The Finger Saga pt. 2

It would be a fair estimate to say that, including tonight, Marlin and I had seen dozens of amputations featured in the hundreds of movies or TV episodes we have watched. In nearly every one of those instances with a severed limb, appendage, or digit, there had always been an accompanying fountain of blood. Whether pulsing to a heart beat, or the steady flow of a garden hose, a bright crimson jet of arterial madness would spurt across a room and paint the walls.
It would also be a fair statement to say that I was pleasantly disappointed when what actually happened was completely, welcomingly, quite the opposite. Instead of a stream of gore, a few fat drops fell heavy to the floor landing near my severed pinkie. As we stared, the sluggish plops joined a small pool growing slowly as the liquid drained from the first two-thirds of my truant finger.
“Okay, okay, so, okay,” Marlin sputtered, “don’t panic.”
“You can’t tell me what to do!” I screeched at her.
That set her off. Her stricken grimace cracked into a poorly restrained smile as a bout of giggling bored out from somewhere deep. Laughter, spreading, infectious, broke through me as she gave up her self-control and allowed herself to be consumed by the ridiculousness of our situation.
As it so often is in the case of insurmountable trauma, unbidden thoughts welled up in my brain, adding to the hysterics. In between gasping breaths, I managed to choke out, “Five second rule,” which doubled Marlin over.
Rolling, she added, “Now mom and dad can finally tell us apart!”
What felt like minutes passed, though in reality it could not have been more than fifteen seconds, before we finally calmed down. With a deep, contented breath, I set my sword down and picked my finger up. It flopped at the joint from side to the other as I rolled it between my still attached digits.
Half-expecting it to twitch, I brought it up to my face for closer inspection. It reminded me of something as innocuous as a baby tooth.
Just a part of me, discarded.
Sobriety washed over me at that thought. I tossed the finger to Marlin, or more accurately, at Marlin, killing off her laughing fit as quickly as it had come on. “Mom and dad are going to kill us,” I told her.
She held it like it she was in a nightmare, a strange detached dream, the edge of bizarre. I have never had cause to use the word before1 but it felt so,
“Surreal,” Marlin finished my thought.
“Exactly,” I agreed.
Watching her turn it over and over in her hands, morbid curiosity tethering my sister to the body part. Not once did it occur to me to wonder where the pain was. Nor did I think to question why it had been Marlin that dropped her weapon first, to clutch at her hand.
All at once, though, the shock wore off, my body gave up, and I watched in slow motion as an arc of blood bridged the four-foot gap between me and my sister. If it were not for her wide-eyed surprise2 in that moment, she would have looked just like a serial killer.
“Oh, shit,” she whispered.
Blood loss was beginning to make me light-headed, I giggled at her hushed swear. “Don’t cuss!” I wobbled on my feet, “Sis, I’m feeling woozy.”
Ever the pragmatist, Marlin feigned calm. “Come on,” she said in a very level tone, completely at odds with her expression, “what’d mom teach us? Elevate.”
As she said it, I mouthed the word, and lifted the wound above my heart. Using my free hand I tore a strip from my shirt to press against the… cut?… slice?… my stump? To press against the stump. “Compress,” I said, the bleeding stemmed a noticeable amount.
Marlin, behind the cashier’s counter, rummaged through a drawer full of office supplies. She returned with a handful of rubber bands. “Tourniquet,” she announced triumphantly. Carefully, she wrapped several of them at the joint below my… stump. The pressure halted the blood flow, which I was grateful for. But, the tightening rubberbands, biting deep into already abused skin, and pressing hard into damaged bone, caused an alarming amount of pain that coursed up and down my arm.
Marlin, my twin, stared directly into my eyes as I winced. The pain abated to a more manageable level. Her face contorted slightly, “Are you okay?” she asked.
“Yeah,” I answered truthfully, “yeah, I’m okay.”
She frowned again, “We have to call 911.”
“Not from here,” I shook my head. “We’re already in a crazy amount of trouble. Going to be so much worse if they knew we were here cutting pieces off of me instead of home cleaning3.”
“But,” Marlin picked up the finger from the counter-top, resistance draining from her. “I hate it when you’re right. We need to put this in milk.”
I repeated her words in my head just to make certain I had heard her correctly. Milk? Really? “Milk? No, ice. You put teeth in milk.”
“Ice. Duh. That’s what I meant, you know that.”
And so, after securing a bag of ice cubes from the fridge where dad kept the sodas for all the nerds when they got too heated raiding a dungeon and or fighting a dragon, we walked out of a darkened store onto an empty street. “We should probably take the back way,” Marlin suggested. With a bloody cleaver in one hand, and a bag with an amputated finger in the other, she was hard to disagree with.
Away from the roads, through the woods, and across the creek, we stumbled. Bugs, all of the bugs, every single insect with wings and a taste for people, were drawn to the scent of fresh blood and wet sweat. In the heavy steam of the night, the going was slow, and my concern of being eaten alive by the swarm overtook the worry of my recent loss.
Our luck continued to hold, however, as when we finally broke through the treeline, the street was still devoid of any traffic. It was easy to imagine the reaction of a passerby upon seeing two fear pale twins, both wearing blood soaked clothing, one holding a knife and a bag red with a mix condensation and blood, and the other barely clinging to consciousness.
Eventually questions would have been asked.

1 – But more than I could have ever imagined after. -Marcus.
2 – Disgust. -Marlin.
3 – Ah, to be young and scared of how your parents are going to react again. -Marcus