EXCERPT


I found the miniature, deformed, and bloodied arm while dusting the wooden bookshelf in my home office during my weekly Saturday morning cleaning ritual. At first, I thought it was a little wooden twig but upon closer inspection, realized it was a tiny human arm. At first glance, it appeared to be made out of some sort of plastic or rubber. I thought maybe it was a toy piece that had broken off of a Barbie doll or a G.I. Joe Army doll. The whitish skin was sickly and gross in appearance and gave the impression of being fake or unreal. The tiny arm was straight and roughly three inches in length, and the attached hand contained tiny spidery fingers. The arm appeared to have been cleanly cut below the shoulder and looked really strange lying in a tiny pool of red liquid. What is that? Paint? Nail polish? Blood?

Curiously, I deftly and carefully picked up the tiny arm with two fingers and gently placed the unnatural and mysterious body part into the palm of my left hand. The tiny bloodied arm felt soft, squishy and wet. It was not made of plastic nor Styrofoam but felt rubbery. Picking up the arm with two fingers, I lightly squeezed the little appendage along the forearm. The severed end of the arm began to seep a gooey, red liquid substance. I caught a tiny drop of the red liquid along my fingertip and brought it closer to my face to get a better look at it. The goo had a deep dark red color to it. Bringing it closer to my nose and nostrils, I sniffed at the red stuff on my reddened fingertip. It smelled like copper It smelled like blood. I dared not attempt to taste it.

I quickly wiped the front of my T-shirt with the red goo from my fingertip leaving a light red smear on my shirt. I strolled over to my oak desk, which sat in the middle of the room. The bookshelf from which I detected the tiny body piece was positioned on the right of the desk. A black filing cabinet stood on the opposite corner of the room. A black leather chair was positioned behind the desk. An additional chair was sitting idly off toward the left of the desk. A single window brought plenty of sunlight through the open blinds.

I sat down into the comfortable leather chair and scooted closer to the desk. A telephone/answering machine, along with a high-resolution video monitor, a color printer, a fax machine, an adding machine, a yellow note pad, and pencil holder all shared space on the well-organized desk. I reached for a yellow note pad and placed the Lilliputian arm on the pad of paper. My eyes were wide, and I was genuinely excited and puzzled about the little object.

I picked up a pencil and poked at the arm inspecting it very closely. No body hair or fur appeared anywhere on the minuscule arm. It looked as if it was the left arm of a rubbery doll or toy or something. I lightly stabbed the pencil into the forearm and removed the pencil. A tiny red dot appeared where I had punctured it, but it did not bleed nor did it squirt any more red goo. I rolled the appendage along the notepad with the pencil for about a minute not really paying any attention to the red blotchy marks the arm was leaving on the notepad. I lifted the arm and, with as little force as possible, I tried to squeeze the arm together in an attempt to see if it would bend at the elbow. Tiny cracking and crunching noise came from the little arm. It awkwardly felt like I was actually breaking tiny little bones. The little arm gave me the creeps so I nervously dropped the little arm on to the desk. The broken deformed arm, now shaped like a V, had landed on the yellow note pad.

I sat back in the chair. Something was up...this arm could not be real. It was not possible. No human arm could be this tiny...this small. It was physically impossible. But the little arm looked and felt like real human flesh and the crunching noise gave me the impression that it had bones. Could it possibly be a real human arm...but...only miniature in size? This had to be a joke. That had to be it. someone was playing a joke on me. Was it a prank? But who and why?