I feel like I shouldn’t be allowed to complain about having a 30 minute commute. I’ve heard of people taking the train for 3 hours a day just to get to their office, so I should consider myself lucky. But something about this drive manages to consistently piss me off. Traffic is never in my favor, people are going to drive like… well, people, and something along the way will inevitably be under construction. On my way home from work, I usually do everything I possibly can to avoid the main road, and that often means taking weird little country side streets that I’ve never been on before.

On this particular day, I took a turn down a road I never paid much attention to. It was a much quieter road than I was expecting given its proximity to a 4 lane highway, but I wasn’t gonna complain about lack of traffic, so off I went. As I continued my lonely drive, I noticed a farmhouse with a moving truck in front. Aside from the standard boxes and storage tubs, a particular shape caught my eye. 2 vaguely human shaped objects wrapped in thick black canvas were strapped to each other, and being wheeled on a moving dolly like there was nothing out of the ordinary. I didn’t have enough time to thoroughly study it, given the whole driving thing, so I shrugged it off and kept going.

About a mile later, I saw a shape in the road and instinctively moved to avoid it. My brain’s immediate, passive observation told me that it was a shoe. As I was driving past it, I could tell it was a tan leather sandal.

With a foot in it.

Wait a sec.

I pulled over as quickly and carefully as I could and got out of my car, heading towards the… shoe? I was lucky that there were no other drivers heading my direction, because what I saw caught me completely off guard.

However certain I was that I had misidentified this object, there was no denying it. It was a foot, with about 2 inches of leg above the ankle, truncated in a flat expanse of skin. There wasn’t a pool of blood nearby, so it definitely wasn’t a severed foot, which meant I didn’t need to worry about accidentally stumbling upon a crime scene. At least, as far as I could tell.

I’d guess it was about a size 8, at least in men’s sizes. I had no idea how that translated to women’s, which this foot definitely belonged to. The nails were painted a light shade of blue, a lot of which had chipped off, as well as some minor scrapes and bruises. Purely out of denial, I would’ve said it was artificial had it not been for the extremely realistic looking surface level skin damage.

Picking it up by the ankle, the first thing I noticed was its warmth. Initially I credited the sun for that, but it was around 6pm, and the sun was pretty firmly setting behind the mountains in addition to the crisp autumn air. The second, more alarming thing I noticed, was that it was alive, which startled me. A short moment after I picked it up, the foot started to pivot on its ankle, toes twitching very slightly, which helped encourage its quick expedition back to the ground.

Upon dropping it, all I could do was stare. And, as expected, it continued to move, albeit very slightly. I wasn’t expecting that, but my curiosity got the better of me, so I picked it back up, this time holding it by the sole of the shoe. I could see a dark red sedan from the distance heading in my direction, and not wanting to upset the flow of traffic, I set the foot on the passenger’s seat next to me and continued my way back home.

I turned off my music, I needed to focus on the road. But no matter how much I tried to pay attention, all I could think about was where this foot came from, who it could possibly belong to, and how on Earth it was still alive.

After pulling into my apartment complex lot, I noticed somebody had parked in my dedicated space. This normally would’ve at least elicited a grumble, but all I could think about was this foot. I parked in an empty guest space and stared at the passenger seat. My mind was racing with possibilities. Was this an extremely advanced prosthetic? Some kind of… animatronic? My brain wouldn’t let me come to the conclusion that this was just some person’s detached limb, but it was the only thing that made sense.

Was it magic? I had heard more talk about magic in the past few weeks than usual, but… that stuff was bullshit. There had to be a more reasonable explanation for this.

Before I let myself get even more swallowed up by the absurdity of the situation, I decided to indulge my curiosity and provide myself a more thorough examination. I unbuckled the sandal and slowly slid the foot out until it was completely bare. It clicked with me that the scrapes and bruises lined up perfectly with the holes in the shoe, so whatever had caused them had happened with the sandal on. Not wanting to arouse suspicion, I put the foot and the shoe in my backpack and started heading towards the steps to my 4th floor apartment.

As soon as I shut the door to my car, I noticed that same dark red sedan from earlier pull into the parking lot. I thought it was a little odd that the same red sedan took the same weird road to get to the same apartment complex as me, but I decided I was being paranoid and continued up the steps.

I turned around when I heard the distinctive sounds of two car doors shutting to see a man and a woman heading in my direction--and they had parked in the guest spot directly adjacent to mine. The man wore a pretty average pair of jeans and a black t-shirt, but the woman in particular made my heart skip a beat. From the distance I was at, I could tell she was pretty cute. Blond hair, nice figure, and sporting some pretty short shorts that showed off her legs quite nicely. Except that wasn’t what caught my attention.

Her sandals matched the one I had sitting in my backpack. Or, sandal to be specific, since her right foot was completely bare. As they came closer, I realized that the woman’s bare foot had no nail polish on, and her left foot sported the same shade of light blue as the one I was trying to discreetly carry up to my apartment.

In the short length of time I was staring, the man caught my eye and waved at me, but I pretended I didn’t see and started heading up to my apartment. Fumbling with my keys, nervousness starting to take over, I entered my apartment and quickly zipped open my backpack. Fortunately my roommate wasn’t home; it was just me and this foot, which at this point pretty obviously belonged to the woman making her way up the steps in my direction. I had no idea what to do, so I set it down on the entryway table and waited for the doorbell to inevitably ring.

Which it did.

I answered after waiting what felt like a convincingly casual stretch of time. Sure enough, there they were.

“Hello,” the woman greeted with a half-smile on her face. “This is maybe a bit of a weird question, but I think you might have something of mine. Do you know what I’m… uh...  referring to?”

“M-maybe?” I stammered in reply. “Do you wanna come in?”

She turned to give a look to, based on the rings they were wearing, who I could only assume was her husband.

“Sure, thanks,” the man said, looking directly at me, his straight face unbroken. They stepped into the apartment and the man shut the door behind him.

“Okay, look,” the woman said, “We don’t want to make this any more awkward than it already is. I’m almost positive I saw you pick up a foot you found on the side of the road.”

“Uh, yeah. I sure did,” I replied, an audible amount of shock in my voice.

“Oh thank God,” she sounded audibly relieved. “Where is it?”

“Right next to you, actually.” I said, gesturing to the table to her right. After looking around for a few seconds, she found what she was looking for and picked it up.

“Damn,” she sighed, “That’s a lot more beat up than I was hoping. Well, thanks for not running it over.”

“Heh, yeah, no problem. Oh also, you’ll probably want this,” I said, reaching into my backpack and pulling out the sandal. “But uh… I have to ask… what am I looking at here? This is obviously your foot, but you’ve got two feet. And how the hell is a detached foot still… y’know, alive? I have no idea what’s going on right now.”

“Oh, I thought this was a little more common knowledge,” the woman started. “Are you familiar with any magical disorders?”

“I mean… I’ve heard the phrase, but I thought it was a load of garbage. I didn’t think they were real, but… I guess…” I trailed off.

“Well, they are real,” she continued, “and I have one called Appendageal Delapsus. To keep it brief, that’s latin for removable appendages. Basically, any part of me comes off.”

“Oh. This is… a lot to take in. I’m still trying to parse the whole magic being real thing.”

“Ehh, it only kind of is,” the man replied, “It doesn’t work like it does in fairy tales.”

“Okay, but--” I stammered, “I guess I understand the whole foot coming off thing, but how do you have two feet on your ankles?”

“It gets a little complicated,” she said, slipping the sandal on her bare foot, “but I’ve got a few sets of extra body parts back at my house.”

“How did it even come off in the first place?” I asked.

“Well, this is gonna sound kinda stupid, but we’re in the process of moving into a new place. We were almost finished with a super long drive and my legs were killing me, so I was sticking my leg out the window, we hit a weird bump, and it just kinda popped off. Since we were less than a mile away from the house, I figured we could just turn around and grab it later. I wasn’t really expecting somebody to pick it up.”

“Ah, so you two are the ones moving into that farmhouse I drove past?”

“Yup, that’s us,” the man replied, clearly a little more loosened up.

“Good to know. If you need a hand, you know where to find me,” I offered, wanting to make it clear that I had no malicious intent behind the accidental body part theft.

“Oh, yeah, don’t worry about that, our moving company is already taking care of it.” She extended her hand. “I’m Rachael, by the way.”

“Kurt,” I replied, returning the handshake.

“Well,” the man started, “It was good to meet you Kurt. We should probably be on our way now, we don’t wanna eat up any more of your time.”

I watched as Rachael examined her spare, relatively beaten up foot. Now that the initial shock of seeing a severed limb had worn off, it was clear that it had sustained a little bit more than some minor scrapes.

“Man, this one is in rough shape.” She sighed. “I really should stop sticking my feet out the window. It’ll probably take a few weeks to get back to normal...”

“Is anything broken?” The man asked.

“Doesn’t look like it, but I don’t wanna put it on to find out,” she answered.

“Well, we can always just put it in storage until it finishes healing.”

“Yeah, but I don’t wanna bother with giving it nutrient cream every day. We’ve got enough extras at home, I might just get rid of this one.”

“Woah, what?” I interjected. “You can just… throw away an entire limb like it’s nothing?”

“Oh yeah, I’ve got almost as many spare pairs of legs as I have pants. Do you want a free foot? I don’t really want this one anymore.”

“Uhh… what am I supposed to do with a foot?” I replied, trying my best to sound as nonchalant as possible.

“Oh come on, you picked it up in the first place, didn’t you?’ She said with a sly grin,

“What would you have done with it if we didn’t come over?”

“That’s… a good point, actually.” I tried my best to keep the confidence in my voice, which I don’t think I did particularly well.

“Don’t worry about it,” Rachael replied, “You’d be surprised how many people are into feet. It’s pretty normal.

After thanking her for the generous gift, we exchanged numbers as new neighbors, if being separated by a 4 mile drive counts as being neighbors. Before they left, Rachael informed me about nutrient cream, which can be applied to detached limbs. A nutrified limb would act and react as if it was still attached to the person in question, despite being completely disconnected, and in this case, would allow minor injuries to heal.

So… yeah. It’s been a few months since then. I still can’t believe a beautiful (and, for the record, married) woman just gave this to me like it was a loaf of banana bread. It’s fully healed by now, and it’s very well taken care of. I’ll leave it up to your imagination what I’ve been doing with it between then and now.