This Is A Video Of Me Cutting My Finger Off

I should have known something was up when, as I began to dream, an FBI piracy warning faded into view. I wonder if that means I can’t tell you this story. Well it’s too late now, and I’m already getting ahead of myself.

This story starts on Youtube.

Specifically, it starts the time I looked down in my “Recommended Videos” section and saw a video entitled “This Is A Video Of Me Cutting My Finger Off”. It was posted by a guy who’s profile was a string of letters and numbers that seemed random at the time. Looking at his uploads, all the videos used a similar naming structure. There were titles in the list like “This Is A Video Of Us Not Getting Along”, “This Is A Video Of The Reverse Side”, and of course the video that was recommended to me. Curiosity got the best of me and I started the video up.

It was a video of a blond man that I could reasonably believe could have been any age between 23 and 43. He wore a red button-up shirt. He was sitting at a black table outdoors and disembodied arms in billowy black sleeves, possibly connected to out of frame characters, alternately placed empty cornflower blue plates in front of him and then took them away. He stared directly into the camera and spoke, but all the sound was removed except for the distinct hiss of pink noise. None of the individual elements of the video was particularly strange, or even interesting, but somehow I found the combination of elements disturbing.

I opted out of watching any of the other videos, and practically forgot all about it until I went to bed and that FBI warning popped up. It was exactly like the beginning of a film.

As the opening scene faded in, I was seated at the table with the blond man. Waiters were serving us what turned out to be all of my favorite foods, course after course of them in the perfect serving sizes. I could barely notice the food, however, because the blond man was talking to me and it took all the concentration I could muster to follow what he said.

“I know how to help you talk to that person you’ve been meaning to talk to,” he said, as if I knew exactly who he was talking about. It was probably no coincidence that I genuinely did. “I also can describe in great detail everything you need to change about yourself in the meantime before then…” he continued, but his voice began to stutter and drift. I had to concentrate really hard to make out what only occasionally sounded sort of like real words. It almost hurt, focusing so hard, like I was having to translate a barely familiar language. Eventually, I strained so hard I pulled myself back into the waking world. Attempts to fall back to sleep and return to the scene all failed.

I did this wrong somehow, I thought to myself with no idea why. I’ve got to start all over again.

I immediately went from my bed to the computer desk to watch the video again, but the account was pulled. No explanation was given.

It was like the whole thing never happened, yet I still vividly recall my failure.

Art Is Inherently Pointless. I Invest So Much Into It Because I'm Inherently Stupid.

I was about 5 or 6 years old when the "punk rock" episode of Quincy came on, and I just knew that was some action I wanted in on. However, they didn't exactly have punk rock clothes available on the blue light rolling rack at the K-Mart in Killeen, Tx, so I had to improvise. I spent the rest of the night doodling skeletons on one of my good Sunday vests, just absolutely sure I was gonna blow everyone's mind when I showed up in it.

I stroll in the next day wearing this hideous fucking thing, and of course everyone made fun of me and made me feel like a turd. At that moment, at 5 years old, that awkward little ragamuffin very likely turned into the pretentious shithead I am today.

I had myself convinced I had made something out of complete face-melting awesome, and couldn't comprehend why people weren't absolutely tripping over themselves to tell me the same. But to everyone else, I was just a snot-nosed little dumb-ass in a ruined vest still sticky from cheap fabric paint. I probably smelled funny too, because fuck it why not.

If I was still the kind of person that gets drunk, here would be the part where I would make a big retarded stink about what the fuck did those kids know because I really did turn out to be some sort of fancy-pants punk rock fringe artist. It's obviously just a coincidental twist of fate, somehow not my fault at all, that this "fringe artist" seems pretty much indistinguishable from a self-absorbed, career-impaired recovering alcoholic with a headful of useless trivia and terrible ideas and attitudes regarding how I conduct myself doing the things I love the most, just drifting between temp agency contracts and only picking up freelance work when it "inspires" me.

When it comes down to it, I'm still that stinky little dickweed in his stupid vest.

I've changed my religion and underlying philosophy more often than I change my underwear. I've experimented with black magic and viral marketing. I drank like I was entering a contest. All I've learned was that my art would have been my art anyway, and that I should have done even more of it, regardless of "inspiration".

I'm a weird guy, I like weird stuff and I make weird stuff. Over the years I've discovered more than a few people that like the weird stuff I make. That's fine and all, but it doesn't make me somehow superior than, say, the guy who draws Garfield gushing about lasagna over and over and over, steady as the drone of a Buddhist meditation bell. At least he's drawing a paycheck for his, um, drawings. All this poncing around like I'm a goddamn savant hasn't done me a damn bit of good.

Because really, it doesn't mean a rat's ass in the long run. I've been just as successful with projects I agonized over as ones I just let happen the way they were meant to. And realistically, the chance of me making a connection to the fraction of a percent of the population that even give art a second thought drops to zero when it's all trapped in my head. I have no excuse.

Time to put that fucking vest back on. Maybe I've gained a little better sense of humor since the last time.

Or maybe, just maybe, it's finally in style this year.

Unclaimed.

To the consternation of the amateur psychologists in the audience, the identities of the secondary characters in this narrative will be jumbled. Jumbled even more so than normal, this taking place within a dream.

"But you still love me, right?" she asked. It was almost accusatory.

"Of course." I replied, and realized this was all wrong. It seemed like the dialogue should be reversed, because I was the one that was caught in the act.

I should probably back up, but I won't.

To gather my bearings, I'll describe my surroundings. Even that is complicated, however, because I will have to describe both what I see and what I know. I see that I am sitting Indian style on a linoleum floor in a nice, if economical, living room with the sunlight caressing my knees and the rest of a three-bedroom house to my back. I know there is really only one room, the walls are corrugated metal, the floor is dirt and it's the middle of the night.

I don't want to go outside. I don't want to look at or think about the stones.

I see that I am tinkering with something mechanical in my lap, but I know I'm holding the tool wrong. More like the way you'd hold, say, a knife. I hope there is not blood involved.

I know behind me, in a drawer, will be found a lot of stuff that will get me in trouble. I had spent the afternoon dismantling all the recording heads in all the VCRs in the house. For the life of me I can't remember why and I know I have neither the ability to fix or the money to replace everything I broke. The more I add it up, the more I realize I ruined with my tinkering.

But yeah, the stones make me uncomfortable now. Now that I understand them better. I'd seen them before dozens of times, a whole field of them. Featureless yet intentional. Intentional was definitely the word that came to mind. It made me think of a cemetery, but without paths or flowers. Without, you know, evidence of visitors. Just a bunch of neat rows and the corrugated metal shack at the far end. I may have even thought at one point it was just a blank headstone storage for a funeral parlor. For some reason I can't even picture a gate; does the caretaker just leap the fence? That seems silly.

It was explained to me later that it was a plot where they deposited the unclaimed from the mental institution. Unclaimed. Like luggage. Abandoned. Seemed silly at first, like an urban legend, but it began to eat at me the more I thought of it.

I think that's why I was begging her to tell me whether she still loved me. I'm sure it sounded almost accusatory. I had broken something, I had fucked up bad, and I was scared of being abandoned.

Unclaimed.

I Really Thought An Angel Was Gonna Steal My Rent.

I'm trying to picture him now, but all I remember was his shoes.

I had picked up a money order from the convenience store and was walking home to deposit my share of the rent. He called at me from the behind-store alley where there was a notorious homeless "camp".

I told him I had no change on me. He said he didn't want money, he just wanted to ask me something. I could barely hear his question, so despite my best instincts I approached him and asked him to repeat.

"If you could ask God anything right now, what would it be?" he asked. "Now's your chance..."

I'd never seen him before. If he really was homeless, he sure had some shiny shoes on.

"C'mon man," he continued, "isn't there anything you always wanted to know?"

My head started to spin a little. I replied that any question I had would probably be very personal.

"What have you got to hide?" he said. "Just ask anything. Anything at all."

But my mind had went blank, and I became more and more conscious of the several hundred dollar unsigned money order in my pocket. I told him I had to get home.

"Suit yourself." he said, and I purposefully strode home.

I stole one last glance behind me, and there was no trace that anyone was ever there.

IRL.

It's like I'm James fucking Bond or something.

People are scattering, screaming, pouring out of doorways into the foyer. There's a bomb in the building, I know it. I can hear the screeching klaxons of the timing mechanism. I am a buoy of calmness in a sea of feral panic. I force myself to concentrate.

Something is wrong, however. I'm tuned in, paying attention, but no matter which direction I move the sound of the bomb's alarm system don't seem to be getting any nearer or farther away. I resolve to check door to door, hoping to find the device by sight since it's masking it's proximity.

It's hopeless, I am told. A pair of cruel, decadent, piercing eyes look straight through me as the villain approaches. With a few subtle, catlike movements I am embraced, our lips meet and the building explodes.

My eyes flutter open. My alarm clock is still screaming. Of course I couldn't find the sound by listening in my dream; no matter where I went the clock was two feet from my head out here. If it was a snake it would have bit me.

I have a groggy, lurching epiphany in the shower. Something about the teeth of gears too large to see meshing, subtle turns of phrase impossibly repeated like code words of an exclusive club. I wonder how many times the answer was two feet from my head if I could just wake up and look at it. So close if it was a snake it would have bit me.

The epiphany, seeming to condense like water on the shower curtain, suddenly evaporates and is gone to wherever epiphanies always run off to when you're trying to hold on to them.

Down the drain, maybe.