Mario Duarte

Disappeared

It began for Marco Alonzo Pacheco Trujillo with the disappearance of a fingernail on a middle finger. He thought nothing of it until the next day when all the fingernails on one hand had vanished. Distractedly, he chewed on his remaining fingernails, occasionally spitting out a piece that blended into the gray office carpet.

What to do? A doctor is out the question! I‘ve had my fill over the years. Always poking and probing and guessing at what’s wrong.

Should I see a shrink again? No, no use. They’re just as crazy as everyone else. Take my last one. His wife took his computer to a shop to get it fixed. They found kiddie porn on it and reported it to the police; he ended up dying in jail. No, thanks!

Why worry? No need. Right?

At his desk, Marco picked at another tuna salad lunch while his co-workers gathered at a local diner. They never invite me. Is it because I don’t look like them, or act, think, or talk like them? ¡Cielos! I am what I am, right? Forget them!

Reaching down to scratch his ankle, his hand discovered only a stump. No marks, no cuts, and no blood. It was as if a sadistic cartoonist had simply erased his foot.

His eyes widened. Am I insane? This can’t be happening? The hair on his arms, and the back of his neck stood, and his brain chattered: Run! Hide! Impossible to fight!

He marked the rest of the day on his work calendar as Out: Sick and emailed the office administrative assistant. “Sorry Sara, I had to email since you were out to lunch. I’m not feeling well. Taking sick time. I’ll call tomorrow to let you know how I’m doing. Have a good day. Marcos.”

Marco grabbed his overcoat and umbrella. His hobbled footsteps echoed down the deserted hallway. A woman laughed behind him, and turning he nearly fell. Oh, it’s only ‘Loudmouth Lou’ on the phone in her office. He fumbled outside, runny sweat stinging his eyes.

A breeze blasted his umbrella inside out; its bent spokes smacking of a bolting octopus. He jabbed the beast into a garbage bin and trudged to the office parking lot. Noon, no sun, the sky hung with an impossibly long blue-black cloud. It churned into a giant hand capable of snatching him up and crushing him in a vast palm.

He fiddled for his car keys in his pants’ pockets, turning them inside out, but only blueberry cupcake crumbs left from breakfast rolled out. Next, he searched the side pocket of his laptop bag. Eureka! When he pulled his hand out of the bag, a thumb and ring finger were missing. He shrieked like a terrified child. A pigeon uttered a short grunt, flapping away from the office building ledge. Is that pity in his moist eye?

Peeling out of the parking lot, his maroon Camry careened down the avenue. “Maybe it’s just a bad dream. Right? Things like this don’t happen …do they?” he asked aloud over the thumping beats bouncing from the car stereo speakers.

While he gazed through the windshield, punching the ignition, a long white bolt of lightning jagged across the sky. The thunder boom rattled him; Marco felt the stitches of reality unzipping and his whole world tingling with red rain.

His jittery fingers combed through his hair. Clumps pulled off. No! His ear felt itchy. When he tugged on it, it flopped between the grimy ridges of the floor mat. At a stoplight, before he could pick it up, it disintegrated.

¡Dios mío! Let me at least make it home.

While his car rolled up the driveway, his right leg vanished. He fumbled to use his left foot on the brake to stop from crashing into the garage door.

Between hopping and crawling, feeling like an insect with torn off limbs, he made his way inside. When he plopped on the couch, his right hand was gone.

Should I call for an ambulance? Marco dialed 911. A voice responded, “Please state the nature of your emergency.” By now, he had no voice, with no teeth or tongue. Only clouds like fists in his eyes.

He rolled off the couch and crawled. His orange tabby rubbed his body against his face until he shoved it away. It yowled, padding back to the bedroom.

In the kitchen, he grabbed the rum out of a lower cupboard. He raised the bottle.

A toast. To somebody, maybe.

When Marco tipped his bottle his remaining hand disappeared, and the glass shattered on the red tile floor below.

I don’t want to die.

Dropping to his knee, he lost his balance and plopped hard on the floor smacking his mouth but there was no blood. His eyes could do nothing but gaze through the glass sliding door leading to the porch. On a shepherd’s hook, a half-empty bird feeder swayed soundlessly.

I can’t die who will feed the birds?

Will they even miss me?

As he counted the sparrows, the raindrops plopping on the patio, his right eye disappeared.

That damn eye was never good, anyway. Always sore. Plagued with allergies. ¡al fin cayo! Who needs it? I still have a mind. I can still think, still feel.

Why am I so afraid to die?

When the EMT’s peered through the glass sliding door, they only saw an orange tabby licking itself, and while they swore at the house their ambulance rolled away, the earsplitting sirens, and blinding red lights switched off. In the end, Marco Alonzo Pacheco Trujillo became what his co-workers and everyone else in the world who did not see him wanted: disappeared.

Mario Duarte is a Mexican American writer and an Iowa Writers’ Workshop alumnus. His poems and short stories have appeared in Native Skin, Many Nice Donkeys, and New Croton Review. New work is forthcoming in the iō Literary Journal, and a short story collection "Monkeys" is scheduled for release in 2024.