Today, he's hard at work, busy for once, chewing at his thumb. It starts innocently enough, an overlooked hangnail, a pinch underneath his skin as if ants are on the march, and by the time his co-workers leave for lunch he's knuckle-deep.
He uses printer paper to wipe up his slobber. There's no blood, spillage. He can't make sense of this, and he distracts himself with a bologna and cheese sandwich, apple, and can of iced tea. The hunger stays; so does the thaumaturgic sensations that there's more to him beneath his skin, a humanship's underbelly.
Without a look around, he chews some more. If there's pain, he's numb to it. And his thumb is mostly gone now, mostly a stub, but he shoves it downward into his mouth until he gags and strikes gold.
Silver, actually.
There, gleaming pewter beneath office lighting, the smooth curve of something solid, and he wriggles his thumb-stub to see the silver-stub move in harmony. There's a moment before the panic sets in that he feels like he accomplished greatness, that he knew it all along; this fades with a second sensation of ants marching on his insides, and he grabs a pair of scissors. With them, he cuts away more skin, folding it back like a napkin, revealing a fully-formed silver hand. And wires. There's wires and tiny polychromatic lights.
He then stabs deep into the metal, chipping out answers, and then he has his, answers and questions: there, beneath the metal-hand beneath his true-hand is another hand, a tiny one, monkey-like, just as pink as his first one, just as detailed, and the sensation of more more more hits him once again.
He digs a little more.
Bob's and Dave's and Claude's Flash-Flash Fiction Competition
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