“Close the door! All the heat’s getting out!”
She slams the door shut using her boot and the last snowflakes that had managed to sneak fall to their melty death on the ground. Alie quickly throws her hat, gloves, and the rest of her winter gear on the ground and sprints to the bathroom before Val. As she sits on the can, she clears the mess of hair in her face and texts Jan. any food we can eat? Pants back up, hands washed and dried, her phone vibrates, stuck in her back pocket. suit yourselves. i’ll be there in 10, 15 tops.
“Hey, you hungry Val?” She says from the other side of the door.
“Yes, but toilet goes first. Out of the way!”
The door is barely inched open that Val throws herself at her to gain access to the bathroom. Alie scoffs and wanders off in the apartment, taking a look around at Jan’s place. A satisfied grin on her face, she approves of the setup, pretty good spot. Big windows, tall ceilings, a nice long kitchen table for lots of games of beer pong, the perfect college place.
After a fair bit of trial and error, she finds the pantry to try and scavenge something to eat. While Jan almost exclusively eats cafeteria food, Alie didn’t think the state of her kitchen would be this… sad. An opened box of salty crackers, a can of tomato soup….. that’s it. The fridge isn’t any better. Apart from mayo and ketchup, there’s nothing in here. Not even a carton of milk.
Only then does she notice the metal cookie tin on the table. What a meme, she’s almost convinced she’ll find a bunch of sewing material in there. After opening it just for fun, she finds it does have actual cookies inside! Not the original ones, though, she must’ve baked a batch from store-bought mixes at the grocery store, although there’s no way to know how old they are. She picks one up to smell it. Chocolate, seems fresh.
After a teensy test-bite, satisfied, she chomps down on the cookie like she hasn’t eaten in a few days. Maybe it’s the hunger, but she thinks the cookie is absolutely delicious. Like she can taste it not only with her mouth, but with the entirety of her body, too. As she starts attacking the second half, Val storms out of the bathroom, just as hungry, if not more, than Alie, looking for something to calm her stomach.
“Tell me you’ve found some fooooood!”
“Yeah, these cookies are pretty great! But it’s the only edible thing in the entire kitchen, so we better ration them.”
“Let’s see….. Oh! Mint-chocolate! My favorite!” She falls down on a chair as she gets a taste. “Hmmmm woooow. hor fomeone vat eatf a’ chool errday,” she swallows her bite, “This is reaaaally good.” She aggressively fits the rest of the cookie in her mouth, struggling to get it to close.
“I know right?? Do they really make that much money in chemistry? I mean come on. Oops!” As she takes another bite, the remaining part of her treat falls to the floor. Steadying herself with a hand on the table, she reaches under a chair to retrieve it before sitting down before her friend. “Her parents have to be in on her budget.”
“Alie..”
“And I mean I don’t care if they do, good for her, I’m not here to judge her life, I’m just saying it may catch-up to her later when she gets a real job and a real place.”
“Alie..?”
“Look at me and you, we have side-jobs, we manage our own things, and I think we’re just as well off than her. And maybe it’s not even that, maybe she’s just in debt for all we know.”
“Alie?!”
“What?!” She slams her fist on the table, the last crumb of her cookie still in her left hand. “I’m not your mom, you don’t need my authorisation to speak.”
Her face is pale, she raises her hand towards Alie. “What happened to your hand?!”
“My hand? Nothing happened to my… HOLY SHIT!!!”
On her right hand, except from the first phalanx of her thumb, all of her fingers are gone.
She grabs her wrist and stares at the remains of her right hand. “What the fuck?! I had a hand a minute ago, did I not?” She pinches the skin at the end of her shortened thumb as she tries to move it. “Where are my fingers? Where are they?!?”
Along with her pointer fingers, a good part of her palm has vanished as well. As she stares at it, she starts getting dizzy and puts her hands on her head, only to remove them immediately.
“This feels weird!!! Oh my god! Are you okay?!”
“I’m fine, really.” Wanting to go help her friend, Val trips and falls to the floor with as much tonus as a ragdoll. “I must’ve been blocking my circulation, my foot’s gone numb.” Reaching down to massage it, she finds nothing at the end of her leg. ALIE?! ALIE WHAT’S GOING ON?!?!”
“Oh no, no no no no no!!!”
Kneeling before her friend, Alie lifts Val’s calf in her remaining hand and is met with the truth face first. Instead of fitting her foot, her sock simply hangs at the tip of her leg like a deflated balloon. Alie pulls it off and screams at the top of her lungs as she notice her friend’s foot is gone, just like most of her right hand.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry!! Did I hurt you?!” I’m so sorry!”
“What the hell, Alie. What’s this shit all about?! Where’s my… My foot is gone, how’s that even possible?!”
“I don’t know, I don’t…”
In an instant, the girls’ attentions are directed to Alie’s phone, set on the table. It’s ringing. One, two, three.. six times. Then, it stops. After a few seconds, it chimes once. She extends her arm to pick it up, forgetting her lost fingers, only to swipe it off the table and onto her face. As it lays on the ground, she reads the message she’s just received from Jan. oh and don’t touch the cookies, it’s a surprise for tonight.
“What does it say?!” Val asks, disgustedly feeling her stump through the fabric of her crumpled leggings.
“What a fucking minute.” Standing up, Alie heads strait for the tin box. “Which ones did you eat?”
“The mint and chocolate ones, why?”
“I ate chocolate chips. Well, actually, I didn’t quite finish it…”
The two flavors have been separated on either side of the box. Printed on the metallic interior are two letters, each centered according to the two types of cookies.
“Is that so…” She mutters.
“What is it? What’s going on? What did the text message say?!”
“I think we’re about to find out. Look carefully.”
She kneels again, holding the last piece of cookie in the fingers of her left hand. She shows it to her friend, and ceremoniously flicks it in her mouth, silently waiting for something to happen. As nothing does, she starts chewing. Again, the taste is overwhelming, but she shakes her head as she tries to stay focused on her hands, or at least the intact one, and her truncated arm. Gradually, as if miniature ants marching along her skin, her left pinky starts feeling numb.
“Look!” She says, the cookie still in her mouth. “It’s the fucking cookies! Look!” Then, she swallows.
As quickly as if it had been ripped off her hand, her pinky finger melts away and both girls jump back in shock. Alie clenches her new fist and jumps when she sees the stump of her right hand again, still expecting it to bear nails and fingers. Part of her left hand has also vanished along with the finger, making it thinner in the process.
“That’s weird I though the rest of my right hand would disappear...”
“Don’t you think it’s weird enough that any part of you at all is disappearing?!” Camping her right foot on the floor, she pushes herself back up, balancing on a single leg. “How am I going to walk with one foot?! But most of all why is my foot gone?!”
“You’re not thinking this through, Val.” Alie says, reaching inside the tin again.
“There’s nothing to think through. What are you doing?! Don’t touch that!!” She tries to slap the cookie out of her hand but Alie simply takes a step back.
“There has to be a logic behind this….” She looks at what’s left of her right hand, then at her left. “I’m a righty so….. then…. took a few bites.... and then…… Ohhhh.”
The smell fills Alie’s nose once again. Still chocolate chips. She closes her eyes and, without taking a bite, she places the cookie between her teeth. After taking a few seconds to focus, she grins : she can feel it. She takes the cookie back and turns her attention to the last finger standing on her right hand. Simultaneously forcing her palm back and holding the cookie balanced with the bit of thumb she has left, she brings it to her mouth, setting her teeth against the cookie without taking a bite in it. Again, after a few seconds, she manages to feel…. it. Faintly, like the softest strand of yarn had been tied loosely around her forearm, brushing against her skin. As she pushes the cookie deeper in her mouth, she feels the imaginary piece of yarn moving up her arm as well. From the base of her wrist, it slides up to her elbow before she accidentally gags and almost spits it out on the floor.
“Alie, would you tell me what you are up to?” Val still sounds panicked, understandingly, but Alie is as calm as ever, proud to have solved one part of the mystery.
“ ‘ook.”
She bites down hard, breaking the cookie in half and chewing as fast as she can, and before the two of them can make a sound, it goes right down her throat. In a instant, the stump of her arm jumps up several inches, bringing along with it skin, flesh, bones, blood, and the sensations in her forearm.
“ALIE!! WHAT DID YOU DO?!?!”
“Calm down, Jesus Christ.” The second half of her cookie is back in her hand. “I think I figured it out.”
“Figured what out?!?”
She holds it up for Val to see clearly. “First, this has to be reversible, or else I don’t think Jan would’ve let them sit on the table without any surveillance. Secondly, don’t ask me how, don’t ask me why, but, eating this cookie will cause the last hand to have touched to disappear. Like this.”
She raises her arm, inspecting her recently shrunken limb. The feeling on her stump is the weirdest thing she had ever felt. She thought if she had grabbed a ball with a third hand sticking out of her forehead, it would’ve felt just as alien to her. After all, her arm didn’t usually end so abruptly. Her stump is an entirely new body part for her. Val seems to have calmed herself a bit. She sits down and reaches for Alie’s stump, bending the elbow and turning it every other way as if to make sure she isn’t dreaming.
“But….” She blinks several times and shakes her head. “Ok, let’s just…. imagine that all of this is really happening, why did my foot just…,” she mimics an explosion with her hands, “while you lost parts of your hands, and fingers, and now arm all these times?”
“That’s the third part of it, I think.” She hands the cookie to her friend. There, put it between your teeth and close your eyes, but don’t bite. Just wait for a bit.”
After doing as instructed and waiting for a few seconds, Val frowns, visibly irritated, and rubs her hands together. “It’s like my fingers are getting numb because of the cold.”
“Which ones exactly?”
“There… It’s like there’s a... like a string here…” With her left hand, she traces a line from between her index and middle fingers to the base of the thumb of her right hand where it attaches near her wrist.
“Exactly!” She points at her using her stump. “That’s where the cookie would make the cut! Now let me see.”
She gets a hold of another cookie with her hand and places it between her teeth again. As she breathes in the refreshing smell of the mint, she manages to feel the invisible piece of string tying itself around her toes.
“So…. The chocolate chips ones cut fingers, hands and arms and the mint chocolate ones do…” Val says, as she’s still holding the half-eaten cookie in her mouth.
“The legs! I knew it! Biting into it right here would have me lose half of my toes!” Alie places the intact cookie back on the table. “Now what about if…”
“I’m not sure I like this game, Alie. Plus, Jan told us to wait for her before eating them, maybe it’s because…”
“Come on, I’m sure this whole night is going to be based on these cookies! Better take a headstart than be left trailing behind!” She picks yet another cookie from the box, sticking to her starting flavour, and brings it up to her face. “I kinda wanna try something weird…”
“As if that’s not weird enough? I prefer to wait for Jan…” She pushes her cookie away before brining her calf up on the chair to roll up her leggings.
“Suit yourself.”
In a single bite, Alie manages to fit the entire cookie in her mouth. After a long time of chewing and breaking it into pieces, she notices her hand and part of her forearm has gone numb, just like during the previous iterations of her tests. But this time, instead of swallowing her food, she grabs a nearby bowl and spits out the entire thing. Right as she does so, the bowl slips out of her hand and clangs hard on the table.
“Oh, Alie. What have you done?”
“What do you mean what have I done? It’s an experi…. ah shit. Well, that’s no good.”
“I don’t think you’re supposed to do that, like at all. Look at you. You’re a mess.”
“Well, my mistake, then. If eating the cookie erases the limb, its logical that crumbling or chewing the cookie messes up the whole.. situation.”
After spitting out the cookie, the tingling quickly propagated to her entire arm before coming to a complete stop. But, instead of restoring her arm as it was before she started eating, its as if a few pieces of her limb had been thrown together in a hurry, while others had been lost in translation. Her upper arm is now shorter, but there’s no trace left of her elbow or forearm. Angled perpendicularly at the end of it are three twisted fingers, two of which are fused together. She wiggles them inquisitively and frowns
She raises her newly shortened arm towards her face and sighs. “Ok then. What now?”
“At the risk of repeating myself, I’m going to wait for Jan.” She’s massaging her calf, looking back and forth between her friend and the tin box. “You’re gonna eat another, aren’t you?”
“I am, to be honest. Would you kindly push your leftovers towards me?”
“You are weird, girl. How are you even going to pick it up?”
“I don’t think I can. I guess I’ll have to use my teeth.”
Leaning over the table, she reaches for the remains of Val’s cookie with the newly crooked fingers of her left hand and slides it towards her. Leaning even further down, she grabs the cookie between her lips and inches it into her mouth to finish it. Just like with the chocolate chip cookies, as she finishes swallowing, she feels part of her left leg going out of existence. She brings it up in her lap to find out half of her foot has vanished. Right as she leans forward to grab another one, the girls hear someone coming up to the door.
“Now it’s showtime.” Alie says.