She imagined an invisible arm reaching up, thousands really, from the depths all at the beck and call of their unseen masters. There was a harmony to it, a silent symphony of sickening conspiracy. She waited, watched as the limb rose, slithering it's way into the yellow box aside the stoplight pole. Then, out of that infinite blackness, it appeared. Five points gleaming in a deep malevolent red, the wrist of free will severed at it's base. Stop. Cede control. At its injunction, the world around her froze: pedestrians, cars, time itself. Obsequiously they all watched, cowed and attentive, but unthinking. Slaves, Terra thought, and they don't even realize it. She mapped the shape of the thing. Four fingers like knives held aloft above her head, dangling, impending, ready to impute death upon the disobedient. A red thumb held out sideways to be turned up or down, menacing judgement, and, worst of all, the wrist, vivisected yet without hemorrhage, floating amid the blackness. No veins, no knuckles, no nails, only red.
Terra warily groped for the shutter button on her camera. Click. As if anticipating this, the hand disappeared, only to reappear the next moment. Click. She missed again. Click, click, click! Nothing. Blackness. The hand blinked out of existence, replaced by the white silhouette of a man. Time resumed and the flow of the world went along as if nothing had happened. Terra knew though. She saw what all these miserable sheeple did not. She would not be thwarted. She had time, and even if that meant she had to wait until the dead of night she would take a picture of the red hand. Click.
After sunset, Terra had the image she desired. She tore the eviction notice off her door and kicked it in. Rats scattered, as did her live-in boyfriend, Jeff, who rushed to his desk to seem as if he had been writing instead of playing video games. She noticed none of this, her mind too focused on the evidence burning in her camera. She strode into the kitchen, which doubled as a makeshift darkroom. With care and craze, she developed her photos. Another set of smoking guns to compliment her growing collection. She took the photos into her conspiracy room, once Jeff's office, and taped them to the walls in deliberate sequence, one intelligible only to its artificer. The sprawl of conspiracy. A jumbled concatenation of string, newspaper clippings, and pictures all under the aegis of Evidence, the one and only god in Terra's pantheon. She stood back and admired her work, if only to immerse herself more in the mystery of it.
Clues spun around Terra, sirens drawing her to a plot from which she knew "they" would never let her return. No matter where one went, evidence of this vast conspiracy pervaded, hung about like a miasma on the world. Terra had scoured the earth and found refuge nowhere. The Red Hand was an omniscient master. Despite the foreboding it drew out of her, Terra knew she could not dwell upon the symbol alone. It could only explain so much. No, she must seek those behind the hand, whoever they may be. She had collected enough evidence to know it was a global conspiracy, a group of persons bent on directing the course of history as if it were a rat in a maze. The Society of the Red Hand they were called. But to what end, for what purpose she could not determine. Terra screamed in frustration. Jeff ran in. "Sorry, I swear I'm going to wash the dishes in five minutes. I'll even rub your feet afterwards!" Jeff was sweet, but way off the mark as usual. She told him not to worry and to just leave her in peace. Slumping into her chair, Terra scanned the wall looking for a connection.
Misfortune became her partner, the only man willing to follow her to hell, but one of many willing to lead her there. Ever since she had actively begun collecting evidence against the Red Hand her life had known little but adversity: she lost her job, her car, even her electric kettle. Slowly they would unravel her as she unraveled the truth. For some time now they had been showing, however subtly, the extent of their malevolent influence. What else could explain the unclogable blockage in their sink or the dripping red hand print left on her bedroom door? The society of the Red Hand was behind this. They were trying to intimidate her.
The next few months were a misery parfait for Terra, the fingers of the Red Hand layering topping after topping of sorrow upon the sour froyo of her life. Disaster befell disaster, while Jeff enjoyed a period of unprecedented success, flourishing as he never had before. It was as if, in a master stroke of life destruction, the Red Hand was promoting Jeff to accentuate Terra's growing frustrations. She watched in the dark as Jeff rose to tumblr stardom. 1,000 followers in a week was unheard of, especially for a novelty tumblr dedicated to the identity politics of experimental dog breeds.
It had to stop. No amount of digging could seem to draw the Society of the Red Hand out into the light, so, Terra reckoned, she would have to meet them in the darkness. Packing up a survival kit including Luna Bars, a yoga mat, a gps tracker, hydrocortizone cream, crystal body deodorant, and go pro, Terra absconded in the middle of the night. She kissed her slumbering boyfriend on the forehead and slipped out the front door. There in the dead of night at the corner of Flushing and Knickerbocker she waited. In a brazen display of power, the Red Hand showed itself to her, full of red hate and demanding subservience. She would not bow to it. Boldly, she placed one foot in front of the other in an act of defiance not seen since Gandhi turned down that mimosa at the inaugural UN Brunch.
Her crossing took what felt like an eternity, the black asphalt devolving back into tar as Terra made her way. Each step grew heavier, more enmeshed in the mire of conspiracy. Finally, and seemingly much more burdened than she set out, she stood beneath the Red Hand. A chill rippled through the air, and in dread Terra looked about the deserted intersection. She watched terrified as the street lights and lamps from down the road flickered in sequence into darkness. The wave of rolling blackness swept over her and she felt a coarse bag slip over her head and tighten around her neck. Hands clasped her by the elbows and biceps. Thrown into and idling van, Terra kicked wildly, her flailing legs crashed upon soft bodies to no avail. She was held down against the corrugated plastic floor whose ridges she gripped with terror. Her screams were only silenced by that peculiar sensation of a needle pressed softly to the skin and slide within. As her senses left her, Terra mused that this drug cocktail was rather pleasant but for the kidnapping. She ought to ask for a recipe when and if she woke up.
Terra's senses returned to her slowly. First, taste, something cold, metallic, and acrid taped into her mouth. Then touch, her fettered arms and legs writhing atop an uneven plane. She noted a declivity from her head to her butt, as well as ridges under her splayed out arms. Finally, her senses of sight and sound reawakened. Though blindfolded, she perceived a deep red light that filled the room and an untraceable hum; the sound and the light seemed indistinguishable, as if somehow sharing sharing the same frequency. Then marching, chanting, and clapping. It sounded as if a very grave pep rally, a Willy Wonka-esque funeral dirge. In single file, the footsteps circled Terra. She was enveloped and eclipsed by their incantation. All of the sudden it stopped, and the blindfold was whisked off her face.
Around her stood a circle of humans sporting red onesies and transparent red visors. To Terra they looked like card dealers at a menstruation themed casino. She craned her neck to see them, to take in their faces so she might direct all the nebulous hate within her that had been building since she began her investigation. These were the faces of conspiracy! Flabby, middle-aged, tired, as if this was some white collar job that didn't provide healthcare. Above her, dangling from the ceiling, hung a gigantic red hand. Her observation was cut short, however, by the approach of a hooded figure. It stepped forward and flipped back its hood. "JEFF?!" Yes, it was indeed him, Jeff, Terra's rock, the man who had regularly cooked her meals that were too spicy despite her protests. He was a man with about as much agency as a goldfish. "Yes, Terra, I'm sorry it had to come to this, but you had to keep pushing. Had to keep asking questions. I tried to protect you, but even I, Jeff, Grand Pinkie of the Red Hand, can only do so much."
She was disgusted with him. "Whatever, just give me back my Luna Bars, let me go, and tell me what kind of nefarious plot the Society of the Red Hand is up to and I won't kick you out of the apartment." Jeff mashed his lips together and looked down at his feet, a clear tell he was deep in thought and feeling ambivalent. He leaned into one of his co-conspirators and whispered something. This set off a sort of telephone style change reaction of hushed speaking around the group. The murmur made it's way back to Jeff where it stopped. "I'm sorry, but all I can offer you is a half-eaten Nature's Valley bar." Terra scoffed, "Fine, I'll settle for knowing why. Why? Why all of this? What is your purpose?" Jeff scuffed the floor and sighed.
"Honestly, that's a bit of a toughie..." Jeff went on to explain the protracted history of The Society of the Red Hand, including its foundation myth (a strange anecdote about an ancient Sumerian queen who loved finger painting), its influence throughout history (they were proud of their association with Oliver Cromwell, but not so much of their involvement in noted 90's super group Temple of the Dog), and its power today (they owned several Starbucks). Huffing from such verbosity, he continued. "That said, no one can exactly remember...why." With well worn shame he gestured to the room around them. "Wait, what the fuck are you saying?!" "I mean, yeah, sure, we operate a vast secret society. We kidnap people, we try to change the course of world events, and we have these really fun corporate luncheons once a month. But if you ask me or anyone else why, we couldn't tell you. We've just been doing it for so long." Terra slammed her chains against their bindings. "So, there's no end game? No agenda? You do it just to do it?!"
Jeff was embarrassed. "Kind of. Yeah. I mean, Joni over there has some pretty good ideas at our board meetings." Jeff pointed to a slender woman across the circle from him. She waved back and he smiled. Terra's face twitched. "Oh my god, you have a crush on her!" "No! She...she's just really good at her job. She's behind our mission to micro dose Tailor Swift's virgin long island ice teas with snake venom." Everyone applauded. Despite her jealousy, Terra was mildly reassured that Jeff at least didn't have a crush on a horrible girl.
"I can't believe I dedicated my life to finding this out. All that pain and paranoia. I threw my life away to find the Red Hand. Do you have any idea how hard it was to be stripped of my honorary title of spiritual adviser at the yoga studio?!" Terra wept. In her search, she had found a passion she had thought lost. She had a crusader's soul, chaste, driven, and obnoxiously righteous. She was willing to give up anything in pursuit of her goal, and she had. But now, confronted with this bathos, the utter purposelessness of the secret society she had imbued with such purpose, she felt empty. She longed for her former life, but she craved that solitary burning purpose like an addiction.
Consumed by self-destructive thoughts, like of drinking and moving back to Florida, Terra sniffled. "Can you just let me go now? You've won. I submit. I'll stop for the red hand at crossing signs or whatever it is you want me to do." Terra had never felt so defeated as she looked out across this ring of dopey acolytes. Her gaze fell on Jeff who shook his head solemnly. "I'm afraid not. As the expression goes 'you know too much'."
The assembled members of the Red Hand chanted "Know too much! Know too much!" "You have two options, Terra. You may join us, or you may die." Terra stared at him and then let her neck fall back so her head rested against the plane to which she was bound. She looked up at the red hand above her. It did not appear the same. All of its sharpness and menace gone, even its red seemed faded. The hand itself looked bloated, not the disembodied appendage of a censorious autocrat, but that of an effeminate alcoholic uncle.
"Fine." Terra huffed. Everyone cheered. Jeff raised his hand and silenced his co-conspirators. "Somebody get this woman a onesie!"
