Boy sober

A short story about obsession and superstitions as a path to true love

The finger felt cold on her tongue, like an ice lolly. She thought of warm days, sun dresses, outdoor sex on picnic blankets. She put the finger in her mouth and sucked on it until it didn’t feel like hers anymore. It felt like someone else’s.

She had always been superstitious. So when the woman in the dream told her to cut off her finger, she knew she had to do it.

It was a relief, really. She finally had an answer to all her problems.

After all, she had exhausted all the other options. Was she desperate? Only desperate for life, for love.

She didn’t want one day. She wanted soon. She wanted loudly and then with no sound at all. She was torn apart by want. Was wanting so bad? Was it so horrible and selfish to want that her wants must be repressed? Some people manifested or believed in the power of prayer. She was going to cut off her little finger.

She figured the little one was the best one to go for. That way she could still be a good lover. People said you could bite into a finger as easily as biting into a carrot, which was probably a lie.

The wind rattled the windows and hail battered down on the cars parked outside. The rain was heavy, perpetual, loveless. Grey piled upon more grey. Ghosts wandered through her mind and she invited them in. Ceaseless quiet muttering filled the empty flat. The day dragged on. Years passed by in her memory. All those wasted, lonely years. Waiting. Waiting. Waiting.

When she took the sharpest knife from the drawer, she ran her finger lightly over the blade. She shivered. It felt almost sexual. This act of self-harm was really an act of love. If she cut off her finger, the woman in the dream had told her, then she would fall in love. After all, she had to be pragmatic about these things. She couldn’t just wait around for someone or go out on a hundred futile first dates.

It would be better to do it now. Better to get it over with, she told herself. She placed her finger on the edge of the kitchen counter. If not now, then never. She counted down from three. Three. Two. One.

The knife slammed down. Pain shot up her hand. Blood spilled out over the kitchen counter. She had cut it clean off.

Mostly she felt relieved. She told herself that she had deserved it, that she had been bad and now she was good. She was free from her past. The horrible things she had said and done in former relationships. The weird sex with strangers. The friends she’d let down by being too sad or selfish or mean. All that was gone. Gone forever. She felt virginal as she held the bandages to the stump where her little finger had been. She watched the blood soak through again and again, mesmerised by the changing colours.

She mopped the blood up from the counter with her free hand and put her finger in a sealed plastic bag in the freezer. It was a strange sensation knowing that part of her was inside the freezer and the other part was on the sofa holding a bandage to the stump. She was split in two and it felt so good.