by Justin Surgent
The toe, a truly ugly thing, was laying on the the table, surrounded by a small pool of blood, the yellowed nail poorly cut and a small chunk of bone sticking out of the end. It was a rushed job, a botched job, and a choice influenced by the half empty bottom level bottle of bourbon also present on the table, alongside a large hunting knife and a bottle of isopropyl rubbing alcohol.
From the table let a smattering of bloody marks and footprints that lead toward the bathroom, where a quiet cursing and the un-bandaging of medicinal supplies could be heard from outside. Too late to call a friend for a ride, and too proud to call an ambulance, a trip to the hospital would have to be tomorrow’s adventure.
But at least the toe would be silent tonight.
To say I’m completely psychic would be a lie. I mean, I’ve had plenty of dreams and visions, like déjà vu where I know what’s coming next, but I’ve never been truly psychic. Psychic at will, anyway. Also I can’t raise the voice of your grandma from the dead, so don’t ask me. And while sometimes the dreams were pretty vivid, like the one time in third grade I dreamt I saw a girl in my class crying and later found her hamster died, they’re more symbolic in nature, and many times take the 20-20 vision of hindsight to figure out.
But what brings me closer to the psychic ability is not my mind, but a part of my body. A small, and slightly disgusting part of my body. My left big toe.
Please, don’t laugh, not yet, because it’s not as funny as it seems. It’s not a pleasant experience, because in fact, it’s quite unsettling. It doesn’t write to me, doesn’t speak to me in dreams, and doesn’t scream up at me in an interesting yet comical voice.
No, it just hurts. Like hell.
It started in college. At first I just thought it was some kind of infection, something that came off and on at random. To a near crippling point, my toe would hurt off and on and I would be left hobbling across campus trying to get to the chem exam I would later fail. Or the coffee date that would end one of my few college relationships. Like with rain on the day of a funeral, I just chalked it up to bad luck, the “everything that can go wrong, will go wrong, including your busted toe” motto.
And this is how I dealt with it, and with a steady stream of antibiotics that did nothing and alcohol that did the numbing. That was until until I met her.
I was on a date, walking across the historic town of Wells, Maine, with a girlfriend that wouldn’t hold that title much longer. As we were walking, the girlfriend spots a sign for a local psychic. Ever the believer in fate and “what is meant to be,” she drags me in, toe wailing as I stub it on the door frame, cursing to myself. And it’s while she’s sitting there, having her palm read by this barely coherent Hispanic lady that all of a sudden she turns to me, dropping the girlfriend’s hand with a look of shock and horror.
“Off shoe,” she said to me. I looked at her, confused.
“Off shoe!” she said again, this time louder. The girlfriend looked at me with a hint of jealousy that I’ve stolen the attention, and followed my gaze to my shoes, half expecting the remnants of a large dog crap on the side. The woman was fidgeting in her chair, and it was beginning to make me nervous. The last thing I wanted to do was take off my shoes around this woman who looked like she was going to bite one of my toes off. But the girlfriend gave me that sad “she’s probably just insane” look, and, working around the pain of my busted toe, I took them off.
The woman flew across the room to me, turning to the girlfriend and saying “you go now,” to which, confused, she complied. Once the girlfriend had left the room, the old woman went right for my left foot, grabbing the disgusting toe to a small shriek of pain from me. She looked at it closely, inspecting the yellow infected nail and touching it almost lovingly and, I swear, I saw her give it a small sniff. After a minute, she looked at me smiling.
“You have a gift!” she told me, here eyes wide. “You have the gift of el dedo de pie psíquica.”
As would any sane and mono-lingual human, I just stared at her blankly.
“El dedo de pie psíquica” she said, “will tell you all you need to know. Is a gift, is a blessing with disguises.”
It’s as she’s looking at my foot with the eyes of a lover that I realized it’s time to go. I pulled it away, much to her dismay, and threw my shoes back on. I tossed her some money and thanked her for her time, and left to find the girlfriend waiting impatiently outside. The minute I saw her, my toe throbbed. She asked what went on in the shop, and with nothing that sounded remotely sane to answer, I said nothing, making up a story about how the old lady came onto me.
Later that night, my toe hurt so badly I couldn’t even stand. I felt bad, because the girlfriend, ever the life of the party, wanted to go out, so I told her to go on without me. The pain was nearly unbearable, so I stayed in and read a book with a bottle of wine while she hit a few of the local bars. The next morning I awoke to find her walk-of-shaming in, her night spent with another man.
And guess what? That next morning, the toe felt fine.
The worst part about all of this is, you can’t even tell someone.
“Hey guys, I have a toe, and it is psychic!” is not the kind of conversation you want to drop at a barbecue, or at a bar, especially when you have to explain that it’s psychic abilities do not stem from an interesting symbolic message but from an incredibly painful and puss filled wound that inhibits daily activities. And that, for some reason, it has taken a liking to your failing romantic life.
In a way, it’s more of a nuisance than a gift. I’d plan a date, put all this effort into it, and as I’m about to pick her up, the toe would hurt. We’d end the night in a fight, many times single, and I’d chalk it up to another win for “el dedo de pie.” And it didn’t invade my life too much until I met her.
Yes, all movie clichés aside, she was the one. The most perfect one. The way her brown hair flowed into her smile, and the way her recipe for buffalo chicken made it’s way into my weekly dinner rotation made her the perfect combination for me. From day one I knew she was it for me. And from day one, that toe was throbbing.
I chalked it up to an infection, knowing I could never tell her the truth, that my toe saw something in our future I didn’t want to see. Every time we spent memorable times together, times I knew would last in our memories, I could barely walk. After a few months, she begged me to go to a doctor, and although I did, their antibiotics did nothing for me.
And after a while, the pain did begin to subside a bit, at least, to the point where I could live my life. And close to a year later of hobbling around and wonderful times spent with her, I bought a ring. Not just any ring. I’ll give you a hint; it wasn’t a toe ring.
I had it all planned out, the timing would be perfect. I rented out a table on top of a light house, with food catered from one of the nicest restaurants on the shore. I bought expensive wine, I bought a new suit, and to top it all off, I wrapped the ring box in a bow that was her favorite shade of purple.
As I got into my car to head to the date, I stepped on the clutch to put it in first and almost passed out. The toe was hurting more than it ever had, to the point of me seeing stars when I put pressure on it. I took a deep breath, got the car into gear and made my way down the street. For the next twenty minutes, I almost passed out every time I had to switch gears, but by the end, I made it there.
Climbing the multiple stories of stairs were killer, and by the time I got to the top, she was already at the table, waiting, wearing the bright red dress I bought her for a Christmas work party last year that she knew I loved so much. I reached the top, sweating from pain and hobbling to the table, falling into my chair with a loud rush of air from my lungs. She looked at me with concern, and when she tried to ask I waved her off and tried to make conversation. The first round of drinks and food came, and I ate while my toe throbbed. She kept looking at me distantly, keeping quiet and not reacting to my conversation. Finally, when the cake came for dessert, I decided it was time to ask her.
“Listen, there’s something I want to talk to you about,” I said as I started to reach back for the box. She stopped me, putting a hand on my arm.
“No, there’s something you need to hear” she said as she burst into tears. “Another man,” “I’m so sorry” and “Not big enough” were all I heard as she got up and ran down the stairs, her red dress billowing behind her. And with every step she took, the throbbing in my toe subsided.
To say I was heartbroken, at this point, would be lying. More so, I was in shock, and after sitting at table in stunned silence for 30 seconds, I ran down the stairs towards her to catch up. As I reached the bottom landing and saw her running down the street, I tried to run after her, but each step forward was like a razor blade being shoved into my nail bed. In the end, I found myself sobbing on the side of the road, half due to my broken heart and half to the inexplicable pain caused by my least favorite psychic appendage as I tried to chase the girl of my dreams down the street.
Following the unwritten rules of heartbreak set forth by countless romantic comedies, I went home and kept myself on track, woke up the next day and started fresh, a new outlook as I began a new chapter in life.
Just kidding, I got fucking wasted.
It was somewhere after the six pack of Pabst I discovered in the refrigerator that I realized, “all of my goddamn problems come from this goddamn toe.” And it was after half a bottle of Canadian Club that I realized, maybe it was time for toe to go. That’s also around the time I remembered the old hunting knife in the closet, and hours spent watching documentaries on surgical procedures, which pretty much made me a professional in my mind.
I no longer cared about the gift of “el dedo de pie psíquica” and all the crippling pain it brought me. I realized, I no longer wanted to know when a date would go wrong, when a test would fail. If a day was bad, I didn’t want to know before hand. I wanted to live life as it came to me. That, and I realized I hadn’t worn sandals in years, so a lack of toe could hypothetically go unnoticed forever. So before I had even realize what I was doing, I had rounded up that hunting knife, a clean medical bandage kid and a bottle of rubbing alcohol.
I pulled the knife out of its leather sheath, putting a piece of beef jerky in my mouth to clench (for hunger’s sake, it was close to 4am at this point). I cleaned the mirrored blade with rubbing alcohol, seeing my face in the reflection. I lined it up with my joint and, taking a deep breath, pressed down hard.
“Adios, el dedo.”