This was recently posted to the White Wolf News mailing list:

“Only the hand that erases
can write the true thing.”
— Meister Eckhart

Someone had sliced open Ted’s forearms from wrist to elbow. They had pulled back the skin and pushed aside muscles and tendons, torn through nerves and blood vessels, until they exposed the yellow-white of bone. They had filled the cavities with carpet tacks, sewing needles, shards of a glass and razor blades. Then they had squeezed muscle, tendon and sinew back together, pulled the skin tight, and sewn it all together again without leaving a single stitch mark. Now Ted could feel the hundreds of jagged edges and merciless needles tearing into his arms as he typed, ripping into him like tiny teeth.

There's more!

He pushed himself away from the desk, massaging one wrist and then the other. “Carpal tunnel syndrome….” Ted muttered. “Should have its own telethon, like MS.” He checked the clock. He’d been typing for two hours. That was an improvement. A month ago, five minutes at the keyboard would have left him in pain for the rest of the day. It seemed the vitamins and wrist exercises were actually helping. Opening the FedEx box Arnie had sent made Ted forget about his condition for a while. According to Arnie’s last email, a real-estate contact had hooked him up with a well-off widow preparing to move to an old-folks’ home. A widow usually knew the value of her own treasures, but could easily be talked into unloading her husband’s stuff at a fraction of its actual price. “For grave robbers, we’re pretty lucky,” Arnie had once said. “We don’t even get our hands dirty.”

By late afternoon, Ted had priced several fly-rod reels and sent email queries to three collectors who’d fight for them like hyenas over a dead antelope. He’d listed 10 mint-condition LPs for online auction. He’d thrown out six water-stained copies of Reader’s Digest. (What was Arnie thinking?) And he’d closed back up a desk lamp, three fountain pens, seven porcelain figurines and two wristwatches for later appraisal.

The final bundle was a tube-shaped, newspaper-covered package. As he pulled off the twine and tugged at the wrapping, Ted tried to guess at what was inside. Too short for an umbrella. Perhaps a pool cue disassembled in its case? That might be something worthwhile if it was an antique and in good shape. Ted knew a newly retired doctor who was setting up a billiards room….

Then he realized what he was looking at. Under all the newspaper was a life-sized, elbow-to-fingertips human arm and hand. He almost dropped it altogether before he realized it was just a sculpture. Ted pulled the remaining newspaper down like a sleeve. It was made of some sort of ceramic, a light terra cotta color not dissimilar to human flesh. Ted let the wrapping fall to the floor. The hand and fingers were anatomically correct, if somewhat simplified. Fingernails and wrinkles were suggested by creases, but not completely defined.

He laid the arm on his desk, palm up. The hand and fingers were curled, as if grabbing at something. As if the arm had been alive and moving a moment before, and would again if he turned his back. After cursing Arnie one more time, Ted retrieved pieces of newspaper. He considered boxing the piece back up for later, but decided to research it instead. The sooner the it was gone, the better. And if he didn’t re-wrap it, he didn’t have to touch it again.