Sudden Dent In Thumbnail Novels & Stories

I gnaw on my thumbnail. Who is he? Parts of his face look familiar, but it’s almost impossible to tell with all the swelling and discoloration on his face. It doesn’t help that everyone was perfectly polished last night, and the man in front of me now is a rumpled ruin. Numbly, I reach out and stroke dark hair out of his face, as if that will make a difference.

Chapter 9 - Present THUMB THUMB! THUMB THUMB! THUMB THUMB! The beating sounds were as loud as the laughs around them to Jason as he eyed how slowly Ryan licked the icing from his hand… THUMB THUMB! THUMB THUMB! THUMB THUMB! … all the way up from the wrist to his pinky finger in a very bold acting, almost as if it were part of a slow scene from a movie. THUMB THUMB! THUMB THUMB! THUMB THUMB!

> He adjusted his shoulder pads into the correct position and pulled his hand back out from under his jersey. _*]:min-w-0 gap-3"> His finger caught on something. A small hard sliver of dried skin at the edge of his thumbnail, a hangnail that had been bothering him since morning and that he'd been ignoring with the specific discipline of a person who knew that picking at things made them worse. He stared at it for a moment. Then he bit it clean off and spat it out onto the battered floor of the bench without ceremony. _*]:min-w-0 gap-3">

I watch her closely and wait for her to do something, anything. All of a sudden, she stands up and walks over to me. Unable to move, I watch as her mouth starts to open slowly and unhinge. I see just how sharp those rows of teeth really are when she leans forward and I catch a glimpse of a child's partial finger wedged in between one of them. She smiles and everything goes black.

Small and dense and I knew exactly what it meant before the pain arrived. I went down on one knee and screamed. He let go. The pain came up white and total. I pressed my broken hand to my chest and breathed through my nose and counted because that is what I do when everything goes wrong and panic is the one thing I cannot afford. I count. I breathe. I look at the problem. The problem was three fingers already stiffening. Possible fracture at the fourth and fifth metacarpal. Scaphoid involvement could not be ruled out. I needed imaging. I needed surgery. I needed things I was not going to get tonight.