Outside of the Wire

by Richard Farnsworth

  P*I*S*H*A*C*H*A*I*S*F*E*D

  #

  On the first night of the new moon, Mr. Nussbaum brought the initiate into my office and I stood from behind my walnut desk to greet him.

  The Board of Directors had appointed me as Mr. Colund’s replacement following his unfortunate incident. It may have seemed an unorthodox move, as I was the first female mid-level executive in the history of the Chicago Tabulating Devices Corporation, but the board had been quite impressed with my thesis for relay logic algorithms.

  I had learned from them that my advisor had been one of several luminaries in the field that had sent unwitting, but promising students on to this industrial setting rather than continue to risk them remaining in academia and outshining their advisors. I don’t believe Dr. Wireman knew the fate of the students he had sent before me, only that they had left the Ivory towers for a less distinguished career in the field of automated tabulation and were never heard from again.

  Working with Pishacha was a different sort of challenge than working with my thesis advisor, though there were parallels. But at least with the demon you were prepared for the sacrifices. It was unfortunate that the demon required a human soul every accounting quarter, but such were the sacrifices one would have to make for the twentieth century and the future of accounting.

  I reached out to shake the hand of the middle-aged man before me.

  Mr. Nussbaum looked down at the floor and fidgeted.

  I said, “Dr. Wireman, I am so pleased that you have agreed to help us with our little problem in automated tabulation.”

  Dougie's Hand

  Sitting in the auditorium, I watched Dougie’s hand flex.

  Just stop.

  An Anthro Grad student droned on about Yanamamos at the lectern as Dougie's hand shot out. Between thumb and forefinger, it snatched a long copper-red tress from the girl sitting in front of me.

  I wrenched the thumb back, forcing the hand to release the hair. As she turned, I grabbed my left wrist and pulled Dougie’s hand under the little flip-down desktop. The hand didn’t like being subverted and it flopped around, making a terrible racket.

  None of the other students seemed to notice, except for the redheaded girl who almost lost some hair. I always sat near the back of the big room just in case the hand started acting up. Like now. She had to go and sit right in front of me.

  The chick looked back and shushed me, like she really wanted to hear this lecture. I smiled helplessly. What could I do? It wasn’t my hand. I mean sure, it was on my wrist, but it wasn’t “mine”.

  You see, it’s really complicated, but I was a twin. I wasn’t born a twin; my brother, Dougie, he died in utero. My Mom didn’t agree. She had assured me there was no Dougie. Never had been. She tried to convince me that I had been the only occupant of her uterus. She even showed me faded copies of ultrasounds to prove that I was a singleton. They didn’t convince me; he could have been hiding. Dougie was shy. I think that’s part of why his hand acted out so much.

  Overcompensation.

  Her weak proof and incessant insistence aside, I'd always known the hand on my wrist wasn’t mine, but instead belonged to my twin. It wasn’t until I was six, sitting in the library with a big picture book of circus sideshow performers—freaks they called them—that I figured out how. There was this one grainy picture of a guy with his twin sticking out of his own torso. There was no head on the little body in doll clothes, but there were these little hands and feet. That’s when I realized how Dougie’s hand could be on my body. We were conjoined twins and part of him ended up on me. No idea where the rest of him went, I just got the hand.

  It dug into the denim over my leg. It’d done this before. I had dozens of scars as proof. I pushed the hand down and held it with my thighs. Risky. The last time I’d done that, it had gotten hold of a testicle and I had to go to the emergency room. Imagine trying to explain that your brother’s hand had squeezed your left nut almost to popping. ER doc didn’t believe me. Of course, Dougie’s hand had behaved then, giving a cutesy little finger wave

  Sometimes I really hated my brother’s hand.

  I slipped my belt off and wrapped it around the offending wrist. The denim was taut against my leg, the nails clipped short, so all it could do was make loud scratching sounds. The redheaded Princess got up, gave me a nasty look, and moved across the aisle. I guess it looked to her like I was going for a really good sphincter scratch. How could I explain that it was my angry dead brother’s hand acting out?

  I continued to wrap the belt around my wrist. It took too long to slide the belt through the buckle and pull. I just wrapped tighter and tighter, making an awesome tourniquet. When it slowed down, I could tell the hand was going numb.

  Finally, it stopped and I tried to concentrate on the lecture.

  The hand hadn’t been this obtrusive in over a year. When I was young I could keep it under control. Until I went through puberty, then there were some really embarrassing, borderline incestuous, public episodes. I tried to explain to my parents about how it was the hand. Dougie’s hand, not me.

  I thought they understood when they agreed to take me to a specialist. I was thinking I’d see someone that specialized in conjoined twins, but Dr. Schlesinger was a psychiatrist.

  How in the world could someone trained to deal with the human mind get Dougie’s hand under control? Hands don’t have brains. I pointed this out to him at our first session, and several sessions after. I tried everything, showing him how Dougie’s hand didn’t look anything like my hand. The pinky finger on Dougie's hand was two-thirds as long as mine. And if that wasn’t proof enough, I showed him how all the lines on the two palms were different lengths.

  The hand behaved through every session with him though, and went nuts on the drive home afte

  Schlesinger first told my parents I was lying to cover my impulse control issues. I spent three month's sitting around a hospital rec room with a pack of chronic masturbators. I learned a lot, but it didn't help me with Dougie's hand.

  Then he said I suffered from Body Integrity Identity Disorder. I suppose that conclusion sounded simpler than mine. But I didn’t have any symptoms like the BIIDs-kids in my new support group. I didn’t ‘want’ to be an amputee or lust after cut off limbs. I just had this hand that didn’t belong to me, and I wanted it to behave.

  The hand didn't behave when I was prescribed the anti-psychotics either, but I was real mellow about it. Schlesinger kept asking why I named the hand Dougie. I explained that Dougie was my brother's name. The hand didn't have a name; it was just Dougie's hand. What else could I call it? That's when I realized you don't have to be smart to be a doctor and decided to go pre-med in college.

  Schlesinger switched to apraxia, alien hand syndrome, often caused by brain damage. I said "Bullshit!” It was my dead brother's hand and that was all there was to it.

  MRIs showed no aneurysms, embolisms, or strokes. No indication of progressive neurological disease or trauma. In short, no physical evidence for my alleged apraxia.

  But absence of evidence isn't evidence of absence, is it?

  I got SSRI's, and then back to anti-psychotics. A cocktail of both seemed to help me get Dougie's hand under control. The drugs never made me feel like it belonged to me, but it behaved. Until my second month away at college, that is.

  This month.

  I’d gone off the resperidone because it interfered with my freshman year love life. I mean, dorms are all about hooking up right? But not with Mr. Flaccid they aren't. Chemically-induced limpidity sucked.

  Walking through the crowded corridor, I looked at the blue extremity. The only earthly remains of my dead twin brother.

  I gave the hand a shake and pulled the rabbit's foot out of my pocket. Schlesinger told me to have Dougie's hand hold something and it wouldn't act out. I used to use a pen but it made me feel like a Bob Dole wannabe, so I switched to the rabbit's foot. I think it was really a forefoot, so if the rabbit were a person, it would be a hand, not a
foot. Dead Dougie's hand holding some dead rabbit's hand. Freaky.

  “Behave, Dougie’s hand.”

  It didn’t respond so I unwound the belt. The hand was thoroughly limp.

  I stuffed the belt in my pack and closed Dougie's fingers around the lucky charm.

  I left before the lecture ended and pushed out into the cool fall air to ponder my quandary. Go back on the drugs and no wood. Stay off the drugs and spend all my time explaining about the hand.

  It started to twitch. I stopped and pulled an oven mitt out of my pack and stuffed it over the hand. I pulled out the roll of electrical tape and peeled enough off with my teeth to get it started around the base of the mitt. It looked hella-stupid, but usually helped.

  #

  I was having a serious heart to heart with Dougie's hand when Sylvia knocked. My roommate had vacated so that we could be alone. As alone as we could be with Dougie's hand, anyway.

  "Brian? Are you there?” She wasn't over-the-top-hot, but she was available, interested, and lived the next floor up.

  "I'm serious," I said one last time. I shook the mitt at it and said, "You mess this up and you're going in here for good."

  I snicked the lock and pulled the door back.

  "Everything okay?" she asked.

  "Yeah, cool," I said.

  "Were you talking to someone?"

  I made like it was a sock puppet and said, "Just my hand."

  She smiled and said something about giving my hand a rest tonight and I knew I was in.

  "I’m glad you came. You know, I learned in Anthro that a warrior of the Yanamomo tribe would prepare a wicked feast for his woman?” I gestured to the bucket of Kentucky-fried chicken, original recipe, and a six-pack of Pabst, bottles, not cans.

  Sylvia laughed at my bounty but ate the cold chicken and drank the warm beer anyway, sitting there in the middle of my bed and looking hotter than when she'd arrived.

  She sucked a thighbone provocatively. I gave Dougie's hand one more pointed stare and reached out to Sylvia. I brushed her long dark hair back and leaned in for the fried-chicken-wet kiss.

  She was accommodating until Dougie's hand reached out and snatched a hand-full of her hair.

  "Damn it!” I yelled.

  Sylvia cried out in confusion and pain.

  "Let go!" I yelled as I grabbed at Dougie's hand.

  "Brian, stop it," she screamed. "What the hell is wrong with you?"

  I pried Dougie's fingers apart but the hand was on a mission. It didn't stop until it had a finger full of hair pulled out at the roots.

  "Brian!" she screamed again.

  She rolled back on the mattress, planted a vicious kick, and as the air whooshed out of me, I knew then that there was no way I was getting laid. She was crying, I was gasping, and the party was so over. I tried to explain about how the hand wasn't mine, but it made like a sock puppet and mimicked talking motions in time with each of my words.

  "You stay away from me, you freak!” She slammed the door as Dougie's hand gave her the bird.

  "That's it! I am done being your life support system!"

  I hit an empty PBR bottle against the desk. I had to hit it three times before it smashed.

  "Ungrateful piece of meat!"

  It flopped around like a fish, intuiting—it couldn't know because we already discussed the whole no brain thing—that I was really pissed. I stomped on the fingers holding it down.

  "I am done being held hostage to an appendage that isn't even mine!"

  I touched the ragged broken glass to the invisible line at the wrist where my body stopped and Dougie's started. As the flesh parted and a little trickle of blood flowed, the hand went rigid.

  "That's right; I am in charge of this partnership!"

  Blood dribbled over the sharp edge of the glass, deep red and shiny. My blood, not Dougie's and I was done sharing.

  I moved my foot from the hand, but kept the broken glass pressed hard.

  "Behave, or are we parting ways?"

  It twitched.

  "You think I won't do it? 'Cause I will, I've had it."

  The fingers rolled a gentle wave. It shot me the bird and made a lunge for freedom. Where was going? It was still attached.

  I stomped down, screamed at the hand and stabbed deep.

  I sawed. I sliced tendons, and ligaments. I cut muscle and sinew. The glass was heavy but broke off so I switched to a letter opener. Pressing hard, prying between the bones of the wrist joint Dougie's hand finally came loose.

  It didn't hurt much, but God, there was a lot of blood. That's when I thought I should have started with a tourniquet before the bottle.

  Some campus security punk smashed in the door. Sylvia with blood on her face and some other people behind him.

  "What the—" the rent-a-cop said.

  I showed Sylvia my wrist stump and said, "Look, I got rid of Dougie's hand. Now we can be together.” A small arteriole gave a little comic spurt and she went pale. I didn't mean get together right then, just sometime. She just turned and vomited.

  "Somebody call emergency," the security guy said.

  "It's okay," I said. "You see this isn't my hand." I gestured toward the hand under my foot. "It was my brother's."

  I gestured with the bloody letter opener and the security guy pulled a gun.

  I dropped the bloody tool and said, "We're cool."

  I took my foot off of Dougie's hand, but it just lay there, playing dead. I knew better and gave it a little kick.

  I was feeling really light-headed, so I sat flat on my ass. Man there was a lot of blood. The security guy holstered his weapon and tried to figure out what to do about my stump.

  I wasn't paying attention to him. I watched Dougie's hand. It made a slow finger wave and twisted over palm down. I tried to tell people to watch, but I was so dizzy and it was hard to speak. No one but me saw Dougie's hand tarantula its way across the floor and under the bed. It stopped before it disappeared into the dark and raised its middle finger. First I thought it was the bird, and then I realized it was a wave.

  I didn't know where it was going to go, and it was already starting to get that bluish hypoxic cast, but I didn't want to part on bad terms so I said, "Good luck, Dougie's hand," and then everything started to fade out.

  Virtual Huntress

  The afternoon sunlight reflected off the hybrid Beemer’s license plate, ‘HNTRIS’, as it slipped smoothly into the last open parking space. A man standing in the park noted the car and compared it to the picture displayed on his cell phone's screen.

  He advanced to the next image and studied the attractive thirty-something American woman. There was no mistake that it was the woman sitting behind the wheel. He snapped the phone closed and slipped it into his pocket as he strolled back up the path to the soccer game in progress.

  #

  "I just pulled in now, Mom," Marcia said into the hands free cell phone. She checked the dash clock as she shifted into park and flicked off the ignition.

  "They have at least fifteen minutes left, so technically I didn't miss Jake's game," she said.

  "Yes, I know I've been working a lot, but I'm here now." She had gone overtime again on her last mission run and had been afraid she would miss the game altogether.

  She checked her face in the rearview mirror while she listened to her Mother's reply and then continued, "You know I can't talk about the job. I'll call this evening, and I really have to go, Mom."

  "Mothers," she said under her breath as she slipped the earpiece off and dropped it on the passenger seat.

  Her new gig with Geodynamix was great, but no amount of overtime was worth missing out on Jake's game. Jake was the only good thing she’d gotten from her ex after all. Well, the settlement and the BMW were pretty nice too.

  Leaving the car behind, she walk-trotted up the gravel path to the fields, a challenge in a skirt and low heels. She’d spent her day plugged into a temperature-controlled world of muted grays and greens, nothing like this beautiful da
y. Maples lining the path were swathed in scarlet and summer was giving one last gasp today before it gave in to fall.

  She slowed as she came up to the sideline cluster of mostly Moms. A few she recognized checked their watches before they nodded and gave her small smiles.

  “What’s the score?” she asked of no one in particular.

  “Three to one,” a man’s voice answered from beside her.

  Marcia glanced sidelong at the man. Standing between her and the edge of the cluster, tall, in slacks and a sweater. Athletic. Tan with dark hair and a touch of stately gray at the temple. Nice. “Who’s up?”

  “Saint Paul’s Prep.” The man didn’t look at her, keeping his eyes on the match.

  Marcia checked her watch and said, “I don’t know if we’ll have time to beat them, then.”

  That got his attention and he turned to regard her with steady brown eyes. Crow’s feet appeared at the margins when he smiled. “You have a boy playing for Connolly?”

  Marcia smiled back, feeling a little spark. She nodded to the field and said, “My son Jake. He’s the blonde kid, playing sweeper. Number twelve.”

  “Ah, yes. He is the one that kicks left footed. He’s quite good.”

  She felt a little flush of maternal pride. Turning back to the field, she said, “Who’s your son?”

  “Steve. Saint Paul's jersey, number nine.” He pointed out to the field and Marcia spotted the boy on the sidelines.

  They watched as Jake thwarted a drive by a Saint Paul’s forward and sent the ball back down field like it was fired from a howitzer.

  “Nice,” the man said.

  Marcia smiled again; glad to be here in time to watch Jake play.

  She caught the man looking at her left hand holding the keys. Noting the naked flesh of her ring finger produced the suggestion of a smile from him. She’d already seen he didn’t wear a wedding band.