There’s a constant skittering, hollow clatters, the gentle knock of a skull against the door.
They’re pretty well behaved really. There was this one guy in the building next door who had a mammoth skeleton that he couldn’t close the door on, so it used to just follow around behind him. Man, you’d know he was walking down the street by this constant knocking sound, loud enough to shake your knees. He went crazy, that guy. Always screaming for the hulking thing to leave him alone. That’s what happens when you don’t deal with your skeletons.
I took time to get to know mine after I saw what happened to him. That one, the one that’s scraping on the closet hinges, it hatched that time I turned someone down while in queen bitch mode. That one, with those elongated digits, it showed up when I didn’t send a message to someone I once loved.
Skeletons hate being shut away, they want to lick up every drip of negative emotion you leak. That’s how they grow, tastes of guilt and shame and fear and regret. Sometimes mine escape the closet and run cool and smooth over my skin, chittering with delight when guilt blooms over me. They’re a bloody nightmare to get back in until they’re fed. Once they’re high on emotion, they slump into snoring piles on the mattress. I can scoop up a softened handful of bones and dump them back in and close the door.
Sometimes I pull open the closet door to take them out. It’s kinda perverse, I know, but there’s something about staring right at the scabs of your past mistakes and wanting to peel them off till they bleed. Probably not so smart anymore, some of those old bones are getting hefty.
Some folks say they don’t have anything in their closets, that you can beam pure positivity and starve those skeletons till they shrink up and die. Seems pretty unlikely to me, seeing as they’re dead to start with.
But I do know that one of mine once disappeared.
It had been made up of all these articulated segments of regret, they’d click one after the other against the door when it slithered free in the night. I’d first heard it after I’d lost someone I love in a messy puddle of pride, confusion and misery. It was years before luck struck and healed the heart wound that had brought that skeleton into being. And then the next night there was no click of coils in the closet.
I don’t know if I could heal those other wounds. Don’t know if I’d want to try either. That might just land me with something bigger clawing its way out.
And there’s something to be said for my skeletons.
It was the retching that woke him. That, and the feeling that his lungs had been set on fire and scoured out with sand. Kilter dragged in air between strained coughs that spattered the ground black.
It took him a few wheezing minutes to realise that the hacking sounds weren’t all emerging from his own mouth. He opened gluey, dirt-filled eyes to see five of his staff were similarly occupied.
They were in the Blue Dining Room, sprawled on the well-polished boards – no, Kilter thought muzzily – what should have been well-polished boards, but these boards were clouded and dusty. The room looked peculiarly dark, the window panes letting in only a small amount of grubby light.
They’d been in here to discuss the upcoming gala in celebration of the princess’ sixteenth birthday, when whatever it was had hit them. His body felt weak, his legs barely kept him upright. He stared at the white faces in front of him and abruptly dragged himself together.
‘Right. We need to check room by room, if we were affected by this sickness, perhaps others have been too. I’ll head to the Royal Chambers; split up and work your way through the ground floor. Get others to help -’ He broke off.
Wailing screams were coming through the open doorway.
Kilter wobbled his way into the Great Hall, having sent the others on their way. A few serving staff were slumped against the oak length of the table that ran through the centre of the hall. They turned blurred, puzzled eyes to him as he walked toward the huge fireplace that dominated the far wall.
Mrs Napfas, the head butler, was crouched in the fireplace, skirts streaked with black smudges as she held a small figure to her breast.
Kilter knelt and reached out a hand to the woman’s shoulder. Her cries had become nothing more than a rambling, aching string of denials.
She pulled away from his touch with a moan, and clutched the body tighter. And it was a body, he saw. Limp and still. With a head that resembled a burnt match end. The boy’s name was Tallo, and he had been so very proud to take on duties last autumn, lighting lamps and fires. It appeared that he had been tending the Great Hall fireplace when the sleeping sickness had fallen upon him, and he had tumbled forward into the fire he had so lovingly built up.
Tallo was not the only victim of this strange sickness.
The gardeners had suffered more than most, their skin had been strangely beaten and burnt until it was curiously grey leather, and most had lost fingers and toes to what seemed to be frostbite.
It had taken hours to find the master gardener. A kitchen boy spotted a limb buried in the bizarre wall of thorns that had sprung up around the palace circumference. After shearing away what they could, the man’s body lay pale and punctured on the lawn, drained of life by the myriad thorned snakes that wove in and out of his body.
Two washermen had been found crushed beneath a curiously crumbled wall. The head cook had been found dead with a terrible slice to his wrist. The bodies of two bathers were pulled from copper bathtubs. At least five of Kilter’s staff never awakened, presumably due to the head wounds that they seemed to have incurred through violent falls. And several of those who had awoken in one piece were now coughing blood.
He’d done his best to keep the staff functioning, but there was no way to hold back the murmurs of fear: this had been retribution, they must have done something to deserve it, the deserving had lived – Mrs Napfas had nearly gouged the eyes out of the sanctimonious chamber maid who spouted that last one.
The royal family, meanwhile, were uncharacteristically quiet. When Kilter had attended them earlier, he had been ordered to depart and to take the chamber servants with him.
He returned that evening, wearied by the deaths and the increasing fear that this sleeping sickness might have spread beyond the palace, that his wife and daughter might –
The door to the Princess’ chamber opened and the Queen stepped out, shutting the door behind her.
‘Kilter! The floor is disgusting, get someone up here to clean.’
Kilter’s face remained blank, ‘Yes, Ma’am.’
From behind the Queen, the door rattled and the sound of furious shrieking slid around its edges.
The Queen pursed her mouth and tapped her fan against her hand.
‘I trust I have your complete confidence, Kilter?’
He gave another nod, managing not to wince at the sound of pounding fists on the door.
‘The Princess is going through a difficult time, Kilter. The, er, gentleman prince who awakened her, and indeed awakened us all, did so with unexpected vigour. Vigour that resulted in his leggings being around his ankles, shall we say,’ she fanned herself as a flush rose over her cheekbones, ‘My daughter, hysterical madam that she is, has refused to marry the young man.’
She paused. The door gave another thud as something broke on its opposite side.
‘The King is ensuring that the gentleman does not leave our company until the matter is settled. And I dare say confirming his pedigree.’
The Queen sighed. ‘Still, we’re awake! Curse broken, we can put it all behind us now. The staff are expected to return to their duties, Kilter. No more unseemly hysteria.’
He gave yet another nod, then hesitated, ‘Curse, Ma’am?’
‘The sleeping curse, Kilter.’ She said it as though it were a stupid question. ‘All rather tiresome but there are worse ways to spend a hundred years!’ She gave a thin laugh, ‘A rather extended beauty sleep, one might say.’
He watched her glide away to the royal chamber. And clamped down on his own rising bubble of hysteria.
One hundred years.
One hundred years.
Impossible.
Kilter put out a hand to grasp the wall (tapestried with a rather fetching myrtle tree).
He had kissed his wife and daughter a fond farewell only yesterday. They were only to be away for a week.
One hundred years.
***
There was no escaping the truth, once the first carriages of curious city dwellers arrived. Their declarations of welcome for the slumbering palace were an unconvincing veneer for gossipmongering.
Kilter broke it to his staff bluntly and gave them no room to mull before assigning them to their duties. They would grieve later.
The thorn hedge was torn down, popping with cherry red sparks as treacherously springy bundles were heaved into the burners. Dirt and dust were chased from room to room, blackened silver laid out for polishing, the mummified contents of pantries replaced with fresh produce from the city.
And then the Governor arrived. She was attended by a full coterie of officials who wore identical sneers of derision, their garments impossibly bright against the drab greys and faded browns of the castle.
Though her staff made it clear that the palace was a pathetic remnant of a former age, they seemed rabid for gossip. The city was simply desperate to know the truth behind the palace’s disappearance and awakening.
The city had assumed that the palace had been swept by plague, and thus the thorn hedge had been secured as a no-trespassing zone monitored by the Governor’s guard. An eager courtier admitted that the current Governor had made multiple attempts to get through the thorns – a palace would have been a useful tool in the battle to legitimise herself as ruler of the kingdom.
She had been white-faced at the word that someone else had succeeded, let alone a prince of the neighbouring kingdom that had been toying with annexation plans since the palace had fallen.
The Governor had no intention of ceding control to the Queen. Her family’s influence had kindled in the days of confusion that followed the disappearance of the palace. There was no way she would allow ancient, dusty, and unnecessary monarchs to take back power.
The Princess meanwhile, such a child! To refuse a marriage with the only man ever likely to want such a poor match. And they’d heard that she was still refusing to leave her chamber. Didn’t bode well for the fate of the kingdom.
Kilter watched the tales of intrigue spool out across the Great Hall, gritted teeth held behind a smooth facade. His eyes never moved from the haunting mass of the fireplace.
These men and women meant no real harm, perhaps, but how could they lust after a story such as this? One of death, rape, endless loss.
He allowed himself to drift into memories of his family.
Anxiety was small and wrinkly when he nestled into my chest cavity.
Two giant eyes goggled outward at the world beyond my body, decided it wasn’t for him, and he settled back inside.
Now full-grown with a handsome sheen, Anxiety makes himself felt.
He doesn’t like breathing into armpits on trains, or overhearing people who roll anger around their mouths. He doesn’t like navigating new places, or new people.
Sometimes he doesn’t like leaving the flat.
Two unsteady feet hold my stomach in a death grip, with a squeeze-claw-squeeze when he shifts.
He flutters gusty wings in agitation, fluffing against lung and making it harder to draw breath.
And then there’s the head bobbing. An endless tapping that fills my gullet and knocks again and again on my chest wall.
He’ll calm when he’s talked to, sung to, or breathed at.
And he’s as greedy as his out-of-body brethren, deflating when fed.
The Pain Killer was born for the second time when his family died.
Or more accurately, after he had watched his wife, children, parents and siblings rot to pieces in front of him. Their screams had been just another sound in the hell that had become their village. One after another, no matter the water poured between cracked lips, the bandages placed over festering flesh. There was nothing he could do.
And when his oldest child finally passed, and he looked down upon himself and saw the rot beginning to spread across his tanned torso, he began to laugh. He wrapped his shaking form around the stinking remains of his loved ones and he gave himself away to the void.
The void had sent him back.
He now wore a thick grey fur cloak, a long way from the thin woven clothes his wife had made for him when he had lived before. A continent away, centuries past, but the loss burned fresh within his body.
He had spent weeks journeying to this town. As he approached, a familiar wailing rose from inside the walls. The snow on the road was splattered with red.
He could see the pain even from this distance, a dark miasma in a frenzy above the buildings. Meaningless slaughter had released the pain that had been held in those bodies, leaving it to dart and swirl until it found a target amongst the living.
Though pain could be generated by humanity, it could not easily be removed from the world. It might transform into grief, or physical pain, or mental anguish, it might linger for weeks or decades, moving from host to host. But it would not naturally dissipate.
The Pain Killer was one of the only ones left with the knowledge of how to ground pain. He had met others at major catastrophes, their interactions limited to professional nods of acknowledgement. But there seemed to be more and more pain erupting across the world, and fewer and fewer of them left to face it.
A light-haired young man had his hands pressed to the rough stone of the town wall. His head was bent, back heaving with deep retches interposed with sobs. Pain roiled around him, an impossible amount attempting to burrow its way in.
The Pain Killer kept his distance. He inhaled, and began to draw the filaments away from the bent figure, bracing himself against the lashing anguish. He channelled the darkness into the ground below, trapping the writhing mass in depths warmed by the Earth’s core. As he worked, the figure of the young man unbent, still burdened by grief but no longer maddened by it.
The Pain Killer eyed the young man. There were so many here that could be born into another life. Into this life. He could taste rage, grief, blood in the air. And there was more and more pain in the world, spreading from man to man like pestilence.
And yet even for the sake of the world, he would not have another be born again as he had been. He would not cause another to ‘live’ as he lived.
She tasted lies young. Much younger than most other children of the town, who were strategically warned by mothers and nursemaids that if you lied, a four-headed serpent with teeth as long as your arm would bite your tongue clear off. And you would also be sent to bed without supper.
Guppy had no mother, no nursemaid, went to bed without supper more often than not, and never encountered a four headed serpent.
What she did encounter was taste.
The first time had been after she swiped a particularly fine looking meat pie left cooling in the baker’s window. Belly full of evidence, she had widened her eyes in panic at the baker’s wife and hurriedly denied any knowledge whatsoever of meat pies in general, let alone this specific pie (it had been remarkably buttery and crumbly, with a firm meaty middle, riddled with chunks of apple).
At her bumbled denial, Guppy’s mouth had flooded with eye-drenching sourness, a taste that seemed to be dissolving her teeth as well as her tongue.
She’d managed a wavery smile convincing enough to send the baker’s wife off after another target, before sticking her mouth under a spigot and scrabbling at her tongue with dirty fingers. The taste of pie was long gone.
In a land where lying was accompanied by such unpleasant consequences, most everyday folk stuck to the truth, or at least as near the truth as would mitigate the risk of tongue scorch and public shaming. Guppy, however, began to try lie after lie, exploring the flavours and learning to tolerate the taste until she could keep all trace of the terrible mouth experiences from her face.
She discovered that white lies tasted bitter-sweet, less dreadful than bold-faced lies, but still with a lingering edge of after taste. Lies of exaggeration bubbled with rotten fumes akin to the smells from a dung heap. Lies of fabrication, including tales told to entertain, would result in an explosion of salt, as though your tongue were caked in crystals.
She got away with it all too, until she encountered the boy.
He had been visiting the market for a week now. He looked about six or seven, with a painfully thin face that often had tear tracks streaking through the dirt. Guppy had watched him clumsily swipe food from several of the stalls, and was pleased to see that the stallholders who noticed his thefts kept quiet, eyes sympathetically watching his frail frame.
Then the boy stole from the wrong stall. The baker’s wife set to screeching as soon as she saw her missing loaf, drawing the swift attention of a town guard, who hared after the boy and had him pulled up by the collar in a few strides.
The boy had had the sense to ditch the bread as soon as the woman had started her howls, but the baker’s wife pointed one plump finger directly at Guppy, who had unfortunately been front and centre for the entire debacle. There was no time to dart elsewhere.
The guard turned to her, the boy gasping in his grip.
‘Girl. Did you see this boy take bread from the woman’s stall?’
Guppy gulped. She could lie, but it was fairly clear that the boy was the culprit and she didn’t want it revealed that she could speak untruths. But if she told the truth, the boy was probably headed for a life of slavery. The boy’s eyes were huge in his haggard face, beseeching her with silent pleas.
‘I saw him.’
Guppy looked down, unable to meet his gaze. And as the guard whirled away with the boy in hand, she felt a curious burning begin in her mouth. Within moments, her tongue seemed to catch alight, scorching the roof of her mouth into blisters, and forcing a whimper to escape her well-trained lips.
Later, as she lay with a rag dipped in cool water inside her mouth, she thought that this must be the taste of betrayal. The result of speaking what you know is wrong in your heart, no matter the technical truth.
The boy’s eyes continued to haunt her.
Swollen-tongue be damned. He wasn’t going to disappear on her watch.
In order to preserve your innocence, Gentle Reader, we’ll add in a 1950s style bathing dress that goes down to the knee, and a balaclava.
I’m bothering to shave my legs for the first time in two weeks, due to their upcoming starring role in A Dress. This is the first attention that my legs have gotten beyond a cursory scrub (I hasten to reassure you, Dear Reader, that I did in fact continue wash during these two weeks), so I’m going through the routine of soak-scrutinise-soap-shave.
I’m not a particularly strong competitor in the hirsute leagues, so two weeks is about enough to make my (very pale) legs look a bit grubby. On closer inspection, I notice a tenacious bit of dirt that doesn’t seem to be follicular in nature.
I splash water. No effect.
I scrub. No effect.
I tug with nails, and voila, success.
Unfortunately, said dirt is wriggling.
Slightly more luckily, I don’t give into my first instinct, which is to dunk my hand in the bath water to wash it off. Instead, the leg dirt is deposited on the side for closer inspection.
A google and a sinking suspicion later, it is confirmed.
It was a tick.
People with a fear of arachnids should really be saving all their animosity for ticks. They’re literally man-eating spiders that burrow their heads into flesh – if they existed on a larger scale, they would be terrorising cinema-goers. I feel like the humble house spider should be appropriately recognised for its decision not to suck out your blood through your skin, or give you a bacterial infection that can be debilitating for life.
The tick might have been a message from the universe telling me to shave my legs more often. In which case, you should have sent that tick along in Winter, mister, that’s when the real growing season takes place.
The universe may instead, of course, be telling me that I should spend the entirety of summer in a wetsuit that covers me from ankle to mid-neck to wrist. I will take this under advisement.
I would also like the universe to note that ‘carrier ticks’ are not going to catch on as a means of communication. My preferred means of contact are by post (pigeon or snail), email or hallucinatory dreamscape.
There is a faint possibility that ticks are an alien species attempting some sort of mind meld with the human race via their blood streams. In this case, I would again ask them to note that I am contactable via email, post, and am entirely abductable if they would like a chat.
I’m happy to note that I didn’t contract Lyme Disease – it’s important to keep an eye out when you’re in a part of the world with ticks. NHS guidance on Lyme Disease and ticks can be found here.
‘I never take pills,’ she says, with a look of constipated pain at the very thought.
We were in the bomb shelter of the GP, walls so plastered in paper notices that it’s beginning to look like a serial killer den.
She chose the seat next to me – ignoring the holy rule that thou shalt always attempt to leave a gap between you and any other occupant (a rule obeyed throughout the land in public toilets and transport services).
She also ignored my headphones and the ‘Vacant’ sign I keep plastered across my forehead when I venture out into the world.
It wasn’t entirely clear why she thought it was a good idea to advocate against pills to someone seeking medical assistance, who would surely statistically be more likely to be taking pills than your average person. Loneliness? Evangelical calling? Verbal diarrhoea?
My non-committal ‘hm’ has no effect.
‘I like to only put natural things in my system, you know what they say -‘ cue gurgling laugh, ‘- you’ve got to treat your body like a temple!’
I feel marginally affronted. I do treat my body like a temple. It’s just one of those temples with giant plates of milk on the floor surrounded by hordes and hordes of rats. Or one of those abandoned ones that’s all dusty statues, cracked floors, and inadvisable man traps.
Oh, and pills. Lots and lots of pills.
I tune back in.
‘… And I get this fantastic health tonic from that Chinese acupuncture place by the station, you know the one?’
I do know the one. It has a real focus in its window displays on curing male genital droop.
‘It tastes foul of course,’ she continues, ‘but it’s just fantastic for skin!’
She runs eager eyes over my face in the hope of finding a skin condition at which to advertise. It’s one of the few times I’m cheerful about the ‘invisible’ part of invisible illness. She bucks back up, undaunted.
‘And it’s all natural of course. No pills. And you know, the Chinese are very smart and wise.’
Ah the sweet, sweet taste of reductionist racism. I find it amusing that traditional Chinese medicine practitioners in China are busy turning liquid medicine into nice white pills in order to increase their reputability. Here, the more eye of newt people can see staring back at them, the better.
‘And I just think that people really shouldn’t take so many! It can’t be good for the body, you know?’
At this point, my tolerance gauge blows a gasket.
I finally turn to look at her and weigh my words.
You don’t take pills because you are well. I’m really pleased for you. That’s really lucky.
People who are not well sometimes have to take pills. Pills can help them manage their illness.
Pills do not generally cause their illness in the first place. Sometimes they have side effects, but these have to be measured against the impact of the illness.
I open my mouth to speak –
– Her name gets called.
‘It’s just ridiculous how long it takes to get a Pill check here, isn’t it?!’ She scoops up a pale pink bag and heads down the corridor.
When she walks past five minutes later, she wags a prescription slip in my direction as a goodbye.
*No muses were invoked in the writing of this piece
I find her in a shed. The directions I’d been given back in the town had been about as useful as a raw sausage with no fire, but it turns out endless ambling has won the day.
The shed stands beneath a slumping holly tree, its walls scarcely visible beneath a mass of determined ivy in mortal combat with a trumpeting morning glory.
I left the footpath over an hour ago, giving in to an unwise spurt of hanger-born bravado, and I’ve been regretting the decision with every thorn/sting/mud-slide/spider-ridden step.
Glimpsing the shed hadn’t exactly raised my spirits (I think my thoughts may have run along the lines of, if I see one more bloody shepherding hut, I’m digging out the matches). But beleaguered hope is restored when I see the sign hammered out front.
It reads:
‘Stop thinking so loudly.’
After ten minutes of tentative knocking that I tactfully escalate to a crescendo of hammering, I hear her voice for the first time. With the dulcet tones of a rusted car door, melodious as a corvid, Calliope speaks:
“Can you not take a hint?”
The door shudders open. She stands taller than me, arms folded into taut cords across a wiry body, all angles and lines. Her skin is a papery brown and hangs loose around the strong bones of her face, the long arch of her neck. Old she may seem, but weak she is not. Power is writ into every inch.
It takes over fifteen minutes to convince her that I’m not a) a salesperson, b) an Instagrammer intent on advertising her location, or c) a desperate writer. She pointedly drags the door closed and leans back against it, standing in silence for a long moment, one leathered hand tapping against an elbow.
“Back in the day, we took our pick of the desperate idiots clamouring for attention, all of them with too much money and time on their hands. ‘O Calliope, make me the world’s greatest poet!’, ‘O Calliope, do not forsake me!’” Her simpering falsetto rings with contempt.
“I’d spend a month, maybe a year with one, and find another when the spark dampened. They all made a bit of a racket, sure, but there weren’t too many overall so it was doable. Sometimes I’d hear someone so full of fire and raw talent that we’d end up working together for a lifetime: mutual inspiration, joy, creation.”
Her mouth twists.
“And then times changed. You know what it’s like to have millions of writers out there screaming for inspiration? The journalists, now, ha! Multiple articles each day and it never stops! I haven’t been able to hear myself think since the birth of the bloody internet!”
She stops. Forces her shoulders to relax. Huffs out a breath.
“It’s the same for all of us, of course. Well, except for Urania, she’s got a manageable flock of astronomers with the sense to use a bit of elbow grease rather than cry out for divine inspiration. She can actually live near people, just avoids the ones with telescopes. Me, I’m stuck out here in the bloody woods so I don’t get woken up at 2am by next door’s teenage daughter writing werewolf fan-fiction. Or her dad when he writes his Mills and Boon books while his wife is asleep.”
She gives a hoarse sigh.
“Gods, I miss the old days.”
Her gaze moves back to me. Hardens.
“And you. You come here with your I-was-just-curious line. But you’re just going to go home and bloody well write something, aren’t you? You can’t just keep it in your own measly skull, you have to go and get it all out there.” Her arms uncross to wave in exasperation. “You’re all the same! Wanting something for nothing, no effort, no learning, no time spent on the craft. Gods forbid you actually think before flinging wishes into the aether.”
Dark eyes bore into me.
I drop mine to the mud-splattered toes of my boots.
In which we journey to a future far, far (and hopefully further) away
They brought in S.H.A.M.E four years ago.
It stands for System for Health and Monitoring Efficiency, and it took the government years of bullying, bribes and blackmail to force companies into implementation. It was going to ‘transform productivity’, ‘improve stakeholder engagement’, and had to be ‘actioned immediately’.
Workers are pretty damn engaged. But mostly because they’re scared shitless.
It works like this: sickness and absence stats, start and finish times, and hours spent on productive tasks are all monitored by a national system that ties data to your National Insurance number and Health Service number. Everyone – from the CEO to the handyman – has to wear a digitised display badge with stats and rankings, and it emits an ear-piercing bleep every time your numbers slip. Teams get rewarded or punished based on collective performances. Productivity is the only thing that matters.
Once your stats drop too low, you can’t work for a company in the same tier any more – you have to move down to a lower tier company. Less pay, same badges. The sleep at the factory kind of deal with no-break shifts, no daylight, and no real money.
If your stats slip too far, there are no jobs. No one can take on a dud in case they have to fork out for rehabilitation training. S.H.A.M.E Central Services take the offender somewhere for a few weeks and drill into them that they need to be less shit. Then they get their badge numbers bumped up just enough so they can work in the lowest tier. “Rehabilitation” costs way more than most people can afford, and more than most companies want to pay.
No badge means no money and no health services.
The government says that measures are in place for S.H.A.M.E to work for everyone. It says that those with a confirmed diagnosis receive an allotment of extra points on their badge. It says that you can get a badge with larger font displays. Or with digi-braille. It says that anyone who’s fallen out the bottom has chosen to ‘not be part of a successful system’.
The government says a lot of things.
They’re launching S.H.A.M.E in America now, and half of Europe is a S.H.A.M.E zone. Apparently the UK’s been an astounding success case.
It’s like they can’t even see all those people sleeping on the streets.
I emerge from my chrysalis. It’s daylight and the sheets have transformed into a hitherto undiscovered substance during my time inside them.
The chrysalis stage involves me, the floor, and the bathroom. I usually stop bothering to eat solids after a while so I can promote myself to vomiting in the sink instead of the toilet (pro-tip). Plus it’s hard to appreciate the colour of bile in a loo.
The final chitterings of cramp have quieted down, prompting the cracking of the sheet walls. A twitched curtain gives a blinding indication that the weather (rather selfishly) has stopped providing an excuse for extended pupation.
My butterfly transformation equates to having a shower, my hair no longer being scraped into a grease-sheened lopsided lump, and my skin making First Contact with Not Pyjamas.
It turns out my nine-ish days of sleep-vom-don’t-bother-rinsing-repeat has led me to forget how temperature relates to my wardrobe (I’ve been meaning to make a Dummies Guide to the coats I own and the temperature bands they function in). Still, I understand that a healthy glow is desirable?
In the words of Pratchett, I am glowing like a pig.
I find myself faintly surprised that the outside world actually looks familiar. It feels like the rest of the world should surely have undergone some sort of metamorphosis as well, but there’s the same old pavement with the same old malformed Lucozade bottle and faded ruin of a Quavers packet.
Home, sweet home.
Life outside my chrysalis scrapes the ears and eyes, but also contains delights such as non-frozen or tinned foodstuffs, and other people – some of whom I actually like. (I might not be deemed the most social of butterflies).
There are queues to stand in, the Tube to be delayed on, inconvenient misunderstandings to have with pharmacies, piles of ignored messages to respond to, and those oh-so-delightfully crunchy sheets to wash.
Today is a good day. It might not be long before my butterfly self catches alight but, on the plus side, a caterpillar always crawls from the ashes.
I, sixteen, and you sixteen in a pack – so strong, so reliable. You seemed so available back then.
I couldn’t get enough of you. Ignored the murmurs from my family, my friends.
I needed you.
But your sugar coating was skin deep.
You turned my bowels into burning pipes of doom.
O! The diarrhoea!
The tender eruptions of our love!
My stomach filled with the broken shards of our promises, and inflated till it tried to escape my chest. Vomit stained my nights.
My stomach in my mouth, I had to let you go.
Many years have grown between us now. I watch others flirt with you and bite back warnings. They will learn.
He sleeps now, my Morpheus, he doesn’t know I once loved another. He is a gentle tonic after your burning love, for all that he is slow to respond when I call him.
You, oh, you were my first love.
I wonder sometimes, if I were to meet you again, would we be as once we were?
Sweet sixteen and the pain of the world washed away.
Medically Unexplained 