Chronicler's Guide
1985 Emilio gnawed at his fingernail, the same damn finger, the left ring finger that no longer carried a wedding ring. Every night, he bit it. Sometimes he worried at it, gnawing until the white edge came off in a strip, peeling back to the cuticle and needing to be chomped, leaving a tiny flap that would catch on loose threads and draw his thumb to fidget. Or he could peel it and then pull, hard, painfully tearing it out where the nerves were. Or if he was disciplined he would file that excess length down, or trim it with clippers. It didn’t matter. Every night, when Emilio awoke, that half-broken length of left ring-fingernail would be back, the same, restored like his hair and his immortal flesh. Some nights, he even managed to leave it alone. Not very often though. Emilio was restless. He was not the type to let things go. “No, not ‘Brainchildren,’ ‘Rain Children’. As in, water that falls from the sky. Yes. Thank you.” He was sitting on a hotel room bed, with the curtains drawn and the lights off. To Emilio’s eyes, plenty of light was seeping through the curtains, crawling under the crack of the door, urine- yellow streetlight glow was plenty for him to dial by. He was in Portland and he didn’t like it, but he’d tracked the book to the coast and now, maybe, to this library… “You have? Splendid, that’s… now, this next question is a little, erm, queer. Odd, I mean.
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