# S410: HANGNAIL By [Andrew Shanahan](https://paragraph.com/@shanahan) · 2023-04-10 --- Sasha turned her hand towards her face and inspected her nails. They were perfect. Four red cuticles looked back at her and she suppressed a tiny shudder of joy at the sight of them. She inspected her thumbs. Left – perfect. Right – perfect. But. But just to the right of the nail there was a tiny fleck of skin standing up ruining the picture. She took brushed it with her other thumb hoping that it was a crumb, or a piece of dust. The tiny flap of skin stayed resolutely in place. She bent down and examined it closer. It was a tiny little triangle of skin, a little flap that had erupted from the thumb itself. She nudged it with her other thumb again and she could see how it was a little chunk of skin that had been knocked loose somehow. Huh. She turned her nails towards her again – perfect. She decided to get on with her day and ignore it. She went into the kitchen and flicked the coffee machine into life. She took down mugs and went to the fridge for milk. The coffee machine slowly ground its way through the process and after twenty seconds or so a drip of coffee splashed down in the carafe. Sasha turned her nails towards her. Four beautiful red visages. She held her thumb up towards her face. Perfect. If she could ignore the tiny little flap of imperfection. It was so small! So insignificant! It didn’t matter at all. She brushed at it with her other thumb. Each pass nettled the flap and made saliva pool in her mouth. She brushed over it and over it until she picked the flap up a little more. Then it was proud enough that she could dig the fingernails of her other hand in behind it. The coffee dripped into the pot. Sasha gradually teased the flap up. She winced as it came up. Her face held in a rictus of pain as she teased the thread to her knuckle. In its wake the skin left a thin line of blood. She continued to pull. The flap sped up her hand and across the contours of her wrist. With an expression of horror welded in place, she pulled the thread up her arm and    \*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\* S410 stands for Starter for 10 and it’s a daily live-writing meditation that I do in 10 minutes. Each piece I write teaches me something. Sometimes what it teaches me is that I suck. Other times it opens up an entire universe. Each S410 is a 1/1 original. Owners of S410 pieces will have access to a range of benefits, from story airdrops, special performances and even the opportunity to be killed in my longer fiction works. --- *Originally published on [Andrew Shanahan](https://paragraph.com/@shanahan/s410-hangnail)*