The first indication that all was not right was a strange, almost sweet, stab of melancholy. It only lasted a moment, making him pause with his toothbrush at his molars, staring blankly into the bathroom mirror. His heart lurched unexpectedly and tears brimmed in his eyes. The lines of his face looked suddenly deeper to him and he experienced that moment, that awful moment, of clarity, when one realizes that everything is wrong and always was, and will never, ever, in a million years, be right. And then it passed. He shook his head, mumbled from behind his toothbrush, and scrubbed away. As the weird bout of melancholy passed, he noticed that the tips of the fingers of his left hand ached. After putting his toothbrush back in the cabinet he examined them. They looked fine, perfectly ordinary, the same long thin fingers that tapped away at a keyboard all day, every day, entering pointless data about pointless projects. But still they ached, a vague throbbing ache, like blood pounding beneath his nails. He looked at them, frowning. My fingers are trying to tell me something, he thought, and laughed a little at the idea. Yeah, they’re piping in after all these years to complain about having to type all the time. They’re gonna organize, join a union. Abused digits of the world, unite!
