By Josie Finlay Joe Ribton

Guest Post: Wonderful Superstar Nails: Varnished In Blood

Oh reader, reader, you’re in for a treat. This SCAB is not just any SCAB. It’s a guest SCAB. And who might that guest be, you may ask. Well, let me tell you that he’s sick, he’s twisted and he makes a mean beef goulash. It is an HONOUR, a PRIVILEGE, and an utter, utter delight to welcome Joe L’Amie Burgoyne Ribton to this hallowed corner of the internet. Today he’ll be lavishing us all with a semi-biographical account of my life, based on my alternative instagram account, @wonderfulsuperstarnails. Take it away, Joe !

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Picture this: A black tie gala, face masks, champagne on the dance floor by the live band, I saunter through the crowd breezing past my contemporaries – my lessers – when I see them. They wrap around a prosecco flute like dragon talons around an enchanted goblet, I am under their spell. These nails flirted with me avec crimson lothario sex and bespoke curvature. I fled the room, breathing so heavily that I doubled over on the pavement. Never before had this earth provided me with such acute aesthetic asphyxiation, I feel like I’m about to have a nosebleed. Like a junkie, an instant addict, I rush back in to behold them some more, but they were gone…

Months pass, I bite my nails down to the finger, they regrow, I bite them down five times more. I must keep them chaste and devoid of colour should I find myself in the wake of those red dragon beauties once again. I walk the streets, past coffee shops with ghastly nails in the window grasping desperately at double triple mocha lattes, a light blue, eggshell, mauve – I vomit at the threshold of a Pret a Manger. Why must I suffer? Those nails pierced my soul with rouge, and now I am blue; separated on another plane of this third dimension.

I place a lone hand on the table, with my other I take up a bic ballpoint pen. Slowly, I begin to carefully poke the space between my fingers, one gap at a time. At the end of each crossing I speed up, thrusting downward with increasing confidence. A guttural sound begins to emanate from deep within me. Soon I am screaming as I furiously stab chips of the table away fuelled by irrepressible disdain at the world. None of the other people in Pizza Express could look me in the eye. My arms motor along with clinical precision, I feel so alive.

The adrenaline, a rush of blood to the fingers. It was in this moment I knew that I would only sate the hunger left within me by those red delicious mandible ends that midsummer night with a hobby, a side-hustle, an extra-curricular activity so depraved it would set me on a path to notoriety.

When I ‘collected’ my first hand rain had been collecting in the drains of our city for a solid week. Every person with any sense had retreated into their homes, waiting in their pens for a wolf to come and disrupt. I stepped into the ‘Your Nails’ Salon, snapping a picture for the gram as I entered. In the far corner a small oldish woman was panting as she filed down a disgusting big toe. The owner screamed at her to work faster as she sipped on cucumber water. Cradling said water were two sets of pristinely kept nails. Calling my name in morse as their mother of pearl glitters. I slip the old lady a fiver and tell her to go lose herself in the Berlin christmas market outdoors. She puts on an anorak and scurries off as the customer removes the compress from her eyelids. Before her eyes can adjust I am on her like a snake, coiling and suffocating as I twist into position. With my legs straddling her face I grip her arms between my thighs. I take the bolt cutters out of my nike drawstring and go to work. Ich bin ein murderer.

That’s how it started, that’s the harsh truth behind the famed wonderfulsuperstarnails instagram account; “Celebrating glamorous disembodied hands”. I made my way across the continent collecting beautiful hands and/or fingers, and my collection surpassed anything I could have expected. Now 162 followers and their 324 hands make my account the most celebrated disembodied hand collection on instagram. I think I am going to need a bigger freezer!