A-1 Assignments

G3 #4

Eric never expected to lose a finger. After all, he worked as an online website designer. It wasn’t as though he had to avoid danger on a daily basis or had co-workers who accidentally lost a digit in a horrible digital incident. Still, he was quite surprised to find that losing a finger could be painless.

At least, he didn’t notice it missing when he woke up.

He rolled out of bed as usual, glancing groggily at his alarm clock and swiping the goop from both eyes, finally stretching and yawning as he got up. Stumbling to the bathroom, he used the toilet and stumbled back out, eyes still partially closed. He picked up the small ring Deidre had given him from the kitchen table, sliding it onto where his left pinky used to be, his eyes still mostly closed. Unfortunately, the ring fell from his hands and smacked the top of his bare foot painfully.

Eric yelped and looked down, watching the crooked bit of metal wobble a short distance away and fall over onto its side. Grumbling about rings and gravity, he stalked towards it, grabbing it from the floor and jamming it down where his pinky used to be. Again, the ring slid off and hit the floor.

Confused, he bent low and examined the ring, running his fingers over it to try to find a break in the metal band, but aside from being a little crooked, the ring was perfect. Holding it in his right hand, he slowly moved it to his left, turning his left hand palm-in. It was at that particular moment that he realized his left pinky was gone.

It didn’t seem to have been cut off or surgically removed. He had no pinky stump or wad of flesh where the pinky used to be, just a smooth curve of flesh down to his wrist, as though the pinky in question had never existed.

Eric flipped his hand over, twisting it one way and then the other, inspecting the hand carefully. Then, in a show of ludicrous shock, walked back to his bedroom and begin searching the covers. When his covers showed no hint of the missing digit, he gone on his hands and knees, peering under the bed. With an odd sense of propriety, he called his mother.

“Mom,” he began, “do you…can you lose a finger overnight?”

“Well,” his mother mused, “that’s what happened to old Ned. A’ course, his brother used an ax on him and he didn’t lose one finger, but all of ‘em—“

“Okay,” he mumbled, hanging up the phone. In a quick thought, he picked up the phone again and called his friend.

“Did I leave anything behind last night?” he asked.

“Um, I don’t think so,” Karen replied. “Dave,” she called to her husband, “did Eric leave anything here last night?

Eric waited quietly as Karen and Dave mumbled quietly to each other. “No,” Karen finally answered. “Dave said he couldn’t find anything. Are you missing something?”

“My pinky,” Eric blurted.

“What?” Karen asked, confused.

Eric just hung up the phone.