consequences were endless.
Terrified to open my cabinets, I debated how hungry I was. Breakfast was the most important meal of the day, but if there were eyeballs next to my oatmeal, I’d have to check myself into the loony bin.
From out of nowhere, a partially translucent woman tore around my kitchen, wailing in like a banshee—and ironically, she was missing a hand. Had the weirdos been trying to kill each other? Wait. That made no sense whatsoever. They were already dead. The varying states of decay were a dead giveaway—pun intended.
“You have got to be kidding me,” I shrieked as I scrambled up onto the kitchen table in fear for my life.
Could I make it out the door and into my yard? Crap, I was still in my nightie and it was chilly today. Furthermore, what in the hell was I going to do outside? Call for help to get the handless dead woman out of my kitchen? Not too many choices here.
“Stop,” I shouted in the voice I’d learned to use during my self-defense class at the Y.
She did.
Now what?
The woman was trembling from head to toe. Where her hand should have been was just shredded skin—if you could call grayish papery-looking stuff skin. No blood at all. If she was alive in the normal sense of the word, I’d guess her age to be somewhere in her late sixties. She was attractive in a ghostly way.
“Did you, umm… lose your hand? I asked, not quite believing I was conversing with someone I was fairly certain wasn’t there.
She simply stared and cocked her head to the side.
“Maybe you don’t speak English. Or maybe you were brain dead when you died so it isn’t functioning now that you’re not exactly alive. Or maybe you were mute in life… or maybe I’m insane,” I added for good measure as I cautiously got down off the table.
She came a little closer, and I jerked back. The rules were wildly unclear.
“Stay where you are,” I warned, holding up my hand and hoping she understood sign language. “If you promise not to body snatch me or eat me, I think I can help you out.”
Still she said nothing as I carefully made my way to the laundry room to retrieve what I assumed was her hand.
“I’m using a bath towel that’s seen better days in case you’re a disease-carrying zombie.” Never in my life did I think I would utter those words in a sentence. “So, I’ll toss it to you in a sec.”
Surprisingly, my gag reflex didn’t kick in. Dead stuff usually set it off. However, she seemed so upset about her hand, I was okay. Strange. I approached her with extreme caution. I held out her hand, and she held out her stump.
Oh. Hell. No.
Did she want me to reattach it? How did you reattach something to what was little more than a ghost? Her hand felt real, and she looked real enough, even though I could see through parts of her.
“Here you go,” I said as I tried again to give her the towel-wrapped body part.
She wasn’t having it. She simply stood there with her arm extended and waited.
“I’m not a doctor. Not real sure what you want me to do.”
Her eyes were huge in the hollowed-out sockets—watery blue and filled with what I guessed were tears. I was tempted to take her in my arms and hug her, but I still wasn’t positive she wouldn’t take a chunk out of me.
“I suppose I could glue it back on,” I suggested hesitantly. I knew there was some superglue in the junk drawer. I had no clue if there was enough to glue a hand back on. “Superglue can hold a big fat guy attached by his hat to a steel girder, according to the commercial,” I told the woman as I put her hand on the table and searched the drawer. “It might work on your hand.”
Damn, I was a slob. The drawer was full of stuff I didn’t need. However, I did find my eyelash curler, a few tampons, last month’s electric bill and the superglue.
“Mmmkay,” I said, assessing the situation.
I was going to have to touch her to make this work. I was hoping to live longer than forty years, but if my time was up—it was up. Maybe all the dead people were hanging out to let me know I was soon to be a goner. It would be nice if I went out doing something kind for