The Lovely Shadow Read Online Free PDF Page B

tender spot and a slight dent where the
forearm had hit the stair, but I could feel neither torn skin nor
blood leaking from it. It felt as if all the angles were in the
proper places. It was hurting, that was for damned sure, but I
didn’t think it was broken.
    I raised my arm above my head slowly,
grimacing at the pain this caused in my shoulder. The shoulder
creaked and groaned in protest, but with a slight pop and a little
grinding, it finally loosened up and allowed the arm to move around
in the socket joint with a little less resistance and a whole lot
less pain.
    I brought my arm back down and rested it in
my lap. I had to check my fingers. I was afraid to do it because I
knew for sure that if anything was broken, it was them. I started
with the pinky. I figured it was the one digit aside from the thumb
that had no pain and was therefore least likely to broken. Holding
my breath, I pinched the tip of the pinky gingerly between my left
thumb and pointer finger and wiggled it slowly back and forth.
    The movement caused a slight pain in the
knuckle at the base of my ring finger, but no pain at all in the
pinky. I let my breath out in a whoosh of relief. I didn’t want to
continue checking the other digits but I knew I had to. I decided
to move onto the thumb. Rather than pinch my thumb with my left
hand fingers, I decided I’d just wiggle it around under its own
power. I wiggled it. It wiggled freely. I really wanted to feel
relieved by that, but I had already known that would be the case
and that sort of made it a nonevent.
    I sat on the stair for several minutes before
I summoned the courage to continue checking my fingers. I reached
out for them several times, only to pull my hand away again at the
last second. Finally, taking a deep breath and gritting my teeth, I
reached over and touched my remaining fingers.
    I brushed the pointer, ring and middle
fingers of my left hand gently against their respective twins on
the backside of my right hand, starting at the lowest knuckles and
dragging them outward towards the finger tips. A small groan
escaped my lips as I confirmed my fears.
    My pointer finger felt a little swollen and
tender to the touch but was at least pointing straight. My middle
and ring fingers were a different story. Both of them were swollen
to the size of little sausages and extremely sensitive to the
touch.
    The knuckles near the palms, at the base of
the two sausage fingers had irregular lumps protruding from them
and felt to be roughly the size of walnuts. Both fingers were
pointing off towards the pinky; the wrong direction.
    I had already suspected that my fingers were
in bad shape, but having discovered the physical evidence of their
injury that proved my assumptions correct did little to fatten my
ego. In fact, the knowledge made me feel a bit sick to my stomach.
Actually a lot sick to my stomach. I leaned forward and puked all
over myself.
    When I was done puking I began to feel dizzy
and started to shiver uncontrollably. I could feel beads of sweat
breaking out on my forehead. I had seen enough nonfiction
television programs to know that I was going into shock, but
knowing I was going into shock didn’t do anything to make it stop
happening.
    For one crazy second I considered calling out
for my mother, half believing that she would come and rescue me;
that she’d come running when I called and throw open the basement
door like some kind of superhero, casting me in a warm glow of
light. Then she’d run in and scoop me off the floor and hold me
tight, telling me all the while that everything was going to be
okay. That thought passed quickly and I realized something else in
that moment.
    Once I understood that my mother was
completely insane I regarded her as poison! I didn’t want her help.
I wondered briefly if I still loved her but quickly decided that
this was not a good time to ponder deep moral issues.
    ‘For God’s sake,’ I thought, ‘I’m going into
friggin shock here!’
    I took