Kessie's Short Stories

Porcelain Hand

Originally written 2/21/2020

He removed his glove, to reveal a hand made of porcelain. "It's a family curse," he said.

The first thing I said back was, "I didn't know you were into special effects." It was Paul's frustrated groan that instantly launched me into a small panic attack.

Paul and I had been dating for a whole year now. We had met during a film festival our university was throwing. We bonded over our mutual love for direct-to-video Disney flicks and hatred for Michael Bay. Our first date was to another film festival – most of the day was spent guessing which shorts were going to win the festival's awards.

Of course I noticed the thick glove he wore on his right hand. And, of course, I brought it up one night when he came over. At the time he brushed it off and gave me some random trivia about body horror. I hate body horror, he knew it, and the conversation ended there.

And yet, here we were now, almost a year after and the secret finally revealed.

"Jan, I'm serious." he told me, his voice sounding incredibly desperate. "All my other girlfriends forced me to take off my glove, and then they left me. You only asked once, and never brought it up again. You HAVE to know, Jan. And you're going to leave me too."

"So?" I carelessly rebutted. "My grandfather blasted his leg off in Vietnam."

"A prosthesis isn't this... thing!"

"Sure as hell moves the same, don't it?"

"It's not..."

"It is so."

It was, by the way. It was what I had come to assume, in all honesty.

"Jan..." Paul sighed. "Why are you making this so difficult? Just leave me already."

I distinctly remember that I was starting to get mad at this point. I had crossed my arms and gave him one of the ugliest scowls I could muster. "Maybe it's because I love you dipshit? God, if I left you now, it would be because you WANT me to break up with you. Do you really want that Paul? Do you really want me to fucking leave you?"

Any anger Paul had quickly deflated. "No," he admitted, "I don't want you to leave. Ever."

"Then why act like I will?"

For a moment, Paul looked at me with a dumb, blank expression before looking down at his porcelain hand. Was I curious on how it was a family curse? Sure. Did I want to know if it was an actual genetic mutation, or if at some point someone in their family pissed off the wrong pixie? Sure, who wouldn't?

But it was clear now that Paul had absolutely no trust or faith in me. All this time, he lived in terror of how I would react to his funny hand. Sure, he always felt betrayed when she showed his other girlfriends, and they'd run in the opposite direction. But what about me? How could he have gone a year by my side and not know that I'd follow his dumbass to the moon and back?

Maybe he was just now realizing this. That all the forces that brought us together made every circumstance right. Not everyone had relatives with a prosthesis, after all. Not everyone loved direct-to-video Disney films, or openly dunked on Michael Bay.

As he carefully placed his hand back in his glove, he said to me in a small voice, "Jan, I love you."

And, without a second thought, I replied with a simple, "I love you too."