1The universe is full of magical things patiently waiting for our wits to grow sharper. —Eden Phillpotts, author
It started with her finger.
It was not quite nine a.m. when Tilda realized that the little finger on her right hand was missing.
She knew it was impossible. How could she lose a finger? But the hand that rested on her computer keyboard now had only four fingers attached.
She blinked, unable to comprehend what was so preposterous. Waiting to see that it was a trick of the light. But it wasn’t. Her finger was actually gone. Without her knowing, it had . . . what? Dropped off?
Tilda searched the room for answers. Or, rather, her finger. There was no sign of an injury. No blood. No pain.
Her gaze skimmed over the piles of paperwork she’d been meaning to file, and the prints she had yet to frame, and the camera gear that lay scattered around. Her eyes rested on an empty can of kombucha she had drunk earlier.
Had someone spiked the kombucha?
She’d done acid once back in her early twenties and thought she was stuck in a bubble for six hours. It was a horrendous experience, and it not only put her off hallucinogens for life but also gave her a deep-seated fear of losing her mind. A surge of adrenaline coursed through her limbs now—pure fear. What if she had been drugged and was losing her mind?
Breathe.
She turned her attention to things that were real. Her home office with its pitch-perfect wood floors, earthy colors, and natural light from the large windows. Her gallery wall, where over a dozen of her favorite photographs hung in mismatched wood frames. There were photos of her twins, Holly and Tabitha. Her girls had shared a womb but couldn’t be more different. One photograph showed Holly, in all her green-eyed, auburn-haired beauty, head thrown back laughing, and tiny blond Tab, a step back from her spotlight-stealing sister, content in the background. Not that Tabitha was unsure of herself—she had a quiet confidence and was, in fact, the more self-assured of the two.
There was the photo of them both at Angkor Wat.
Holly dressed for the lead in a school play.
Tabitha as she was awarded the citizenship medal at her high school graduation.
The two girls with their grandmother Frances at their twentieth birthday dinner, nearly a year ago now.
And then there were other images. Tilda’s closest friends, Leith and Ali, dancing barefoot in her garden, wineglasses in hand. An average Friday night.
Her dog, Buddy, his large paw across Pirate, the cat, both curled up in front of a winter fire.
Pirate was watching her now from on top of the printer. He seemed normal, and she met his gaze. Pirate had only one eye, but it was steady and all-knowing. From the moment Tilda first saw Pirate four years earlier, she knew he was a cat who had seen things and survived them.
“He’ll be a lifer,” the woman at the animal shelter had said. “No one wants a damaged cat.”
But Tilda knew how it felt to be discarded and alone, so she’d brought him home. On his papers, it said he was wary of all human interaction, but he’d jumped up onto her lap that very night and their three eyes had locked. Tilda’s fears, stresses, and worries had all melted away, as if he’d drawn them out of her.
“You’re special,” she’d whispered, tears rolling down her cheeks.
Pirate had curled up on her lap and fallen asleep, as if relieved that finally someone had seen him.
Even now, he calmed her. She wasn’t tripping—the kombucha had been fine. Everything but her hand was normal.
Then what?
She mentally ran through her day so far, trying to remember the last time she’d looked at her hand. She’d used it to hit her alarm, get dressed, and then take Buddy for a run on the beach. He’d been the one running, not her. Tilda always joked that the only time she’d ever run was if something was chasing her.
She’d used her hand to pat him, to clip and unclip his leash. It was an unusually cold day, even for late May, so she could remember rubbing her hands together for warmth while she let him bolt up and down the beach. Then she’d returned home and searched for her keys behind the potted plant and opened her front door, letting Buddy bound past her down the hall. She’d pottered around the kitchen, made a coffee, and then sat at her desk, taking a moment to savor the sun streaming through the window before turning her attention to her emails.
“All that and I’d notice a finger missing, right?” Tilda said to Pirate, an edge of hysteria in her voice.
Pirate couldn’t answer that question. Or didn’t want to.
Tilda held her fist up in front of her face and, one by one, unfurled her fingers. She wiggled them. Her thumb. Check. Her index finger, and then her rude finger, as Holly had called it when she was little. All good. Her ringless finger, as her mother, Frances, called it. Check. And then . . . tentatively . . . her pinkie. Check.
What?
She could still feel it. It was there. She hadn’t lost her little finger—she just couldn’t see it.
Tilda pushed back her chair and stumbled through the house to the bathroom. She clutched the basin and searched her eyes in the mirror. Wasn’t it Susan Sontag who’d said, “Sanity is a cozy lie”? What if Tilda was suffering a psychotic episode or mental breakdown but didn’t realize it? Was she unhinged? Surely even asking that question ruled it out. Years ago, an old friend of hers from university had been certain the CIA was following him—it was this certainty that led to his spending time in a clinic. From the little Tilda knew about the matter, people who were having a psychotic episode didn’t think there was anything wrong with them. But if her mind was fine, why couldn’t she see her finger? A brain tumor? She’d read that a tumor could affect your vision.
A sense of tumor, Tilda thought.
Good to see I still have my sense of tumor . . . Perhaps it was her vision that was playing a trick on her? Was she going blind? She looked over at the wall above the toilet, at the framed print of a meditating monkey that Leith had given her. Underneath his serene image, it said in small, ornate lettering, “Let that shit go.”
The fact that she could read the poster gave Tilda some comfort. Her eyes seemed fine. She turned back to the mirror and stared into them again. No visible weird shadows or spots. And then, to her absolute horror, Tilda noticed that her right ear was missing too. She raised her hand—the one missing the finger—and drew back a lock of hair to touch the spot where her ear used to be. She could feel her ear. It was still attached to her head. But as with her finger, she just couldn’t see it.
And with that, Tilda turned to the toilet and threw up.
Copyright © 2025 by Jane Tara. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
