I lost my right hand in an accident 4 years ago. Last week, I woke up with it back.

Like the title says, I lost my right hand a few years ago in an accident with a circular saw. I don’t really like to talk about it because it brings back bad memories, but just for this, I’ll clarify.

I was working on an easy project with my dad. I was cutting through the center of a board, the blade hit a knot, and easy as that, the wood flew forward, pulled my hand with it, and it went right under the saw. I remember the smell hitting me first. Like singed hair or skin maybe. I remember my dad shouting at me.

They had to amputate just below the wrist. It took a long time to get used to it. A lot of pain, too. I had to teach myself to be left-hand dominant. The feelings of my hand still being there mostly went away after a few years.

This is all just to contextualize how confused I was one morning last week when I woke up. My hand reached over to silence my phone alarm and I rubbed my eyes with a different hand.

I realized the problem right then and shot up in bed. I stared wide-eyed at my hands. You know that saying about knowing the back of your hands?

I didn’t know this hand. 

It was perfectly planted over the stump at the end of my right arm, as if there never even was an amputation there to begin with. No scars, no discoloration, nothing at all. I tested finger movements and found that with some concentration, I could move all five. 

Was this really my own? I tried to just accept the gift and not question it too much. This was a new opportunity for me, after all.

I spent my day relearning to do my normal activities with both hands. After so long only really using my left hand for complex actions, it felt so strange having to use both. Putting on shoes, using my phone, buttoning my shirt, hell, even just pulling my pants up were all new and odd to me. But I became accustomed to it all fairly easily.

It was during this day-or-so of rediscovery that I realized two oddities about my new hand. 

First of all, it smelled weird. Kind of oniony, or like a protein shake that was left out overnight? It wasn’t that strong, but it was very clearly there and it smelled bad. The smell permeated my nose and wouldn’t leave. Faint, but present.

The other thing was the temperature. It was warm. Really warm, actually. Much more so than the rest of my arm or body. It was hot to the touch. Similar to a feverish forehead burning up. Weirdly enough, that didn’t stop it from being real pale in color. 

Since I work from home and a lot of my workflow involves typing and zoom meetings, I had to relearn to type with two hands. For a few days it was really hard, but I started to get the hang of it. I chose not to tell any of my coworkers about the arm thing just to avoid questions. It was during these days of constant typing that I found a new quirk in my hand.

It would sometimes just… type on its own? 

At first I thought it was just because I was still learning and making mistakes. But I realized that it was something else when it randomly started typing a few letters of gibberish once while I was just resting my hand over the keys. I made no intention to move the fingers, they just did it somehow. 

After that, I really started to notice it. Fingers would twitch, bend, tap, poke, all sorts of tiny gestures on their own, all against my will. It became really hard to ignore, but believe me, I tried to. I wanted this new hand to be a no-strings-attached situation. 

Then the smell started to get worse. 

I woke up one morning and nearly threw up from the shock of it. It was revolting. I pinched my nose and took a shower to try and get rid of the smell. 

While showering, my right hand reached up to the handle and jerked it hard. I was caught off-guard by how blatant and large of a move it was, more than any it had done previously. The water, nearly instantly, became scalding hot and I yelped out in pain. I jumped out of the shower as steam billowed out. The skin all over my head, shoulders, and chest stung bad. I turned the handle back to cold water and I got back in to rinse down the sensitive skin.

I looked down at my hand. It was pruning in the water. The veins in the wrist pulsated at an odd tempo. I felt it closely; it didn’t match my heartbeat. 

The second real incident happened later that evening while I was cooking dinner. I tried my best to not use my right hand while doing anything that could endanger me, since I was still scared from that morning.

Weirdly enough, the skin on that hand was still rough, pruny, and more pale than before. 

I was cutting a cucumber when it happened. I know, in retrospect it seems stupid to have had a knife in front of me like that, but I just wasn’t expecting something so dramatic to occur. 

The pale hand leaped out of my hoodie pocket and ripped the knife out of my left hand. It flew towards my head with shocking speed. I grabbed it by the blade in my left hand and stopped it just short of my forehead. The pale hand quickly loosened its grip, and I was left with my bleeding left hand clutching the knife. It clattered to the floor. I panted hard.

For the next couple days, I decided to keep the hand taped up against my torso beneath a shirt and sweatshirt at all times. And for the time being, it worked. No incidents. But I noticed something else.

Every time I went to change clothes or take a shower, I had to inspect my right hand and re-tape it down. The second time I did it, as I pulled the tape off the back of the hand, I heard an extra ripping sound. I saw red. The skin beneath the tape had come with it. I could see the pale tendons, red muscle, and even a milky-white bone. I gagged.

I bandaged it, but I knew deep down that it was only a temporary solution. It came more undone each time I tried to tape it down. The skin was starting to turn grey. I found two sticky, black fingernails in my bed one morning. 

I decided that I couldn’t keep doing the same thing. I was destroying myself. The smell was getting so much worse, too. The same evening I found the fingernails, I let the hand hang loose from my shirt sleeve. I just made sure to avoid anything that seemed dangerous.

As I sat on the couch watching TV, the hand jolted. Just a small spasm. I looked down at it and saw the fingers begin to twitch.

Suddenly, it shot into the air, wrapped its hot fingers around my neck with surprising strength, and squeezed. I coughed hard and grabbed its wrist with my left hand, but was unable to pull it away. I couldn’t breathe. The strain on my throat was unbearable. 

My mind raced a million miles a second. I resolved to do the one thing I had been thinking about for days but dreading. I had no other choice now.

I sprinted into the kitchen with fading vision. My lungs were choking out for air. I grabbed a steak knife and tried to steel myself.

Bringing the knife up to my wrist, I began to saw away. Luckily I felt nothing from the knife. However, each time the knife cut deeper, the grip tightened. I was close to blacking out. I felt hot liquid pour out and drip down both of my arms and neck as I cut more and more.

I felt a hard vibration as the blade ran across the bone. I pressed harder.

Just as I lost feeling in my legs, the knife sliced through the remaining skin of my wrist. The right hand fell from my neck and I gasped for air.

Both me and the hand collapsed onto the ground. As I filled my lungs with sweet air and grasped at my bruised throat, I saw the hand crawl away on bleeding fingers. It disappeared around the corner.

I rushed to put my arm under running water. The remaining decayed tendons and flesh fell away and I was left with the same stump that I had known for the past four years. There was no bleeding coming from me. I searched for hours that night but couldn’t locate the hand. It was nowhere to be seen. I was deeply disturbed. I felt a knot in my stomach and it wouldn’t go away.

I scarcely slept that night. I tossed and turned, laying there for hours before I finally drifted into an uneasy sleep.

I awoke to the sound of steps in my room. I heard the closet door open. My bloodshot eyes easily found the source.

A man, exceedingly pale, only dressed in pants and socks, stood in front of the closet, his hands running through my shirts, back turned to me. His hair, wet and tangled, was the same color as mine. He only had a right hand, pink and wrinkled, the nails absent. The left arm ended in a stump just before the wrist. 

Adrenaline spiked through my body and I jumped out of bed, shouting at the man. He turned toward me. His expression was blank. 

He looked just like me.

I tried to race to the door, but he grabbed my hair and jerked me backwards before I could. I fell backwards and he pinned me down with incredible force. I punched and kicked to no success.

He dragged me over to the closet, threw me in, and shut the doors.

Winded, I tried to get up in the tiny, dark space. By the time I was able to push the door, it was already jammed shut. I screamed and pounded at it, but it wouldn’t budge. I heard the bedroom door shut. He was gone. 

I sat there for what must have been hours. I tried to understand what he was. What he was doing. All the while, I was kicking at the door. After a long time, when my foot was worn and blistered, the door finally creaked and snapped at my force. It opened.

My phone was gone. My shoes were gone. My car was gone, too. It was 7pm. It had been hours and he still was gone. I had no clue what he was doing.

I grabbed my laptop and have spent my time typing this out. 

If you find him, stay away. It’s not me. My right hand is gone, not my left hand. Please call the police.

Help me.