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LEMONY SNICKET

Something You Ought to Know

“The right hand doesn’t know what the left is doing” is a phrase that refers to times when people ought to know, but don’t know, about something that is happening very close to them. For instance, you ought to know about the man who watches you when you sleep.

He is a quiet man, which is why you don’t know about him.

You don’t know how he gets into your home, or how he finds his way to the room in which you sleep. You don’t know how he can stare at you so long without blinking, and you don’t know how he manages to be gone by morning, without a trace, and you don’t know where he purchased the long, sharp knife, curved like a crescent moon, that he holds in his left hand, sometimes just millimeters from your eyes, which are closed and flickering in dreams.

There are, of course, things he does not know about you, either. He does not know what you are dreaming about, but then it may be that he does not care. His clothes are rumpled and have odd rips in them here and there. One of his coat sleeves is longer than the other, and this may be to cover his right hand. The sleeve is long enough that if you were to wake up and see him, which you never do, you might not see that his right hand is strange and crooked. It would take a while, in the darkness of the room, to notice that it is missing three fingers.

He comes every night. His right hand does not know what the left is doing.