Rusty Fire Arms

His skin is tanned golden brown and I can see underneath it the white of his bones, shaping his wide shoulders as he leans toward the fire in the dark. Blonde hair falling into blue eyes. My fingers itch to grab hold of those tousled locks, to pull him to me, our desperate breath warm in each other’s ears. A flash of firelight, angry orange and red, on his bare chest. He stretches and leans against the tree, linking his fingers behind his head, his elbows sharp points jutting into darkness.

He is mine. I will not share him. Ever. My chest tightens at the thought of him leaving, disappearing into the mountains to breathe with the trees there. I know he will go; nothing I say or do ever makes him stay, but still, I try.

The night smells of charred pine and heated skin. It presses against my face, warm and urgent.

“Don’t go,” I say, my voice crackling in my throat like burning paper, rasping across the fire to his sun-burnt ears. “Don’t go this time.”

His eyes flash blue at me, burning my skin hotter than the fire between us. He bites his lip, tosses his head to clear the hair from his eyes and reaches into the pocket of his worn blue jeans, his arm whispering against the bare skin of his torso. He pulls his hand from his pocket, uncurls his calloused fingers. In his open palm, his silver Leatherman knife glints in the firelight.

His arm is long, the muscles shaped, tight and smooth beneath his skin. I am beside him now, my fingers running the length of his arm, tracing the blue lines of veins until I meet his hand. I touch the Leatherman and fierce gooseflesh spreads from my fingertips, up my arm, and across my chest; the Leatherman is freezing, like it’s been pressed against ice cubs in his pocket.

He jerks the Leatherman away from me possessively. It is his. He will not share it. Ever. With a simple flick of his wrist, he dislodges the sharp, cold knife from the depths of the Leatherman, clutching it tightly in his left hand. He shifts his body away from me slightly and presses the knife blade into the muscle of his shoulder where it begins the gentle slope into his neck. Across the fire again, I watch as he saws into his arm, the small silver blade of the kinfe sinking into the smooth sun-browned skin. Dark red blood, black in the firelight, pools to the surface of his skin, welling and seeping from the gash, which reaches now from his armpit to the middle of his shoulder blade. Blood streams run down his arm, across his chest, between his fingers. The thick, red liquid drips into the dirt beneath him, the sound of sit echoing off the trees and melting into the cracking of the flames between us. He smells of iron and fire, charred and sharp.

He turns his head to me, still sawing the knife deeper and deeper into his own flesh. His face is blanched but blank, and his eyes lock onto mine, sparking and shining, a clear blue color, almost black in the firelight. His right arm hangs, gaping, from his torso, the bone a prefect white circle, clearly sawed through. Only bloody strings of muscle, sinew and skin keep the limb from breaking away completely. The fingers of his right hand, though, are still moving, his fist clenching and unclenching, his fingernails stained red with the blood pooling in his palm.

With one last jerk of the knife, so violent that even his hair shakes in front of his eyes, the remaining skin and muscle are fully severed and the right arm comes completely free of his body, floating slowly to the ground beside him.

Carefully, he leans down and uses his left hand to roll the amputated limb up his leg, into his lap, the hand now limp, fingers flapping with each rotation. He begins to gently fold the right arm into neat squares, each one smaller than the first. Blood seeps out each time he creases the fold, staining his pants and sprinkling the ground around him. When his arm has been folded to the size of my pocket, all the blood gone from it, he tosses the souvenir across the fire to me.

I catch it, cradling it gently in my hands, my waist tingling with the remembered warmth of that arm, usually flung across my body while its owner sleeps with reckless abandon behind me.

“Take good care of that,” he says, his voice muffled by the thread he holds in his mouth as he stitches up the stump left by his amputation. “I’ll need it back someday.”

I slide the neatly folded arm into my pocket. “I won’t let it rust,” I whisper.

When I look up, he is gone, the scent of blood and sun-burnt skin left by him smelling more potent than the burning wood. I call for him, wanting desperately to give him something of my own to take into the mountains, but he doesn’t answer. Only the wind in the trees, rushing through the leaves and blowing the smoke of the fire into my face.

“This arm isn’t good enough,” I say to the empty space he has left behind. “I want a leg, too.”