Milk and Whiskey

The one-armed man stumbles through the swinging double doors, entering the fine-dusty establishment here in Red Mesa. He's stammering about something rather unfortunate and it sounds like the tailend of a terrible tale. With a grim ending and a pensive sigh. but the old man doesn't cease his words, instead it reloads like guns. 

The other patrons have their hands on their holsters, and almost simultaneously gawk at the old man. Heads and pupils twist like prisms, razor and unyielding focus. But the ol’ man steps along as if he could walk through a wall, eyes locked above him. He's just lucky a door was in his way. He continues down the creaky wooden floors, stained with whiskey, blood and gravy.

Veterans of that uncivilized war, gang members from pathetic posses, venomous suited conmen—all ignored, all the way to the bar, but not all there. 

Either way, caution subsides, the danger is not imminent. Not a single bit of leather around his waist, no gun on his person, and, again, one-armed. But, the few keener gentlemen in the audience are still prepared for the unknown. They fear the strangeness of the old man, after all he is talking to himself. His eyes locked onto the empty space, and discerning any words spoken only made him seem madder. He speaks with elegant confidence, like a bookworm, or a conniving eastern folk. 

But his clothes begged to differ, his body was inside a large scruffy pajama shirt, and baggy jean overalls hung by one strap over a shoulder. The jean strap wraps around his left shoulder, where his only arm lived.

He interrupts and stutters with accuracy to a real conversation. The volume of the room thins out, the chitchats, cups clanking, and utensils chattering quiet down. They want to hear him, who is the stranger who entered the lawless town of Red Mesa.

“And again, that's why God is in your life. Enough already, I will not talk about it again. Do what you will with that information. Anyway…” 

The old man finally divides his attention to the bartender. The bartender just stares blankly at the old man, unsure if the man had too much already to serve, or offer help with his unfortunate circumstance. But the old man, eye contact, wacks up one of those elderly coughs, and says “Milk, please.”

Some snicker, others disinterested, but others find it harder to dismantle their confusion. The bartender, however, dissects the uncertainty with “Are you sure?”

The old man shakes his head, and is given the milk in a glass. He sips, offers it to his… invisible friend. But he laughs and swallows the rest in a single gulp. He slams the glass and says “I know what you're thinking?”

“What's that?”

“You wanna know about this!” and the old man stood there presenting his current situation.

“I had to, you see, it was a necessity, a vow to destroy what is evil in this world. What a great misfortune it is to discover my exemplary role, a demonstration of the evil within good people. And how it manifests in different forms, sneakily too! You see, the right arm had to be removed, for it was not mine. It was never mine to begin with.”

The bartender tends to his cleaning, but can't help himself from smirking, the corner of his lips perking up with a fascination hanging over his face. “You said 'the arm’, so it was ‘not yours’?”

The old man scoffs and says, “Stop jestering around the misfortune. Anyway, for the longest time, I can recall the difference between my lefts and my rights. There were these discrepancies, minute details, asymmetries on the surface of my forearms. The right veins were prominent, and the direction of the blood vessels differed. My fingers would jerk and tremble on their own. I would stare at it, the twitching, and mentally command it to stop. But my condition worsened over time.

“Eventually, my condition became a public nuisance. Initially, I would feel a tug from the right arm, whenever I reached proximity to other people. As curious as one man gets, I allowed the arm to have its way just once, and observed the meaning of this strange force. I was at the Red Mesa train station, waiting for my usual ride, and a woman stood ahead of me. Here, the arm would motion itself, slowly swiveling from the axis of my shoulder mechanically. The feeling was unique, it was weightless. And I allowed it to stretch out to the height where I could reach her—where I could grab her. But an immediate instinctual feeling of regret took over my judgement, and that hesitation recovered my agency. I couldn’t allow it.

“Afterwards, it became a constant struggle between me and the arm. The nuisance grew more like an unwanted stray dog, it became a toll on my health and livelihood and needed vigilant attention. My mornings began with a sharp sensation from the right side of my neck and traveled down the whole arm. Have you ever been shocked before? The nerves felt electric, and would leave the right side of my face numb. Even thinking about it gives me some kind of residual pain, a false sensation recreated from my mind! I don't know if I clenched and flexed my fingers to ease the pain, or if it was brandishing a fist to me. My own arm threatening me.”

The old man demonstrated with his left the clenching motion over and over as if pumping the air. The bartender accidentally fixed his gaze at his left hand, wondering aimlessly about the missing limb. All while with a twisted neck and backside facing, as he reorganized the liquor shelves. He doesn’t interject and listens closely. Most of the other patrons have moved on, but a few eavesdropped from afar, sipping their drinks slowly with an open ear.

“I avoided public spaces. It was too difficult. Trains were too dangerous, and stages were terribly expensive. The last few trips by train, which I used to take often, were miserable. Utterly miserable. The arm would reach for anyone at that point. I presumed that it was some kind of twisted form of malicious lust, a kind of “psycho-science” explanation, however my hypothesis was proven incorrect. Men, women, the elderly, and the youthful. Even my horse, which I surrendered after the right fist wanted to smash its face in and expose all the innards. The fist demanded, not blood like some savage, but malice. A Devilish malice!”

The old man hopped off his seat and stood.

“There was once where the arm knew somehow it was being restricted from performing acts of malice, and would delegate it to the rest of my body. The last time I rode on the train was the final straw, when I noticed the arm would almost slither like a snake, bending and contorting in like a ritualistic dance, one I have never seen before nor can I replicate it with my left. But it was not a ritual, it was deception, as the arm would shimmy its way to my body and attempt to assault me! In public, and inject and orchestrate vile thoughts into my mind against the innocent. I had to put an end to that.

“At night, where I resided in a cabin in the woods. Away from those scummy cities, and poor settlements out here in the frontier, I stored myself. Lived off the land, where there was no one. But, a fool, a fool I was!”

The old man looked over, with a conspicuous pause, and back at the bartender.

The bartender's face twisted like he took a shot of straight gin, this quizzical look trying to make sense of this madness. But there's no time.

“The arm wanted something. It wanted to accomplish something. I restrained the arm on a plank off the side of my bed, with any belts or leather I could find and nails. This was necessary, after I awoke to the early morning sunlight to the daunting appearance of the arm standing upright in front of my view. It stood over me with its palm down and fingers splayed out. That same evening I scrambled to build this trap.

“But no matter what I did, it could not prepare me for the worst. I've been feeling it in my heart, my mind, and in the arm, that there was this pent-up frustration from all the restrictions. A wicked temptation manifested as a separate consciousness, embedded wholly apart from my own person. It tormented my dreams, at night when I tied down the arm. But like a starving trapped hyena, it broke free in the middle of the night.”

“Now wait a minute—” An attempt by the bystander.

The old man continued, already too investigated, spoken with extreme conviction.“I was deep into my sleep when I was suddenly awake, like a switch—” He snapped his left fingers to emphasize. “My face was hot and sore, like I was slapped with devilish force. And there it was, my right arm. The fleshy monolith stood before, as I laid in bed. I looked over to my creation and it was completely destroyed, forced through with extreme prejudice. Then, I attempted to release myself from the bed-sheets and make a run for it, but I could not escape the arm.

“It attacked me! The hand wrapped its fingers around my neck, I counted all five pressed against my jugular. I tried to fight it, but I already knew that the arm was not mine! I tried to pry it off me, we wrestled on the bed, and onto the floor, against the furniture, and ended up destroying the front door and heading outdoors. I can only imagine how I looked for any poor farm animal there. A man gone insane choking himself, but also resisting. When it couldn’t snuff the air out of me, it resulted in punches. Let me ask you something: have you ever punched yourself for something you didn’t do?”

Taken aback by the question, the bartender has no words, his eyes still comprehending this one-armed man’s tale. 

Another pause. The old man turns to his side “He doesn’t know! Hahaha!”

And snaps his attention back. “It’s the most asinine feeling a full-blooded man can experience. I don’t pray to my own enemies, if I had them, to befall such a fate! Nevertheless, the intensity would only climb up, and my strength was waning. That is when my woodcutter’s axe became apparent.”

The bartender cannot pull his attention away. Some waiting customers have made their way from impatience to audience members. While not all were too happy with the wait.

“It was a difficult journey, from what may have been a few yards, rivaled that of any ancient Mesopotamian voyage. It was life or death, and Damn the Devil, I wanted to live, with or without a lesser me. The axe was my answer. Sever the evil from good, for you see, I am good natured. I am a praying man. I never ONCE hurt anyone. Not physically or emotionally.

“The arm fell from me and died the moment it touched this God-green earth. I’ve seen it with my own eyes. Don’t be so myopic!”

The animated old man stopped himself and sat back down on his seat. All of a sudden, his face goes blank and eyes part ever so slightly. The bartender noted this and said hesitantly, “But that was still your arm. How can you separate yourself from your own body?”

The old man doesn’t seem to understand the question. 

“Your arm may be gone, but YOU were still the one who almost committed the crime.”

“Young man, the arm belonged to someone else. It had a different shade of skin, a tone darker.”

Before the bartender could rebuttal what he believed to be the full story, the old man turned to the empty space to his left and started to mutter short responses. The old man wanted to interject, but he seemed to be interrupted, cutting himself off. 

But his voice grew weary and spoke out loud, “Oh no! What do you mean? A priest? The absolution is communicated by man, therefore I can absolve myself—don’t you dare do this to me!”

All the patrons, all the workers, and every uncounted pair of eyes watched on the old man make a scene. He whined and weeped to himself while staring at the ceiling. He prayed and crumbled down in fear, only to pray again. The white of his eyes submitted to despair, as the invisible grew louder, but only for him. Whatever words were heard wrecked the old man’s entire being. He flew out of his seat and dropped to the floor like a fish out of water.

He was dead. And slowly peeking out the side of his shirt, was his right arm.