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Writing inspired by the following Sunday Writers’ Club prompt:

Write about old hands.

Old Hands

by Caroline Stevenson

Sheila tilted her head at an unexpected ringing of the front doorbell. The timing was inconvenient; she was partway through doing the dishes and her rubber gloves were covered with soap suds. The cutlery she was washing was brand new, just like most of the stuff in her new place, and rinsing off the residual dust that had come with it from the homeware store felt like an important initiation ceremony, a rite of passage. If it’s important, they’ll ring again, she reasoned.

Dingaling.

So this wasn’t just a delivery for the next-door neighbour. Sheila sighed, wrestled off her gloves and headed to the hallway, stopping to peer through the spyglass first. Not that it made her any the wiser: her view was largely blocked by a hand with splayed out fingers, as if it were being admired by its owner and keen to soak up every ray of the early spring sun. It was certainly a pale hand, but not a sickly looking one. Rather, it was unspoiled. The nails were neat and didn’t betray any signs of stress or neglect. The hand looked neither masculine nor feminine, just… in prime condition. Even the knuckles looked smooth and unwrinkled, and if it weren’t for their fluid mobility, Sheila would have believed a mannequin had been propped against her front door. The hand then rotated at the wrist so Sheila could see the palm. It had the three classic lines running through it (what were they called again? She’d had a phase of reading people’s fortunes in the school playground. The life line, the love line… and the other one… ) But aside from that, the palm otherwise had no imprints at all. If this person’s trying to sell me hand cream then I am more or less sold, Sheila thought. I still get dry hands doing the washing up despite the gloves. So she opened the door, and once she saw the owner’s face her brain told her to shut it again immediately, but her frozen body refused to obey this command.

How had he tricked her like that? She must be going insane after all. Just like he had told her repeatedly. Jeremy, her ex, now standing before her. At least, it was mostly Jeremy. About 93 percent of him was the Jeremy she recognised and recoiled from. The spiky chestnut-coloured hair, high cheekbones and slim jaw with permanent stubble. The light grey tracksuit he wore for the gym. But someone or something had worked its magic on him. Sheila could have drawn Jeremy’s hands with her eyes closed, the hands that had left their mark on her more times than she could count. The mole at the base of his left index finger. The scar under his right thumb from where a dog had bitten him. The ring with his initial which he had used as a stamp to brand her as his property. Those hands she knew with all those identifiable features were not the ones currently attached to his body. And no, his shiny new hands weren’t prosthetics or ultra-realistic gloves mimicking human hands, they had somehow been incorporated seamlessly into the rest of him.

“You’re not going to let me in for a cuppa?” he asked innocently.

Sheila shook her head. If he attempted anything indoors, it wouldn’t be caught on the security camera, which she pointed up towards as a warning.
Jeremy held both of his new hands in the air. For a fleeting moment, Sheila thought he was about to confess his guilt.

“I see these have caught your attention,” he said. “I can explain. You see, I was clearing out some stuff from the attic – there’s still some of your things in there – and I knocked over what looked like a piece of junk. On closer inspection, it was a bronze oil lamp. I know this is going to sound crazy, but… a genie came out of the lamp and granted me three wishes. And I wished for him to give me new hands.”

All the better to strike me with? No other motivation occurred to Sheila. Meanwhile, Jeremy bared his teeth in a self-satisfied grin.

“Why stop at the hands?” Sheila asked. “Why not a whole-body transformation, or personality transplant?”

“Well, then I wouldn’t be the guy you fell in love with.”

“Where is this genie? Do I get an introduction?”

“It doesn’t work like that. Only I get to speak to the genie or see him.”

“That’s convenient.”

“Have you got a better explanation?”

Sheila paused. “Do genies even have genders? Did you even think to ask?”

“Stop changing the subject, smartarse. I’m not taking the easy route here. Don’t you think I could have just got the genie to wipe your memory or turn back the clock if I was trying to weedle out of responsibility? See, you automatically assume the worst of me every time. It’s about time you gave me some credit.”

Sheila’s mouth became more pinched and her brows furrowed closer together.

“I still think you look cute when you frown. I must be a hopeless case.”

And you’ve told me thousands of times that no one else will have me because I’m such a bitter and wrinkled hag. You’ll deny it, of course.

“I know it’s a lot to take in, so I’ve still got my old hands as proof.” He motioned to a cardboard box next to his feet. “Have a look inside if you don’t believe me.”

Sheila didn’t need to look in the box to know that Jeremy’s old hands – his real hands – would no doubt be clenched, poised for action as always, even if they had been relieved of duty.

“I’m not eloquent like you. I know I did a lot of talking with my fists, but I’m not going to apologise for feeling strongly about things. What’s done is done, and can’t be changed. But I can promise to be different from now on.”

Sheila did all she could to stop herself from laughing in his face. He still had two wishes left. Whatever those wishes were, it wouldn’t end well for her. She had to intervene, and fast.

“And what better way to show you I mean business?” Jeremy lowered his chin and gave her a pleading look. “Go on, Sheila, give me another chance. I did this for you. I did it for us.”

She steeled herself and looked Jeremy in the eye. “I don’t need to look in the box. I believe you. You say I can’t see the genie. Fine. But could I at least have a look at that lamp? I’m pretty sure it was my grandmother’s.”

She knew darn well it was her grandmother’s. The first week they had moved in together, she had asked him whether he had seen it amongst the piles of boxes. No, he had replied, it must have got lost in transit, he’d chase it up with the moving company. But he never had. He must have kept it hidden from her all along. The bastard.

Jeremy conceded. He delved into the satchel casually strewn over his shoulder and retrieved the lamp, placing it into her outstretched hands, which were still a little red and blotchy from doing housework.

Now that Sheila was cradling the lamp, it was as if she was seated in Nana’s lap again, inhaling the scent of her herbal tea. And she remembered how Nana had explained all the rules of the lamp to her as a child. It was expressly forbidden for children to touch it. By the time it came into Sheila’s possession, she remembered Nana’s stories fondly but no longer believed in them, just like she’d stopped believing in fairy tales.

It was time for Sheila to put her trust in someone who deserved it. She rubbed the oil lamp on the side which had became tarnished through repeated contact with sweaty human palms over the centuries. A pink mist emanated from the spout and then took on a shimmering and vaguely human form, if you were to squint at it.

“What did I tell you!” Jeremy shouted, “you stupid b-”

But the genie talked over him.

“Goodness, don’t you look like your grandmother,” an authoritative but warm-sounding voice from within the mist declared. “You must be…”

“I’m Sheila. And how would you like to be addressed?”

“As you see fit,” the genie replied, “I am here to serve you.”

“Hey, steady on,” Jeremy interjected. “Aren’t you forgetting I still have two wishes?”

“But you surrendered the lamp. Thus, you are no longer my master,” the genie explained calmly.
Jeremy’s jaw remained on the floor.

“Very well,” continued Sheila. “These new hands you have given to Jeremy… I wish for them to be mine instead.”

“Hey-” Jeremy had regained the use of his mouth –

“Your wish is my command,” the genie replied.

And the genie was swift in granting it. Sheila didn’t feel an ounce of pain. Her hands had already been replaced by the immaculate pair as soon as she glanced downwards. The skin was smooth as a baby’s. Jeremy immediately began whining but Sheila didn’t even glance at him. She had no time to lose in making her second wish:

“And I wish for the rest of him to disappear. Every trace of him.”

Jeremy’s final moment in this existential realm was spent cursing Sheila with all the venom she had grown immune to. He would have loved nothing more than to strangle her, but he only had stumps where his hands ought to have been. How foolish he looked as he faded away into nothing. It made Sheila smile. And this genie didn’t cut corners: even the cardboard box had vanished.

“Thank you, genie, that will be all.”

The genie was shocked. “Really?”

“Yes, thank you. I release you. And if you see Nana, tell her I say Hi.”

Sheila thought she could detect an expression of joy within the pink haze before it, too, dissolved into thin air. On the other end of the street, a girl in a navy school uniform with blonde pigtails stopped and did a double-take in her direction. After a moment she shook her head and continued to skip her way home.

Sheila brushed her new hands together in that good riddance to bad rubbish sort of manner before shutting the door. She then leant against it for a while as she let out a sigh. She resolved to clear space on the mantelpiece to make a proper shrine for her family heirloom. But for now, she still had those dishes to wash up. And this time, she didn’t even need to use the gloves.