Reality couldn’t be this cruel.

   There came to her images of a building being bombed.

   No. Strike that.

   Several buildings, all withering husks of scrap metal, discarded brick, and detritus of furnishings. Then there’s Tom, her partner, standing near one (Two? Three? More?) of the ruins, lazily poking a foot through the burnt trash there, as if the reason for the bombing might be found. He’s smiling that winning smile of his, smoking, the cigarette held between two fingers, and saying something. Why can’t she hear what he’s saying? He’s pointing at her feet. She looks down and sees her feet are gone. She feels herself scream. Tom continues smiling and takes in another breath of non-filtered smoke.

   Then the scene changes to Ronald, her lover, and her.

   She’s still screaming, but now for entirely different reasons.

   They’re in bed. His hands all over her: Caressing her naked back, her continually fluid face, her breasts, the caresses closely followed by butterfly kisses and erotically appealing licks which only take her higher. He enters her – Oh, God, how he enters her – his lovemaking alternating between deliberate and syrupy and scabrous and wanton. The image drifts off, leaving Steff with the ghost of clinging hands.

   She’s in the chief’s office. What’s he saying? Something about Ronald. being dead? Impossible. They’d just made love that morning. She can still feel his hands, his knowing hands, his wandering hands, her body responding as it had never before.

   The scene shifts again.

   Ronald in front of her: Tall, naked, without hands.

   Where are his hands?

   He’s smiling as the blood drips from the stumps at the ends of his arms. His lips struggle to say something, his tongue squirming to be free of its moist cave. Is it words of love? Of supplication? Of warning? His pleading face is masked by a fog bank before she can be answered.

   And then he’s gone.

   She’s running. She’s tired. Her feet hurt. Why is she running? Is she running to or from something? People vacate houses to offer her fluid. Steff turns her head to her audience and sees not Dixie cups of water offered, but the blood dripping from their handless stumps.

   Steff turns from the zombie-slack faces and faces a fog bank that slowly reveals a sidewalk in front of her. Buildings on each side of her, vacant. Where is she? She walks to a deserted intersection. Which way to go? To the right the highway, to the left the city. Straight ahead is the ghetto of the city, behind her much of the same. She decides to flip for direction. She flips a quarter into the air. A hand not belonging to her catches it. She backs away from the floating hand, stumbles, catches herself, and continues backward until stopped by a building.

   Another hand mystically joins the first.

   The hands advance on her. She tries to move, but her arms are stuck to the building. The hands swarm about her face like a cloud of gnats and begin slapping her. She tries to scream, but a foot from nowhere sticks itself into her mouth.

   There’s blackness.

   Numbness.

   Endless void.

   But she can still feel those hands…. On her shoulder, slapping her, slapping her, slapping…

***

   Steff opened her eyes to faint gray light sifting through a window’s tightly pulled curtains.

   "She’s awake now. Come."

   The slapping stopped. There was the feeling of a spider clambering down her arm from her shoulder, then the sound of a piece of meat slapping the floor. She heard the impatient tapping of fingernails on wood before she saw the limbless hand crawling away. She closed her eyes, licked her lips, and felt all confusion wiped away. It hadn’t been her imagination. It hadn’t been a dream. It had all been fact: Ronald dead, the bombings, and the hands….

   The hand returned under her chin, lifting her head, the breath blown into her face rotten.

   "Welcome back to the land of the living."

   Her eyes now better adjusted to the gloom, Steff craned her head to the right, then the left. There was a bench to her left; its top littered with what appeared to be tools. On the floor in front of the bench was a can of gasoline. In the corner were some rags. Heaped in the opposite corner were bundles of magazines. There was a strong odor of chemicals. Her surveillance through, she gazed squarely in the face of the man. "What’s this about?"

   "My dear. Is this all so much above you?" He pulled a chain above his head. The light momentarily blinded Steff. "Can’t you see? I mean, is this all so difficult for you to figure out?" The man sighed and went to a freezer setting in the far corner. The top was open. Vapors of fog smoked upward. "How about if you and I play a little game."

   "Game?

   He spun, facing her. "Yes. A game. I want to play a game with you. Not a parlor game. Not a video game. One of the originals: Dealer’s choice."

   Steff pulled at her bonds. Her hands were expertly tied behind her. Her legs were tied together, and then tied to the uncomfortable chair she was sitting in. "Do I have a choice?"

   "Oh, yes. There’s a choice. There’s always a choice."

   "What if I don’t wanna play this game of yours?"

   He clapped his hands together. "Well, my dear, it’s like this. If you don’t, what I have planned for you will be known to you that much sooner. Besides, this is where you’re thinking if you play along with me long enough, I’ll make a mistake. And if I make enough mistakes, thereby giving you time to plan, you’ll find some way out of this, escape back to your precinct, and come back with a posse to hog tie and roast me like a pig. So…. You game?"

   What choice did she have? None, which led her to answer, "Yes."

   He turned back to the freezer and fished inside. "This is going to be so much fun. I like fun. I have so little of it anymore. Okay." Frozen articles were turned over, moved aside. "Ah, yes. Here’s one. A golden oldie." A package was lifted from the freezer. "You ready to play?"

   She looked at him. Said nothing.

   "Okay. Now what I want you to do is answer this riddle for me. Do you think you can do that?"

   Silence answered for her.

   "I don’t think you heard me."

   "I heard you."

   "Then answer the question."

   "I’m your captive audience, aren’t I? Why do I need to answer?"

   "Pooh on you, then. I’m not going to let your bad manners spoil my good mood."

   "No. Wouldn’t want me come between you and your fun."

   He snapped his fingers. "Exactly. Fun is what I am going to have and I can assure you this is going to be so much fun." Sigh. "Okay. Nails too long, dirt underneath – something I find particularly disturbing, I might add. Too many calluses, black hair on knuckles. What am I talking about?"

   "A hand."

   "Bravo. A round of applause." He turned to her, thumping his two stumps together. Beside him were his hands, clapping like leaves in a tree on a windy day. "Oh, please. Oh, please. Enough of that. Enough of that already." He held his stumps still and the hands jumped up on them. He raised a finger to the air. "This one might be a bit tougher for you." He shut the top of the freezer, walked over to the bench, set the package down, picked up a knife, and slit the package open.

   Steff couldn’t believe what she was seeing.

   It was a pair of hands.

   He brought them over to Steff, still holding the knife. "Tell me: Who they belong to?" A chuckle. "Oh, but please forgive me. Allow me to correct myself. I mean, who did they belong to?" He set the hands in her lap.

   Steff’s first instinct was to try to shake the Popsicle’s from her lap, but then she got a better look at them. The dark hairs on the backs of the knuckles should have alerted her. She blinked back the memories those frozen hands caressed to her attention. They could have been any pair of hands. They would have been any pair of hands if it hadn’t been for the gold ring on the left hand.

   The man held his arms above his head. His hands fell to the floor. "Stumped?"

   She shook her head, not allowing herself to acknowledge the comedy routine. "Ronald Gainer."

   "Gotta hand it to you." His hands floated back up to their spots at the ends of his wrists. "You’re a natural at this game, aren’t you?"

   "You’re not natural," Steff managed weakly, inhaling deeply. She stared at the ground, past the hands. If she didn’t look, didn’t concede their existence, then maybe, just maybe she could walk herself out of this impossible situation.

   "You mean these?"

   A stare in the way of an answer.

   He grabbed the hands from her lap. "Must I explain everything to you? Does everything have to be spelled out for you? Why can’t an artist just sketch and be appreciated? Why is there this great demand for detail? You can get so lost in detail that you miss the big picture."

   "He was killed in a bombing," she choked out.

   "Poor woman." He threw the hands in the direction of the freezer.

   Steff’s stomach knotted as they clunked to the floor. The earlier experienced tears of loss quickly boiled into tears of anger. She gritted her teeth together.

   "What you saw was a fiery hand puppet. A pyrotechnical Punch and Judy show."

   "The very reason you are here, my dear. You’ve been wondering what you’re doing here, right?"

   Steff bit her bottom lip.

   "But of course you’ve been wondering." He turned his back on Steff, lifting his hands to the audience of hands he had stashed in the freezer as if waiting for their applause. "They all wonder: Just what is my part in this play? And being the director, it is my part to push them along to do their greatest work."

   His hands darted from him and went to the bench.

   "Not now. There’s time for that later."

   The hands came back to the stumps.

   "What are you?" Her disgusted countenance directed at his hands perfectly conveyed her meaning.

   "You mean these?" He held his hands out before him.

   A nod.

   "But of course you do." He turned his hands over and shrugged.

   "How’d it happen?"

   The hands curled into fists and he turned his gaze from his own anatomy to Steff’s pleading eyes. "Stalling while looking for a way out?"

   "No. I—"

   He held up a hand to silence her. "Doesn’t matter. We’ll play your game for a moment here. I mean, it’s not like you’re going to be saved or anything. Right?"

   Silence.

   He shrugged. "I really don’t know what you want to hear. A government experiment gone awry?" A shrug. "Or maybe I was born this way and I’m seeking retribution against the normal people of the world. I could be an assassin who fell into enemy hands and was turned against my benefactors. Or I’m an alien abductee returned to earth to spread the word of love." He winked at Steff. "I kinda fancy the latter myself. Has more panache than the others, don’t you think?"

   Steff didn’t answer. She looked down at the ground, at the cracked and chipped cement flooring. She struggled with her bonds, but all that did was cause the rope to further bite into her flesh.

   "But of course you think so. You’re an agreeable person." A dramatic sigh. "I'm tiring of this game. Can we agree on that?"

   "No."

   "Then what—Ah. Oh, yes. I can see what you want. It's in your eyes. The flesh, my dear. Oh, how they speak to one another without our knowing. Body language isn't just a catch phrase." A giggle.

   "You're sick," Steff spat out.

   The man placed a hand on his chest. "Me? Sick?" He turned and laughed dramatically. "American society buries toxins beneath the feet of our unsuspecting innocent children, wars are fought in the name of corporational control of America, the poor are trod upon, the rich get away with murder and I am vomited from the soured stomach of all this and you dare sit there and call me sick while defending the right for all that to continue?" He tsked and turned, raising an index finger at her. "My dear Steff, you are the sick one. A disease that must be eradicated. If you want, you can think of it as a game of cowboy and Indians and you have just been given a smallpox-infected blanket. Does that little bit of covering make you feel safer against the ghouls of the darkness?"

   Steff blinked, then said, "Fuck you."

   The man placed a hand over his mouth, feigning surprise. "Oh, my, dear Steffie. You just said a naughty word." He giggled. "But that's all part of your repertoire, isn't it? Where did the legend of good manners run off to? Hmmm? Ah, well. Maybe it didn't run off at all. Merely misplaced. Probably wandered off with good old Howard Hughes and caught one of those awful womanly diseases and locked itself away from the world, sitting in a room somewhere in Middle America, rotting. Or maybe it’s waiting for a cure. What do you think?"

   "You're insane," Steff spat out.

   "You think so? I mean, really think so?" He placed his right index finger on his temple. "I don't know. I like to think of all this as taking part in the only really original American vocation: Genocide."

Steff looked over at Ronald's hands lying on the floor near the freezer. He caught the movement of attention.

   "Oh, not to worry, Steff. I'll put the popsicle back before it melts and loses its flavor. Spoiled meat isn’t a refreshing odor, is it?" A giggle.

   "You bastard."

   "You know what your problem is, Steff, my dear? I don’t think you appreciate what can be accomplished with these hands. Further, I can see you don’t appreciate anything. Anything at all."

   "What’s there to appreciate about this?"

   "Umm, I don’t know. Let me think." His right hand floated from its dock and capered in his hair, scratching at the head beneath. "Ah. I know. How about your buttered role in all this and how delicious it’s going to be?"

   Steff didn’t say anything.

   "No answer is necessary. It’s about that time, anyway."

   "Time? Time for what?"

   His left hand detached itself, went to the worktable, and picked up a knife.

   As strong as she thought she would be when the end of her life came, she never envisioned she would end it trussed up like an animal. In the field, maybe. With an unseen bullet with her named etched onto its tip. A knife in the gut. A bat beat against her belfry. Her life so quickly finished she wouldn’t have time for anything but a quick prayer.

   But never anything like this.

   At the end of that thought, against her will, her body mutinied: Warm piss soaked the front of her pants.

   He shook his head, watching her fear dribble to the floor. "Now why you go and do that for? Now I'm going to have to change your pants for you."

   "What?"

   "I'm going to have to change your pants before I set you free."

   "But--"

   "You thought differently. I can see. And smell. But no matter. Here, let me cut your bonds and set you free. And then all will be clear to you."

   His knife-wielding left hand came to him, reaffirming their bond. Then with a shake of his head, he went to her and began undoing her bonds.

***

   Steff walked into the noontime heat of the precinct, walking past familiar faces devoid of anything but the urgency of their current mission. No one acknowledged her and she acknowledged no one.

   She took the elevator to the third floor, walked its length, her gloved hands wringing themselves together in expectation, and entered Captain William Dole’s office without a knock.

   It was empty, as she feared it would be.

   She locked the door behind her, walked over to the desk, sat in the chair, and set her purse on its top. Against better judgment, she opened her purse and pulled out packs of plastic explosives. Her gloved hands stroked these packages, set them aside, and withdrew the small spool of wire and detonators from the purse. She got up and placed the wire around the door in a way it could be opened just enough for Bill to see Steff sitting behind the desk when he entered. The packages -- twelve of them total -- were split up. Three on each side of the door, three between the door and the desk, two sitting on top of the desk, and one would be for Steff.

   She had given up all thought of struggle back at the house of the man who claimed to have so far killed thousands of people across the country. He already had his way with her. Now she would have to deal with his offspring.

   She laid her head back, her eyes glazing over, and thought, Get it over with. Just please get it over with.

   On the tail end of that thought, she couldn’t help but wonder if these were the very same thoughts Ronald juggled with. She couldn’t hold back the tear which rolled down her cheek at the thought of him.

   The gloved hands detached themselves from her and tied their respective arms to the chair. When through, they climbed down her legs to tie them to the chair. Finished with the knots, left climbed up into her lap and undid her pants while right retrieved a pack. The pack was flipped up to left, who caught it deftly, molded it thinner, and stood by as right climbed up into her lap where it pulled her pants down further, giving birth to more room. With enough room now, left lanced the now cylindrical pack into her vagina, right hooking the detonator and wire to it.

   Steff thought the last of her will to struggle had been taken from her, but when she felt the tongue in her mouth begin to squirm, she clamped her mouth shut. She couldn’t keep the hands and feet from removing themselves from her, but, by God, she could trap the instrument which denied her warning anyone downstairs of what she was now doing. The tongue banged at the prison-bars of her teeth.

   But it wasn’t about to be daunted.

   It fooled Steff, taking the route she least expected and acting quicker than her gagging reflex: It wormed its way to the back of her throat, bent down, and ripped Steff’s larynx from her.

   Steff shook violently from the pain, a gout of blood flooding from her nose, but she kept her mouth clamped shut. There was no way that son-of-a-bitch was going to get out.

   No matter what it did.

   But the tongue wasn’t interested in the easy way out. It already had its route planned. It curled upwards at the back of her throat and snailed its way through her nasal cavity and popped out her nose, snot and blood marking its trail. It jumped from her top lip and landed on the floor, escaping Steff’s final act of defiance far easier than she would have wished it to be done.

   Steff watched the hands take hold of the window, their stubs digging into the wood of the sill, their fingers struggling with the purchase of the window.

   The window went up an inch.

   The left hand went through first, signaling for the feet to follow. The tongue glided from the floor and floated through the aperture. Before the right hand joined its comrades, it gave Steff a wave. Then it, as the four before it, was gone.

   Alone, Steff watched the approach of sunset.

   After a short time of this and getting bored with it, she closed her eyes, dreading the moment when she would hear Bill’s leaden advance down the hall to the door; when he would grip the knob and find the door locked; when he would unlock the door and set off the trap set exclusively for him.

   She just hoped the moment before his body would decorate the street below he would look into her eyes and see she loved him. She didn’t want him to die thinking this had been her idea. She laid her head back and watched the light of the day crawl across the ceiling on its way out the window.

    ©2004 Forrest Hunter