The Fingers

The Awakening

Rain patters against the window. Fresh, rainy air comes in, cooling my body. I open my eyes to a world entirely anew.

"Oh my God, Tangello!" My best friend says, turning around from the open windows to look at me. I stand up to stretch the stillness from my muscles, but wince at the feeling of the IV in my arm.

Were my adventures not really real? Were they all figments of my imagination?

"Where... Am I? What happened?" I ask, my throat so scratchy I must have been screaming when I was out.

"Your aunt found you convulsing on the floor of her apartment. The ambulance brought you here and pumped your stomach, and you've been out since." He says, taking a sip from a paper cup of cranberry juice.

"How long?" I demand, putting my bare feet on the cold floor and walking to the window, hoping to air out my sweaty robe.

"Two days. Man, I really thought you weren't gonna wake up." He chuckles, handing me the bottle of water I always carried with me. "You've been cleared to drink fluids when you woke up, and you must be pretty thirsty."

I immediately grab it with the non IV arm, pouring as much water in my mouth as I could handle. Oh, how it tasted good to consume something that wasn't dead body parts.

"So, what about the finger?" I ask, wondering if I could restart the adventure by eating it again. By now, though, it would probably be half-digested and rotten. "Oh, I guess I should explain myself first. I found a finger inside the oven at my aunt's house, so I ate it. Thinking back, that was kind of stupid of me." I chuckle, running my hands through my greasy hair.

"It got removed from your stomach when they pumped it. Your cousin told me that it was ripped off when he bent the oven handle, but that he didn't really care." He leans closer to me, whispering in my ear, "But unfortunately for him, it's too mangled to be reattached."

"Hell yeah!" I exclaim, shrugging my shoulders out of the gown and putting on my shirt. "I wanna go see him so I can point and laugh.". My friend knew to look away when I put on my pants and shoes. He waited at the door for me, eager to make fun of my cousin.

I grabbed the IV in my arm, undid the tape, and slowly pulled it out. The weird, indescribable feeling was nauseating, but I quickly felt much better, better enough to mock my cousin.

"So, uh, what finger was it?" I question, following my friend through the halls of the hospital.

"Right index. The loser didn't even notice since he took all that nausea medication."

There was no indication we were going to a certain room. I looked to my friend for advice, only to see him trying to leave.

"Tan, he's at home. You don't stay in the hospital for a missing finger." He sighs, walking out the doors. I quickly follow, deciding I would much rather walk the town than stay in the hospital.

"They found so many drugs in your body that you were lucky to live. Makes you wonder how many he had in him..." He ponders, walking the sidewalks. It's cool outside, and the water droplets catch in my hair.

"And he's still alive?" I ask, knowing the answer would be an unfortunate 'yes'.

"Yeah. And the oven's still broken."

The oven!

"We had such an adventure, man. The oven and I had to go all around the world in search of my cousin's parts so that I could absorb them all and fight his soul." I reminisce on the memories, knowing I might be able to recreate them.

"Did you go to Germany?" My friend implores, knowing full-well of my cousin's obsession with the country.

"Nope. My cousin was such a loser he didn't even end up in the place he wanted to go the most, even in 'death'." I say the last word with finger-quotes.

"What an idiot."

"Real."

I arrive at my house several hours later, having drank half of a stolen Monster Energy Ultra Strawberry tm with my friend. In that moment I came to realize that dreams couldn't be achieved by eating the fingers of an evil person.

All of that, and my urge to beat up my cousin grew millionfold.