I wanted to slaughter every sesquipedalian-slinging pretentious fuck that came through the bookstore doors and bought the new edition of 100 year old books. "The author is dead!" I would say. "Go find a used book suppository." And they didn't get that joke because they hadn't seen that movie. So it goes.
For them, the act of owning the book, the art, was more important than reading it, looking at it. If you sold 10 Moby Dicks in a week, 1 would get read. They would bring it every day to the coffeeshop and thumb through it, as if they would chance upon greatness like they did on the genetic lottery for their parent's trust funds.
Always. Every day is exactly the same. And now you know that this one won't.
It started with on a beach. More accurately, it started with a glimpse of a woman on the beach. And, even more accurately, it started with a glimpse of part of a woman on the beach. A disembodied arm had washed up on the shore. The hand was palm down, stuck in a claw shape like a kafkaesque insectoid being. A scorpion. I'm a Scorpio, but don't you believe that I believe in that. Just a coincidence. That in an of itself wasn't that unusual, back in the that time, that time before we had the order we have now. And I mean the time when I was orderly.
So, no. A disembodied arm was not a normal thing. I don't even think it was ever a normal thing, save from the remnants of Kublai Kahn's fleets or a battle like at Lake Trasimene. Though such bloodshed being normal is anathema to me.
Usually.
In any case. I was on the beach, where dirt meets water. I don't know why I was there and I can be hardly blamed for not remembering considering that I had just found the arm of a woman. And I could tell it was a woman, due to the delicate nature of her hand and its adult size yet hairless and feminine appearance. I know I know, one could shave one's arms. And that's possible, but the presence of that light hair on the pale skin belied that it was not a shorn arm, but rather an arm of a woman. These are all generalizations, I know I know.
So I brought it to work. I had intended to bring it to the authorities but as I stood outside the police station I knew that I had fumbled. I should have called the police with my mobile before picking it up and carrying it to them, like I was some kind of domesticated dog bringing a dead animal--a rabbit, for example--as a gift to the family.
My heart is filled with failures. It is a crowded heart. This is one of them. I could outline them all but like the voices tell me over and over again but that is not the purpose of this narrative. You are not reading this to get to know me or my neurosis. I am reasonably sure that you are reading this despite that. You are reading about the arm. The asset of my narrative is this arm. That is what it is.
I shouldn't have brought the arm to work. But the shells were talking and told me to. The shells on the beach. I cannot be blamed for their insistence. It was for the best as I might be late for my shift and the boss said "Don't be late again or I'll steal your glasses and never give them back." I wasn't egregious with what I had absquatulated. I brought it in plastic bag so that any fluids would not leak and soak through the backpack that I carried everywhere. I double bagged it. And, for the record, it did not leak. It wasn't hermetically sealed, no no. Not at all like that. Just that there was no blood or whatever fluids or bile that she may have contained.
No, the story doesn't end with some co-worker discovering the arm. The story doesn't end like that. No-one found the arm. I just brought it to work which we all know and have discussed as being unwise. Have we? Unwise, then, I am. Though compelled.
Pt 2 to come.
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