From Falling Apart

Jason flicked the light switch and his other thumb fell off. So much for opposable thumbs, he thought. Does this redefine me in some evolutionary sense as less than human? Probably not, he decided, but it had been a week for redefining his anatomy: two thumbs, one foot, half an ear, and one testicle. All gone.

He was starting to worry in spite of Al’s assurances that it was just a passing thing as Jason spooned an ear lobe out of his coffee. “Bit of sleep, proper exercise, you’ll be fine,” Al had said. “These things have a way of righting themselves.”

But eight hours later, his ear was showing no signs of righting itself, and the image of his left testicle plopped on top of a deodorant cake in the urinal was still disturbingly clear in his mind.

He hopped into his apartment and tossed his right foot, still shoed, into the pile of slippers and boots outside the hall closet. It had come off on the bus home from work. A woman standing next to him had said, “You should probably get that looked at.”

He left his other thumb on the floor. Strange, he thought. Shouldn’t there be blood or something?

Five minutes later, sitting on the couch, cold beer in thumbless hand, he pondered the day’s events. Things had started normally: up at six, pee, ten pushups, ten sit ups, multivitamin, shave, shower, towel, groom, dress, bagel and coffee, off to work.

Things are simple when you live alone and have a routine, and that’s the way he liked it at home, simple. He had all the complications he needed in his life from his job. He had few friends and he rarely went out. Friends had a way of complicating things when their lives collided with your own, and the outside world was too prone to events and rules made by others.

His office was on the third floor of the Bonnano Tower building, the headquarters for ErectSoft Inc, the largest software company in the world. He wasn’t sure exactly what kind of software the company produced, but for him it didn’t matter. He wrote high level product development procedures documents, and the product development procedures he documented were so high level they could be applied to anything and everything. For instance:

4.6 Project Compliance Form – The Project Compliance Form (ESI/Form978/PC) contains specific project information, including Client and ErectSoft contact personnel, system requirements, project resources, media resources, and media depth. If the target market has been defined, then a Target Market Profile Form (ESI/Form349/TMP) will be attached to the Project Compliance Form; if not, then the Target Market Profile Form will be completed in step 4.9 Target Population Analysis, below.

So high that the details were devoid of information. And they changed constantly. But Jason’s life remained the same. At work, he kept himself busy documenting processes for projects that might not even exist for all he knew. At home, he followed his routine of eating at the appropriate times, watching sitcoms and reality show re-runs, watching the news before bed for confirmation that the outside world was definitely full of routines he wanted to avoid, and sleeping dreamlessly. It was a comfortable life and he couldn’t think of anything he would change.

Until now.

Now he’d like to change his life into one with all his body parts properly attached to his body. Manipulating the remote for his TV was clumsy with no thumbs but he managed tuning into the early evening news. Stories about robberies, storms, political scandals and troubles in the Middle East flashed across the screen, but there was nothing about missing body parts, no reports of appendages mysteriously falling off.

It must be an isolated event, something isolated to Jason Betts, maybe something he’d eaten just before the first isolated occurrence three days earlier when his left thumb had fallen off in the shower. He remembered thinking it was odd at the time, but since he used only two fingers on his keyboard at work, it didn’t seem all that urgent.

But then today happened – one foot, one ear lobe, the other thumb, a testicle. Something’s not right, he thought as he swilled back a mouthful of beer.

And swallowed his tongue.

Well he thought so much for complaining about all this. He downed his beer and pulled another from the cooler by his chair. He was prepared in the event his legs fell off.

He thought back to the shower three days earlier. Maybe the soap? The quality of the water? A contaminant of some sort? But that would have traveled through the water mains to other homes and something would have cropped up on the news by now. Chemicals in his clothing? Nothing was new. Nothing was different. Everything in his life was at it was and had always been. Nobody could pin anything on him. Nobody could say, “Jason Betts has done something … and now … all his body parts are going to fall off.”

There was absolutely no reason for him to be falling apart.

Except …

(He pushed back uncomfortably in his chair and felt something loosen up in his chest. Oh great he thought now I’m falling apart inside?)

… that day last week … when he’d stepped on an angel.

God, it’d been gross. Angel parts everywhere. Not at first when the little booger had screamed, “Ouch!”

He’d looked down and there it was all shiny and small and pissed off. He’d always thought that angels would be, you know, bigger. Its halo had floated askew over perfect blond waves. Bits of red had flashed from its blue eyes as it stood, arms crossed, staring up at him, tiny Michelangelo foot tapping feverishly on the sidewalk.

Jason did the only thing that seemed to make sense at the time. He stepped on it again. Harder this time. It had made a squeaky scrunching sound and felt weird, like stepping on a plastic bag of fast food with bones.

“OUCH!”

When he lifted his foot, the angel was still standing, foot tapping, minus one arm, the remaining one crossing its chest.

“I’m just a small man,” Jason had said. “I can’t have something like you reporting me to who ever it is you report. I can’t handle having to take responsibility for something like this.”

He stepped on the angel again and almost threw up. It felt nasty, like stepping on crunchy pigeon crap. “That hurts!” yelped the angel. “You stop that!”

But he stepped on the tiny angel again and again, harder and harder, until there was nothing but broken angel bits scattered on the sidewalk. There he thought that’s that. And he began immediately to feel better about himself.

Until he saw the itsy-bitsy skewed eyes glaring up from a piece of angel bit. The eyes smoldered and Jason shuddered. He wasn’t feeling better about himself anymore, and he wasn’t the least prepared to see the anger in the eyes soften and lighten and twitch slowly into a look of sad compassion. Jason could almost have shed a tear looking into those I’ve-got-the-blues-because-I’m-all-over-the-sidewalk deep blue eyes, but he didn’t. “Hey, you!” called the angel’s voice from lips scrambled willy-nilly throughout the angel bits strewn on the sidewalk. “I forgive you,” said the voice.

“You what?” replied Jason.

“I forgive you,” repeated the angel’s busted mouth parts. “Hey, we all make mistakes and life sometimes leads us along unexpected paths. I’m going to die now, but I just want you to know that I forgive you and I love you.”

The voice stopped. None of the angel parts glared, talked, or looked sad-eyed and compassionate. They littered the sidewalk without movement or sound.

That was easy, thought Jason.