Phantom Itch

A Short Horror Fiction.

It’s hereditary you know, I remember her saying. I had them, so you will too. This hardly seemed fair; I didn’t ask to be here and that was already a cross I bore in her eyes. The life ruiner. Thrust into the world naked and afraid, each year a new fear.

I squirmed uncomfortably in my seat & she exhaled through her nose into the plate in front of her. Not much to be done but get on with it.

I am not remarkable, and this is not remarkable. Sometimes I feel like a werewolf, knowing this is living in me and I have to ride it out when it comes. There’s a certain peace I’ve found in surrendering to that. I have never been a person to fight, to cry, to fall apart about the burden of it all. I have simply existed, so has it. There aren’t bargains to be made with something intrinsically part of you - there aren’t bargains to be made in a world that wasn’t expecting you in the first place. There is something calming to think about being a little bubble in the ocean, bobbing in the waves and accepting things as they come.

Once you get it it never leaves you you know? It lies dormant, living along your nerves until it comes again.

In that moment I imagined a rotting sloth, stringing along my nerves, waiting to claw its way out again.

She was a woman of few words, and they often lived in the same way, along my nerves, entrenched in my mind. I couldn’t resent what was never there.

How do you catch it? Love, it hides in love. In the kisses, it burrows in and makes itself at home, this answer never satisfied me. I would wake up from a feverish night, gore under my nails and my head full of terrors; this does not feel like a gift from love.

Is that why I have it? You loved me too much? I winced, the phantom itch gnawed at me. Yes, she said soberly, I loved you too much. Nerves snap and sizzle in the exertion of resisting acknowledgement. If I think it to be true, then it is. And it cannot be.

Late nights spent hunched over, wracked with the guilt and grief of love, the heavy stones of fear crushing my bones in those quiet moments of ice packs held to skin until the ice turned to fire. Solid pustules felt churning, furrowing flesh, tearing up against the skin, screaming to break through and breathe the air. Why was it so wrong to try and liberate what wanted to be free? I traced delicate fleshy folds with the tip of my finger, I could feel the roiling boil of vesicles, heavy with infectious misery, begging to be loosed. You weren’t supposed to be here, you weren’t supposed to know this kind of wretchedness. She grimaces a tight lipped smile, this is no one’s fault but your own.

As a child, I saw it on others. Skin peppered with weeping crusts where it tunneled and burned its way to daylight, to snatch a breath of air. Don’t be rude, don’t stare, you’ll be the death of me. Some things you cannot be inquisitive about. If she couldn’t bury my body, she wanted to kill the parasitic curiosity that plagued her. Bright eyes, brighter thoughts.

Another night fell, my body weighty with the burden of fear, of love, of fever. She could see I was in pain, and I knew somewhere primally it hurt her, but there was nothing to be done, it was too late. Every breath laced with the heat of febrile burning, I slumped over the hand mirror. I could feel it, it was happening. The flesh was breaking away, dissolving to the caustic virulent plague eating away at my softest parts. I squatted, parted folds with shaking hands. Squirming between my fingers, a bulb, firm and immutable, dancing like an olive in a drink. A slit began in the centre, stretched across the width, dazed I squinted, watching in terror as the lips split and parted, pulling wider. Paralysed in terror, the lips pursed and stretched open, like the maw of a creature that has never known light. An hole, empty and bleeding like a gunshot wound. My legs gave out from underneath me, I had lost time mesmerised by the terror unfolding in front of me. I loved you too much rang out in my head like a whip cracking.

Hands shaking, meat hole throbbing, a new strength forged at the hearth of the curiousity that cannot release you from witnessing a car accident, I looked down again. From darkness, a globule of white pushed forward, crowning in a bulging dome. A bright blue iris rolled from behind, coming into focus. An eyeball. It stared at me, and I stared back.

Phantom Itch on a paper bag with oil pastels

I write often about the other of being chronically ill, my ten years in the adult industry, the eldest daughter thought experiment and attempts at scraps of poetry and fiction. It would be lovely to have you here <3

~ Z