/lit/ - Literature

Oh lord, where do I begin. I don’t know how to tell you this story because it’s so simple that “story” isn’t the right word. I was born in the front passenger seat of a pickup truck doing seventy on I-9. At the hospital the doctor told my parents, “forget it, he’s dead. Blue-in-the-face and something’s weird with his arm.” My father lunged at the doctor, but male nurses held him back. I made it, obviously, but my right arm just hangs there from my shoulder like a sock. I learned to write left handed (my handwriting’s pretty bad) and I stuff my dead right arm into long sleeves and bury the purple hand in my pants pocket. People think I’m just really casual. At parties I freak people out by slamming my dead fingers in doorjambs or sticking my bicep with kitchen knives. I’ve been called “dead arm” and “Ahhhhhhhh!” My life got interesting last October when I got a job as a public speaker. When I want to gesture, I fling my meat-bone arm in a big arc by twisting my shoulder. At the bottom of the arc, the arm disappears behind the podium. No one has said anything. I’ve considered clipping the arm off and experimenting with synthetics, but I’m a bit of a luddite. This is my girlfriend, Sam. I found her packing acorns into a hollowed out tree and lured her home with birdseed. She lives in this aquarium here with my goldfish, Madonna. I had no idea squirrels could breathe underwater, but apparently no one thought to find out. Sam and Madonna hate each other. Once I found the furry one floating face-down on the water surface, but she was just playing.