Find Me Some Fins

I can’t stand them anymore. I know. I know, they’re necessary. I need them to walk. And for balance. Blah, blah, blah. But they are so repulsive. I can’t look at them anymore. They’re not me.

I’d rather not walk. Not today. Not ever.

I’ve done all the praying I can do. They’ve gotten worse. Can you believe it? Longer. More scrunched together. Hair has sprouted on the knucklebones of the toes. Imagine! Flopping around in flip flops with hairy, ape-like feet.

And just the other day, I noticed a girl in overalls staring at my feet at the deli line in the grocery store. Her mouth gaping open for about fifteen seconds, and when I finally asked her what the hell she was looking at, she went howling to her mother. You’d think she saw Baba Yaga.

How was I created with such repulsive appendages? Long, dangling things protruding from the feet.

Can feet be feet without toes? What is a foot without toes? Hack the toes and you lose the “t”? Fee? Foo? The etymology behind the word is beyond me. I haven’t patience, nor care, to find the answer.

Off with my toes! Chop them off! Chop them off!

I’ll fish out some fins. Lovely, iridescent fins. Sew them on. There are plenty of fish in that lagoon down the street.

The hands I don’t mind. My fingers are fine. I need them to write, and frankly, my hands and fingers are rather attractive. I have long, slim fingers. Not too stubby or too large. My nail beds are flat. Not bulging like some I’ve seen. Just the right size. I could be a hand model. Really! On the cover of a magazine.

The toes though! All that on a foot? On both feet! A monstrosity.

Ape feet. I could dangle from a tree. I guess that would make me a bat. No, no, no. I don’t want to be a bat. Nor an ape.

Chop them off! Vile sausage links. Little absurdities that move independently of each other. Where’s my axe? Chop them off!

Wait.

Wait.

First—I’ll find me some fins!