the last book I ever read (Black Wings Has My Angel (New York Review Books Classics)) by Elliot Chaze, excerpt seven)

from Black Wings Has My Angel (New York Review Books Classics) by Elliot Chaze:

I started to pick it up and place it on the stack with the others and it was then I saw the three glove fingers lying on the new-cut metal. They were made of yellow cotton with red stripes, and of cheap green suedey leather. I don’t remember whether Brannigan began screaming the instant the cut was made, but I remember the screaming getting louder and louder as I came around front and that there were three jets of blood coming out of what was left of his right hand. He was bent over, the hand down between his knees, squirting against the greasy floor. Spano leaned back against the work table, his tailbone on the edge of it, smoking. He was watching Brannigan with the faint frown of someone who’s just heard a corny joke.

And that’s how I became what Brannigan called a full-fledged power-shear operator.