Traitorous Limb

Ichi suspects his left arm is NOT his left arm.

He kept his eyes forward for fear of looking down and seeing it. That… that thing masquerading as his left arm. The mere thought of this aberration triggered his eyes, yearning to affirm that the foreign appendage had miraculously vanished.
Damn! It was still there, still attached to him at the shoulder, still leeching off his life and energy, stealing nutrients meant for other places. How he hated that thing!
Ichi turned his head away with haste, desperate not to think of the horror sewn to his very body at birth. How many times had he thought to remove it himself? How many times had he found himself holding an axe, a saw, a mighty cleaver to his shoulder? But to remove an arm… that would be dangerous to do alone, he could bleed out, and this knowledge always stayed his hand.
Sighing, Ichi rose from the wooden chair at his table. His shift was due to start soon and already he could feel himself sinking into the weeds. Server at a restaurant, yes, a job that required no less than two hands. Two functioning, human hands. But he had only one true hand. The other… well, it obeyed him often enough, but for how long? How long until he awoke in the middle of the night with his own fingers wrapped around his throat? When will the latent evil residing in every atom of his left arm activate and begin terrorizing him?
Brian, the head chef, asked Ichi if he had clocked in yet as the dinner rush was on the way and the young man’s section already had at least one table seated. Ichi’s eyes lingered on the cutting board as Brian spoke, watching a knife slide through some green vegetable whose name Ichi couldn’t pronounce. Ichi rolled his eyes, replied to the affirmative and patted his pockets for the customary pen and notepad before hurrying off to his section. Indeed, there was a couple seated at a table in need of service. His left arm held the notepad as he wrote down their orders, the fiendish thing complying, bending to his whims for the present. Ichi went back to the computer to input the order, swearing that his left hand was shaking as he pressed the colorful icons on the ancient touchscreen, his hand faltering in it’s duty, just as he feared it might.
Ichi finished putting in the order and went behind the hostess stand to calm down, clutching his left wrist firmly, rigidly, growling hushed curses and threats at the alien monstrosity claiming to be a part of his body.
“You may not be my left arm,” he hissed, hot dewdrops forming on the hills and valleys of his face. “But you’re in place of my left arm so you better behave! So help me, I’ll cut you off! You understand?!”
His left arm trembled and sent a metallic shiver up along his spine. Ichi took that to mean they had an agreement, if only for today.
Indeed, that malignant limb behaved for the next several hours, holding steady drinks and hot plates and bowls of soup and heavy trays laden with dishes. Ichi found himself scratching at his left elbow more than once, as if confirming the thing was still hooked into his nervous system.
Then, at the height of the evening rush, it happened. What he had feared found substance in reality. He was carrying a load of dishes back to the kitchen when someone grabbed his attention.
“Excuse me,” the lady said. Ichi adjusted his hold on the tray to utilize the power of his left arm as he spoke to her, answered her questions about the Italian cuisine she had ordered. The longer the exchange went on, the twitchier his left bicep became. Ichi could feel it, his muscles rebelling, forming a union against him in protest at this injustice, this blatant favoritism of his right side! Before he could stop it, his left arm failed purposefully, dropping the delicate and fancy dinnerware onto the hard marble floor.
The sound, oh, that dreadful, dreadful sound! So loud the shattering and clattering! So forceful was the impact that shrapnel flew into the air, pushed further by that awful noise, an angry chiming of a thousand bells and the sickening snapping of cooked bones.
Ichi had just broken quite a large amount of money’s worth of custom pottery. And that damned traitorous limb was happy about it! He could feel it celebrating as it dangled at his side, swinging merrily at the destruction it caused.
The restaurant had gone silent at the sudden cacophonous roar of disaster and remained so as Ichi gripped the detestable thing attached to him at the shoulder.
“God damn you!” He shouted at the silently giggling appendage. He gripped it so hard the arm pleaded for mercy, but he was having none of it. The evil was spreading, he could feel it. His left arm had tasted freedom and wanted more. It was twitching and writhing just below the skin, where none but he could detect the storm brewing, gaining speed. The pain was intense! This horrible thing, this wretched, misplaced weight he had lived with since birth; it was angry now. And motivated.
Ichi knew what he had to do.
He leapt over the mess and pushed his way past his coworkers, grunting and murmuring feverishly about the horror of his arm, that it was seeking to control him, destroy him, that it was not but a cancerous growth feigning as a useful, everyday appendage. He charged past the swinging doors and the chefs into the kitchen, the pain in his left arm increasing.
“Ha, you know what I’m gonna do, don’t ya?” He asked venomously, rummaging around in the heat and steam and smoke of the usually busy and crowded kitchen. But the staff had gone out to see what was being fussed over. He had his chance, it was now or never, he had to do it now, now, now!
Ichi spotted the huge meat cleaver, a siren’s song of shining metal lured him to the counter where the weapon lay. His true fingers curled around the handle as frantic voices rose in pitch behind him. He went to his knees and, with all the will of a hysterical madman, laid his left arm out on the cutting counter. The voices were getting louder and more panicked as he held the cleaver up high over his head. With a deep breath, Ichi felt a sudden sense of calm resolution overcome him.
Light glinted off the edge of the cleaver as he brought it down, the hatred of a lifetime spent living with a limb that was not his fueled the blow.
The cleaver struck.

THE END