The Criminal Mind

It occurred to me just now that with all the skin missing from my fingertips, I no longer have fingerprints. I got terribly excited. What better candidate to become a master criminal than a man with no fingerprints? I even liked the sound of it—The Man With No Fingerprints—like the title of a Sam Spade novel, very gumshoe. All I needed, I figured, was a thin mustache and a black turtleneck sweater, and I would be set.

I imagined red velvet ropes surrounding a well-lit, glass display case with a perfectly round hole cut into the side. I imagined four bare, metal prongs inside the case that had once held a massive diamond. I imagined flashbulbs popping, and hound dogs sniffing, and a junior detective in a trench coat sheepishly admitting to a chief detective in a three-piece suit that he still hadn't found anything. One of them had a cigar and a gold pocket watch. I think it was the chief.

I pressed the fingertips of my right hand onto the surface of the glass coffee table in front of my chair and closely studied the grease smudges they left behind. There wasn't a ridge or groove among them. I laughed the airy, wheezy, sinister laugh of a master criminal, and I pressed the fingertips of my left hand onto the table so I would have normal fingerprints to compare the blank ones to.

That's when it occurred to me that all the skin was missing from all my fingertips, and I no longer have any fingerprints.

Now I don't feel like a master criminal. I mostly just feel sad.

I'll still probably grow the mustache, though.