Only Ten Toes

by Amanda Zila

Table of Contents

Table of Contents
parts: 1, 2, 3

conclusion

“Sure, no problem. You can have everything in my wallet, and I can run to the ATM after we’re finished.” Thomas pulled his worn billfold from his back pocket and held out the folded cash from the money clip.

“No, not that kind of currency,” Gus responded, waving his hand at the money. “You have to pay with a sacrifice. You have to sacrifice part of yourself.”

Thomas stared bug-eyed in shock. “I... what? You’re joking, right? That wasn’t necessary last time. Why do you need it this time? Part of my actual body? Like a hair? I can do hair. Here.” Thomas hurriedly plucked out a clump of his overgrown hair and held it out, shaking it in Gus’s face.

“No, no, no. I need a real sacrifice as payment. I don’t care what it is, but it has to be of worth to your person. Like... your nose. Your nose will do just fine. It’s a bit pimply, but it’ll do,” Gus said with a smirk. Thomas swore the creature was enjoying this. “Oh and hurry up, will you? If the potion overcooks, we’ll have to start all over and who knows when I’ll be in the mood to try again.”

“I... I can’t! I won’t! This is crazy. I’m not going to cut off a part of my body! What the hell?”

“Okay, fine. I don’t care either way. But you can kiss your guitar godhood goodbye,” shrugged Gus.

Thomas ran to the bathroom to collect himself. He looked in the mirror, seeing a man who was nothing without his guitar. Everything he was, was tied up with his music and his prodigious ability to play the guitar. It strengthened his relationship with his mother. It gave him a connection to his father, even if it was a kind of torture. People only knew who he was because of his guitar. Without it, he would just fade into the mundanity of small town life. He would become invisible, like Gus. There, but not really there, because no one would see him.

He couldn’t. He wouldn’t. “I can’t believe I’m actually considering this.”

He opened his medicine cabinet and took out a straight razor. He gingerly flipped it open and fished around for the bottle of gin he kept behind the toilet. He drowned the razor, balanced it on the edge of the sink, and started frantically feeling all over his body.

“Okay. Okay. What can I do without? There must be something. Something I don’t really need. Like...” He looked down. His toes. He didn’t really need all ten, did he? He definitely needed his big toe and probably his pinky toe for balance. But maybe he didn’t need the middle one. He could likely walk fine without it. Middle toe of his left foot, then.

“Hey, are we doing this or what?” yelled Gus from the living room.

“Yeah. Yes. Just give me more time!” Thomas shouted, the stress forcing his voice into a shriek.

Gus chuckled vilely. “You have three minutes before this baby goes bad. Hurry up.”

He sat on the edge of the bathtub, feet inside in case there was a lot of blood. In a detached sort of way, he congratulated himself for thinking of a small detail like that. He grabbed the gin and gulped down half the bottle. His vision swimming, he rocked back and forth, his breath an accelerating steam train.

“Okayokayokay. Just think about the big picture. Music. Dad. Mom.” He leaned over, positioning the blade just above the second knuckle of his left middle toe.

“Thoooomas,” he heard Gus call from outside the door.

“Pleasepleasepleaseplease,” he sobbed. Before he could talk himself out of it, he pushed down hard with the blade, like a miniature guillotine cutting the head off his toe’s body. He screamed and everything went black.

* * *

He woke up in the bathtub, metal-scented blood spattered on his hands and feet, head aching from a hangover and a large bump. He pushed himself up to a sitting position, panicking, until he remembered what he had done. He reluctantly slid his eyes over to his left foot. There was an empty space that had not been there before.

Bile rose in his throat as he turned his head to the side and retched violently. He figured it was either in response to the huge amount of gin he had knocked back or the self-amputated toe. Likely both. Spitting vainly to try to remove the sour taste from his mouth, he turned back to look at his foot. He leaned in closer. Instead of a dark red blood clot, the flesh at the stub was blackened and cauterized. He groaned and leaned back against the wall of the tub, sliding down until he couldn’t see above the top of it anymore.

“You’re welcome,” came the nasal voice on the other side of the tub. “Not that a toe amputation results in a lot of blood loss. But you were passed out, so I figured I might as well seal it up for you with some of the matches.” Gus’s stringy scalp fringe appeared over the fiberglass molded edge. “Oh, and here’s the potion.” The jar, now filled with inky liquid, materialized into Thomas’s line of sight.

Thomas sat up, his head protesting at the movement. He looked down at Gus and began to tremble from shock and rage.

Around Gus’s neck was a thick thread necklace. Thomas’s middle toe dangled from it.

“Oh, do you like it? It’s the nicest thing you’ve ever given me. Top-notch sacrifice. Good job on the cut, by the way. Very clean. Might want to rinse off that vomit from your stump though. Could get infected,” Gus said knowingly.

“Infected. Infected?! My toe is hanging from a necklace that you are wearing around your neck!” The room began to spin and fade for Thomas, and he had the forethought to lean his head back against the wall before he earned a second bump.

He woke again in the bathtub. Without windows, he had no notion of how much time had passed. He stood up, stripped, and showered. He hissed as the hot water hit his toe stump, but he gritted his teeth and held steady until the wound was clean. He hopped out of the bathroom and into the living room, where Gus was settled on the couch.

“Hey, buddy, I have to say, I’m impressed. I didn’t think you had hairy enough balls to go through with it. But I think you made the right decision,” Gus told him, still watching the screen.

Thomas didn’t hear anything Gus said. He just stared at his toe around its neck.

* * *

Years later, Thomas sat on the same couch, now threadbare and sagging with age. Gus sat beside him, eyes glued to the flatscreen, neck ringed with shriveled toes. Thomas looked around the room, taking in the dozens of concert posters plastered on the walls, his name and face on each one. He sighed, looking at the one poster whose date had not expired. The pinnacle of his music career. He was retiring right after, too old for tour buses and well liquor.

“Gus,” Thomas begged, “I need one more potion. For one last show. A big one. But I don’t have anything else to give you. You have all of my toes. I can’t sacrifice anything else on my body. I need it all.”

A malicious and greedy smile spread over Gus’s wrinkled face.

“There is always something else, Thomas.”

“But I need my fingers for playing! And ears and eyes and...”

“Your father managed just fine without a pinky, didn’t he? Anyway, I never said you had to cut off a body part. That was all you. I said part of yourself that is valuable. Look, you’re interrupting my monster movie marathon. Come back when you’ve figured it out.”

Thomas bit back a retort and stomped off to his room. He sat on the edge of his bed, pushed aside the mound of bedding, and put his head between his knees. He stared at his uneven toes, like blackened stumps after a forest fire. Sometimes he had been too drunk and made lopsided cuts.

He flopped onto his back and pulled out his phone, redialing his most recent call.

“Hey, Mom. How’s the hip? Have you done your walk today?”

“Oh yes, honey. Marie helped me this time though, and you know how fast she walks. I just don’t see what the big hurry is. But I’ll do it because I want to be able to walk to my seat at your big concert. I just can’t wait to see you perform. I know your father can’t be there for real, but I’m sure he’ll be watching. And he will be so proud, honey.”

“Do you think he ever wished he hadn’t given up a music career?”

“No,” came the sharp reply. “His dream was his family. His dream was you. He never regretted sacrificing in order to achieve his dream.”

Again the nauseous self-reproach churned in his stomach, as it did every time she referred to his father in the past tense. The guilt was a loyal hound, snapping at his heels and howling when it didn’t get the attention it felt it deserved.

Thomas was tired of feeling responsible for the heaviness in his mother’s voice. After all these years of hating himself, he was done. He needed it to all disappear.

Thomas stared at his phone for a few long seconds, then before he could lose his nerve, he trotted back to the living room, heart jumping and slapping his gag reflex. Gus was already hunched over a steaming jar of coal-colored juice.

“Gus, I figured out what I can sacrifice. The thing that is really valuable to me. I want to sacrifice my father.”

Gus froze and slowly turned its head towards Thomas. With its bulging eyes and wrinkled body, which had become hairless as it aged, it resembled one of those bizarre, trendy hypoallergenic cats. A dribble of black liquid snaked its way out of the corner of its mouth.

“Oh, well, that’s fun! I thought you were getting boring, but this really redeems you. It will be done.”

* * *

Thomas trotted up the narrow aisle, crowded with people and flanked by rows of pews. He took his mother’s arm, bony protrusions digging into him as they made their way towards the stage framed by amber velvet.

“Well, this is quite something, Thomas. I’ve never seen such a lovely concert hall. Look at that stained glass!”

As he eased her down into her seat, he felt a sudden wetness on his skin and watched salty tears trail down his calloused fingers.

“I’m extremely proud of you, Thomas. I always have been. And your father would be, too.”

Thomas didn’t really see what his father had to do with it. He had died so long ago, Thomas didn’t remember anything about him.

As Thomas stepped out into the blinding spotlights a few minutes later, he began strumming the opening chords as cheers and whistles crescendoed. He was about to launch into the first lyrics, then caught sight of his mother and cleared his throat.

“When I was a boy, I snuck into our attic looking for ghosts, and instead found this guitar that, I guess, the previous owners left behind. I’d like to dedicate this to my mother. Thanks for encouraging me to start playing all those years ago, instead of grounding me for going into the attic. I love you.”

Thomas watched emotions parade across his mother’s face. Confusion, hurt, and disappointment were not what he expected. He dismissed it, took a deep breath, and sang.

* * *

Back in Thomas’s apartment, a grating titter drifted into his room as Gus read the concert reviews for what seemed like the hundredth time. It had been six months, but Gus was endlessly entertained by the critics’ words, which said that Thomas’s last show lacked its usual magic. There was no “gravitas.” No “elegiac intensity.” Whatever that meant. Apparently Thomas’s technical ability was certainly still there, but the performance fell short of the captivating ambiance fans had come to expect.

Thomas futilely rubbed at a scrape on the body of his guitar and laid it in its case. To him it felt like the emotions and motivations that had previously been wound so tightly with music in his head had come untangled.

Into his closet the guitar went, along with a jar of black liquid and some old boots. A shoebox fell down as he rearranged things to make room. Faded prehistoric animals had been crudely drawn and glued upright into the cardboard. Thomas’s brow creased as he picked it up. With a shrug he tossed it into the garbage bin on his way out.

* * *

Gus arranged the newspaper clippings in a semicircle around itself. The oldest were faded and wrinkled from repeated handling. Articles from the local gazette featured Thomas’s father playing guitar and ranged from one-line blurbs in the entertainment section, to front-page features.

Gus reached back into the box and pulled out part of an emaciated pinky. It set the relic next to an obituary.

“Tsk, tsk, Patrick. I wish you hadn’t cut short our arrangement. You left me no choice. At least your son was smarter.”