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The woman of the house, I guess if you were to observe her, moves about with intent when she moves, or else she folds like a rag doll in her malaise. Sometimes, she curls a lock of golden hair between her thumb and index finger. She imagines that when she looks busy she seems impressive; she imagines others seeing her work and acknowledging how productive she is. Her pale smooth hands are an extension of her heart. Everything she feels can be read in how she moves her hands and how she touches the outer world.

And then there are those other hands. Submerged by moonlight, they look pale. 

The hands had come into her possession—well not exactly hers, but she was married—by way of her husband; he had inherited this macabre, though expensive and rare, curio from his family.  The foreign hands were a tableau vivant, dark-skinned and lying in a red velvet-lined glass cabinet. At first, she thought the curio was obscene and told her husband she wanted it out of the house. 

“They’re like something out of a Poe novel… or a Vegas freak shop! Your family is so fucked up.” She teases, laughing, large blue eyes made even wider in disbelief, waiting for him to agree. But he doesn’t respond, merely moves the cabinet into his office. Then he places a square of fabric over the top.

“There, now they're out of the way.”  He seems to think that this is enough for her. 

 But she would sneak into his study and take surreptitious peeks at them—the more she looked, the more she saw just how beautiful they were. They horrified her, but she couldn't look away. 

*

The hands inside the glass cabinet are poised in movement, the stain of dark red henna on its fingers, labyrinthine script curling down to the wrists. Its skin is a warm caramel colour, yet it looks like it could be translucent—the metacarpus seems to glow from within. The synovial, cartilaginous and fibrous joints are almost visible under the muscle-tendons. The ulnar fingers are long, the skin nearly covered in tattoos while the radial fingers are inked with a simple fern shape, snaking up towards the nail. Articulated fingers even in death.  Dense nerve endings—sources of tactile feedback in limbo. The dermal papillae has distinct lines, some of which are dark brown. There are two nasty scars near the base of the carpal bones—they have been neatly covered up by elegant silver braces over the stumps.

She peers closely at these hands, hands that look so foreign to her. She wants to will some extrinsic muscle group to move—a tiny gesture of life from the pinky, perhaps. There’s a chance that the extensors have not been damaged; maybe the distal phalanx just below the thumb… the anatomical snuffbox might twitch for me? 

She presses very softly with her fingers on her eyelids, she can feel a tension headache come on like a looming storm. But the birds outside are singing. Distant sounds of a car alarm, a car door slamming, waves of staccato traffic. It is barely 11am and she is tired. Even the yellow walls of the kitchen look tired, the chairs, the wooden floors, the pictures on the wall. But the hands… they are alive. At least they look more alive than anything in this house—I want to open that glass case—but what if I smashed it and the glass pierced the skin… would her hands bleed? 

*

She kneels down in front of the glass cabinet. The kneeling feels humbling, her own hands mere inches above the hands inside the case, the warmth of her palms condensing the glass like mist. Preparing, in case something happens. Her knees take her weight, her back straightens. Her eyes are unfocused, entertaining wild thoughts. I married to get to this moment. All my lethargy, my uncertainty, all the cracks in my life have led me to you. But I think of you contained in these ancient hands—whoever you are. Fuck, this is nuts… I don't know why I must be bored sad lonely stuck I've been stuck and lost like a seed pod trapped in cement… but seed pods grow in cement don't they?

She straightens a bobby pin and twists it into the front lock of the cabinet, wriggling it around, hoping to unhinge it. She has no idea what she is doing but she knows what she wants. She knows now, more than anything, that she wants to open the cabinet, to be closer to the hands.  She leans her face against the glass, her eyes only centimetres away from the hands.They glitter ominously, cognisant of her presence. She is aroused by the singular thought of touching these auriferous hands.

The bobby pin fails. She goes to the cupboard where the tools, paint, and vacuum cleaner is kept. She finds a hammer. She considers quickly what she will say to her husband. She will say she broke the cabinet because the hands seemed alive and she had to free them. He will probably be pissed off and re-evaluate her sanity. She holds the hammer and restores her previous kneeling position in front of the cabinet. Her thoughts whirl chaotically, erotically, demonically: Women seem to live on the edge of sanity in the eyes of others. Women's madness come from being locked up—behind walls, behind cabinets, behind the eyes of others, pungent and bleeding,  I've read enough to know the fate of mad women. 

*

“Touch me… touch me... touch me.” A muted voice from somewhere outside—or perhaps, within—the house. She places her head against the top of the glass cabinet, her ear pressed close, her neck at an unnatural angle against the edge. She listens, blood loudly pumping in her ears. 

“Free me, I have stories to tell. Free me!'”

The light is dim through the windows in this room, its face against the daylight outside.  She feels as if she is underwater: her hair matted in front of her face, her dress billowing up from a soft breeze coming in through an open window, exposing her plain black underwear, a bruise on her upper thigh. But under the pressure of this ocean, a calm soon takes over her body—the glint of harsh daylight above and the dream of lighter atmospheres. She moves quickly and easily, her lungs collapsing as gills sprout on the sides of her neck. Her hands have grown and her fingers—oh they're like jelly!—melt into each other, and now a sharp, silver fin forms along her spine. The walls of the house have opened onto a seabed: there is a current coursing underneath her belly and she can hear the gurgling sound of whales—a terrifying song to her, a small seahorse. 

Now, the floorboards are slicked with a dampness. Her hair is cadaverous against her forehead. She looks down to see the hammer lying on the floor next to her. Under the glass cabinet, the hands lie there, serene and patient. She sobs, drawing a jagged breath and absentmindedly fiddles with the bobby pin in the lock, yet to no avail. The bobby pin is warped, remaining in the lock as the feverish woman returns the hammer to the hallway cupboard.