Hi, so here is a story I wrote a while back. I found it an interesting concept and wanted to share some of my thinking behind it. Here is the story!
Oh! Here’s a disclaimer for the bad language and mature themes. Viewer discretion advised!
A Perfect Circle
“Fuck!” The words bounced off the ceiling and back into my eardrums.
I was alone, in bed, sweat soaking the sheets now. I needed to change them. I touched my face with both hands, thank goodness I still had them. It was all a dream.
I had reached over to press the light on the alarm clock beside my bed. I stretched over instinctively and banged the button with my forearm. Ouching as my wrist bent over the alarm clock. Did I just forget I had a hand? Surely that dream was just intense. So intense it made me think I still had no hands. My wrist strained as I got up off the bed and onto my feet. The light of the clock turning off before I could check the time.
“Fuck sake,” I squeezed from my lips.
Reaching over to press it again, my hand felt strange. As though it wasn’t mine.
‘3:35am’ it read. I had to leave for work at five. I had more than enough time. I should have slept more.
My beard itched from the sweat of the dream I was having and so did my body. It makes sense to have a shower. So I did.
Every action involving my hands felt strange. From opening the door, to turning on the water for the shower, even towering myself dry. It was as though my mind forgot I had them.
I watched something last night about a strange phenomena called phantom pain. Where people who had lost their limbs could still feel the movement and pain of the limb they lost. This felt like the opposite of that. It was as though my limb forgot it even exists. A full ache and less clarity in the movement of my hands. Wait was I getting some type of arthritis? I should call the doctor. There’s no way I could go to work if this stays.
My hands pained as they started to wriggle on their own. I could see them move now but I couldn’t feel them. I felt paralysed yet every finger tapped itself against the inside of my palm. A pain pronged from my wrist now and I saw a tearing of my skin. Some skin ripped open and blood began to seep from the wound. A perfect circle. My palm began rotating the blood dripping onto the floor. I couldn’t feel a thing. My hand span around and began to dance on my wrist. Tendons, veins and capillaries were visible as my hand fell onto the floor. My jaw hung open in awe and shock. This pain should be terrible yet I could feel nothing. Nothing but a perfect circle and blood spewing out from it…
And there it is!
As I sat down to write about my story “A Perfect Circle,” I couldn’t help but reflect on the thoughts and feelings that led up to its creation. It all started with a curiosity on the concept of phantom pain, a strange phenomenon where amputees feel pain in limbs that are no longer there. This led me to wonder: what if the opposite were true? What if, instead of feeling pain in a missing limb, one suddenly forgot they had a perfectly functioning one?
That was the seed of the idea for ‘A Perfect Circle’. I wanted to explore the feeling of disconnection from one’s own body, the fear of something being wrong and not knowing how to fix it. As I wrote, I tried to capture the surreal, dream-like quality of the experience, the way the protagonist’s hands seemed to move on their own, disconnected from their own will.
The moment when the hand falls off and begins to dance on the protagonists wrist was particularly striking to me (Although kinda bizarre too). I wanted to create a sense of horror and awe, of being confronted with something so strange and impossible that it defies explanation. And yet, even in the midst of this horrific scene, there is a strange sense of detachment, of not being fully present in one’s own body.
As I read back over the story, I am struck by how much it speaks to the strange, uncanny nature of our own bodies, the way they can betray us and leave us feeling like strangers in our own skin. And yet, even in the midst of this uncertainty and fear, there is a strange beauty to the experience, a sense of wonder and awe at the sheer complexity and mystery of the human body.
Andy Ohm 
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