Hand

The hand had its back to the ground and its palm pointed to the sky. The
surface of the palm rippled, like a lump of muscle was being pushed to the
surface from the inside. But the truly startling part was still to come. A few
creases shot across the surface of the lump, depressions formed in the flesh
in some places while other parts swelled up—forming at last a human face!

...

With those words as a cue, the arm started to move. Though the nerves
and tendons had been severed, the weird countenanced carbuncle had the
ability to reanimate the arm portion and make it do its bidding. The fingers
of the prone hand swam in the air and grabbed hold of a branch of the
shrubbery directly overhead. Clinging to the branch and pulling itself up,
the hand flopped back to the ground palm down. “Okay, time to take a little
trip.” The five fingers curled like spider legs and the wrist arched into the
air. Dragging the heavy forearm behind it, it cleverly wound its way
through the bushes and inched toward D. When it came to the stump of his
left arm, the fingers once again scurried around busily, turning to the right
and matching both sides of the cut together perfectly.

D had fallen on his back, so the palm of his hand naturally faced the
sky. The countenanced carbuncle’s bizarre visage was left naked in the
moonlight. And this is when it—the hand—began to act truly strange. It
inhaled for a long time, like it was taking a deep breath. Given the relatively
small size of D’s palm, it seemed to have an incredible lung capacity. The
wind whistled and howled as it coursed into the tiny mouth. After this
amazing display of suctioning skill had gone on for a good ten seconds, it
paused for a breath and repeated the same behavior three more times. And
then the countenanced carbuncle did something even more wondrous.

Cleverly flipping over from the elbow so that the palm faced down, the
fingers sank into the ground and began tearing up the soil.
Thanks most likely to D’s steely fingertips, they scooped up the hard
ground like it was mud, and before long there was a sizable mound of dirt
into which the palm proceeded to shove its own face. In the hush, an eerie
munching sound could be heard. The tumor was eating the dirt! By the light
of the moon this unearthly repast continued, and several minutes later the
mound of dirt had vanished completely. Where had it gone? Right into the
countenanced carbuncle’s maw. But where in the world could it put all that
dirt? The shape of the arm hadn’t changed in the least. And yet, the severed
hand had consumed both the air and the earth. But toward what end?

The down-turned palm let out a small burp.
“Without water and fire this may take a while, but there’s not much we
can do about that,” it said to itself, and then the whole arm abruptly reached
for D’s chest.

It couldn’t be! The two sides of the slice along D’s arm were together
again, even though reattaching the arm after both sides had bled dry
should’ve been impossible. But the arm rose nonetheless.

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