4. Ten Little Toes

Feet are really weird.  Have you ever thought about them?  I mean, if you weren’t familiar with the human anatomy and saw feet for the first time, you’d think they were a seriously deformed pair of human hands.  Even so, I think they’re really cool.  It amazes me those ten little toes basically keep your entire body balanced.  A few years ago, I went to a Lakers game and thought about the basketball players’ feet.  These guys are seven-feet-tall and 250 pounds but their little toes still allow them to run all over the court and jump up and down and dunk the ball.  It’s truly remarkable.  Sadly, my right foot was now destroyed. 

You know how it is, the tab kept peeling and moving to other toes and before you knew it, I was chewing on the bone of my pinky toe.  I always thought my feet were pretty cute but now my right foot was disgusting.  The main part of the foot still looked normal, but it now had five little bones wrapped in pink tendons sticking out of it.  The air against them really started to burn, so I used some leftover bandages from my finger to cover them up.  As I painfully pulled a wool sock over my toes to keep them warm, someone started knocking at my door.  It must be Candice! 

I couldn’t wait to see her and limped over to the entry way.  “Hey Candice!” I said while opening the door, but found Eesha standing there instead.  “Novi, how are you baby?”  Oh Jesus, are you serious?  I threw my foot behind the door to avoid another “cleaner” incident.  “Oh I’m fine Eesha,” I said, “Hey, thanks for taking me to the hospital.  I really appreciate it.”  Now why don’t you give me the $2,000 I owe the hospital, thanks to you.  “Oh baby, don’t worry about it,” she said, “And you know what?  Don’t worry about rent for next month either.  I know those hospital bills can be expensive.  You have enough to worry about.”  Holy shit!  Did she just read my mind?  “Thanks Eesha!” I said genuinely.  “You’re the best landlady ever.”  I gave her a big hug and then shut the door.  What a sweet old lady.  Man, I love Eesha.  

Someone started knocking on the door again.  

Jesus Christ, Eesha?  Leave me the fuck alone!

I opened the door and found Candice standing there.  “CANDICE!”  I gave her the biggest hug I could.  

We walked into my kitchen (she walked, I limped) and sat at my counter with some beers she brought over.  She looked me up and down and said just what I needed to hear, “God damn, you look good.”  A smile stretched across my face and I took a big swig of my drink.  “Thanks baby, you do too.  How are you?”  She shrugged, “Ehh, you know.  What’s all this shit about you trying to kill yourself.”  I shrugged back, “Eeh, the usual.  What do you want to do tonight?”  Without thought she fired back, “Get wasted.  This week sucked so bad at work.  Let’s go to Sunset.  That one DJ is there tonight.”  I pulled a mediocre lie out of my ass, “I can’t, someone ran over my foot yesterday, I can’t dance.”  Candice’s eyes widened, “That’s fucked up! Seriously?”  I nodded, proud of my creativity, “Yeah.  Super sucked.”

She took me out to dinner because she’s a sweet friend and we managed to get seriously drunk at this bar close to my house.  At one point Candice slurred, “Are you sure we should be drinking since you just tried to kill yourself?”  I laughed and responded, “Of course!  That’s why we should drink.”  There were a couple of dudes who drank with us.  Sometimes getting drunk with strange guys worries me, but Candice carries a gun.  So even if they tried something, that tough bitch would end it quick.  Besides, I had to go to my new shrink in the morning and didn’t feel like dealing with them when I woke up.  So Candice and I just came back to my place and crashed on my bed.

At about 3 a.m., I woke up with a horrible cramp in my stomach.  I went to my couch in the living room to avoid waking Candice.  The cramp was eating me alive.  I couldn’t tell if it was the alcohol or if one of the assholes we drank with tried to roofie me.  After rolling around on my couch, I realized I was starving.  At dinner I only had the bread the restaurant gives you for free and I guess it didn’t do the trick.  I dug through my cabinets only to be reminded that I still had no food.  Oh yeah.  Bummer.  Well, I had to eat something this time.

I sat on my couch and pulled the wool sock (now brown) off my foot.  I licked my lips and pulled it up to my face.  I’ve never really chewed on the side of my foot before, so it took a few times to get the positioning right.  But after a few tries, I was chomping away.  It hurt like hell, but I was hungry and wasn’t going to stop.  The gross part wasn’t the skin or foot odor, but the blood filling my mouth.  You know when you eat at Poppa Johns and every bite fills your mouth with a disturbing amount of tomato sauce?  Well it was like that, but tasted like rusted pennies.

The blood gushed out of my mouth and onto the couch as I tried to swallow as little fluid as possible.  I wanted the meat because if I didn’t get something soon, I was pretty sure my stomach would digest itself.  The calluses were the best.  They were like the calluses on my fingers except a lot thicker and more filling.  I gotta be honest, besides the tears streaming down my face from the pain, my foot was a pretty good meal.

“What the FUCK are you doing?”  Candice yelled from the hallway.

This scared the living shit out of me.  I jumped, kicked my foot out and it crashed into the coffee table.  This would hurt any day, but now that my foot was mostly exposed bone, it felt like someone just hacked it off with a hatchet.  I screamed and grabbed it instinctively.  This hurt just as much.  I was finally able to get it to stop hurting by sticking it out and lifting it in the air, kind of like when a dog pees on a fire hydrant.

Candice still stood in the hallway like she had just seen a ghost.  “Seriously.  What the hell are you doing?”  I tried to think of a lie but I had nothing.  “I was hungry,” I said, tears still streaming from my eyes.  Candice stared at me, her eyes the size of half dollars.  It was quite the sight: My leg stuck up in the air as blood oozed to the ground like a waterfall.  Finally, she just turned around and headed back to the bed, but I stopped her.

“Candice!”  I called.  She turned and looked at me.  “I have some crutches in my closet,” I said, “could you grab those for me?”