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Jeff Fleischer

The Paper Cut


Stupid paper cuts.
 
There aren't many things more infuriating than a deep paper cut. An infinitesimal fragment of a second earlier, your finger feels absolutely normal, and then there's that sudden, stinging, sharp pain that feels like it will never go away. The blood starts seeping out instantly. Before you even realize you've been cut, there's bright red fluid all over your finger, usually getting on the rest of your hand.
 
Most of the time, not much comes of it. You suck the blood off your finger for a couple seconds, throw on a bandage. No big deal.
 
Not this time.
 
In an example of remarkable dumb luck, the piece of paper Jason Rollins happened to accidentally slash across his finger also happened to contain an original ink landscape by Masaki Okajima, one of the seminal artists of imperial Japan. Okajima, along with most of his life's work, was forever lost during the Allied bombardment of Tokyo. That made this piece of paper irreplaceable, and therefore extremely valuable.
 
Less valuable than it was now that it had a long streak of Jason's blood on it, but no less irreplaceable.
 
The reality of what had happened dawned on Jason quickly, though that fragment of a second didn't let him react in time to stop it. Like the time he'd locked his car keys in the car, part of his brain saw it coming, but couldn't fire his synapses fast enough to do anything about it.
 
The situation was bad enough for Jason, but made worse by this being his first day as an assistant collections manager after five years as a docent, tour guide and curator. He couldn't think of a worse way to ingratiate himself with the collections chair, Charlotte Kincade, than to destroy a priceless work on day one. Getting fired was a sure thing, and he couldn't very well get his old job back either. Just fired, if he was lucky. They could sue him too, take his house and his car and his bank account as partial compensation.
 
He'd been so careful with the exhibit, which made things more disappointing. He'd taken each piece from one frame to another with the utmost care, touching them gently at the edges to prevent sweat or prints getting on the artwork. Now he wished he'd used gloves instead.
                                                                                                                  
Jason's brain ran through the stages of grief until he settled on reevaluation. He could hear Ms. Kincaid's high heels echoing through the mostly empty museum hallway, and knew she'd be in his workspace soon, not giving him much time for a solution or explanation.
 
He grabbed a rag from the eyeglass case in his pocket, and started dabbing the blood. This succeeded in removing some of it, but more was already dry and—Jason realized to his horror— while he'd kept the cut finger off the paper, blood had gotten onto the palm of his hand. Some had rubbed off onto the drawing, leaving a prominent red streak.
 
Already in for a pound, Jason quietly walked to the men's room, holding the ink drawing behind his body to make sure no passing docent could see what he was doing. Once inside, he checked each stall to make sure he was alone, used the trash can to block the door, and gingerly placed the drawing down so that it straddled two sinks. Looking at it, he saw the blood had spread down the page faster than he'd realized. He noticed that the artist's signature was in red characters, and hoped for a second that such a fact might prove useful. But the seventy-year-old ink maintained a more vibrant hue than did the minutes-old dry blood.
 
His next idea was to dampen a paper towel and try to wash off the blood. At first, the faucet released no water, so he turned the handle more, and was greeted with a sudden blast of cold water that splattered onto the paper. Jason attempted to wipe the droplets with a paper towel, but the water and the pressure from his hand combined to make Okajima's ink run. The leaves of his trees now looked as if they were falling and blown by a mighty wind, but only in the most impressionist sense. The sun appeared to be melting, and the seawater looked too much like real water. Jason considered turning these explanations into his presentation, trying to pass them off as the artist's intent. Maybe Ms. Kincade didn't know the piece that well… Jason realized that was a stupid idea. This wasn't quite the Mona Lisa suddenly crying or David losing an arm, but it was still an obvious desecration of an iconic piece.
 
Jason considered making a run for it, just taking the drawing and getting out of there. That idea died quickly. He'd clocked in, so everyone knew he was in the building, and the drawing had some kind of sensor he didn't understand that protected it against theft.
 
As he wrapped a paper towel around his cut finger to try denying the wound any air, he realized he had no plan at all. He was stuck in the men's room with the carcass of one of the great works of the twentieth century. He looked at the drawing again. Now stained. Now water damaged. He could hear his boss's heels echoing again, getting louder as she entered the gallery he'd been assigned. She would know the drawing was missing in a matter of seconds.
 
Stupid paper cuts.



--
Jeff Fleischer is a Chicago-based author, journalist and editor. His fiction has appeared in publications including the Chicago Tribune’s Printers Row literary journal, Shenandoah, Steam Ticket Third Coast Review, Pioneertown, Crossborder Journal, Zoetic Press Non-Binary Review, Chicago Literati, Crack the Spine, and Indiana Voice Journal. He is also the author of non-fiction books including Rockin’ the Boat: 50 Iconic Revolutionaries (Zest Books, 2015), Votes of Confidence: A Young Person’s Guide to American Elections (Zest Books, 2016), and The Latest Craze: A Short History of Mass Hysterias (Fall River Press, 2011). He is a veteran journalist published in Mother Jones, the New Republic, the Sydney Morning Herald, the Chicago Tribune, Chicago Magazine, Mental_Floss, National Geographic Traveler and dozens of other local, national and international publications.

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  • Home
  • About
    • Our Story
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  • Issue #27 Spring 2024
    • Issue #27 Art Spring 2024 >
      • Kristina Erny Spring 2024
      • Luiza Maia Spring 2024
      • Christy Lee Rogers Spring 2024
      • Erika Lynet Salvador Spring 2024
      • Marsha Solomon Spring 2024
    • Issue #27 Poetry Spring 2024 >
      • Terry Belew Spring 2024
      • Dustin Brookshire​ & Diamond Forde Spring 2024 Spring 2024
      • Dustin Brookshire​ & Caridad Moro-Gronlier Spring 2024 Spring 2024
      • Charlie Coleman Spring 2024
      • Isabelle Doyle Spring 2024
      • Reyzl Grace Spring 2024
      • Kelly Gray Spring 2024
      • Meredith Herndon Spring 2024
      • Mina Khan Spring 2024
      • Anoushka Kumar Spring 2024
      • Cate Latimer Spring 2024
      • BEE LB Spring 2024
      • Grace Marie Liu​ Spring 2024
      • Sarah Mills Spring 2024
      • Faisal Mohyuddin 2024
      • Marcus Myers Spring 2024
      • Mike Puican Spring 2024
      • Sarah Sorensen Spring 2024
      • Lynne Thompson Spring 2024
      • Natalie Tombasco Spring 2024
      • Alexandra van de Kamp Spring 2024
      • Donna Vorreyer Spring 2024
    • Fiction #27 Spring 2024 >
      • Bryan Betancur Spring 2024
      • Karen George Spring 2024
      • Raja'a Khalid Spring 2024
      • Riley Manning Spring 2024
      • Adina Polatsek Spring 2024
      • Beth Sherman Spring 2024
    • Nonfiction #27 Spring 2024 >
      • Liza Olson Spring 2024
  • Issue #28 Fall 2024
    • Issue #28 Art Fall 2024 >
      • Eric Calloway Fall 2024
      • Matthew Fertel Fall 2024
      • JooLee Kang Fall 2024
      • Jian Kim Fall 2024
      • Robb Kunz Fall 2024
      • Sean Layh Fall 2024
    • Issue #28 Poetry Fall 2024 >
      • Jodi Balas Fall 2024
      • Clayre Benzadón Fall 2024
      • Catherine Broadwall Fall 2024
      • Sara Burge Fall 2024
      • Judith Chalmer Fall 2024
      • Stephanie Choi Fall 2024
      • Sarah Jack Fall 2024
      • Jen Karetnick Fall 2024
      • Ae Hee Lee Fall 2024
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      • Ruth Williams Fall 2024
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      • Anne Gerard Fall 2024
    • Issue #28 Fiction Fall 2024 >
      • J​oe Baumann Fall 2024
      • ​Morganne Howell Fall 2024
      • Matt Paczkowski Fall 2024
      • Ryan Peed Fall 2024
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      • James Sullivan Fall 2024
  • Issue #29 Spring 2025
    • Issue #29 Art Spring 2025 >
      • Irina Greciuhina Spring 2025
      • Jesse Howard Spring 2025
      • Paul Simmons Spring 2025
      • Marsha Solomon Spring 2025
      • Elzbieta Zdunek Spring 2025
      • Na Yoon Amelia Cha-Ryu Spring 2025
    • Issue #29 Poetry Spring 2025 >
      • Deborah Bacharach Spring 2025
      • Diego Báez Spring 2025
      • Jaswinder Bolina Spring 2025
      • ​Ash Bowen Spring 2025
      • Christian J. Collier Spring 2025
      • ​Shou Jie Eng Spring 2025
      • Sara Fitzpatrick Spring 2025
      • Matthew Gilbert Spring 2025
      • Tammy C. Greenwood Spring 2025
      • Alejandra Hernández ​Spring 2025
      • Ben Kline ​Spring 2025
      • ​David Moolten Spring 2025
      • ​Tamer Mostafa Spring 2025
      • ​Rongfei Mu Spring 2025
      • Cynthia Neely Spring 2025
      • Pablo Otavalo Spring 2025
      • ​Bleah Patterson Spring 2025
      • ​M.A. Scott Spring 2025
      • ​Liam Strong ​ Spring 2025
      • Alexandra van de Kamp Spring 2025
      • ​Cassandra Whitaker Spring 2025
      • Angelique Zobitz Spring 2025
    • Issue #29 Fiction Spring 2025 >
      • Vanessa Blakeslee Spring 2025
      • K. J. Coyle Spring 2025
      • Meredith MacLeod Davidson Spring 2025
      • Jessica Mosher Spring 2025
    • Issue #29 Nonfiction Spring 2025 >
      • JM Huscher Spring 2025
      • Qurrat ul Ain Raza Abbas Spring 2025