The Rubber Arm

My partner and I watched an episode of a magic show where the magician demonstrated how people can be led to believe that a rubber arm is theirs, while dissociating from their own arm. He placed a divider on the table, in front of the person's left shoulder, and the person would place his/her left arm behind the divider, out of his/her sight. A rubber arm would then be placed on the other side of the divider, in view of the person. A plastic piece would be draped over the person's shoulder and the divider, further obscuring the view of the person's own arm, only showing the rubber arm protruding from beneath the plastic sheet.
The magician then used a feather to tickle and touch both the fake and real arms in the same spots, at the same time, and soon synced the person's brain to believe that when the magician touched the rubber arm, the person could feel it. There were more steps like this to help the person believe that the rubber arm was his/hers.
So all in all, we watched the episode, and were intrigued. We immediately set about purchasing a life-like rubber arm, and we conducted the experiment at home.
It worked pretty well for my partner, but exceptionally well for me. I could really feel that the rubber arm was mine, and I didn't even notice that my partner had snapped a rubber band on my real arm, during the whole process. But I felt every bit of sensation on the rubber arm, even the soft touch of the cool air from the air-conditioning.
It was incredible, and we were really impressed. But after a couple of hours of fooling around with the arm, we got tired and put it aside, on the living room table, then went to bed.
I woke up in the middle of the night, unsure of what woke me. I was in a sleepy fog, and didn't want to move from my comfortable spot beneath the comforter. While rubbing my eyes, I turned to the left to check if my partner was asleep. My heart stopped for a beat when I caught sight of my left arm, lying limply next to me. The arm that was rubbing my left eye abruptly stopped, and flopped onto the bed. I stared at it, unmoving, the icy realisation dawning on me. It was the rubber arm from before.
My own left arm started moving to my will again, and I used both arms to rudely shake my partner awake. I shared with him what had happened, and we both quickly left the bed, staring at the rubber arm in fear.
We spent the next hour discussing it in the living room, and came to the conclusion that I must have been having a nightmare. We couldn't explain how the rubber arm got there, but in our desperation to find some normalcy in the situation, we concluded that I must have sleepwalked, or perhaps we left it in the bed without remembering. We were really tired before we went to bed, after all.
To ease our minds, my partner took the rubber arm and threw it down the rubbish chute. We went back to bed.
The night passed without any issues, but in the morning, when we were headed out to the usual work space we rent, the rubber arm was at our door step. We were terrified, but somehow managed to convince ourselves that it was a joke. Or that my partner had dropped it and not actually thrown it away in his sleep-addled state. We both knew it wasn't true, but it was good to have something sane to hold onto. My partner picked it up and we threw it in a dumpster outside our apartment.
For the rest of the day, we tried to put it out of our minds.
When we headed back that night, the arm was no where to be found, and we breathed a sigh of relief.
We went about our business, believing the whole saga to be over, and went to bed a little past midnight, after plenty of wine.
I never sleep well when I've had wine, and tend to wake up at different times in the night. But for that, I am now deeply grateful. Because when I woke up last night, I saw the rubber arm at the foot of the bed, trying to pull both itself, and the knife it was holding, onto the bed. I screamed, a shrill ring of horror, and my partner startled awake. He took one look at my horrified expression, looked down at the arm, and sprang into action. The arm had stabbed the knife into the edge of the bed, and was trying to use its grip on the knife to maneuver itself onto the bed. My partner grabbed the arm and tugged forcefully, and it released its hold on the knife. holding it by the end, he held it as far from himself as possible, the rubber fingers pointed away from him, and darted outside, yelling for me to bring a lighter and some oil.
I hurriedly grabbed both from the kitchen, and ran after him, down the stairs.
He found a dumpster. He placed the writhing arm on the floor, stepped on it to secure it, and poured oil all over the arm. He bent forward to set it on fire.
Suddenly my arm felt glazed over with oil. I could feel the lighter coming closer toward my skin, and I gasped in pain. He looked at me, pausing with the lighter near the rubber arm.
I told him about how I could feel it, and he froze, eyes wide with uncertainty and fear. He shut the flame from the lighter off, and picked up the arm. I immediately stopped feeling the sensations of the rubber arm.
We decided to bring the arm back up to our place. We placed it in our safe, and locked it in.
We just went out to get some heavy velvet drapes, and we've covered the safe in them, to tune out the sound of the arm banging against the safe door.
I'm not sure what to do. I'm terrified that it'd get out somehow, or again link my mind to its sensations, and do something painful to itself, or something along those lines, to make me open the safe. I think it was trying to replace my real arm with itself when we caught it with the knife. Or perhaps it was trying to kill us both. I'm not sure.
We've been researching online and considering hiring an exorcist, but at the same time, I'm not too sure if that is what is happening here. Does anyone have any idea what's going on, and what we can do to stop this?
Category:Weird
Category:Items/Objects