“Who?”
“Charlie George, doctor. You must remember me.”
The hand was pulling him farther and farther from the phone with every precious second. He could feel the receiver
sliding out from between his shoulder and ear.
“Who did you say?”
“Charles George. For God’s sake Jeudwine, you’ve got to help me.
“Call my office tomorrow.”
“You don’t understand. My hands, doctor… they’re out of control.”
Charlie’s stomach lurched as he felt something crawl across his hip. It was his left hand, and it was making its way around the front of his body and down toward his groin.
“Don’t you dare,” he warned it, “you belong to me.
Jeudwine was confused. “Who are you talking to?” he asked
“My hands! They want to kill me, doctor!” He yelled to stop the hand’s advance. “You mustn’t! Stop!”
Ignoring the despot’s cries, Left took hold of Charlie’s testicles and squeezed them as though it wanted blood. It was not disappointed. Charlie screamed into the phone as Right took advantage of his distraction and pulled him off balance. The receiver slipped to the floor, Jeudwine’s inquiries eclipsed by the pain at his groin. He hit the floor heavily, striking his head on the table as he went down.
“Bastard,” he said to his hand. “You bastard.” Unrepentant, Left scurried up Charlie’s body to join Right at the tabletop, leaving Charlie hanging by his hands from the table he had dined at so often, laughed at so often.
A moment later, having debated tactics, they saw fit to let him drop. He was barely aware of his release. His head and groin bled. All he wanted to do was curl up awhile and let the pain and nausea subside. But the rebels had other plans and he was helpless to contest them. He was only marginally aware that now they were digging their fingers into the thick pile of the carpet and hauling his limp bulk toward the dining room door. Beyond the door lay the kitchen, replete with its meat saws and its steak knives. Charlie had a picture of himself as a vast statue, being pulled toward its final resting place by hundreds of sweating workers. It was not an easy passage: the body moved with shudders and jerks, the toenails catching in the carpet pile, the fat of the chest rubbed raw. But the kitchen was only a yard away now. Charlie felt the step on his face. And now the tiles were beneath him, icy-cold. As they dragged him the final yards across the kitchen floor his beleaguered consciousness was fitfully returning. In the weak moonlight he could see the familiar scene: the stove, the humming fridge, the waste-bin, the dishwasher. They loomed over him. He felt like a worm.
His hands had reached the stove. They were climbing up its face and he followed them like an overthrown king to the block. Now they worked their way inexorably along the work surface, joints white with the effort, his limp body in pursuit. Though he could neither feel nor see it, his Left hand had seized the far edge of the cabinet top, beneath the row of knives that sat in their prescribed places in the rack on the wall. Plain knives, serrated knives, skinning knives, carving knives-all conveniently placed beside the chopping board, where the gutter ran off into the pine-scented sink.
Very distantly he thought he heard police sirens, but it was probably his brain buzzing. He turned his head slightly. An ache ran from temple to temple, but the dizziness was nothing to the terrible somersaulting in his gut when he finally registered their intentions.
The blades were all keen, he knew that. Sharp kitchen utensils were an article of faith with Ellen. He began to shake his head backward and forward; a last, frantic denial of the whole nightmare. But there was no one to beg mercy of. Just his own hands, damn them, plotting this final lunacy.
Then, the doorbell rang. It was no illusion. It rang once, and then again and again.
“There!” he said aloud to his tormentors. “Hear that, you bastards? Somebody’s come. I knew they would.”
He tried to get to his feet, his head turning back on its giddy axis to see what the precocious monsters were doing. They’d moved fast. His left wrist was already neatly centered on the chopping board.