Hands
Written by K-Nice.
The tinsel covered store front advertised sale prices and year-end deals. Hands occupied with the straps of her packages, Sarah stopped to stare at a middle-aged woman exiting the small store. It was about the size of the Pretzel-Time shop, which sold a bread-like substance that was both buttery and salty, soft and smooth with a crunching outside. Sarah liked pretzels.
It seemed this woman liked food too, if her size was any indication. Her thick body was stuffed into a much younger woman's clothing, but Sarah was not interested in the woman's fashion sense. The click-clack of her fingers as they struck the side of her monstrous tote-bag caught Sarah's attention and held it tightly. Sarah lifted the hood of her sweatshirt away from her face by a fraction so she could get a better look.
Unconscious of her motions, Sarah drifted behind the woman as she plowed through the heavy holiday shopping crowd. The young Morlock girl was transfixed, watching the bright red and green nails as they glittered in the fluorescent light. They were long, disproportionate to the woman's stubby fingers and pudgy hand. They looked like claws. Claws painted pretty, festive colors.
The woman turned into the Gertrude Hawk store and Sarah broke off to sit on a bench near the phone booths.
The press and bother of holiday shopping was a new experience for her. In the tunnels, gifts were simple, hand-made affairs. Marrow half remembered the year her mother gave her a song, whispered in the night by a rasping voice that made up in desire what it lacked in talent. An old, ragged ache scratched at Sarah's eyes as she tried to grasp at those fleeting early impressions of the woman who had cared for her until Harpoon separated her top half from her bottom half with a glowing spear. The only thing celebrated on the Hill was the fact that the corpse rotting in the sun was not your own. If you foraged enough, you could feel a moment of satisfaction at fact that you would not be forced to pull rancid meat from your fellow Morlock's bones before night fell and the creatures stole your kill.
Now that he was back and in control of his finances, Professor Xavier, aka "old baldy," gave each of the X-Men a monthly stipend to spend on whatever personal needs they encountered. Remy had sat down with her one day and shown her how to budget the money out so that it lasted. Sarah knew she could always ask for more if she needed it, but he seemed to think it was important that she learned to manage her money as soon as possible. His concern may have stemmed from her spending her entire first month's allowance on sweet cakes and ice cream and chocolate and pretzels. She had vomited for hours and couldn't stomach solid food for another two days. But it had been worth it. Even with Reyes threatened her with cavities and other such nonsense, Sarah still kept a bag of M & M's under her bed for safe-eating. She had never tasted food that was sweet by design, not from decay.
Today, she was supposed to be buying gifts for her teammates. She only had two bags. One held scented candles for the blue elf. His room always smelled like matches, and not in a good way like Remy's sometimes did. Now it could smell like vanilla or raspberry. The candle store hadn't had mocha-chocolate-crunch, but she went to Baskin-Robbins and found it right away. After that the shopping experience had been much more enjoyable. The other bag held a video, called Karma Suture or something like that. She had noticed the book in Remy's room and thought he might like the video. It was a big, thick book, the kind she didn't like to read, and maybe he didn't either.
Sarah watched the woman come out of the chocolaters and walk toward the food court. Digging in her jacket pocket, Sarah pulled out her money, which was mangled and mashed together with receipts and candy wrappers. Pressing her knees together to create a table, she slowing counted each bill and coin until she was sure she had summed correctly. She still needed to buy gifts for the rest of her teammates. Peter might like a new sketch-pad and Kitty liked computer things. Rogue liked that twanging music that everyone else seemed to hate and chrome dome liked thick, old books. Wolverine liked beer and cigarettes, two things she found she could not purchase, so maybe he would like a poster picture of dogs with beer and cigarettes and cards. Passing the pet store, Sarah contemplated a live rat, with a big, red bow on it. Yes, that would be the perfect gift for the Windrider.
As she walked the mall, her money dwindled. She was down to $30.46 when she passed the tiny store front again. There was a picture of a hand, with long claw-like nails, just like the woman Sarah had seen before. Under the picture it read, "Full Set Acrylics - $28." Sarah watched a girl her age come out of the store, her fingers gleaming, and run up to a boy coming out of the department store next door. They kissed, her nails contrasting his hair and skin as she held him close. Sarah's eyes went soft as the boy's hair became wheat-colored and his shoulders broad and strong just like . . . Sam.
Sarah looked down at her own ragged nails. The ends were rough from scratching against bone . The nails themselves were over calcified, rough and chunky against her small hand. A thought skittered across her brain before her killer instinct could put it down. "Maybe he wouldn't have left if . . ." and then it was slaughtered by her old, lingering hatred for upworlders and their pretty-pretty ways.
If she were to buy Rogue and Kitty's gifts from the Just-a-Buck, she would have just enough, maybe. Sarah hovered near the entryway of the shop, alternately looking at her fingers and shifting her packages.
"You want acrylics?" The woman was short, her round face looking a bit worn and haggard. She had eyes like Wolvie's pet kid, but her face was flatter, and light cream in color as opposed to Jubilee's honey-tinted tones. Her voice was both lilting and insistent and Sarah found herself being drawn to one of the odd looking stations without a single thought on her own part.
"Um . . . what . . . what do I do?" Sarah lifted her hands to her hood immediately, drawing it down closer around her face. She flopped down in the chair that the woman pointed to and was promptly left to stew for about three or four hours.
It was more like a minute or two, but Sarah's mind was in overdrive, trying to adjust to her new surroundings. There were ten stations in two rows of five, each distinguished from the other only by who sat in the chairs. The high pitched whine of a Dremel set Sarah's eyes to darting around. And then a young man approached the station, sitting across from her. Sarah was momentarily fascinated with his spiked blond hair and then she started scowling her suspicion across the little white utility table.
He wasn't fazed one bit. In fact, once he saw her hands, he did little more than glance up before he grabbed them in both of his. Sarah snatched her hands back, caught completely off guard.
"Give me yoh hand. I do yoh nail, yes. Give me yoh hand." This time Sarah let him have it. He held her callused hand in his own, examining her battered nails for several seconds before pulling out a file. With quick see-saw strokes he attacked her brutish thumbnail until the file gave out and he discarded it. And then another. And when that one broke, he snapped something in the rapid sounds Sarah just couldn't imagine were words, and grabbed his Dremel.
The little power tool hummed loudly in Sarah's ear, but she was too involved in watching it scour away the thick layers of her nails to be agrivated. The vibrations made her whole arm tingle, but she ignored it as the man shaved the nails of first one hand and then the other to a more workable shape and thickness. Pulling her hands away again, she examined at them in awe. They looked as if they belonged to someone else. And he wasn't even finished yet.
Muttering in his fast-tongued language, the young man took her hand again, a strange looking cutting device in his right hand. Sarah cocked her head to one side and watched him cut into the rolls of skin that crept onto her nail surface. "I do yoh cuticles. It might' hurt." He glanced at her strangely when she didn't even flinch. She had pulled out three finger bones that very morning, which made his attentions feel like slight pinch through layers of wool.
He sent her to wash her hands and after a momentary struggle with the soap-pump, she came back and sat down again. Sarah was a bit leery of what came next. She had never had a manicure, and so far things seemed a little mechanical. That is, until he took her hands in his and began to rub lotion into them.
Her eyes went wide and then her eyelids drooped contentedly. He used both hands on one of hers, stroking the aches out with graceful pressure. She distantly heard her bones scrapping against one another and he seemed more than a bit surprised by how far back he could push her wrists, but it was heaven nonetheless.
And then the moment was over and he was trying to get her to pick a polish color. "T'is one? Yes?" It was a soft, shimmering pink but Sarah was too enraptured to object.
"You pay now, okay?" Slowly, she put one exquisitely relaxed hand into her pocket and put five bills on the counter. The man snorted and put the money in a drawer. "Hmpf! No tip, huh?"
Sarah didn't understand what the problem was, but she was mesmerized as he attached the claws to her fingernails. They were a clear color but she figured that was what the polish was for. She shook her head violently when he tried to trim the two inch nails down to a more manageable size.
"No! Leave it long. I like it long." She tensed as he looked at her strangely, but he did as she asked and merely filed the ends to a round smoothness. She tried to sit still as he applied the polish, but she was so excited at her new claws that the best she could do was vibrate.
Then she had to sit even more still as her fingers dried. He placed a hot fan next to her and said "Don' move, okay?" And then he disappeared.
Sarah sat there, looking at her hands, now a soft, healthy pink instead of the rough, angry red they were usually. Her nails, now long and thin and pink, were an endless fascination. The time barely seemed to pass as she thought of all the things a good set of claws could be used for. She could rip into a rat without having to pull a bone dagger out. She could reach that spot right under her shoulder blades that always itched when they started growing. She could scratch the Windrider's eyes out at the breakfast table, easily. Yes, her new pink claws were going to be useful indeed.
After a very long time, Sarah realized that the young man would not be coming back. Shrugging her shoulders, she reached for her bags and got up to leave. "Ow!" She stabbed her own hand as she tried to close it around the straps of her shopping bags. Struggling valiantly with the packages, she managed to get to the discount store without having to open any doors.
Rogue got Alabama's Greatest Hits, Kitty got a blue and gold mouse-pad and Sarah got brand new hands.
All she had to do now was get a cab back to the mansion. The cabby could open the door for her, which would eliminate one problem, and when she got home, she could kick the door until someone opened it, which eliminated her other problem.
The dilemma she had yet to solve, however, was how to pick up and dial a pay-phone with two-inch claws on both hands.