untitled hand story [draft for a writing contest]

Details of the contest can be found here: Dean Alfar

On to the rough draft!
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My hands won't open no matter what I do.

Once I tried to massage it, to soothe the muscles with a salve that would make me forget everything and numb my senses, keeping me oblivious to everything around me, including the pain of sensation. The following numbness was too disturbing and I had to scrape off the salve. My hand remained tightly closed, unwilling to relinquish it's grip on...

With the salve gone, the sensation returned.

I tried to hire some strong burly men to open my hand. I thought subjecting it to pain would make it open. They tried to pull away the fingers one by one, to slide in a crowbar and pull, to beat it with a hammer. They tried and tried so many acts of mutilation 'til I couldn't remember anything of what happened. At the end of it all, my hand remained tightly closed, unwilling to relinquish its grip on...

With the pain gone, the sensation returned.

In desperation, I called upon a doctor. Now this was no ordinary doctor. She specialized in making hands relinquish their grips on... And she came one day bringing her tools. One by one she laid the implements on a white cloth, counting them one by one, arranging them according to their purposes. After her ritual, she faced me. Her lips moved but I could no longer hear what they said, for I was completely etherized upon the table. I had the vague notion of nodding my head before fading away.

When I woke up, the doctor was gone. With the doctor gone, the sensation was gone.

I saw my hand lying on the table, still unwilling to relinquish its grip on... I kept it in a glass case, occassionaly taking it out of its case and playing with it during lonely nights. A grisly memento, but it was a memento nonetheless.

One day, a visitor came to the house. She saw the hand and asked if she could touch it. She had never seen a dismembered hand beofre. I took it out of it's case and handed it to her. It fascinated her for a while and she came back again and again to touch it, to play with it, and sometimes, when she thought I wouldn't notice, to whisper to it.

One day, when we were playing with it, it finally relinquished its grip on... And I smiled.

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As is, it looks and even sounds more like prose than fiction. It's my ambition to submit this as a prose piece to that contest. I'll be adding more details. Dialogue is tricky business. I've never done much of it and I feel I underrate it. I'll have to see if I include dialogue in my submission. :)

Wish me luck. The deadline is August 15...