Or perhaps you’ve heard a version that attempts to make the woman more of a person and less of a MacGuffin through the sin of vanity.
This is that story; this is not that story.
There once was a woman with a wife, and they loved one another very much. For many years, the woman could not afford a prosthetic arm that was custom-fit to her. They’d tried several different versions—wood and aluminum, plastic, whatever they could find cheap or second-hand—but none of them ever fit well enough not to hurt. The woman decided that, since she’d been born without that part of her arm, there was no rush on the matter, and the wife loved the woman just as she was. Still, the comments and looks that the woman got began to wear down on her, and the wife wanted to find a way to help. After a decade of saving every spare cent, the wife managed to purchase and have custom-fitted a titanium arm plated with gold. A white gold ring had even been added to one of the fingers. Though the woman felt like it was too much, she could not deny that it was a perfect fit, and the woman loved her wife, so she accepted the gift. It was not long after this that the wife died—a disease of the heart where she was there one minute, gone the next.
And so the woman, who could not bear the pain of daily reminders, left the life they had built together, starting a new life all alone in Silicon Valley. In her new home, the woman stored everything sentimental in the attic, though she could not bring herself to part with the white gold ring, and so she kept her golden arm attached. She became known quickly around town, both because it was the kind of place where outsiders were noticed and because she was the only woman, man, or child brazen enough to make an accessory of a missing limb. It was the kind of thing that some called brave and others called flaunting.
It was not even a month after her arrival that the woman was approached by a man down the street. He asked her story, and she told him that she was a widow. When he expressed condolences for her late husband, she did not correct him because she was not sure that it was safe. He patted her hand—the golden one—and offered to make her dinner some night. The woman was lonely, and so she agreed. And then it became a weekly ritual until he kissed her, and then more frequent after that until finally they married. The man had never asked her for anything—not children, though she was nearly too old for that, nor money. They filled out a will, but when she asked about life insurance, he told her he didn’t want to jinx anything.
The woman died within weeks of their courthouse wedding—a hit-and-run on the corner of their street while her husband was at work. The gossips of the neighborhood assured everyone that there were no less than 14 witnesses at the husband’s tech company at least a half hour away. Per the will, the woman was interred in a local mausoleum next to the ashes of her first wife. The woman had insisted, despite all of her husband’s protests, on being buried with her golden arm. She had tried explaining that it was not solid gold, that it was not worth what he thought it was. Though the husband had relented, the woman could tell he remained unconvinced.
Two days after the woman’s funeral, the mausoleum was broken into.
It would be too difficult to see a face on the security cameras with the rainstorm that had come through. Her final place of rest was pried open with a crowbar. Her body was pulled out, her golden arm ripped from flesh. Liquid began to spread on the white dress with the little blue flowers that covered her torso, but her husband did not care. This was all he had needed her for. Even though he was a mechanical engineer, a few bad investments had left him in a bind, and this limb would fix all that. She couldn’t even use it anymore; it was selfish of her to seal it away with rot and stone. He left, triumphant. The husband even dared to laugh and reach toward the sky with the arm, as though defying god.
But it was not god that the man had to worry about.
He heard something behind him. Afraid that someone might have seen what he’d done, he turned. His ex-wife stood in the doorframe of the mausoleum, bracing herself against one side. She continued to leak, and her mouth was sewn shut. The husband laughed, because the dead could not speak. The woman straightened herself and pointed. The husband was still holding her arm in the air. Just when he was getting ready to mock her, lightning struck the arm. It killed the man instantly, short-circuiting every camera nearby.
The next morning, the cemetery manager found a strange sight waiting for him:
A man with pink lightning-shaped scars all over his body, found dead.
The mausoleum, broken.
And two bodies missing: that of a recently dead young woman, and the ashes that had been stored next to her.
No one ever saw the golden arm again.
Audrey T. Carroll (she/they) is the author of What Blooms in the Dark (ELJ Editions, 2024), The Gaia Hypothesis (Alien Buddha Press, 2024), Parts of Speech: A Disabled Dictionary (Alien Buddha Press, 2023), and In My Next Queer Life, I Want to Be (kith books, 2023). Her writing has appeared in Lost Balloon, CRAFT, JMWW, Bending Genres, and others. She is a bi/queer/genderqueer and disabled/chronically ill writer. She serves as a Fiction Editor for Chaotic Merge Magazine and Editor-in-Chief of Genrepunk Magazine. She can be found at http://AudreyTCarrollWrites.weebly.com and @AudreyTCarroll on Instagram/Bluesky.
