NYC Midnight - 250 Word Microfiction Challenge (2024)
Genre: Horror
Word: puff
Action: Pooling resources

Symmetry

Five severed hands… that should be enough. I pluck them from the ground, tightly rolling two pairs in a scrap of cloth while a knot forms in my core.

There will be questions. An even number is expected, but if I find another, it will be wrong. Slender fingers, where these are puffy and wide. Delicate, perhaps, where the other is calloused and strong. The oddness is illogical, but I cannot bring myself to throw the surplus away, so instead I gently entwine my grip with the solitary flesh and squeeze, hating the way my extra digits twist and bend at strange angles.

It is absurd. My programs cycle more information in an instant than a human does in a lifetime, yet I cannot mimic something as simple as a hand. My kind are feared and ostracized until, with surgical correction, our wrists sprout palms with only five distinct branches, and we blend in.

Though the detached appendage cannot squeeze back, it is still warm. I should not be capable of feeling the comfort that warmth brings, so I tell myself I will keep it simply to avoid waste. There are stares as I spread my offerings among dozens, but I keep my prize.

The remaining body will be safe, I assure myself, recalling agonized screams from the marvelous specimen the hand had once been attached to; the object of my impossible affection. My obsession. Because a proper disguise requires symmetry.

Yes, for love, I took only one.