FicWad

I originally entered this into a short story competition. Ididn't win, but I did learn a lot about maths and obsessive compulsive disorder.



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a+b = a = phi
a b





Sunday's hand creates a golden section in relation to his remaining arm. A ratio of 1.61. Phi. The Divine Proportion.

I know this because I am gifted in the field of mathematics and I am holding Sunday's severed forearm in front of me, close to my eyes. This scenario had been carefully engineered, but I have forgotten my reading glasses. Blood is now seeping though my tweed blazer despite the tourniquet.

I can be absent minded when focusing on important tasks. Sunday knows this. I start to count.







Sunday did not know of me as "Mad Math", "Psychopath Math" or even "Matthew Malkovitch" when he approached me on his first day at our university many years ago, right cuff pinned to right shoulder. Striding over to me, he placed his paperback book on my desk and offered me his hand.

"How did you loose the arm?" I'd asked.

"Car accident. Nothing special." He'd replied.

Sunday's blonde hair was long and knotted and over one shoulder.

"Why no prosthesis?"

"Because I'm not a liar," He'd said, evenly. "I'm a masochist. And I've heard that you always hurt the thing you love."

Sunday's grey eyes were staring at the pencil behind my ear. Sunday's one hand was on my desk.

"So perhaps you can come to love me?" he asked.

Sunday's bitter laugh as he sat down next to me.







The Golden Ratio- Phi- The Divine proportion- can be found in every perfect thing ever created. Fingers. The Nautilus shell. Human teeth. Sunday would let me measure his divine proportions while I let him read his poetry to me.

As I removed the thermometer from the zip-lock bag in my breast pocket and placed it under his tongue, wanting to count his teeth again, I discovered that the head I held in my arm was a perfect thirty-seven degrees Centigrade. I discovered that his hand on the back of my neck was a perfect thirty-seven degrees Centigrade.

The saliva in our mouths was a perfect thirty-seven degrees Centigrade.

The orphaned arm I had never dared to measure was a perfect thirty-seven degrees and wrapped around my neck.







The golden ratio is even found in a peaceful human heartbeat. I placed electrodes on Sunday's exposed chest as my fingers ran through the blonde hair flipped to one shoulder. The ECG pattern showed me perfect, golden Fibonacci numbers.

Sunday was perfect. I knew this.

His pupils aligned with the corners of his smile.

But, as usual, I felt compelled to find reassurance.

I found myself concluding that the extension cord would make a suitable tourniquet.







I place a lock of Sunday's blonde hair in a zip-lock bag. Icount the thirty-seven strands in my head as I wipe at the tiles of my father's surgery again. The grouting is still stained dark.

Sunday, at least, would conclude that I had come to love him after all.