canoe

"You shits!" I screamed as I was pulled out of the canoe and dragged up the bank. "You shits!" I cried as they removed my arms and left me shaking alone and cold on top of eroded tree roots. I saw them in flickering lights attaching my arms into the body of another - an unconscious someone - I saw through my throbbing and flickering vision a pure speck of that placid face, asleep as my arms were twisted into the waiting sockets. Like seeing an eye appear through a kaleidoscope.

Without arms I rolled and wormed and twisted. I could feel them gone. My mouth rubbed against the dirt and my teeth scraped the grit. "Syme. S'il te plaît calme-toi," she said to me, and she lifted my head up with her cool hands and I saw deep into the star sky. I saw her from above the trees cradling me and I saw my armless torso stop writhing under her long dark hair and I saw my legs stop kicking as her touch cooled my blood. And I felt me drifting away and I felt me fading away and I felt the opening of the stars in the sky and I saw their visual flares as paths. Smiling I looked down at me cradled within her arms and smiling I looked back up at me and I laughed at the silliness of it and my laugh woke me up and I bolted out of her arms and her sharp nails scraped against my moving skin. I turned and saw her hollow empty eye sockets and her many shadowed wings pulled her away into a thousand directions within the dark bushes.

Feverish and sweating I stumbled on the rivers uneven bank and found my discarded arms. I gripped and screwed them back in and quickly fumbled them into guiding me into the canoe and pushing it off.