Decisions Ch. 01

Chapter 1: "Set in Stone"

Alli sat on a soft padded stool in front of her makeup mirror and sighed. She'd not slept very much for a couple of nights, now, and the decision she had finally made after years of denial had been, to her great surprise, one of the easiest things she'd ever done. Her stomach fluttered as she pursed her lips and frowned slightly in determination. Her intuition and her heart told her she was doing the right thing, but 10 years of shame and embarrassment cried out in panic, begging her to stop. For better or for worse, her life was about to change, and she hoped with all heart that she was ready.

When Alli was 14 years old, she was helping her father change a fuel pump in his Ford flatbed truck. The local mechanic, whom Daddy was too cheap to hire, had told him that the easiest way to change the pump was to unfasten the big bolts that held the bed to the frame and tilt the bed up so that the pump could be taken out the top of the tank. Her Daddy had just gotten the side of the bed propped up with a board and was searching for a cinder block to stabilize the weight when Alli had walked into the barn.

Fascinated by all things mechanical, Alli knelt beside the pickup and put her hands on the frame. The motion dislodged the board, and when her father had run around the stalls and saw his daughter, she was holding what was left of her arms up in the air and staring at them with a puzzled expression on her lovely face. Just before she passed out, she'd looked at Jim Olsen and said, "I'm so sorry, Daddy!"

To make a long story short, the fact that Jim was more focused on saving his daughter's life than anything was commendable, but short-sighted. Between the time the doctor at the small Georgia clinic asked Jim for the hands and the time he'd made it back to the farm in the Sherriff's howling police car, the farm dogs had made short work of the delicate presents they'd found on the floor of the milking barn. Jim Olsen returned to the clinic a defeated man.

Alli had come out of surgery several hours later minus her hands and several inches of her forearms. The board of the clinic had reckoned themselves lucky to get the young physician, and the success of Alli's surgery did nothing to dissuade them. As they healed, her stumps lost all traces of trauma save the hair-like suture lines the Doctor had placed so very carefully.

Every morning and every evening for eight years after that, Jim Olsen helped his daughter with her prosthetic hooks, and Alli valued her time with her father too much to tell him that she was far more than capable of dealing with her prosthetics herself, and could be in and out of her hooks in seconds.

There was no money for life-like hands; the farm demanded hard work from all its tenants, and Alli was expected to hold up her end of things, regardless of her handicap. Alli's mother was German, a taciturn, hard-working farm wife, and the sight of her daughter without her hooks offended her Teutonic sensibilities. She made it plain that Alli needed her industrial hooks to be productive, and insisted she wear them unless on her own, which was rare. The few times she had seen Alli without her hooks, she'd turned quickly away and told Alli to "Put herself together and get to work. The bills aren't going to pay themselves." Her answer to her daughter's developing breasts was tighter t-shirts and baggy clothing, which earned her jeers and merciless teasing from her peers at school.

With her father's help and her mother's ignorance, Alli excelled in school in spite of her conditions, and when she turned eighteen, she had already secretly graduated. Acceptance letters made their way to a post office box her father had procured for her in town, and a few days later, Jim Olsen put his only child on a bus to the University of Oregon, and went home to confront his wife.

Outraged that her husband would let her unpaid worker escape, Greta Olsen packed her meager belongings and bought a ticket for Munich, never to be seen again. Alli's father sold the farm and went to work on an oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico after sending Alli an address and account number. When she inquired about the number, she was told that the account contained over three million dollars from the sale of the farm and surrounding land. Her father sent cards and letters for a few years, but by the time she graduated with a degree in computer design and engineering, the contact had ceased.

Alli had been working for a large electronics company in Portland for about a year when she met Sam.

San Enfield was a creature of habit. He always arose at the same time, did his workout in his home gym at the same time, and was in his studio carving by 8:00 in the morning. Sam carved in stone, mostly marble and granite, other stone by request. His was an ancient art; he carved gargoyles, grotesques and other medieval figurines for churches and collectors. One of a handful of master stonecarvers left in the world, he worked by commission and was booked out years in advance.

This day found him in Portland to meet an old client to look at drawings for another commission. The meeting had gone well, and before she left to return to her home in the Seattle area, the client had given Sam a hefty reserve fee and a first class ticket to Vermont to select stone with her the following week. As he sipped his coffee and made some changes to his website, he noticed a woman looking over his left shoulder from a seat just behind him. She was so intent that when she noticed him looking back at her with a half smile, she jumped and brought a hand to her mouth in embarrassment. Except that it wasn't a hand, it was a prosthetic hook. Sam's cock surged into an erection at the sight.

"I'm so sorry to peep over your shoulder! I was taken by the carvings in the pictures. Please forgive me, I should mind my own business," she said and looked down at her own laptop. Not content to let the special encounter stop there, Sam responded. "Do you like stone carving?"

"Very much", she answered, recovering some of her dignity. "I admire the work and I admire very much the skill of the artisan."

Sam stood and put out his hand. "I'm Sam. Would you mind very much if I joined you? I could tell you about the carvings if you like."

The woman put out her right hook, almost daring Sam to flinch. He did not, and shook it softly. "I'd like that. My name is Alli. Do you know about carving?"

Sam moved his laptop and coffee to Alli's table and sat to her right. "I'd like to think so; it's my website we're looking at."

Alli burst into a soft, pleasant laugh, looked down at the table and then looked back up at Sam through her soft brown bangs, and in that instant his amputee fetish was subsumed, and he felt an urgency he'd never felt before.

The sunrise of the end of two solitary lives had risen over the distant horizon, and they were just beginning to feel the warmth of the light it was to shine upon them.

From that moment in the coffee shop, they were smitten with each other, and they began a heartfelt, although tentative courtship, the likes of which neither had ever experienced. Sam showed Alli his carving studio, and she'd spent a number of days sitting and watching him carve the glowing stone into shapes. She wondered how the coarse rock became satin smooth under Sam's careful violence, feeling it with her cheek instead of her metal fingers. Days turned into weeks, and they were both breathtakingly happy.

The one subject which never seemed to arise was Alli's amputations. She'd mentioned that she had had an accident when she was 14, and that had been that. Sam found himself content to be with her, and although he derived great pleasure from the fact that she was a double amputee, as well as watching her work with her hooks, he'd not asked to see her stumps and she had not offered. They had shared some intense petting sessions, and although both were anxious to take the relationship to the next level, neither wanted to take the first step.

Sam had been wrestling with his past as a devotee, and although he still visited some amputee websites occasionally, his attention was truly on Alli now.

For her part, Alli was agonizing over the ways she felt she could show Sam her stumps without disgusting him. Her mother's influence had never really left her, and she still felt ashamed of her stumps and what she felt was their hideous appearance. She was gripped by an intense sexual frustration made somewhat worse by her lust-filled evenings with Sam. She knew she was missing out on something, but she wasn't sure what, since masturbation had been condemned by her mother. She had engaged in some frustrating sessions when she was younger, but fulfillment had escaped her, since her hooks were not really suitable for self stimulation. Her stumps, a source of revulsion to her mother, were too short to effectively reach her genitals, and so became another disappointment to Alli as well. The only orgasmic feelings she had ever had were delivered quite by surprise as she sat on the out-of-balance washing machine to keep it from walking across the basement floor and unplugging itself.

After much soul-searching, Sam decided that he should bare his soul to Alli, and beg for her understanding. He felt that, based on his behavior toward her, his love for her and his need to have her in his life, he had to be totally honest. He explained this with a long letter that he had delivered to her via a mutual friend over a weekend that Alli had known he would be on the East coast. In the letter, he explained everything, asked her forgiveness for not being forthright with her, and set a time the following Monday to meet. He said that he would understand if she chose not to see him anymore, and hoped with all his heart that she would stay with him. He wanted her to have the time she needed to process the information in the letter and begged her not to think of him as cowardly for revealing his thoughts in a letter. He gave the letter to Mary, their friend. His eyes were tearing up and she could tell he was miserable but knew better than to ask why.

Mary had delivered the letter to Alli at around 6:00 Friday evening. She had explained how miserable Sam had looked, and that she hoped that whatever problems arose, they could overcome them.

Alli's hooks were shaking as she sat on the couch and tore open the letter. As she read through it, her emotions ranged from shock to anger to denial. After the fourth reading and the third glass of wine, she'd decided to take a shower and go to bed. She slid her blouse over her head and stepped out of her skirt. Her hooks slid under the waistband of her panties and she dropped them in the hamper in her bathroom. The front clasp on her bra was easy, and then she shrugged her hooks off for the ten-thousandth time. She stood in her bathroom naked and looked at herself, really looked. At five feet, six inches, she was average in height. Her brown hair was short for ease of care, although she would have liked to have it longer. Her green eyes were really quite striking with her olive skin. Her breasts were large, full and moved constantly, and she considered them her best part although they were somewhat more pendulous than she would have preferred, a fact she blamed on not wearing a bra until she was almost 19. Below her flat, toned stomach, the hair at her mound was darker than that on her head, and quite thick, which she disliked but felt helpless to remedy with her handicap.

Her handicap.

She looked at her stumps as they hung, carefully motionless. Her mother had insisted that Alli keep her stumps tight to her sides and still when she was without her hooks, so she didn't have to see them. With a frustrated howl, she began to wave them around in random circles and flap them like tiny, pitiful wings. Her breasts swayed and bobbed as she flipped her stumps and she began to laugh. Sam loved her stumps as much as her hated mother had disdained them. How strange was that? Alli sat on the toilet and peed, then put one hook on to wipe, since without her hook, her arm was too short to do the job. Brushing her teeth went normally and then she moved to the bed. When she grasped the smooth cool sheets with her stumps it occurred to her how much of her world she was missing by hiding inside her hooks. She took the letter between the butter-soft skin at the tips of her forearms, watching carefully as the ends deflected slightly where the skin was slightly longer than the bones. She felt the paper, smiling at the sensations and the sound as she rustled the page.

A change came over her as she read the page held in her stumps, and by the time she got to the end this time her heart began to swell, and she knew what she would do.

Alli sat on the softly padded stool in front of her makeup mirror and knew exactly what to do. In her heart and in her body, she was naked. She'd been to a spa over the weekend, and had had a full body wax including a Brazilian, a pedicure and a massage. Her hair had been cut into a more modern fashion that she could continue to style herself. Her brows were nicely arched and she had finally had a bra fitting. She was astonished to find that she was a 34D, and more surprised to find a bra that she could put on without her hooks. She put on her new bra, reaching around the front of her breasts one at a time and lifted her girls into position with her soft stumps. A silk short-sleeve blouse was next, in a deep green to match her eyes, and then a short but successful struggle with matching panties and a knee-length skirt. She spun in front of the mirror and was quite pleased indeed. Her eye caught the reflection of the package of nearly empty birth-control pills on the table, and her pulse quickened at the decision she'd made weeks ago.

Sam had spent a distracted and miserable weekend at a quarry in New England. He'd been abrupt and snippy with his customer and had felt the need to apologize to her. The plane ride home seemed interminable, and his home was cold and far too quiet. He was more worried than he had ever been in his life and his meeting with Alli (hopefully) was an hour away, in a neutral location which gave her the ability to leave if she felt the need.

He was still in his robe when the doorbell rang. He decided not to answer it and went into the bedroom to change. He stood in the door to his bathroom and suddenly felt dizzy enough to sit on the bed, and as hid did he began to weep. He leaned forward and sat with his elbows on his knees as huge sobs wracked his body. He felt the need to surrender, to give up on his life and curl into a ball from which he felt he might never emerge.

His body fought for some time to crawl to the surface of his misery. When he finally opened his eyes, he was astonished to see two delicate shoes in front of his own bare feet. He sat and stared at them for a minute, and then felt the gentlest of caresses on each side of his face, a pair of satiny stumps tilting his eyes up to gaze upon the most beautiful woman he had ever seen. Alli was crying too, and as the tears ran down her face she said, "My name is Alli, and I don't have any hands. Could I use yours for a while?"

Sam considered his answer carefully, and then whispered, "Only if you want them for a lifetime."

"It's a deal, Sammy. Now get dressed and let's go shopping, OK? I need a new wardrobe, and I'm counting on you to help me pick it out and help me try it on." She put out her right stump, and Sam took it and stood. Alli pulled him into a hug and kissed him soundly, her stumps meeting behind his neck and her breasts pressing warmly into his chest. She released him and turned toward the door, her skirt swirling nicely and her hips moving very pleasantly over her low heels. Sam found himself watching her twitching stumps as she walked away, and an erection swelled to life in his pants. Her stumps were everywhere as she walked toward the garage, picking up her purse, petting the Maine Coon cat, Max, on the back of the couch. They wiggled in time to her steps and rested against the outer curve of her breasts as she turned to face him at the car. She watched as his eyes travel over her, and her pulse quickened as she saw the love and maybe something more. He kissed her again as he took her arm to lower her into the car. As he leaned across her body to fasten the seat belt his wrist brushed her left breast, and he started to stammer an apology. As his eyes met hers, she took his hands in the crook of her elbows and held it against her breast. "It's OK Sam. You can touch me anywhere you like, okay?"

As he backed away from her and stood beside the car, he drug his palm and fingers back across her breast slowly, watching as her eyes fluttered closed and her mouth slackened a little. He shut the door gently and got in the car. On the highway, Alli chatted away merrily, causing Sam to laugh out loud more than once. After about two hours in the car, he pulled into a rest area and asked Alli if she needed to use the restroom.

"That would be great, Sam. Will you help me?"

"Of course, sweetness; let me get you out of the seatbelt." Alli was quite able to release the seatbelt herself, but felt a thrill as Sam came around the car to help her. As he reached in, she made sure her boob touched his arm, and that her stump caressed his shoulder. His warm hand found her stump and pulled gently to help her stand, and as they walked to the rest room, he kept his hand on the small of her back. The possessive gesture made Alli feel protected and cared for, and by the time they reached the women's rest room door, she was smiling.

There were no other cars in the parking lot, so Sam wasn't nervous as they entered. He helped Alli into the stall and drew her panties down after he cleaned the seat well. He was looking up at the ceiling as she began to pee, and as the hissing sound grew, she burst into laughter and he followed. By the time she was done, they were both roaring with laughter. Sam heard the door open just as he was wiping Alli's pussy, so he didn't spend as much time there as he would have liked to. When he said, "All done," he heard a gasp from the next stall, and the sound of clothes rustling. When he opened their stall door, a woman was backing out of the bathroom, her angry face pointed toward them.

"What kind of perverted things are you doing in this facility, you freak! I'm calling the State Police right now, and they're going to arrest you!" At that moment, Alli stepped out from behind Sam and waved her stumps at the woman with a smile. "OH!" the woman stammered. "I'm sorry, I didn't know you were handicapped, miss. I apologize for the misunderstanding," she said, blushing furiously.

"I'm not handicapped, Ma'am. I just don't have any hands. Bye now," Alli said cheerily, as they left. They'd only gotten a few yards when Alli slapped Sam on the arm with a stump and giggled, "Pervert!" They burst into fits of giggling again. After about another hour, Sam unwrapped a granola bar and gave it to Alli. He watched out of the corner of his vision as she maneuvered it between her stump tips, chewing happily until it was gone. "Oops, I have some melted chocolate here," Alli said. Sam looked just as Alli raised her left stump and began to lick a bit of chocolate from the tip. When she knew Sam was watching, she sucked the soft tip into her mouth and rolled it around, her eyes gone sultry and dark. Her tongue darted out and caressed her skin, wrinkling the tip of her stump as the tissue was compressed. "Tastes pretty good. Too bad there's no more chocolate on it," she said quietly.

"There could be chocolate someplace you can't lick, you know." Sam said, a growl in his voice. Alli leaned over toward him, and as she did, the seatbelt pulled her blouse taut. Her breasts were dramatically separated and enhanced by the pressure. Sam's eyes darted to her cleavage and Alli said, "Something wrong, darling?"