The Plea

[Belcast]

He had lost his arm to an IED, but some days it didn’t feel that way. The Doctors spoke of “Phantom Limb Syndrome”, they told him the sensation and pain was all in his mind. He could accept that, but a month later his condition took an odd turn.

While slumped alone in a waiting room, he felt someone grip him by the ‘hand’, the one he'd left outside Kabul. He felt distinctly the meeting of implausible flesh. Unshakable fingers from the unknown slid urgently across his un-palm.

Shivering, he comprehended the mysterious tracings. It was, a message! HELP ME

[strawman]

Nice.

[tbaker2500]

Very nice!

[Algernon Sydney is Dead]

Yes, that was very good, with just the right "creep factor".

I took the liberty of adding paragraph breaks for legibility. Please forgive me (andChangeItBackIfYouAreAFanOfMonolithicText).

On a technical nit, it was only 99 words ("un-palm" counts as one, but some editors do not count hyphenated words correctly).

[strawman]

DC's DHS Czar is also a format Boy Scout?

Nice.

[Algernon Sydney is Dead]

I moderate on several sites, including ones like the Stack Exchange sites where editing other people's posts is strongly encouraged (but they have a superb tracking/reversion system), so I made the tweaks out of habit before remembering that it's not such a good thing here.

Sorry.

DHS? Does that mean I have to spend 93 million taxpayer dollars to buy a shipping-container X-ray system for Plentywood Montana?

I prefer TSA, for "Twabble Spewing A..., uh enthusiast".

[ROU Killing Time]

This had me thinking about our injured vets, the struggle so many of them face with PTSD, and the necessity to do so much more, as a nation, for those that have offered to give their all in defense of it.

[LizPennies]

My mind enjoys playing with this one far too much and imagines the possibility of the phantom hand tapping out a message back in morse code.

You may want to play with this idea in a longer format of short story or even novella. It has a great deal of potential! Excellent job.

[Belcast]

Thanks for commenting everyone!
I'll fix the word count, and I will certainly consider expanding the idea into a short story.

[acpracht]

Yeah, this one could be a short story at least. Well done.
It reminds me a bit of "Ghost Hand" which was the first chapters segment over on StarShipSofa recently.

[PhineasQP]

Spooky-cool!

[uncre8d1]

+1 for expansion. I want more of this!