The Tale of the Perplexing Digit

There are, in every lifetime, strange, unexplainable, unknowable, unnameable things. We see them, experience them, but we don't tell anyone else, for fear they might think us deranged. But yet, we see them. They're the stuff of dreams, of nightmares sometimes, but corporeal and as real as your or me.

Or, at least, that's what I would like to think. That everyone experiences such things.

My impossible recollections would be more disturbing if I were the only one to have experienced such things... such impossible things.

It began, as I suspect most such tales do, with a calm, invigorating bowl of cereal on a Friday morning ... It wasn't Lucky Charms, rather a cheap knockoff version I forget the name of, but it tasted just the same. The kind you buy in bags. Sometime past ten in the morning, when I had finished my first bowl and decided to indulge in a second before getting ready for work, I grabbed the bag for a second serving, and that's when I heard a very curious sound.

It was a high squeal, as from a tiny voice inside the bag.

Fearing vermin – or worse – had infested my cereal, I abruptly yanked my fingers – which had thoughtlessly slipped inside the opening – out and leapt away from the table. I soon discovered, though, that the source of the noise had come out of the bag with my hand! Something pink and fluffy was stuck to the smallest finger of my left hand. Something with eyes!

It brought a panic in me, I must confess. Some strange, unknown creature had latched onto my hand! I shook it violently in hopes of dislodging it, but that had little effect, save to make the thing squeal more and ... giggle.

That giggle was enough to startle me into a temporary paralysis as my early morning mind struggled to comprehend what was happening.

“Hi, my name's Pinkie Pie. What's yours?”

Again I darted back, which of course was to no avail, since I could not escape my own hand. I held it up and looked at it more closely, more carefully. My pinkie finger was completely pink, with a streak of curly darker pink fuzz sticking out from the top and a face on the pad of the finger, complete with mouth, nose, curious pointed ears, and enormous blue eyes. It was the eyes that captivated me the most, bringing about a profound stupefaction.

“Can you talk, Mister?” it asked me.

I became overwhelmed with an urgent need to get this thing off my finger ... at any cost. I grabbed it by the base and pulled upward, but my fingers slipped along it until they caught on its tiny chin. When I pulled on that, I felt my own joints and tendons stretching ... and more disturbingly, I felt the contact from the fingers of my right hand upon the thing's chin. It wasn't on my finger, it was my finger! At any rate, I soon let go and desisted in my attempts to remove it, since it made most piteous choking noises in response to my pressure and tugging.

“That wasn't very nice.”

I couldn't detour the thought through my mind any longer: this thing on my finger, that was my finger ... could speak. “Um, hello?” I asked.

It giggled again. “You can talk! Whoopee!” After a few more moments of my blank stare, it tried again, “What's your name, big stranger?”

I blinked and shook my head... but I was still unable to process the fact that I was holding a conversation with this thing on my finger ... or perhaps conversing with my finger itself.

It rolled its eyes. “Fine, be mysterious. I don't mind! I'll just call you Mister Biggles!”

Strangely, I could feel its mouth move as it formed the words, feel it move its eyes and ears. Yet, I had no voluntary control over it whatsoever, or at least none that I ever learned to use, and I certainly had no input from its sense organs, neither sight nor sound nor taste.

Evidently growing bored with my – admittedly slack-jawed – features, it began turning the tip of my finger against my will, looking around my sparse kitchen.

By this point, my panic was growing again, seeded by worry and dread. What was this strange thing on my finger? A growth, some kind of tumor? A freak genetic defect? Some siamese twin impossibly sprouting from me? Some creature, alien or of unknown earthly origin, now parasitically attached?

“Ooh!” it cried. “That cereal looks tasty! Can I have some?”

“Um... okay,” I replied in my stupor. With my normal hand – and I did quickly check to see if my right hand was normal – I poured a small portion of the cereal into the still-wet bowl.

The pink thing strained toward the bowl, bending my finger toward it, but could go no farther than that. It comforted me to know that it did not have control of any other part of my body.

It whined, still straining for the bowl.

Watching with as much curiosity now as dread, I lowered my hand to the bowl, allowing my pinkie finger to dip down into it.

With an “Mmm” of satisfaction, it leaned down and gobbled up one of the marshmallow pieces from the cereal bowl, then chewed it quite loudly.

Only when it swallowed did the full ramifications of what was happening occur to me. “Wh-where does that go when you swallow it?”

It looked down at the palm of my hand, then back up at me. “I dunno.”

Some latent part of my mind had arrived at a conclusion and formed a plan of action, and only now did it see fit to inform my conscious thoughts: I should go to the doctor, right away. Busily imagining some convoluted digestive system within my smallest finger and fearing to ask where such a system might output, my conscious thoughts heartily agreed.

I rushed to my bedroom and grabbed my phone, disregarding the pink thing's squeals, protests, and demands for more cereal. In order to dial, I was forced to hold it with my left hand, which left that disturbing face staring at me as I scrolled through the listing, finally finding my doctor's number. I pressed 'call' without hesitation, but then I did hesitate when it came to holding the phone to my ear. That would have pressed the thing's face against the side of my own.

After quickly switching hands, I held the thing as far away from me as I could and dialed my way through the labyrinthine phone menu of my doctor's office. It wasn't the best office in the world, probably not even the best in that neighborhood, but it was covered by my insurance, so that's where I usually went.

When one of the receptionists finally answered the phone, I requested an immediate appointment.

Naturally, they didn't have any openings in their schedule for at least three weeks.

Filled with disgust, I hung up. Useless.

“Ooh, who was that? She must be fun to hang out with if people wait three weeks!” one of my fingers said. I am certain you can guess which finger.

My vexation, of course, was great, though I need not trouble you with it, merely that it ultimately led to a new resolution to action.

I had intended to walk calmly to my car, but to my embarrassment, I fear it may have looked more like a run to any hypothetical onlookers. Of course, no one was there to see me, since I live some distance from town and have but a few neighbors who only can be seen outside their houses on very rare occasions.

Pinkie, as my finger now called itself, found great amusement in seeing the outside world, then in seeing the interior of my car, despite the fact that it was a completely uninteresting old Honda Civic.

The only complication of the drive – aside from the constant need to ignore my chattering finger – was on the occasions when I used the blinker, which I was in the habit of doing with my left pinkie.

Of course, every time I tried, Pinkie squealed in discomfort... and every time, I would end up apologizing to my own finger and promising not to do it again. But then, my mind would grow understandably distracted, and I would again turn the blinker on in my usual way, finding myself completely unable to break the habit.

As I walked from my car to the entrance to the emergency room and saw other people walking to and fro, I suddenly began to feel self-conscious about my little finger's strange new features, and I made to hide it within the crook of my other arm.

This, of course, did not please Pinkie. It wailed and caterwauled piteously, and with such volume that I feared it would attract more attention there than elsewhere.

Before I – we? – walked in through the big sliding door, I pulled her back out again. “Okay, okay, but be quiet.”

“That's easy for you to say! You didn't just get shoved into somebody's sweaty elbow-crack,” it responded crossly.

“Just...” I hesitated. What did I want it to do? “Just be quiet and try not to attract attention to yourself, will you promise me that?”

“You stop sticking me in uncomfortable places, and you've got a deal!”

Fair enough. I nodded to my own finger.

It responded with a strange, complicated series of motions accompanied by, “Cross my heart and hope to fly – stick a cupcake in my eye.”

I stood and stared for a moment, but eventually decided that was some form of an 'I promise', and proceeded into the emergency room's waiting room.

After filling out a little paperwork, when the nurse asked me what my complaint was, I merely needed to show her my finger. Eyes wide and speechless, she waved me on into the waiting room proper.

There, Pinkie completely failed to keep its promise about not attracting attention. To be fair, she did remain quiet for several minutes amid the stares and hushed comments. But when the first direct question came, from a little boy with a severely swollen eye, it immediately blurted an answer, and after that, there was no end.

I just hid my face with my good hand and let my finger answer the questions of the curious, which went on for long hours without the pink thing ever seeming to lose enthusiasm.

It was with great relief that I heard my name called. I quickly fled from the throng of the curious and rushed to follow the nurse through the back door and hallways.

Once I was seated with a sandy-haired, harried-looking young doctor, I blurted out my whole story frightfully fast, sure that I was finally in the hands of someone who could do something about it.

The doctor stared at my finger. I stared at him. My finger, finding this all hilarious, giggled incessantly.

“I'm sorry,” the doctor finally said, “but I haven't got the slightest idea. I've never seen anything like it.”

I was understandably crestfallen.

He grimaced. “I suppose we could amputate it?”

“What?” my finger screamed. “Amputate me? How could you say that?”

“The fact that it can talk...” He shook his head. “This is completely unprecedented.”

“I'm not an 'it', Mister!” Pinkie shouted at him. “I'm a she!”

He peered down at my finger for another close look.

“I don't see any external sign of genitalia.”

Pinkie huffed. “It doesn't matter what you are on the outside. It matters what you identify as on the inside.”

The doctor leaned back in his stool and took a deep breath. “I can't believe I'm having a philosophical discussion with a growth on a man's finger.” He looked up at me. “Would you mind if I contact Doctor Strauss at the university? He does a lot of research on rare conditions, and I'm sure he'd be very eager to study this.”

I really didn't want to draw attention to myself, but maybe this Doctor Strauss would have enough specialized knowledge to actually diagnose what was happening. “Well, um... Okay.”

“I'm afraid there's nothing I can really do to help you other than that. This is just too far outside of my experience. I haven't got the slightest idea of what to do with it. I do apologize.”

“No need, no need.” I rose from my chair. I should have expected as much.

“I'll contact Doctor Strauss right away and have him call you to set up an appointment.”

“Thank you,” I said. In a slight daze, I walked out of his office, through the same hallways I'd come in, and out of the hospital. When I got to my car, I sat motionless in the driver's seat for a very long time.

That daze broke when Pinkie made a slight whine. “I'm hungry. Can we go get some lunch?”

I stared at it – no, her – momentarily. Did she need to eat, or did she just think she needed to? Where did that food go? Still, now that I thought about it, I was also hungry. I started the car.

* * *

I never did return Doctor Strauss' phone call. Somehow, as time went on, my pink finger became less and less strange, less of a medical condition in my mind and more of a... well, a friendship.

The first month had been the hardest, getting used to each other, meeting friends and family and struggling to explain things to them. The first shower was a challenge.

But in time, I became attached to my new digit. Well, I had technically always been attached to it, of course, but now I found that I enjoyed being attached to it.

The End

Author's Note:

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