Bip Yasser was the foremost palmologist in the Victorian world.
He had read the palms of the rich and poor alike, always capturing the very essence of their futures in pithy predictions and uncanny forecasts.
His seminars and colloquia carried the alarming but alluring statement,
"If you meet me by accident be sure to wear a glove!"
Besides palmistry, Yasser was also obsessed with collecting.
Collecting his favourite things.
His bread and butter.
Hands that is.
Left ones.
His secret and grisly collection of left hands was without equal. Thousands kept in cold storage in the cellars beneath his Victorian home, all neatly severed with excellent palms. Beautiful palms, which he'd read.
Unfortunately curiosity was a killer for the left handed when it came to palmology. The more they wanted to know the more it lead them into Yasser's lair to the end of their lifelines ....
And Chop!
Another severed appendage for the freezer to be poured over again when Yasser felt the urge.
The more his fame grew the more sad, lonely victims sought his counsel and more than anything they desired a happy turnaround in their otherwise derelict and hollow lives. Malcontents for whom no-one cared and would not be missed.
For those he chose to murder that turnaround meant a further but fatal reading. A personal sitting in the comfort of his drawing room, where the gossamers of a violent death were waiting by the gaslights.
In a dark twist of geography his house was built over a pit. It lay dank and black in Yasser's main cellar, a sable void yawning beneath his gothic pile like a hungry mouth.
He fed it too.
He gave the pit the remnants of all his prey, hacked and butchered but largely there except for one hand, the left one, the Sinister, which he fondled and fingered, tracing the blood-flecked creases like a miner of gold.
Once washed and cauterized the sinisters would join their fellow limbs in the rank cold air of the basement's chests. A thousand frozen handshakes they wished they'd never had.
But there was one left hand Yasser didn't have.
The left hand to end all others.
The Fallen left.
The hand of the Devil.
Satan's very own sinister.
Legend had it that Lucifer lost it in the Final War of Angels and it's dark digits were hidden forever in the mists of evil and rheumy time.
But Yasser had researched it in a hundred hoary tomes, manifold ancient scriptures and countless forbidden grimoires. He'd read them all or the palms of those that had and it was this mastery of the art that eventually took him to the actual location of the real Fallen Sinister.
He had read the palm of the curator of the Vatican's hidden ossuary, it's secret cache of the bones of the holiest saints, whose sacred relics were piled on top of the most wicked of things that ever existed.
Lucifer's lost hand, the caresser of flies.
Yasser was electrified and immediately readied himself for the illicit plunder of the Holy See's reliquary.
He coveted that fell appendage above all others. The unholy grail. The very fingers of evil.
He had to have it and he had to read it's palm.
The date was set and leaving a guided tour of Victorian guests, the palmologist loped unnoticed through the myriad ancient vestibules of the citadel until at last he indeed reached his goal.
He had realized that it would be dangerous to remove the dreadful hand unprotected.
A crucifix around his neck, a Bible in his pocket and a prayer on his lips, the apprehensive hand hunter rummaged through the heap of sanctified femurs, skulls and ribs until he unearthed the very bottom of the shrine.
There, in the eerie glow of his flaming torch, astounding as it was, the true left hand of the Devil sat palm down on the divine earth, it's clawed fingers splayed out like a tarantula, it's skin like the black and scarlet hide of the plague.
This was it!
Everything Bip Yasser had dreamt of.
The severed sinister of sin and malevolence here, before him, and reading it would surely grant him untold power and magnitude. Him alone.
He would stride across the globe a demi-god and all monarchs would fear his handshake and bend to his baleful will.
The plunderer shook his head, the hot reverie passing and wearing a metallurgist's thick gloves he placed the ancient limb in a corked vessel of rosaries and holy water blessed unwittingly by the Holy Father himself.
The voyage home from Rome was dangerous and breathless.
Yasser stayed in his room on the Channel steamer until he caught the mail train at King's Cross. A midnight horse and cab delivered him safely back.
He was grateful to be home but had aged ten years from his devilish quest.
Placing his loathsome glory in the cellar's hold he collapsed in bed and suffered a fretful slumber ragged with tortuous visions and hateful strangers.
Waking at dawn, Yasser roused himself and with toast, marmalade and china tea bolstering his spirits he ventured into the lowers to savour his leathery prize.
Staring at it outstretched inside the tank of rosary beads, it was indeed an arcane thing, a talisman of the serpent, monstrous and crimson, a forbidden greeting that drew Yasser in like a spider.
The Devil's Sinister.
He gently turned the horrific hand inside its cell and stared down through the shallow water at its dreadful palm.
He couldn't read it.
A palm that could not be read.
Perhaps if he took it out?
He did.
Free from its cloying bath, Lucifer's lines slowly gave up their grim fortune.
With his most astute tracery, the nitheful paw gradually surrendered it's secrets to the ecstatic Yasser, which culminated in the foretelling of his rise to power, as he bestraddled the entire World and held it's fragile beauty in the palm of his hand like a snake's skull.
Released from this seductive vision the rapturous man returned the hand to its holy water and began planning his fated dominion over the Earth and it's elites.
He commenced building an empire of vanity.
Readings, divinations and tellings ushered him into the throne rooms of Emperors, Kings and Queens and the clandestine sanctums of the Holy.
Nothing stood in his way as his subjects heard what they wanted, the gears of self- indulgence turning their heads away from his gradual ascent.
It was at one such gathering where the palmologist, now Lord Yasser, was ending his sitting, when a newcomer sat before him wearing gloves.
He shook his hand and bid him read his fortune.
I prefer the left for a fuller picture Sir.
Alas, that is not feasible my Lord.
The man held up a left gloved hand, clearly stiffened through years of arthritic strictures and malaise.
Ah, then the right it is! Lay your palm before me and close your eyes Sir.
As you wish my Lord.
The stranger removed his glove.
Yasser began to divine the ridges of what was clearly the hand of one who toiled, scolded and reddened as it was.
Then the teller opened his eyes wide!
An apparition emerged in the ether of his senses, an overwhelming desire to take this strange individual home, bring about his death in a most terrible fashion and relieve him of his left limb regardless of its condition.
He simply must have it.
I detect great beginnings but they remain muted Sir. A clearer foretelling would be had in my personal quarters if you care to join me?
Indeed I would my Lord.
Safely in his comfortable villa, Lord Yasser bade the somewhat hobbling gentleman, garbed in a long dark coat trailing along the ground, to be seated in front of his palmistry table in the gloomy drawing room, where the butcher's cleaver was hidden by his chair.
Place your right palm here and your gloved left hand beside it if you would.
Of course my Lord.
Once more the palmist faced the leathen appendage of fevered scarlet hues, it's fingernails more akin to talons than anything natural.
It had the unpleasant feel more than anything of the wing-tipped claw of some enormous beast.
Gathering all his energies, Yasser began.
I see strength in you Sir, an as yet untapped reservoir of fortitude. Swathes of grand tomorrows await after years of imperfection. Yes, a reparation of sorts will occur, a union, but of what? If I follow the line further .....
Yasser's cleaver swung through the air and within a split second he had severed the man's left hand.
It separated from the wrist with an odd splintering sound, quite unlike the splatter of his beloved skin and bone.
The stranger simply smiled.
That was mildly irksome my Lord if I may say so, however, it was exact in its execution and I compliment your quick surgery. It needed to come off before we could proceed.
Proceed? What is that amputated hand before me Sir?
It's a wooden prosthetic made from the trees of Golgotha after I lost my original to that scoundrel Gabriel. Lost, yes, that's the operative word. I needed someone to find it for me. Someone like you Bip Yasser, deluded from the beginning. Did you really think you were destined for anything but a fool's errand leading to your ultimate damnation?
But the visions of greatness, my glorious ascent?
My lies you gullible termite. Like all you flesh puppets favoured by Heaven, it is easy to steer you to the quicksand of vanity and pride. Which is where you are now poor fellow. So be a good Victorian chap and bring me my missing hand. I, Satan, the Fallen One, want very much my sinister again!
With both of them descending to the cellars and commanded by hideous unseen forces, Yasser fetched the bath of rosaries and placed it before the Devil.
Now remove it from that accursed soup!
Ah, excellent. And now!
Satan held his severed limb in front of his left wrist stump and laughed with glee as the two heathen surfaces re-joined.
Wonderful! Splendid! I'm whole again! All thanks to you old fellow and your murderous gift. And so, I'd like to do something in return and complete your collection for you.
Satan grasped Yasser's left wrist and wrenched his hand free in a gout of spurting blood.
Yasser screamed at his amputation.
Slurping from his gushing stump, the Devil then placed the torn-away limb in the rosary bath.
Quite appropriate don't you think Yasser. The murderer's own hand loosened too!
Ha ha ha!
The now undressed devil, his crimson hide smoking in the frigid cellar air, picked up the agonised palmist and carried him across his shoulder down into the pit, in which all the bodies had gone.
Oh, and thank you for the many morsels you threw me. Very tasty old boy. This is one of my favourite entrances to my beloved home, where you shall live with me forever ...
In Hell!
Ha ha ha ha ha!
