The Painter's Promise
By Larisa Harrill
When Dave found the severed hand in his kitchen, needless to say, he was shaken.
He was shaking already, to be perfectly accurate. He'd taken so many pills and drunk so much Jaegermeister that his body was begging to be shut down for a week or so, but he fought it, hell bent on holding on to this precious moment of welcome oblivion for as long as possible. It was in fact the first moment of something like peace that he'd experienced since his wife died in his arms two weeks before.
That night was a blur right now, but a blur that kept introducing itself to his consciousness, playing again and again. He'd heard once before what seemed long ago that repetition is hell, and so he believed fanatically. So he greeted every vision, every tinge of memory, with another shot of Jaeger, and at the point of contact between body and booze (for the most part) the memories would relent momentarily.
But the hand brought it all back.
He was searching his fridge for something to make the shaking stop, to make his stomach stand still. He felt as if he were going to wretch, and wretching meant releasing alcohol, which meant sobriety, which meant awareness. God forbid. He must make the shaking stop.
He vaguely recalled something about muenster cheese. He'd bought some the day before. Or was it two days? What the hell was the difference anyway? he wondered. He knew it was there, and that was all that mattered at that moment.
He scavenged for the muenster cheese, rotating the mayonnaise jar, throwing his dead wife's rotten head of lettuce on the floor, relocating the week old sub sandwich to the top of the fridge...
Behind the meatball sub was a human hand with strands of tissue and ligament protruding from the point of severance.
Dave couldn't speak.
The person was married. The ring was the only part of the monstrosity that was in its original condition, save for a bit of blood encrusted across the top.
April was his wife's name. Or his life's name, as he said in introductions, for she had been Dave Dacoma's reason for breathing. When April was there his old demons went away, and he often theorized that it was because she intimidated them with her perfection.
April had rescued Dave from the gutter, where alone with manic depression and self-medication he had resided for most of his life.
They'd spent ten years together, during which time April Holtz had mothered Dave and taught him what life off the streets was like.
Then his demons had devised a plan to annihilate her, and it worked.
April died during a seizure.
Dave was painting a mural in the bedroom when he went into the kitchen--for the meatball sub, actually--and found his beloved flopping around on the linoleum like a fish out of water, drool coming from her luscious lips like a retard's, and there wasn't a damn thing he could do about it.
Dave called 911, and April stopped flopping.
He scooped her up in his arms, her face a blur from the well of tears he dispensed, and for one moment the glaze lifted from her gorgeous blue bird-eyes and she focused on him.
Her dead hand closed around his left hand--the dyslexic painter's hand--and squeezed.
The paramedics came and took Dave with the corpse. There were two reasons for this; first, he was convinced that she wouldn't let loose of his hand, and second, they could clearly tell that he was on the verge of a severe nervous breakdown.
'If I let go of her hand she'll be scared,' he wept, and one of the compassionate-eyed EMTs squeezed his shoulder.
'She's not scared anymore,' the EMT told him.
Dave responded with uncharacteristic rage, emitting a growl far more powerful than he ever imagined his vocal chords could muster.
'YOU KNOW NOTHING ABOUT HER, YOU CRETIN,' he bellowed. 'SHE SAID SHE'D HOLD HER HAND IN MINE FOREVER, AND I INTEND TO RETURN THE FAVOR.'
It took two orderlies, one EMT, and a burly security guard to break Dave's pact with April. They pulled him off the carcass and stuck him in the psych ward for evaluation. For three hours, Dave just howled at the walls like a madman.
Two weeks later, Dave's insurance ran out and he was released. He still spent far too much time communicating with the walls. He'd melted down and he knew it.
But what he didn't know was how a human hand had gotten in his refrigerator. If he could only remember...
Or could he? His stomach flip flopped, and a pain so severe ensued that it felt like his intestines momentarily switched places with his kidneys.
It wasn't April's hand. No way. Her fingers were dainty, her ring diamond... this was a man's ring.
It looked like the paramedic's hand, the one who had unwittingly enraged Dave. How he remembered the paramedic's hand, the one that touched his shoulder so gently, he didn't know. It had been as if time had slowed down that night, despite the fact that everything happened so fast.
Dave's kidneys fought back against his intestines, and as he reached for the Jaegermeister in spite of himself, his body won, and he keeled over on the floor and vomited. When he was done he was swimming in stomach juice and the whole room smelled like liquor.
Sobriety came too soon. When it came, Dave found himself weeping, pleading with the walls to explain what was going on.
When sobriety came, it brought with it the greatest demon of all--awareness.
The pool surrounding Dave was not just vomit, he realized. There was blood.
The hand was so familiar. He began to talk to it.
'You paint pictures,' he said between sobs. 'You painted beautiful pictures for April. They made her so happy.'
He saw his beloved flopping on the floor, and wretched anew. Suddenly everything was painfully clear.
The hand was his token to his lost love.
'I'll hold my hand in yours forever,' she'd told him, and he intended to return the favor.
If he couldn't hold on to hers, he'd be goddamned if she couldn't hold on to his.
Dave had cut off his hand so that April may be buried with it and hold on to him forever.
He scooped his weary body off the floor and killed a fresh bottle of beer (he was out of Jaeger). He grabbed his dead hand in his remaining one, picked his car keys up in his mouth, and headed to the cemetery. The shovel was already in the car.
It was going to be a long night.
