Fulfillment 25

"Of course I'll be your best man, Kenny. I wouldn't miss it for the world."

Charlie Compton leaned back in his big office chair and laced his fingers behind his head. Ken Warner, his best friend and business partner, slouched in the visitor's chair across the desk.

"But I have to ask: why on earth would you marry a girl with no hands?"

Ken grinned broadly. "And why would you marry a girl with no brains?" It was an inside joke, and Charlie just grinned back and shook his head.

Charlie might be Ken's best friend in Austin, but he didn't know everything about him. They'd met their freshman year at the University of Texas and ended up renting a tiny off-campus apartment together when not a single one of the fraternities offered to pledge either of them. Too weird, was the consensus.

But they hit it off as friends, drinking buddies, and computer game geeks. They double-dated, if they both had a girl who would go out with them, which wasn't often.

Ken had the car, sort of. It was a beat-up '61 Dodge Dart, a geekmobile if there ever was one. They'd go on walking dates, or, if one had enough money, they'd spring for a beer or two at the student union, or at one of the numerous bars down on 6th Street.

Now, one of the things Charlie had never found out about Ken was the way he was, shall we say, interested, in girls who were amputees. As it turned out, during the whole four years he was at UT, with its 20,000-plus students, he never spotted a one-legged or one-armed girl. A couple of old ladies, sure. Even a little one-armed girl once, maybe 6 years old. But never a girl he could approach and ask out.

He'd done better in high school back in Houston. Lamar High School had had, during the period he was there, four amputee girls. Two were one-legged, one was completely legless, and one, Tori Latham, was missing the index finger of her left hand.

The legless girl was a full-time chair rider, and although it gave Ken palpitations whenever he saw her, she was by necessity confined to the first floor (there were no elevators back then), and her classes were arranged so that she needed minimum travel in the hallways. Add to that the fact that she was delivered directly to her first class in the morning by her father, and picked up by her mother as soon as her last class in the afternoon was over, and Ken really had no opportunity to get to know her. And he was shy enough that he wouldn't just take matters in hand and overtly seek her out.

The one-legged girls were more accessible, but Ken had no more success. He even had a class with Betty Jackson, who was cute, and had a pleasant enough personality. But she didn't date, she said, either through fear, lack of desire, or that she was just put off by Ken's inept, stumbling invitation to "go out for a Coke or something?" He never asked again.

The other girl, Lois King, was a very large, rather ugly girl who Ken wouldn't have had anything to do with, even though she was one-legged.

Both girls wore prostheses full-time, and Ken never found out why their legs had been amputated, what their stumps looked like, or anything else about them. All in all, the school pretty much ignored all three girls, and best Ken could tell, it was all right with them.

That left Tori. She wasn't exactly pretty; cute was more like it. She was small, about 5' 2", with a classic heart-shaped face accentuated by the pageboy hairstyle she always wore. She had very dark hair and wide-set grey-green eyes with little gold flecks in them. The eyes were the first thing you noticed.

Oddly, she was not really petite. Her breasts were too generous for her frame; she had a small waist, but her hips were a little too heavy, and her legs were, ah, solid. She also had big hands, with short, fat fingers -- four on the right hand and three on the left, a fact that Ken hadn't even noticed for the first couple of weeks they were together in the two classes they shared.

That may have been the secret of his success -- he began to relate to her before he knew she was even a minor amputee.

But Ken was so shy he never asked her out. Finally, noticing his stumbling interest, she invited him to a party one weekend, and he gratefully accepted. She turned out to be a warm and friendly girl, the kind treasured by all inept high school boys just beginning to develop their relationships with the opposite sex. They had a good time at the party, and neither of them ever mentioned her missing finger.

After that, Ken was able to ask her out, and they became regular pals. But it was quite a while before he found out about the incident which took Tori's finger, and which ultimately changed her life.

It had happened when she was 13, and late for school. Her father was driving her and her older brother, and was racing the engine and tooting the horn impatiently in the driveway while Tori charged around collecting her backpack and assorted other junk which was invariably scattered all over the house.

Jack, her brother, had already commandeered the front seat, so Tori rushed around to the drivers side, flung open the back door, dumped her stuff in and plumped herself down next to it on the back seat. She was still settling herself in place when her father reached back through his open window and gave the door a hard shove -- just as Tori placed her hand on the doorframe to shift her position.

Her piercing shriek was probably heard for six blocks around. Immediately her father leaped out of the car and yanked the door back open, but the damage had been done. They both stared at the purplish, misshapen remains of her first three fingers. Tori's mother came rushing out of the house at the sound of the scream, swiftly ripped off her apron and gently wrapped the injured hand.

"Jack! Get back into the house and call Dr. Harmon. Tell him what happened and that we'll meet him at the emergency room," Mr. Latham barked to his son as he gunned the engine to back out. Mrs. Latham sat in the back with Tori, holding her gently in her arms.

It only took them four or five minutes, and they were ushered immediately into an exam room. A nurse gave Tori a sedative injection and seated her in a wheelchair for a short ride down the hall to X-ray.

After a few minutes of bustling activity during which Tori's hand was washed, doped with disinfectant and lightly bandaged, Dr. Harmon, X-ray film in hand, explained their options. Mr. Latham was pale and silent.

"First the good news," Dr. Harmon began. "The little finger is intact, only a bruise. It'll be sore, but I don't think you'll notice. The next finger," he pointed at the X-ray film, "has a dislocated joint, and we'll be able to straighten it out without much trouble. The middle finger is actually broken, and will require some work before we bandage it up with a stiff splint."

"The bad news is the index finger. The first two segments are pretty well crushed. There is a good chance we won't be able to save it. I've called for a hand surgeon, Dr. Peterson, and I don't want to say too much before he sees you, Tori, but even if he thinks there's some hope, we're looking at a long road here."

Tori's mother began to sob quietly. Her father looked stricken. "Baby, I'm so sorry...," he began, putting his arms around her.

"Daddy, it was an accident, for heaven sake. You don't need to beat yourself up about it." The sedative had taken the edge off the pain, and had calmed her down. "Besides, let's see what the hand doctor says."

The hand doctor came, took a good long look at the X-ray film, another long look at Tori's hand, which was now swollen to twice its size, and just shook his head. "We can save it -- you'll still have a finger, but I'm afraid it won't be very pretty. And I doubt you'll be able to use it for much. It'll be stiff, small and odd-colored. And then maybe we'll put in all the effort and you'll lose it after all."

Her father groaned; her mother cried.

In the end, it was Tori who finally said, "Just cut it off, for God's sake. I can't imagine it'll look any freakier that way than what you're talking about."

Dr. Peterson motioned for Tori's parents, and they followed him out of the room. Dr. Harmon joined them. Heads shook slowly, papers were presented and signed, the niceties observed.

They all returned to Tori's room, where she waited, nearly dozing from the effects of the drug.

Dr. Peterson did the deed, with Dr. Harmon assisting, in the same room, after they'd asked her parents to leave.

"I can put you under, if you like," Dr. Peterson offered, pulling on a pair of rubber gloves.

Tori shook her head. "Just try not to hurt me," she said with a shrug of resignation.

He put a couple of injections of novocaine into her wrist, and sat back to wait for it to take effect. "It won't be so bad," he said. "For what it's worth, I think you made the right choice. All the king's men could never put that finger back the way it was. The best we could do is keep it from just falling off." He smiled at her; she was strangely calm, and watched wide-eyed as he painted her hand with a bright orange, foul-smelling antiseptic, and sliced off the remains of her finger with a couple of deft strokes of a tiny little knife.

Nor did she flinch when he dabbed some stuff on the severed end to stop the bleeding, and pulled over a flap of skin and sewed the whole thing closed with a tiny needle and thread.

Only when he started working on the other fingers did she look away, gritting her teeth....

When her parents were finally summoned her left hand looked like a baseball in white bandages. No other evidence could be seen, not the sickening orange, not the splints, not the newly-acquired stump of her first amputation.

By the time Ken met Tori -- when she was a sophomore and he was a senior -- there was no remaining trace of the accident, except, of course, the chubby little stump of her amputated finger. She didn't seem sensitive about it, Ken thought, and she related the story without hesitation when he finally had the nerve to ask. It wasn't like a leg stump or an arm stump, but it was a stump, and it was interesting to Ken. Turned out, it was interesting to Tori, too, but Ken didn't know that at the time.

They began dating with some regularity, and Ken became increasingly bold about playing with her left hand, trying not to be too obvious that it was really her little stump he was playing with.

But she knew, for he was not the first to be interested. Ken would take her hand, walking along or in a movie, or just in the car, and she would gently stroke his palm with the little stump.

After the accident, after things had more or less calmed down, after the house was back to what passed for normal, Tori had time to think about the fact that she was, technically, an amputee. During the four times she'd returned to Dr. Harmon's office to have her dressings changed, splints adjusted, etc., she'd become fairly familiar with the new shape of her left hand.

For some reason, she wasn't repulsed by the sight, nor was she in any way depressed by the bizarre turn of events. More accurately, she was strangely fascinated. She couldn't wait to get all the dressings off and take full possession of her remodeled hand.

The day the bandages came off for the last time and the hand was pronounced, for all intents and purposes, healed, she went on to school from the doctor's office and completed her normal class schedule. No reason to do otherwise. Her middle finger was still a little stiff, but there was no longer any pain.

But Tori could not stop staring at her three-fingered hand. It was different, unique, and it brought on a strange medley of feelings welling up inside her, some describable, some not. She'd lay her hand on the desktop and place her right hand next to it, absorbing the contrast.

Finally she told herself that she'd get used to it soon enough, it was just the novelty, which would wear off. She tried to concentrate on the events swirling around her, but was mostly unsuccessful. She was glad when the final bell rang and the day was over.

When she got home she went straight to her room, dumped her books on the bed and sat down at her desk, staring fixedly at her nine fingers. She was alone in the house for the moment, and the strange feelings were welling up inside her like nothing she'd ever felt before.

The more she stared at the little stump that was all that remained of her finger, the more she felt strangely excited. That feeling in the pit of her stomach was back, more strongly than ever.

She crossed the room to the dressing table and sat down. On the dresser, in front of the mirror, was her manicure bag, and a single bottle of seldom-used bright red nail polish. It wasn't Tori's custom to do her nails -- in fact, she usually chewed them raw, but she had got out of that habit during the time her hand was bandaged.

She picked up the emery board and began to file her nails -- all nine of them. "How strange," she thought, "now I only have nine nails to do."

She carefully filed and shaped, then wrenched the little bottle open and painstakingly painted each remaining nail a bright red. When she had finished she held up her hands, again comparing the five with the four. Five and four are nine, she thought. I have only nine nails now. I have only nine fingers. One of my fingers has been cut off... amputated....

Her face was flushed. Suddenly she realized the source of her strange feeling. It wasn't her stomach -- it was between her legs. Her panties were soaked. The nipples of her expanding young breasts were hard as rocks.

Slowly she unbuttoned her blouse and moved her left hand down inside the bra cup covering her right breast. She slid her hand under her breast and let the little stump rest against her rigid nipple. She shivered and began to breathe heavily. What was happening to her?

Withdrawing her hand, she kicked her shoes off and lay down on her bed, spreading her legs. Her skirt was up around her waist, and she slid her hand down inside her panties, stroking the wiry hair with her stump.

Of course with her stump in the pubic hair the rest of her fingers were at just the level of her love spot, which she found immediately. And immediately she knew what was happening.

The orgasm washed over her like a wave, leaving her breathless for several minutes.

"Well," she mused, "I never would have expected a reaction like that."

Ken never told Charlie about his predilection for amputee girls.

Ken and Charlie stuck it out at the University, and graduated with degrees in business and computer science. No honors, they both just made it out the door with their degrees.

And since by then they were both heavily into computer games, they decided to try to market some of the ones they seemed to come up with so easily. They were now into their sixth year of operation, grossed $4.6 mil last year, had decent offices in Industrial Park, and 14 employees keeping the place running.

Their first employee, in the remodeled storefront they rented, had been Cecily Roberts, hired on a thin resume and a testosterone overload.

Charlie's.

Cecily was a tall, willowy blonde with big tits and a pouty Marilyn Monroe mouth. And, as it turned out, not much else. She could answer the phone, and usually she could take a message. Charlie was finally able to teach her the rudiments of turning on the computer and getting the word processor running, and sometimes, on a good day, she could even get something to print.

But she was a good-natured girl, unfailingly cheerful, and seemingly aware of her limitations. She never pretended to be something she wasn't, and made the most of her limited assets. Even so, she probably wouldn't have stayed as the company expanded, except that by the third month she was pregnant.

It was okay with Charlie. He probably would have rather put off marriage and all the complications of family life and responsibility, but he and Cecily were really in love, and by then the company was making enough that he could afford a small wedding and an apartment somewhat nicer than the hole-in-the-wall he and Ken still shared. So they were married and, as a bonus, it got Cecily out of the office.

Their second employee was hired through an employment agency, who sent them some qualified candidates. They settled on Susan Grimes, an older woman, 37 at the time, who is still with the company, as Charlie's secretary. He intends never to let her go, if he can help it. And Cecily is now pregnant with the third Compton.

They were looking for coders when the resume came in by email. Normally, all the inbound resumes went to Ken, but he was out of town at the time, so Charlie got it. He thought the girl sounded good enough to interview, and mentally insisted on doing so, even though she said she wanted to work at home. Of course they had no problem with that; they already had three coders they'd only seen once each, and one, who lived in Seattle, they'd never seen.

Still, he called Ken in Los Angeles, where he was negotiating a deal with a packaging and distribution company. By their mutual agreement, each new prospect had to pass muster with both of them.

Charlie read off the resume, which sounded good enough to pursue. "She's also uploaded a game she did herself," Charlie added.

"Oh, yeah?" said Ken, "what does it look like?"

"Well, it's no commercial deal, but I've stepped through the code structure, and she obviously knows what she's doing. It's in "C," but we can always ship her a copy of 'plus' if we want her. We may have to teach her some graphics," he added.

"Sure," Ken responded. "but it sounds like she's a creative type. I'll be back on Wednesday. Can you set up an interview Thursday morning?"

"I'll give it a try. How's the deal coming out there?"

"Should be wrapped up by tomorrow. Looks like we might have ourselves a distribution guy."

"Outstanding. You may return home."

Ken responded with a rude noise.

"See you Thursday." They hung up, both chuckling.

That night Charlie emailed an invitation to the Thursday morning interview. He gave their phone number in case the girl needed directions or something.

Next morning she was on the phone to Charlie. "I thought you'd be able to hire me without my coming in -- I'm just going to work at home, you know."

"Well, uh, sure -- but I thought you lived in Austin. Is there a problem?"

"I do live in Austin, and I can come in, but people -- employers -- don't always have a favorable reaction to my... appearance."

For a moment Charlie was at a loss for words. "Uh, look, miss... we're hiring you for your coding ability, not for... anything else. If you, uh, can't drive -- or something -- we can send someone for you. There are papers to sign...." His voice trailed off irresolutely.

A moment of silence. Just before he couldn't stand it anymore and had to say something, anything, she came back.

"Okay," she said. "I heard you say you want me for my coding ability. I'll come in for the interview, but I'm going to expect that you'll evaluate me on my coding ability and nothing else."

"Um... sure, of course," Charlie stammered. "I wouldn't think of doing it any other way. I'll see you tomorrow at 10. Know how to get here?"

"Oh, yes, thank you. I'll be fine. See you tomorrow at 10."

Charlie stared at the phone for a long minute, wondering what the heck they were getting into.

Thursday morning came, and so did the girl. Charlie sent Susan down to collect her from the reception lobby, and phoned Ken to remind him of the interview.

"Oh, shit -- I forgot. Go ahead and start with her and I'll be up in a few minutes. I'm in the middle of something." Which was usual for Ken.

"Okay, but don't leave me alone with her for long. This is the one who didn't want to come in at all."

"Well, if she turns out to have two heads or something, let me know right away. Maybe we could use her in a magazine ad."