The print appeared on the far side of the table while Nuri's remaining hand was in her pocket. Five damp marks and the heel of a palm, arranged as if someone invisible had leaned forward to examine the biscuits.
She knew the shape. Her left little finger had never straightened completely, even before the accident. The smallest mark lay closer to the palm than the others.
"Does anyone else see that?" she asked.
The group leader looked up from the attendance sheet. His name was Abel. He wore cheerful socks and had spent the first twenty minutes making it clear that nobody was required to be cheerful.
"The water?"
Nuri nodded.
Across the table, a man called Leon put his cup down. He had been quiet since arriving. Now he moved his trouser leg aside, exposing the empty space below his knee, and pointed toward the doorway.
A wet footprint marked the floor.
They had come to the community center because it offered a room where unusual bodily experiences did not need to be introduced with an apology. Nuri had expected to listen, perhaps speak, then go home with the uncomfortable relief of having told strangers something her friends were tired of hearing about. She had not expected her absent hand to arrive separately.
The fingers pressed down again. Nuri felt the table's cool laminate beneath a palm that had not touched anything in six years.
Abel moved a plate away from the prints. Everyone watched. One woman said she could feel her missing toes in a place below the floor.
From the disused sports hall came the sound of something dragging itself across polished wood.
There were five of them in the room. All five heard it. Abel went to the hall door and switched on the lights. He did not offer a reassuring explanation before looking, which Nuri appreciated more than anything else he had said that evening.
At the center of the hall, a shape was trying to stand.
It had a foot where a shoulder might have been. Two hands met at the wrists, their fingers spread for balance. A long pale leg bent through an angle that made Leon grip the edge of the door. Other parts remained indistinct, showing only when the shape moved against the darker lines painted on the floor.
Nuri felt her left hand pulled forward. On the table behind her, the wet print slid toward the edge.
The thing wanted it.
She could feel that desire as a pressure through the absent wrist. The hand resisted. It had its own terror, immediate and bodily, without words or an explanation for where it had spent the intervening years.
The shape fell. Around Nuri, people cried out. Leon doubled over, clutching a knee that ended in empty air. The woman who had felt her toes beneath the floor sat down hard and told Abel not to touch her. He obeyed, then asked what would help. She said she needed the thing to stop trying.
It had no head. Nuri watched the assembled limbs search for a center that was not there. Each piece knew how to belong to someone, but none knew how to become a someone of its own.
She asked Abel to open the exterior doors. He went through the glass fire door, which swung shut behind him.
The night air entered through the service yard. The shape moved toward it, dragging its ill-matched parts. Nuri's phantom hand pulled harder. She followed its sensation to a glass door between the meeting room and the hall, where a damp palm had flattened against the pane.
The fingers spread. She felt the cold glass with a precision that made her briefly want the hand back more than she had ever wanted it. She could remember gloves, warm mugs held between two palms, the easy way she once turned a heavy page without trapping the book against her knee.
The print trembled. It was afraid of what waited in the hall, not eager to restore her life.
Nuri opened the door.
The sensation passed beside her. For several seconds the hand seemed to rest at her left side, exactly where it would have hung if her arm had continued. She did not try to catch it with her remaining hand. She had no reason to think she could keep it without doing what the other body was trying to do.
The shape crossed into the yard. The parts moved at different speeds. Once the joined hands separated, then joined again because the rest of the body had begun falling. Nuri's hand passed into the yard along the wall, keeping away from the dragging shape. She felt brick beneath its fingers until it reached the corner.
Abel closed the exterior doors when there was nothing left to see. Everyone remained in the meeting room until the building caretaker came. Nobody wanted to explain first.
Nuri put her right hand against the empty sleeve. For the first time in years there was no other hand waiting inside her sense of herself. Part of the relief she had imagined was there, but she kept waiting for the familiar shape to return.
Before leaving, she sat down to collect the leaflet Abel had given her. She trapped its edge beneath her right forearm and folded it, the way she always did. The movement used to leave a useless but vivid pressure in her absent fingers. She unfolded the paper and tried again. Behind her, the caretaker began stacking the chairs. Nuri folded it once more, put it in her pocket and stood up before he reached hers.
