comment, and he leaned over the table right close to my face, close enough I could feel his hot breath and smell his gingivitis. “One rule for it though.” He said in a low, grave tone. “Never keep ‘em out for more than five minutes.” I ask him why again, and do you know what that bastard tells me?

”No idea, just don’t do it.”

School started a week after that, and I was frankly torn on showing my friends my new trick, and I eventually landed on showing them, but then I saw Tommy Milton, some poor younger kid with big ears, getting jostled around by the older boys, so I didn’t bother with it. Never did either, not even when I was alone with Don, who was just fucking odd to be frank with you. If I thought I could get away with it though, I’d let ‘em go after a pencil I dropped or a kids bagged lunch. I did that last part for kicks, never even ate anything I took. Left Barts lunch in an air vent once, but don’t you go feeling bad for him cuz he was one of her who liked yanking Tommy’s big ears.

That was the extent of my use of my Handy Helpers really, I hardly ever did it at home unless I was feeling like a funny guy; wanting to scare my younger sister Katie. Mum never liked that one. Father did, though he never let the other two hear it. I used to call him Dad back then, but now, aged twenty six, I’m not giving him the courtesy. Why? Cuz the bastard never properly warned me about the strings going blue.

It happened one day, after work, I didn’t feel like getting up from my chair in my flat, so I had my Handy Helpers go and get me some popcorn out of the kitchen. Of course, I never even looked where they were going cuz I trusted my memory, right? I’m busy watching the tele while they’re climbing up the drawers and cabinets, and I won’t deny being an inattentive bloke, but even still I only noticed that I stopped feeling my fingers thumping against the hardwood when I looked down and saw the red strings had turned blue.

I didn’t think much of it at the moment, aside some mild concern, so I just turned around in my seat to see what my hands were doing. I saw the left one just sitting there, with its knuckles facing me and it pointer finger tapping, and I thought ‘I’m not doing that, am I?’ I looked over to where I saw the right ones strings going, and I saw it sitting on the knife block, trying to use its middle fingers to grab at one of the handles. That made me reel them in right quick, but I didn’t even feel it when righty got slammed right onto floor from his perch, I even heard em smack down.

When they were back in my sockets, I clenched them into fists. I did that hard enough that I could see my knuckles going white. All I felt was a dull straining in either one. It’s been getting worse over the past month. I’ve had sausage fingers ever since that night and, since I work with my hands moving tree limbs to the chipper, that’s a serious issue for me. My boss took notice and I told him I didn’t know what was wrong with em, so he tells me to go to the hospital, which I did.

They told me shit all about the issue, told me my circulation was fine, told me nothing was visibly wrong with me. Lefty threw up the bird at her after that comment, which shocked both of us cuz I didn’t want to do that. I didn’t want the pinky on lefty’s hand to start bending itself backwards when I got home either, but that was the point I realized I wasn’t about what I wanted anymore. Even with the numbness in my hands, I could still feel the pain enough to want to stop it, but Righty wasn’t budging. It was like mashing to chicken cuts together, so it was basically impossible for me to prevent my pinkie from snapping backward, first at the top knuckle, then, right after I recovered enough to stop breathing quick, the bottom knuckle. I felt every twist of that finger even when I couldn’t feel myself palming the wall to stay up. I could feel it twirl itself in circles in the socket, swing itself back and forth and back again with a bunch of horrible crunching sounds. I saw it all too, and I also saw that pinkie stop very suddenly right as it was pointed at me.

I’ve not been able to feel anything in my hands since yesterday, they won’t do what I want them to do, nor what I need them to do. I can’t call my boss, or the doctor, or Mum and Father to ask for help. They worked themselves off of my wrists the night before tonight. They did it while I slept, so when I reeled them back in this morning, Righty was right pissed about, he kept rearing his fingers back into a claw and shooting them out toward me, trying to get me. Lefty, for his part, seemed content, which made me quite a bit more uncomfortable than if he was also throwing a fit. His pinkies still broken as well, though I’ve stopped feeling any of it. I don’t think I want to feel what they’re up to tonight though, and I don’t wanna see it either. I’ve tricked them into thinking I was asleep, so when they went roaming, I pushed my door shut with my shoulder.

I can’t sleep, and I can’t eat or drink or put clothes on either. They’ve got a monopoly on those luxuries, and they don’t want me to have them anymore. I don’t think they want me to have a lot of things, so I’m going to keep to myself for a while, let my Handy Helpers sort themselves out. I can hear them scuttling on unclipped nails out there, and I heard something solid hit the ground not long ago. I’ve got an idea that Righty might’ve finally gotten at that knife he was after. I can hear them dragging something up the stairs, something that clangs in each of the hardwood steps. I don’t know what I’m going to do now.

It’s just occurred to me that, in my current state, sitting on my bed in the pitch dark of my room, that neither one of us is going to be able to get that door open.