The Arm Farm - 3

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3. The Farm

Immeasurable unreality washed over Chris as he walked through the fields of plastic bags. He had never experienced anything like it in his life. A light breeze blew through the field and the bags crinkled. He wondered if it was the wind or the hands moving beneath their plastic covers. How does someone do something like this? Art seemed genuine enough, but Chris thought of the pod. He could still feel the tentacle moving and the pulsing of the thing’s heart. When something seemed too good to be true, it often was. Chris had learned that lesson more times than he wanted to count.

            “Now, let me check my notes.” Art pulled out the tape recorder again and pushed play.

            Chris wasn’t listening. He was looking over the fields. How could he look anywhere else? Megan grabbed his hand and squeezed, running her soft fingers across his. Ordinarily it would have made him feel calm, but in the moment, he just thought of the fingers reaching for the sky in a desperate attempt to feel the breeze. Why did they want to feel the breeze? He gave Megan a week smile and dropped her hand, stepping out of reach. He needed to be alert.

            “Ah yes, white, three or a four for pigment, some freckling.” Art bent down to check a plastic sheet pinned to a wood post. “That’s going to be row fifteen. Not too far of a walk.” He strode forward and motioned for them to follow. “Step careful now, and if you can help it, don’t touch the bags.”

            Chris didn’t have to be told twice. Keeping a healthy distance from the bags was in his own self-interest. All he could think about was the arms grabbing for his ankles. The whole field was watching him. Sure, the hands had no eyes, but he could feel them following his movement, shifting imperceptibly to track his steps. He remembered the sound from the barn. Some cacophony loud enough to rattle his bones. Had it actually been disco music? Your mind is exceptionally good at tricking itself.

            “How many prosthetics are you growing here?” Megan’s voice still held a note of nausea, but she was pushing through it. Polite questions were her private strategy to regain normalcy.

Chris thought about employing mental strategies of his own. God knows he had plenty from years of therapy. Maybe try a deep breathing exercise, ground yourself in the present moment. Instead, he ran through the time it would take them to get to the car at a dead run. Art wasn’t carrying a weapon, but they were on a farm, which meant a rifle probably wasn’t far off. It was going to be a long sprint, but they would make it. So long as the car started, they could be out of range by the time Art got his second or third shot off.

Art continued, either not noticing or choosing to ignore Chris’s silence. “I think we’re up to about two-hundred now, and that’s not counting the incubators. Right now, we’ve placed about fifty. The results have been extraordinary. Full rehabilitation in a matter of weeks.” The pride was clear in his voice.

“That’s incredible.” Megan smiled.

“You should see their expression after everything gets fitted.” Art stopped at a row of crops with a plastic number fifteen posted beside them. “Ah yes, here we go.” He stepped between two lines of plastic bags and examined small tags beneath them. “Ok, I like to go with a best of three methodology.” Art unceremoniously whipped off three bags, revealing three human arms flexing toward the sun. Their flesh met the dirt just below the elbow.

            Chris winced. They were all skinny, like they hadn’t been used in a long time. He supposed that was true. They hadn’t ever been used. Sunlight reflected off their pink fingernails, causing the tips of the hands to glow in the midday heat. Despite his great discomfort, Chris couldn’t help but marvel at them. They were the best prosthetics he had ever seen. He looked down at the stump of his right arm and wondered what it would feel like.

He felt his hand running over his beloved car’s stick shift, still warm from the midday heat. Looking down at the uncalloused fingers and pale skin, he could feel what it would be like to pluck his guitar for the first time. Elation ran through him in a wave, chasing away his misgivings. What if this is the real deal? What if you’ve been paranoid up to this point? Embarrassment flushed hot in his face. Chris took a few deep breaths, smelling the soil and the odd scent the hands gave off. He had never seen anything so strange in his life, but with the fear dissipating, excitement rose to take its place.

            “See?” Art beamed. “There it is. That look right there is why I do it.”

            Chris laughed, a hysterical noise in the quiet field. He crouched down, putting his good hand on his knee, taking stock of the situation. “They’re incredible.”

            Art crouched next to him. “I know this can all be a bit much at first, but trust me, when you get this bad boy attached in a few months…” he whistled. “You’ll forget you ever had any misgivings to begin with.”

            Was I that obvious? “They certainly do have a disarming effect on you.”   

            Art gave a great belly laugh. “Now, there it is! A sense of humor poking out from beneath it all. I like that. Now, we’ve got an important piece of business to deal with.”

            “What’s that?”

            “Well, you have to tell me which one you like of course!” He slapped Chris on the shoulder. “Go on, take a closer look, don’t be shy.”

            Chris approached nervously, bending low to each of the arms. Their skin looked soft and fresh, at odds with the very idea of being in the summer sun. The irony of unworked hands being tilled in a field made gave the situation a dark levity. At first glance, the arms all looked similar, but the longer he inspected them, the more intricacies he found. Much like snowflakes, tiny variations made all the difference in the world. Knuckle size, finger length, all things he had never thought of, but looking at his good hand, he noticed them.  

Eventually, he came to settle on the middle stalk and held his hand up for comparison. It would never be a complete match, but it was close enough that not many would notice. He imagined the government would have a hell of a time understanding his difference in fingerprints. Shifting to put his stump next to the stalk, Chris tried to imagine what it would be like. A smile crept over his face.

            “I think we have a winner.” Art grinned.

            “I think I agree.” Chris blinked back tears. They were sudden and surprising to him. Straighten up. Now that the niceties were out of the way, this was going to be a business negotiation.

            Art shuffled over to the arm Chris had picked and put a tag around one of the hand’s fingertips. It read ‘RESERVED FOR CUSTOMER’ in the same blocky lettering as the sign out front. He then replaced the opaque bags around all of them. “Don’t worry, we’ll leave it out in the sun a little each day to get the right pigmentation and get started on those freckles, but baby steps.”

            “Thank you.” The dreamlike quality of the farm returned.

            “Look at that, he’s stunned speechless.” Megan wrapped her arms around Chris. “Told you this was a good idea.”

            Art smiled at them both. “Well, now that we’ve got the part I like out of the way, it’s time for the ugly bit. We’ve got to discuss payment, insurance, all the stuff that makes my skin crawl.” He shivered. “Why don’t we head on over to my office and we can iron out the details.”       

            “Of course.” Chris extricated himself from Megan’s hug and put an arm around her. “You’re running a business after all. How much are we talking?”

            A high-pitched screech cut across the farm.

            “What the hell was that?” Chris’s good feeling evaporated in a second. Unconsciously, he ran through the distance to the car again.

            A flicker of annoyance and anger crossed Art’s face. “It’s the god damned buzzard hawks trying to get at the fields again. I’ll go handle it and meet you both back at the barn. Take the front door.”

            Before Chris had time to say anything else, Art was running across the field towards the barn’s side door. “Don’t you dare!” he yelled, waving his hands like a madman.

            When Art was out of earshot, Chris let out a long breath he didn’t know he’d been holding. “That didn’t sound like a buzzard hawk.” He watched Art cut across the field and was surprised by the man’s speed.

            Megan shrugged. “What else could it be?”

            Chris’s suspicion rose again. He looked out at the field of bags and his stomach churned. “If something feels too good to be true, it probably is. This is too good to be true, Megan.”

            She looked at him with worry in her eyes. “Oh Chris, come—”

            “No. I did what I agreed to. Something is wrong here and we’re getting the hell out.” His words were clipped, bordering on angry. I’m sorry. Saying it out loud would undermine the urgency, but he felt it, and he saw the hurt in Megan’s eyes. She didn’t have to tell him he was being irrational, he could practically see the feeling radiating off her. A feeling in his gut told him to run.

            Megan looked over at Art as he entered the barn. “But he’s such a nice man.”

            Fear rose in Chris’s throat. He recognized it as the moment before a fight. “I’m sorry, Megan, but I need to go. I don’t know what it is, but I can’t be here. Let’s go, straight to the car, at a walk, but don’t stop.”

            She sighed and then nodded. Together, they started walking toward the car, parked just outside the main barn. It wasn’t nearly as far as it had been in Chris’s mind. He said a silent thank you for that. Even though it felt like fight or flight, the heavy shroud of shame clung to his shoulders. In the moment, the threat felt very real, but he knew once they were out, it might seem silly. That was how mental illness worked. He looked to the barn and then back to the field. This isn’t your PTSD, this is real.

            As if in answer to his thoughts, Megan ran a firm hand along his back, working at the tension there.

            “I’m sorry Megan, I—”

            Another screech cut across the farm. From behind the barn, a man burst into the sunlight, completely naked. The sun glinted off his shaved head, and Chris’s eyes immediately fell on his missing arm. Blood ran down the man’s back in rivulets, smearing across his pale skin. “Help me!” He staggered toward them. “Please. This place isn’t right!”

            A shot rang out and a puff of red mist exploded from between the naked man’s eyes. He brought a hand up to the neat hole in his forehead, confused and then fell forward into the field of plastic bags.

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