The Best of World SF by Lavie Tidhar (children's ebooks free online .txt) 📕

and vigilance must be exercised. This symptom can also be exploited to constrain restless patients in a painless and harmless way. This is easily achieved by keeping them in a well-lit room filled with empty glass jars.

Red Lice

By far the most troublesome and sometimes dangerous symptom, the red lice appear once the hair fall associated with first-cycle mainstream typhoid is complete. Aggressive and persistent, the actual degree of severity varies from patient to patient. Some experience mild itching while more severe cases have included blisters and craters which tend to form along the side of the head and at the nape of the neck. These are often painful and susceptible to infections.

The lice never leave the host body though they are known to migrate to the armpit and groin regions. The color of the lice varies; some are a bright cherry red, while others have been a dull rust-brown and even a yellowish-orange. They are known to move very quickly, albeit in circles. When startled, they tend to circulate themselves into the ear, which for some reason, proves to be fatal for the lice (regular ear checkups and cleanings to remove red lice carcasses is imperative).

It is not advisable to remove these lice manually, as they have been known to slip under the fingernails. When they are trapped underneath the nail, they tend to engorge themselves until they explode (for further reading, please see Red Lice Removal, p. 2 and The Disease and Art Series – Frozen in Time – Impressions and Explorations of Lice Nail Art and Motif, p. 83000287). The application of coconut oil, kerosene and DDT only cause the lice to migrate to other parts of the body where they stay until the offending substance has been washed away. The only effective way to deal with this lice infestation is

a) treatment of superficial blisters, rashes or craters

b) numbing the skin to dull or eliminate any feelings of itchiness or pain. This can be done through the application of different lotions or by ingesting tranquilizers on a daily basis.

Broken Hand Syndrome

Often misdiagnosed as the Assumption That You Can Bend and Break Light, this symptom manifests a number of false signs that the hand is broken when in fact it is not. The hand will appear swollen, the skin will be discolored in parts and the nails may become black or dark purple. Though this will not cause the patient any pain, the affected hand will cease to have any feeling and become deadweight. It will have a tendency to drag and in many instances, the patient will forget it is there, leading to accidents, the most common being hands getting caught in doors.

The Old Man with the Third Hand

Kofi Nyameye

Ghana

When I came to put this together Kofi Nyameye only had two short stories published, but I fell in love with the oddness and atmosphere of ‘The Old Man With The Third Hand’ immediately. Kofi hails from Ghana, and is part of the new wave of African SF writers emerging now. I am very excited to see what he does next, but in the meantime, settle in for an unsettling tale of perception…

The old man with the third hand sat on the beach and watched the waves wash over the sand.

I’d seen him before. Everyone had. Some people assumed he was crazy. Others thought he was just lonely, sitting out there by himself day after day, staring at where the ocean seemed to merge with the sky. Not very many people found the third hand growing out of his back terribly interesting. This was, after all, the town that had produced the infamous Inside-Out Girl.

All the same, there was something about the old man with the third hand, something about the way he sat in the same old rocking chair, rocking back and forth almost in sync with the waves that made the townspeople stay away from him. Nobody ever went down to the stretch of beach on which the old man sat and stared at the sea.

But I did.

I had to, you see. I was playing catch with Deidre, who is a terrific catcher but can’t throw a ball to save her life. The ball went sailing over the top of my head, bouncing down the rocks toward the beach, and I followed it without thinking.

The rocks were hard and slippery with lichen, and the descent was difficult. More than once I nearly went sprawling. I should have turned back, I know, but that ball was the only thing my brother gave me before he went off to fight the Frog Men from Outer Space, so I did not turn back and soon found myself on the beach.

The sand here was almost unnaturally smooth. There were no human footprints like there were on every other beach I’d been to. It was easy to pretend I was in the middle of the Sahara, except for the sea.

I didn’t find my ball.

I searched and searched for what felt like minutes but was probably only… well, minutes. I saw no sign of my ball. All the while the old man with the third hand gently rocked in his chair and watched me.

I walked up to him, hands behind my back, tears gathering in my eyes.

‘Um, sir?’ I asked, my head hanging, my eyes fixed on the ground, on the long expanse of sand broken only by the footprints I left behind me and the deep divots the old man’s rocking chair left in it. ‘I… I lost my ball and can’t find it. I was wondering if you’d seen it?’

For a long time the old man did not say anything. The silence spun itself out until I lifted my head and looked him in the face. And for a long time after that I only stared.

His face was hidden in the shadow cast by the wide-brimmed hat sitting on his head, and perhaps it was that interplay of shadows on the lines of his face that made it