A-1 Assignments

Pantsing TB1 #2.1

"My instinct about painting says, if you don't think about it, it's right."
Andy Warhol


Dave watched the three-legged dog hop its way towards him on the darkened street, its face pointed down in resigned contrition. It was a dog that'd seen difficult times and cruel humans. Dave automatically pulled the meat part of his burger out from between the grease-soaked bread and offered it to the starving mutt. The animal looked up and feebly wagged its skeletal tail. "It's bad for you," Dave mumbled, "but you could use the fat."

The dog opened its mouth and something plopped down onto the sidewalk. Dave couldn't see what the object was in the dark, but he didn't bother to examine it. Instead, he waited patiently as the dog gently pulled the meat from his fingers and hopped down the street. The dog didn't eat it, Dave saw, but carried it diligently. He thought about leading the dog to the nearest animal shelter but knew that with overcrowding, the dying animal would simply be put to sleep anyway. He would've taken the dog in hisself, but his house was too small for an animal and he just didn't want the responisibility of caring for someone or something else. Sighing, Dave wiped his fingers clean on his jeans and glanced down at a dark object on the sidewalk.

He remembered vaguely that the dog had carried something in its mouth, but he didn't remember identifying it. The streetlamp above him was out (surprise) and he had to squat down and squint to get a good look at the object. It was a hand.

In an almost automatic action, Dave stood straight up, his spine going so straight it hurt. "No," Dave said outloud, his face twisting to a disbelieving grin. "No way."

He bent down again, leaning his face even closer to the object, willing his eyes to see something different. He couldn't command an object to turn into another, so the hand remained a smelly, rotting hand. Almost parodying his earlier movements, Dave stood up straight again, jerking his head around to look for the dog. The dog was gone and the hand was still laying on the shadowy pavement.

"What now?" he asked himself.

The cops--he'd call the cops. Dave fumbled for his cellphone and saw that he had no reception. He thought about the payphone he'd passed just a block or so away. Sure, he'd call the cops...and spend hours with police officers, trying to explain that a mangy dog dropped it and vanished into thin air. They probably wouldn't believe him and try to get him to confess to murder. "You did it!" they'd shout. "You murdered some poor shmuck and left his hand on the sidewalk! You sick freak!"

"No!" he'd scream back. "It was the dog! The dog did it!"

The dog might've killed the hand's owner. After years of being tormented by two-legged creatures, he finally snapped and lunged....Dave had just aided and abetted a murderer.

Unless the man wasn't dead. Then the guy would probably sue Dave for not bringing it back so it could be reattached. Could a person sue hand negligence?

"You waited until it was too late!" the one-handed guy would shout. "I have no hand!"

"It was the dog's fault!" Dave would shout back. "He had it too long!"

Dave would lose the house, his car, his...everything. Unless it was a fake hand--prosthetic. He bent down again and examined the hand. Nope, it was real and smelled bad and everything. Dave stood up again.

'I'm being ridiculous,' he thought to himself. 'I need to calm down and just call the damn cops. What do I do with it?'

At first, Dave thought about taking it with him, but he couldn't stand the idea of touching it. Then he thought about draping his jacket over it. It was fairly warm night, and he really didn't need the old windbreaker....

No, he decided. Some smelly old hobo would probably come by and pick up the jacket and maybe the hand would somehow get tangled up in it and the hobo would walk away with an extra hand. Or maybe the hand belonged to the hobo. Maybe the hobo was watching him right now, waiting for him to walk away so he could get it back....

Or maybe it wasn't a hobo that was watching him, but a killer--a serial killer who was going to wait until Dave turned his back and then slide up to him and reach around and slice his throat and kill him because he'd seen too much and had the only proof that the serial killer was killing the people he killed....

He killed hobos, Dave reasoned. He did it so the police wouldn't be too worried and the story wouldn't be front-page news. But with the hand, the cops would find him and stick him in jail for life. They'd find the killer's fingerprints on the hand, safely protected by the dog spit the mutt had lacquered on from carrying it around, but it was the same reason Dave couldn't pick it up with him and carry it to the phone. His fingerprints would mess up the serial killer's prints and he'd be the one in jail...

All because he fed a starving dog.

'Stop it!' Dave screamed in his head. 'Do something with it now, because it's driving you crazy! No one's watching you, the hand...well, leave that mystery for the cops, and no one is going to be pissed at you for finding it!'

"Yeah," Dave whispered out loud. "Just do something."

Dave took his windbreaker off, used it to pick up the hand, wrapped it up in the slick material, and headed for his house. He got in safely, headed out back, and buried it deep under the rose bush. "There," said Dave when he finished. "Now no one can sue you or frame you for murder."

~*~

The same moment that the three-legged dog had dropped the rotting hand onto the sidewalk, a mortician discovered that he was missing something from his latest client. The dead man had died accidentally when the homemade bomb he was making went off as he was peering down at it. Sonny, the mortician, had put most of his bits and pieces back together, but realized that he was missing a hand. It, like the other parts, was partially rotted because no one found the body until it had started decomposing.

Sonny traced back the day's events, knowing the hand had been there when the body was brought in. He remembered ordering some Thai and shooing a very thin three-legged dog out of the room. Sonny still couldn't figure out how the dog had gotten in, and how he had to kick at it to get the mutt out of the funeral home. Maybe the dog took it?

'No,' Sonny thought. 'What a ridiculous thought. Anyway, maybe the hand was accidentally thrown in with one of the other bodies....'