Featured Writer: C.L. Hernandez

Good morning, and welcome to the first Feature Friday on the new site! I’m so excited to share work by C.L. Hernandez, in the last few months not only has she contributed multiple stories to October Stories, offered countless amounts of advice, and become a fast, and good, friend. Her work is absolutely incredible, and I’m honored to be able to share it both as a feature and within October Stories!

Give the Man a Hand

By C.L. Hernandez

I knew it was wrong to break the hand off the mummified body we found in the woods, but what can I say? I have an innate sense of the macabre, and the damn thing was cool. It’s not every day you stumble across a dead guy while farting around in the forest with your two best friends, and I figured I needed a souvenir. Besides, the dude was dead. I didn’t think he would mind. So, while Tony tried to get a signal on his phone so he could call the authorities, and Craig barfed dramatically into a patch of weeds, I knelt down beside the dried-up body and helped myself.

The dead guy looked like a giant piece of beef jerky, the teriyaki kind they sell down at the corner store. When I snapped off the right hand at the wrist, it made a sound that reminded me of corn chips. I haven’t been able to eat jerky or corn chips since then.

I don’t think they saw me take it. I managed to keep a look of solemn concern on my face as I pretended to examine the unfortunate dead dude, and the hand broke off just as easy as you please. I slipped it into the pocket of my hoodie, then scrubbed my own hand on the leg of my jeans before I stood up.

Tony finally got a signal and babbled into his phone, while Craig came stumbling out of the bushes, wiping his mouth and saying, “Gross! Oh, holy shit, Charlie! Gross!” I scowled at both of them and shook my head. It wasn’t that bad.

The police asked us a few questions, then took the body away and allowed us to return to our homes. Tony and Craig still lived at home with their parents, but I had my own studio apartment above The Log Cabin, the local watering hole for the local alcoholics. My uncle Curtis owned it, and he let me live there in exchange for my dubious janitorial skills. It was a classic shit hole, but still better than living with parents.

Once I got home, I took the stairs two at a time in my eagerness to examine my prize in private. With the door locked behind me, I sat down at my rickety table, and I reverently took the mummified hand from my pocket for a good long look. It was smaller than I’d originally thought, and when I brought it up to my nose for an experimental sniff, I detected a faint odor of mushrooms. It was one of the coolest things I’d ever had in my possession, no doubt about that. I had no idea what to do with it at the moment, but with Halloween coming up I was sure I’d think of something.

Shaggy, my little black mutt, watched me as I examined the hand from all angles. I’ll be damned if the little sucker wasn’t licking his chops the way he did when I had a treat for him. I tucked the hand into my Playboy beanie for safe keeping and got my happy ass to bed.

It was all bad from there.

A faint scratching sound woke me a little while later. It sounded like a mouse scuttling around behind a wall. A sneaky kind of sound. I sat up for a look around. The first thing I saw was my Playboy beanie lying empty on the floor.

The hand was gone.

In a whirl of vexation, I leaped from my bed and got down on my hands and knees to peer beneath it. Shaggy was under there, burping and farting. He looked back at me with his big brown doggy eyes and thumped his tail listlessly on the floor in greeting.

“Did you eat it?” I yelled at him, “Did you?” I got up to get the big flashlight I had stolen from the hardware store earlier that week. I swept its powerful beam under the bed. Other than the usual dust bunnies, chip bags, and condom wrappers, I saw nothing that could be classified as evidence that my dog had devoured the dried-up hand, but I was sure he’d done it. Severed hands don’t just get up and walk away. I shook my head and sighed. “You stupid little mutt. I hope it gives you heartburn!”

***

It was three a.m. when I finally finished swamping out the dive bar downstairs. Saturday nights were always the worst. Drunks are such slobs. Once back in my apartment, I kicked back on my creaky, lumpy bed and watched TV with only a vague interest. My eyelids kept drifting shut and just as I was about to let them stay that way, I caught a furtive movement at the outer edge of my vision.

Something small and brown ran across the floor and ducked behind the dresser. Some sort of critter, most likely a rat, was running around in my room.

Shaggy snored on the bed beside me and I nudged him awake. “Go get that rat, boy!” I urged, pointing my finger in the general direction of the small, stealthy thing I’d seen, “Sic, em, boy!”

Shaggy raised his head and looked at me the way he usually did when I told him to do normal dog things, like fetch, heel, and pee outside. Instead of doing what he was told, he offered me a low whine and a thump of his tail. Dumb dog was probably still trying to digest his meal of dried-up human hand.

With an irritated huff, I gave up and rolled over onto my side while the TV droned on in the background. It could wait; rats didn’t bother me that much.

I suppose whenever you deprive a fellow human of a body part, whether they are living or dead, it’s bound to stir up some sort of sleep disturbance. I’m not prone to nightmares, but that night I had some doozies. I dreamed the hand was running amok in my room, knocking things over and basically making an asshole of itself. The really freaky part was when it leaped up on my chest and began to explore. I actually felt it scuttling around on my chest and neck like a malformed spider, inserting a questing finger into my horror-parted lips and twiddling a crusty pinkie in the cup of my ear.

I awoke with a start and a gasp long before the alarm went off.

My place is a pigsty, I’ll admit that. Always has been, always will be. Yet when I finally sat upright in the reluctant glow of dawn and looked around the one room studio, I saw more than just the usual mess. The place was in shambles. My stack of magazines was knocked over and lay scattered on the floor, half a can of soda slowly soaking into the pages. An ashtray which I kept on my nightstand to hold loose change was now clear across the room, and the trash can in the corner, overflowing to begin with, lay toppled over. Its odious contents were scattered everywhere.

Shaggy couldn’t have done this. No way. He was a dumb dog, but he’d never been a destructive dog. It must have been that rat. There was no other explanation. Perhaps there were more than one. Maybe Mr. Rat had invited some of his buddies over for a little vermin party. Funny thing though, I never heard a sound. I must have been really zonked out. No big deal though, I’d fix the little bastards. Uncle Curtis had some rat traps down in the cellar, huge ones that would break your finger if one snapped shut on it. A few of those, some spray can cheese for bait—problem solved.

I got out of bed and headed for the bathroom, kicking aside the soggy magazines on my way.

Once there, I turned on both sink taps full blast. I stuck my face into the basin, and splashed, lukewarm water against my cheeks and closed eyelids, trying to wash away the last tattered remnants of my nightmare.

With my eyes still shut, I fumbled open the medicine cabinet with a dripping wet hand and groped for my toothbrush. What I wrapped my fingers around wasn’t the familiar smooth plastic of my elderly tooth scrubber. It was leathery and dry, like a piece of jerky. The water on my forehead ran into my eyes when I opened them, and in the space of several heartbeats, I simply stared at the object in my fingers.

The hand.

Shaggy hadn’t eaten it after all, but how the hell did it get into my medicine cabinet next to my damn toothbrush? Unfortunately, I really didn’t have time to ponder the matter.

I was too busy screaming.

The foul thing moved. It twisted around in my grasp, and those shriveled-up fingers closed around my own. Oh, I know it sounds ridiculous. Severed hands don’t move around on their own, they just don’t. They don’t have a central nervous system, or a brain stem, or any of that crap. But this one moved. It moved a lot.

Frantically, I flapped my own hand, and I managed to shake it loose. It fell into the cracked and stained porcelain sink and started scrabbling around like some sort of hideous crab. The thick, yellowed nails clattered and scraped against the smooth surface of the sink as the hand tried to pull itself out. Little crumbs and flecks of long-dead flesh broke off and fell down the drain hole.

I don’t know why I didn’t just haul ass out of the bathroom. Fear does weird shit to a person, I guess. Instead of running away, I grabbed the closest thing I had to a weapon: the crusty toilet plunger. Wielding it like a light saber and screaming like a mad man, I started kicking ass.

After half a dozen good whacks, it finally stopped moving. Its pinkie finger was nearly severed; it hung by a shred of dried tendon. I stood staring down at it for a moment, still clutching the toilet plunger and shaking like a proverbial leaf. When I glanced up at my reflection in the cloudy mirror, I saw my bugged-out eyes, and my mouth, turned down at the corners in utter terror. I threw the plunger into the mildewed shower and got the hell out of the bathroom.

I made it to my bed just in time. My quivering knees gave out, and I collapsed onto the sagging mattress, put my face in my hands, and tried to get hold of my sanity. My breath came in great, whooping gasps. Shaggy kept barking his little ass off. Between the two of us, we made so much noise that there was no way we could have heard the quiet scrape of dried flesh against wood if the hand squeezed under the door.

It took at least five minutes for the shaking to stop and for my heart rate and breathing to return to normal, then five more minutes before I could bring myself to get up and look for my cell phone. I’d call Uncle Curtis. He would know what to do next, and he was just weird enough to believe me. He would come and get the hand out of the shower, throw it in the incinerator, and maybe even buy me a beer. God knows I sure needed one then. My legs supported me reluctantly, and I started to walk across the room to get my cell phone from the top of the TV.

The hand sat in the middle of the room.

It rose up on its fingers and bounced up and down the way a boxer does before the bell rings. Its broken pinky finger didn’t seem to bother it in the least. It sat between me and the TV, blocking my path. Fuck the phone—I was outta there.

I turned around and headed for the door.

It shot across the floor, its skittering fingers propelling it forward in a blur of motion. Its nails made a rapid-fire clicking sound on the cracked and faded vinyl. I have never seen anything move so fast. Its broken finger trailed along behind it like an afterthought. It leaped for the doorknob, as agile as any cat, and it hung there by its fingers, mocking me, like it was daring me to knock it down. I wasn’t about to touch it. I backed up against the wall, and Shaggy barked on and on.

That must have been when I blacked out, because I don’t remember anything after that.

It was Uncle Curtis who found me lying on the floor. I guess someone heard all the racket and called him at his place. From what I’ve been told, I couldn’t stop babbling about the hand when I finally came to. I don’t remember that either. As far as I know, the damn thing was never found, not that anyone really looked for it. Why would they? A mummified hand moving around by itself?

Ridiculous.

I don’t mind it here at the mental health center. The Palace for the Peculiar. Haha! Funny, right? The food’s not bad, I get to watch all the TV I want, plus there’s a hot nurse who brings me my happy pills in the mornings. Sure, I have to talk to Dr. Palmer once a week about my so- called psychosis, but he’s a pretty cool old guy.

The only thing I really don’t like is when it rains. You see, there’s a down spout just outside my window, and when the rain runs down inside, it makes the weirdest sound. I swear, it sounds just like someone tapping on it with their fingernails.

Bio

C.L. Hernandez is a literary cryptid who has been occasionally spotted lurking

somewhere in central California.

She was once a multi-published author of unusual horror novellas and short story

collections and has been featured in several anthologies. Sadly, most of her work is no longer in

print.

After a long hiatus, she is clawing her way back to her writing desk and hoping for a

successful comeback.

https://www.facebook.com/cindyhernandez63/

@c.l.hernandez1

Thank you C.L. Hernandez, for being today’s feature!