Brin Hodgskiss was born in 1976. After that he went to school for a while, spent six years at university looking at some books, and is now gainfully employed. He once kept a wolf spider as a pet. It was not as exciting as you might think. He wrote these stories when bored and unsupervised at work. He has some interesting real-life stories, and will tell them to you if you buy him a drink. Any drink will do. Thanks. He is threatening to write a lot more. He might even do it some time.

Foot

Brin Hodgskiss

Once, on holiday when I was still very young, I found a severed human foot on the beach. It tumbled clumsy up the beach in hissing foam, and as the backwash dragged it back over the dark sand I snatched it up. I didn’t know what it was when I first grabbed it out the sucking, sliding, water. It was a white foot, turning slightly blue-grey, and was cut off just above the ankle. I could see the pink meat. It had all its toenails too, like a set of perfect pale seashells. It was a very good foot.

I ran up the beach, holding the foot by its ankle, and showed it to my parents. They were trying to relax on their towels, beneath a big beach umbrella. Dad was asleep and Mother looked over at me as I waved the foot happily in the sandy sun, but I don’t think she saw me through her sunglasses. She had also just taken one of her white pills, and that always made her notice things less. She gave a brittle nod with patched lipstick, smiling vaguely. So I ran down the beach, skipping every third step, holding my special foot very tight.

I had a wonderful day with my foot. I made a sandcastle and put the foot on a tower as a flag. Then, I thought, it would look much better as part of the main wall with seaweed on top. Later I floated my foot on a piece of driftwood down the river, splashing and blowing happily behind it like a seal, nudging the foot along with my nose. Later, I put the foot (ankle down) amidst a churned patch of beach. It stuck out amongst the thick finger-dug sand. It looked as is someone had got stuck upside down in the earth, head deep under the sand, and had desperately tumbled the sand up in a vain attempt to escape. Oh, how I laughed and laughed! I can’t even recall all the fun I had that day.

I was so busy having fun, I forgot all about time. I only noticed it was late when I felt the whisper chill of twilight blowing off the sea, across my bare back. The cold and distant sky had turned to blank copper, I suddenly realised, and long shadows stretched out the beach. I took up my foot from where it was lying, quickly rinsed it in the sea to rid it of the sand sticking to the nice white skin, and skipped back to where my parents were busy packing up the umbrella and rolling the towels. I thought they might not like my special find as much as I did (even though I was young, I was remarkably perceptive). So I quickly wrapped it up in my towel, and packed it firmly into the icebox, between Dad’s whisky and Mother’s gin. Dad grunted at me when I offered to carry the icebox, and Mother said that I was becoming like my father, always wanting to be near the alcohol. I just smiled, and was pleased that my foot was safe in my hands.

That night I could barely sleep with happiness and enthusiasm to play with the foot (now safely wrapped up in a corner beneath my bed) the next morning. And so it went on for the rest of the holiday. Each morning I would smuggle the foot down to the beach in my towel, play with it there, and then wrap it back up for the journey back to the hotel. It actually had a remarkable effect on me. I’d always been a shy and nervous child, but now, through having the foot, I even invited some other children to join me in play. I walked right up to them (even now, I am surprised at my bravery, how out of character it was), proudly waggling the stiff purpling foot in front of me, and said “Come and play!”

The directness of my approach must have startled them, for they (a little boy and his slightly older sister) seemed quite shocked. The boy leapt back and ran away with a surprisingly concentrated swiftness. The sister just sat stiff and pale and completely silent, as if skewered to the sand, with her jaw clenched and eyes wide. I waved the foot, temptingly, to emphasise my invitation, and a very slight shiver rushed through her. The pupils of her eyes were large and black and stood out against her suddenly grey skin. I turned away then, perplexed. Could some children be even shyer than I, I remember asking, so that they are terrified even by another’s approach? Still confused I looked back as I walked away: the little boy was nowhere to be seen, and the sister’s huge black eyes still stared at me, she hadn’t moved. Her face looked like clay, with two big black shiny pebbles stuck in it for eyes. This so unnerved me I broke into a run and didn’t stop until I had reached my parent’s umbrella and wrapped my foot up for the trip back to the hotel.

This little incident didn’t stop my fun with the foot. Of course not, I knew better than be worried about an isolated incident. But, alas, nothing lasts forever. I noticed quickly that the foot was changing. The flesh was a deeper purple now, and the toenails had turned a sweaty grey-black. The smell had started to cling in the icebox: I saw Dad sniff his whisky suspiciously one afternoon, and shoot a narrow glance at Mother out the corner of his eye. But I refused to give up my newfound friend. I took to collecting fresh seaweed, half-rotted anemones, and even a few fish tails, to try and hide the odour. But even Mother seemed to notice, sniffing through stiff chemical nostrils, the changing pattern on my towels. The situation became increasingly risky, and my palms would sweat at night with the thought of losing the foot.

The end, when it came, was sudden and unexpected. I had carefully stashed the bloated foot, soaked in my Dad’s cologne, in the luggage for the trip back home. I remember, for absolute certain, where I packed it. It was beneath Mother’s Louis Vitton makeup bag, wedged alongside the bag of dirty laundry being taken for the maid to wash at home. I could no longer risk putting it in the icebox, especially since Dad always needed a few drinks to relax on the highway back to the city. I was very nervous, sitting on that sunny back seat, listening to Mother’s gentle sedated snores. I didn’t dare check on the foot throughout that trip, least Mother or Dad see me and get upset. They always got upset with holiday souvenirs, even if they didn’t cost anything.

But the worst still happened. When we arrived home, when I looked in the car boot alongside the laundry, the foot was gone. I searched and searched, shakily flipping all the bags over in my excitement, but my towel, with the foot wrapped in it, had disappeared. I have now idea how. Perhaps it got thrown away when Mother had her panic attack on the N1 and had to get a gin and tonic, and her larger pills? Perhaps it fell out in the forecourt of one of the highway one-stop restaurants? I would never find out. I was very unhappy. It had been a brilliant foot. I wept, heaving at its loss. Of course I tried to find some replacement for it. I found a finger the next year, tangled in kelp, but it wasn’t the same. And now, of course, the authorities won’t let me keep anything of the sort. Thinking back, many things began to incubate in the moist sand of that deep, black-sunned holiday. Ah! Those were the bright halcyon days of youth. I will never forget that foot. Never. But, then again, I suppose you always remember your first.

boontoe

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