Barry The Butcher

When the police found the fingers of Trisha McGuire, one digit under each base on the baseball diamond at Danbury High School, they questioned the team mascot, Larry the Lumberjack, who wielded an axe, though they discovered very quickly that it was only a plastic prop. Larry, whose real name is Barry, was Trisha’s ex, and some say he took his job as a means to win her back (she was the coach of the girls’ softball team).

Trisha’s fingers were severed at the second knuckle, each nail painted in alternating orange and white, the Lumberjill colors. They found her thumbs last, buried beneath the rubber on the pitcher’s mound. “She was all thumbs,” Barry heard one of the detectives say, laughing as he slipped Trisha’s into an evidence bag.

The town of Danbury mourned their coach, who had led their girls to a state championship the year before. The big game was next week, a chance to repeat the glory. But after the disappearance of Trisha (and the sudden appearance of her fingers) they called the event off. Now Danbury mourned its opportunity to reclaim its softball supremacy in the state of Wisconsin. With no one to blame for the disappearance and probable murder of Trisha McGuire, the town cast its suspicion on Barry, who, if truth be told, was more devastated than anyone else.

It was with unbelievable misfortune that Barry, less than two months later, discovered a severed finger tucked between the folds of roast beef while working at his new job at Arby’s. He picked it out and recognized the tattoo; it was his coworker, Melanie, who lost her finger while operating the meat slicer the week before. The Arby’s crew never found her middle finger, which Melanie was known to use liberally, and everyone assumed it must have found its way into the rubbish or had rolled under some unknown cranny. After eight hours, the hospital staff told her it was too late to reattach it.

It was troubling, everyone thought, that Barry had found the finger. They ruled out coincidence, assuming he had orchestrated the severing. No one seemed to care that Barry was at home, and not at work, when Melanie cut off her finger. Once the flames of gossip ignited, there was no dousing the small town’s rumored beliefs. Even Melanie had doubts about Barry’s involvement. When he was fired from Arby’s, she flicked him off with a stubby middle finger. “Go fuck yourself, Barry the Butcher.” And the name stuck.

After months of being heckled, ostracized, threatened, and disregarded as scum, Barry decided he could no longer endure living in Danbury among people who saw him as “Barry the Butcher.” He made arrangements to sublet his apartment, and, without any notion of returning, he hit the road with no planned destination, nor the slightest vision for his future.

Not far from Danbury, Barry saw a woman poised on the side of the road. A hitchhiker. She was blonde, like Trisha McGuire, and about the same age and build. She was holding a cardboard sign that read “Minneapolis” in black marker. She stuck out her thumb—the universal gesture for needing a ride—but it looked a little odd, clumsy, and utterly graceless. The woman dropped her sign and struggled to pick it up.

Barry was lonely, and the thought of conversation with another human being who did not know him as “Barry the Butcher” was a warm prospect. He hit his blinker, slowing down as he passed the hitchhiker, and pulled over to a stop about fifty feet in front of her. He rolled down his window and stuck out his arm, waving the woman over. Minneapolis was as good a destination as any other. It was a big city, a place Barry could blend in.

“Hi there!” He called out joyfully, but ended up choking on his words, coughing as if he had swallowed an Arby’s sandwich with a finger tucked inside.

In the side mirror, he watched a woman approaching him, her fingers flexing like a bird of prey reaching for its quarry. They were short and stubby, mutilated and raw. Blood ran down the woman’s palms and wrists as she waved with a smile that seemed jovial to the point of transcending into sinister, a wild mirth suggestive of insanity.

Barry hit the gas, flooring it like a bat out of Danbury. He zoomed out onto the road, kicking up dust into the face of the hitchhiker. Neglecting to look ahead, his eyes were lost in the maimed clutches floating in his mirror, which seemed to follow him no matter how fast he sped ahead. A car horn alerted him to the impending disaster, and when he turned to investigate the road, the last thing he saw was a large vehicle, point-blank, with the driver inside. Her hands were held out in front of her, as if that could stop what came a millisecond later.

*

The following year, in the wake of Barry the Butcher’s death, the Danbury Lumberjills won the Wisconsin State Championship softball title. A statue was erected in honor of Trisha McGuire, whose body was never discovered, nor her fate made known. Her statue was life-size, lifelike, and she gripped a softball bat with ten long fingers. Barry the Butcher was demonized, and the news of his death brought many satisfied sighs to the good folks of Danbury. In their small town, where softball is religion, the Finger Thief became an urban legend and a popular choice for children’s Halloween costumes. The local Arby’s shut down. Somewhere, living or dead, Trisha McGuire lingers, her bones bared, or sheathed in living flesh.

Bio: James Callan lives and writes in Aotearoa (New Zealand). His fiction has appeared in Apocalypse Confidential, X-R-A-Y, Hobart, Reckon Review, and elsewhere. His 2nd collection, Fish Out of Water, is forthcoming from Anxiety Press.

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