thumbleweed news [short story poll]

Although I alas received only three submissions (#a, #b, and #c), following my call for thumb-related short stories, I may as well go and have a poll (for two weeks) as to which one was most appreciated by ‘Og’s readers… (I just noticed you cannot put links within the poll answers, most annoyingly!)

thumbleweed news [short story #c]

Following the previous thumbleweed news, here is a third short story, called #c for the time being. There are a few days left for those who want to contribute to this series!

X woke up with a terrible hang over. Thinking of last night performance, he was proud himself. He is an equilibrist and has been lucky enough to perform at the biggest collaborative circus show in France. He has never seen so many talented and attractive people performing together and this is what he has been dreaming about. 

X was about to get a cup of water and noticed that his right thumb was gone and, wrapped. ‘This must be a horrible dream.’ he thought. Unfortunately, it wasn’t. He tried to remember what happened but all he could remember were some brief moments. After the show, there was a big party to celebrate the last performance. He had a great time till Tim started a fight again. Tim (a lion tamer) was always jealous of X’s talent. Tim got aggressive and threatened X with his lions. ‘His lion took my thumb?’ X got so furious at Tim then, he remembered the moment with Bella. Bella has been working on a hand disappearing magic. Yes, he was drunken enough to volunteer himself for her working magic. She brought an axe to pretend cut his hand. ‘So… my thumb got cut for real?’ He should’ve took Jimmy’s advice, ‘Never volunteer yourself to working magic.’ Last night Jimmy was too busy impressing Liz who was very popular and snobby. X was keen on Liz’s friend, Cloe, secretively. One moment, all of them were sitting at the same table and Liz whispered X that Cloe fascinated a snake show very much. Luckily (?) a group of Indian magicians was sitting at the next table. Yes, he remembered reaching out himself to those snakes for one simple purpose. 

‘My thumb must be beaten and poisoned?’ 

He got confused with these slices of memory and none of them gave him clear reason why he lost his thumb. He got out of his room and found Jimmy and Kev. 

Both looked at X worried. “How are you feeling? We were so afraid that we might lose you. You’ve been in a bed for four days.” Jimmy said. The most surprising question was asked by Kev, “So, what happened, X? How did you end up in the 5th district?” When a milkman found X next morning in the 5th district, his thumb was brutally smashed and even his bone. When he was brought to a surgeon, there was no other option except cutting his thumb. They talked to everyone and tried to find any clue. No one seems to know exactly what happened that night rather most of them couldn’t remember. 

After that, X, Jimmy and Kev traveled around countryside and performed together. After a year and half, that night seemed to be almost forgotten till one morning X read a small article. It was about the new invention of a punch press machine and there was a photo of an inventor, Cloe, smiling beautifully. One of feature caught his eyes, ‘Warning : The maximum pressure is enough to crush human hand.‘

thumbleweed [local] news

Most likely one of the last thumbleweed posts. This one just to mention the marginalia that I have now gone back to the climbing gym, along with my daughter, and that we both managed to climb (apparently) without any injury. Obviously, we have both lost our earlier climbing abilities and are down by about three (French) grades but I am very glad we could and can make it, looking forward to improving our climbing skills back to earlier standards… Or whatever level I can reasonably reach with enough training. (And remember the deadline for submitting the short stories by the end of the month!)

thumbleweed news [short story #b]

Following the previous thumbleweed news, here is a second short story, called… #b for the time being, that sounds more on a realistic plane than #a:

The din was deafening, literally deafening. One hundred and ten kids, drunk on sun, sea and the urge to enjoy a last and final day of freedom together before returning to their respective families after this too short summer camp. As it happened, the dining hall was a large barn with high ceiling, white walls and thin roofs, storing heat and noise like no other place in those hot summer days. The shouts and conversations were rising like so many waves, only to break against the next shouts and conversations. But this did not prevent the kids from eating whatever fell in their plate. Or in their neighbours’! They had cleaned dry the bones of the mackerels I had spent the whole afternoon gutting and cleaning after a fisherman showed up with a basket of leftovers from the morning market. And there was not a single slice remaining from the potatoes I had peeled and cut over the morning. I had already refilled the bread baskets once  and now they wanted more, to get with the salad bowls I had just dropped on the tables…

Getting back to the camp kitchen was a relief from both the heat and the noise. Its heavy stone walls were protection enough and the oven were cold as we had cooked the mackerels on grills outside. More cleaning to do later, though. The poor lighting due to narrow and dusty windows helped in this feeling of relative coolness. I dropped my baskets on a table and looked around: fortunately there was enough bread left in the scullery and I took several loaves next to the manual bread slicer. I had grown expert over the past weeks at working the slicer with high efficiency, pushing the break with one hand while quickly pumping the handle and the blade with the other. This was my only recipe at the moment to prevent a riot in the dinner hall! Anyway, I did not want to see any one and especially no kid near this machine. 

I had already filled two baskets and I looked at the third one as the loaf was steadily disappearing under the blade. I was actually much closed to its end than I thought and pushed my thumb through the gap with the rest of the loaf. It all happened so quickly that in the heat of the moment I first fail to notice anything was wrong. Only when the bread slices came out crimson did I realise I had cut myself. I nonetheless had to look at my hand to see the bleeding stump and understand my thumb was gone. I could see it lying there in the crumb collector under the machine, not much distinguishable from a bread piece in the uncertain light. The cut had been sharp and instantaneous, thanks to the weight of the blade, so sharp that I was not in pain but just stunned and shocked, unable to move or speak or act in any coherent way, staring at this impossible transformation of my hand. However, my body defences quickly took over and I soon fainted on the kitchen cool floor. Before the pain really hit.

When I woke up, staring at the wooden ceiling and its cobwebs, I tried to resist the unavoidable reality, to block sound and feeling and mind away in a world where nothing had happened, in another plane where the floor and the thumb were far below me, in another structure with no pain but only the sounds of the waves breaking on the rocks outside the house and of the gulls calling one another in the evening light. I could not stay there long enough and came back to my floor to realise the main cook had wrapped the stump in a clean white cloth, then put ice cubes around. I could not see the thumb any longer. The kitchen was still quiet and cool, with the cook holding my head against her knees with her other hand. Someone had clearly gone to call emergency for an ambulance came to take me to the hospital a few minutes later. I left the camp unobserved by the kids: the din from the hall had not abated a bit.

To this day, a basket of bread slices never fail to wake in me the memory of this hot and intense noise that reverberated from the hall roofs. Never the memory of a bread slicer, surprisingly…

thumbleweed news [short story #a]

If you read the previous thumbleweed news, you may remember me launching a short story competition on the theme of losing a thumb. I already received a short story, called #a for the time being, that I find quite funny. (And before you start asking question, the author is not Dutch!) Here it is:

Xi’an sat impatiently while the pilot double-checked his harness. He understood the need for safety, but he was eager to begin his first trip into space. His mission was to debug the quantum computer aboard the International Space Station, and to reset it in the unlikely event that it went mad and tried to kill the crew. He anticipated that he would have plenty of time on his hands to work on the ninth edition of his treatise on solutions to multi-dimensional Sudoku. Finally the pilot, Lottie Yeager, gave him the “thumbs up” sign and began preparations for takeoff. Seated on the opposite side of the capsule was the only other passenger, Yevgeny Chekhov, a gifted young evolutionary biologist. It would also be Yevgeny’s first spaceflight. He had been nominated by his research group to conduct experiments with fruit flies in the multi-purpose laboratory module. Xi’an thought that the countdown would never end, but at last the prolonged waiting was supplanted by several intense minutes of sturm und drang. As they passed the Kármán line the nose fairing was jettisoned and the spacecraft rotated towards the horizon to pick up speed. Through the small viewport, Xi’an glimpsed the Earth from space for the first time.

It would still be several hours until their rendezvous with the ISS and space sickness was beginning to kick in. They were able to remove their helmets and gloves and get out of their seats. Xi’an moved towards the viewport for a closer look, while Yevgeny made his way gingerly to the cargo compartment in the rear.

Xi’an was still gazing, transfixed, into space when he heard Lottie shouting. He glanced back to see Yevgeny standing at the hatch with what looked like a pistol in his hand. “Don’t worry, it’s not loaded,” Yevgeny said, just before a loud bang was followed by a high-pitched whistling noise. Xi’an saw that there was now a small hole in the side of the spacecraft, mere centimetres from his head. He grabbed his glove and attempted to block the hole before it vented all of their air into space. Somehow his thumb got sucked into the hole, which caused him excruciating pain.

He had little memory of what happened next, but afterwards he was told that Lottie had confiscated the weapon and ordered Yevgeny to resume his seat. The young scientist apologized profusely. The gun had been his grandfather’s. He had smuggled it aboard amongst his scientific equipment as a memento of home. He hadn’t meant any harm, although it was clear that he had come very close to killing them all.

Lottie was able to patch the hole in the ship, but Xi’an’s thumb had to be amputated in the process. Venting all of that air had put them way off course. However, ground control had received the telemetry data and were able to recalculate a flight path so that they could still make their rendezvous.

Yevgeny would be put on the next flight back to Earth, where he would have to account for his actions. Xi’an would still be able to complete his mission, even though he was now one digit short.