The Back of my Hands Read online

  Holding the handle of the shattered pitcher, I turned the jagged edge around and began slashing and sawing at the back of my hands.

  “These aren’t my hands! These aren’t my hands!”

  I remember screaming that or something like it, but I was lost in a blind frenzy of panic as I tried to cut and scrape the flesh from the back of my hands. Suddenly, I had the unnerving sensation that I was somehow outside of myself—that I was floating above it all and watching what I was doing as if this were all a movie or a play.

  I felt no pain—none whatsoever—but I could see the ragged strips of flesh I was removing from the back of my hands. There was blood everywhere, but no matter how much I tore at the skin on my hands, it didn’t stop the burning sensation.

  Oh, no.

  It continued to spiral up higher and higher until it was all I knew. The mere physical pain of tearing the flesh from my hands was nothing...literally, nothing.

  From my vantage point, hovering above it all, I watched as I continued to rake the broken glass across the back of my hands, first the left one, then the right. My sheet of notes was splattered with bright red smears, like ruby teardrops. I almost started laughing when I realized that one splotch of blood—the biggest—looked exactly like the splash of blood on Derrick's kitchen wall, the night I killed him.

  Every other sound in the room was muffled, but I sensed a rush of motion as someone—I have no idea who...probably Andrew—ran up to me to help...to try to stop me.

  Then I heard a sizzling, crackling sound, and everything went black.

  I woke up sometime later, here in the hospital. I realize now that I must have grabbed onto the microphone and, because I was standing in the puddle of water I had spilled, had gotten one hell of an electric shock.

  Not enough to kill me, mind you, and—well, the emergency room doctor said that, thankfully, I hadn't severed any arteries, so I didn’t bleed to death.

  The most horrible thing about it all, though, was that I didn’t get rid of Derrick’s skin. It's still here, on the back of my hands.

  See?

  It’s still growing. Maybe you can’t see it, but it’s inside me now, still growing...and look at this. It’s spreading out, moving like a fungus up my arm. Pretty soon it’s going to cover my whole body!

  I swear, it’s true.

  Look at my hands.

  Can’t you see?

  I still can’t control them, either. Even with these bandages on, I’ve been trying to do a little bit of drawing while I’ve been here, and you can see that I’m not drawing anything very good...certainly not what I want to draw.

  Look at these sketches. Every single one of them depicts something from the night I killed my brother.

  See here?

  This is him lying on the floor, leaning up against the wall. Remember how I said he looked like a puppet whose strings had been cut.

  Well, doesn’t he?

  That's exactly what he looked like!

  And check this one out.

  This is the design the splash of blood made on the wall behind him, after I’d shot him. You’ll have to take my word for it, but it’s exactly like the bloody smear on my sheet of notes.

  And look at this one.

  See?

  It’s a close up of Derrick’s face, once he was good and dead. He looks really relaxed, doesn’t he? It's amazing how much he looks like me. I also did a couple of sketches of what his arms looked like after I’d hacked off his hands, but I had to throw them away. I didn’t like the way they were coming out even though I always was pretty good at drawing anatomy, especially hands.

  The problem is, you see, I’m not the one who’s doing these drawings.

  Derrick is.

  He’s using my eyes and memory to record what happened to him.

  His hands are doing all of this!

  They betrayed me!

  The police never would have even found out that I had killed my brother if his hands hadn’t started drawing these pictures.

  That’s how they finally got me to confess.

  They wore me down by telling me that no one except the murderer could have done these sketches, not with such exact detail. They even showed me a couple of photographs taken at the murder scene. I don’t know if that was before or after I drew these pictures. They give me drugs and have got me pretty confused here.

  And yes, the backs of my hands still hurt like hell. I don’t even like looking at them anymore. Sure, they’re healing up just fine, but the burning sensation just keeps getting worse, day after day. I tell you, it’s driving me insane! Even when the nurse gives me a shot of something, it doesn’t really stop the pain. And I know, once these bandages come off, it won’t get any better.

  Oh, no.

  That’s why I asked you to come up and see me again today, doctor. I know we talked about all this before, but I’m positive I want you to do it.

  Why do you keep saying you won’t?

  I know you can! You have the equipment here, don’t you?

  You have to cut Derrick’s hands off before they do something even more horrible!

  ALSO FROM RICK HAUTALA

  SCARED CROWS

  One of the most respected names in genre fiction, Rick Hautala, delivers his second chapbook...and this one has it all...and one of the greatest comic book characters of all time...HELLBOY.

  It’s a dark and stormy night somewhere in the backwoods of Maine,and when Hellboy and his friend, The Finn, stop by a bar for more than a few ‘cold ones,’ HB enchants a pretty young woman with a story designed to impress her. But every bar has its local punk just itching to make a name for himself, but he’s about to learn a valuable life lesson...that it never pays to interrupt Hellboy...especially when he’s trying to tell a story.

  CHRYSALIS

  Just outside of the sleepy town of Thornton, road crews have begun blasting the area to prepare for the straighten of Route 25. Young Stan Walters finds the caves that have been opened up by the crews just too much of a temptation...and explores.

  Once inside the labyrinth, he comes upon something about the size of football - cold and almost certainly dead. But what he and his brother, Chet, soon discover is something far from dead...something very much at the beginning of it’s life-cycle. An untcigahunk...

 

 

  Rick Hautala, The Back of my Hands

 

 

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