“It’s so simple, you just put your fingers like this and…” their fingers snapped sharply, as they always did, like they’d known how to do this forever.

“Okay, okay, so like this…” I tried to mimic their motion but it was like my fingers were a broken lighter, without even so much as a fizzle. “Fuuuck, what’s with my fingers?” I groaned.

My friend shrugged, “Your hands soft?”

“I guess? Do they need to be rough?”

“Mm, maybe it helps…”

“What? You make a deal with a devil to do this?”

“Uh, no, this is beneath their pay grade.”

“Okay, so what, go climb some trees to get my hands all rough and snappy?”

“Hey, I’m down to go climbing trees if you are, but honestly, why all the fuss over this anyway? We’re not kids anymore. Nobody gives a shit if you can snap your fingers.”

“Yeah but that’s just it, how do you get to our age not being able to? What if I have kids and wanna teach’em? Send’em to you?”

“Oh hell no. Okay look, some people, they can just do it, like me, that’s why I suck at teaching it, others…” their face grew serious as they considered how to proceed, “…do make a sort of deal. Not with the devil though, like I said, beneath them.”

“So…What, to a lesser demon?”

“I don’t know that you’d call them that, but…I guess? I’ve never had to deal with them.”

“Ookay, let’s say I believe you, any idea how to go about it?”

They extended their hand, “I think it goes something like this.”

I extended mine, and they grasped it. “So do we shake, or…?” They tightened their grip on my hand. “Uh…?” It began to hurt. “Hey, cut it out, you don’t want to show me, I get it!”

Their face was blank, as if in a trance. Their grip somehow grew even tighter, my knuckles began to pop, and I was wincing with each one, as it felt as if the bones were being smashed together.

I tried to pry my hand out of their grip to no avail, and as I struggled, suddenly my other hand’s fingers just…Snapped. Like that. And my friend was out of their trance, letting go of my hand, which was sore as hell, but…Fine?

“Hey, did you just…Snap?” my friend asked, as if nothing had happened.

“Y…Yeah, I think so,” I snapped the fingers of my other hand as though I always could, and my friend started to snap theirs when their face suddenly twisted in pain and we realized…The hand that had been gripping mine so hard before, had two broken fingers. The snaps weren’t from my hands at all…They had been from my friend’s.