The skin on my hands has been coming off lately. It starts by the nails, sort of folding back. Not quite tearing but slipping away. I have to be careful when I wash them. If the water pressure is too high it’ll catch the fold and drag it back. Then it just sits there, bunched up like a hair scrunchie until I straighten it out and glue it back down.
I’m melting. At least, that’s what we call it. It’s got some long medical name that Mom repeats to herself obsessively. But why call it anything other than it is?
It started with Derrick Penderton.
Derrick was the head of the basketball team at our high school. The Maple Ridge Ravagers. Technically he still is but it’s more of an honorary thing at this point.
For a time, Derrick had everything. He was being scouted, was dating the head cheerleader, and was acing his classes. Derrick was a rare kind of annoying. You wanted to hate him because he had everything but he treated everyone so genuinely that you couldn’t help but think the best of him.
Maybe it had to start with him.
It was certainly the best way to get our attention.
March 7th. The Maple Ridge Ravagers are playing their rivals, The Eastbridge Earwigs (Don’t ask). Words gotten out that Derrick’s got professional eyes on him, so the Earwigs are pushing him hard on the court. Making him earn it. Attendance is through the roof and every eye is on Derrick.
Number 18 trips Derrick, so he’s got a free throw. Not a game winning shot or anything. That’s been decided long ago by this point. But there’s a tension in the air none the less. We’re not cheering for the game at hand but Derrick at large. We want to be able to say to our friends that we went to school with Derrick Penderton before he won the cup.
Derrick jumps up with his throw and we’re all watching the ball sailing through the sky like it’s slow motion. It’s straight out of a sports movie. Only I guess not everybody was watching the ball because suddenly one of the cheerleaders screamed.
A murmur goes up in the crowd. We’re all trying to see what’s happened. Then people start to scream. “Oh shit.” “Oh no.” And some of them are pointing and they’re all pointing at Derrick. Derrick’s who’s looking around confused, not really sure what’s happening until he takes a step or two and notices something’s off so he looks down and sees what everyone’s pointing at.
Derrick jumped up as he shot the ball. When he landed the skin on his leg slipped down off the thigh, caught on the knee and dangled there exposing the muscle and tissue underneath. Leaking, staining the court floor. When he took a step the skin came free from where it had caught on his knee and peeled back down to his ankle. It looked like a pinkish leg warmer.
When Derrick saw what happened he screamed, stumbled over himself and fell. It sounded like a wet towel hitting the ground when he hit. He started kicking and screaming.
The coaches from each team jumped up and started coordinating help, ordering the arena to be emptied by the front doors so help could approach from the closer rear. We could still hear Derrick screaming as we shuffled out into the windy night. And we all agreed on what we saw in hushed whispers. What we heard. Derrick didn’t know what happened. Hadn’t felt his skin slough off. He wasn’t screaming from pain but fear. Because he hadn’t known what happened and that, far more than the graphic nature of what we witnessed, was the truly terrifying part.
It wasn’t long after Derrick that somebody else melted. One day Tania Ginsberg stopped coming to school without a word to any of her friends. She left Thursday afternoon to head home to babysit her little brother and was never seen again. At least not by any of us students. Rumor was she melted like Derrick only hers started on her tits. I don’t attribute much to the rumor. Tania was one of those girls that developed big and early and rumors relating to her breasts had been going around since elementary school. The truth of the matter only came out months later at the height of the pandemic. Tania had returned home to babysit her little brother. She hadn’t melted it. Her brother did. We know this because we was one of the earliest reported deaths due to melting. We still don’t know what happened to Tania.
After her it was like the floodgates had been opened. Every other day there was another n0-show. Then it was every day. Then multiple each day until finally school was canceled for fear of this spreading disease.
They don’t know where it came from or how it spreads. It seems to start first in the subcutaneous layer of the skin, destroying the hypodermis so that the skin slides off like a piece of clothing. That’s what they say, at least, but I don’t really believe that. I think it starts in the brain, because how else would it dull the pain of losing your skin? There’s a numbness involved that seems unnatural. Either way, the largest health risk comes from infection. Without the protective coating of the skin, the body is damn near defenseless against infection. It’s why I still glue down my skin whenever it comes loose. I know the glue is doing more to hold me together than my body is, but I just can’t lose that protective layer.
Others seem less concerned. Something unusual began happening as the disease made its way through our town. People who were at first afraid of melting started to grow to appreciate it’s… unique contributions to fashion. I can still recall the first time I saw somebody making a fashion statement of their melting. She was walking down the street in a crop top, the skin that covered her belly had slipped down to her waist where she had coiled it up into a kind of make shift belt. Her head in the air, she walked with a sense of power unknown to me. Her outfit said she may be dying but she was damned if she wouldn’t be pretty.
That was the first but it wasn’t long after until others appeared. Men in muscle tees showing off the gory musculature of their guns, women in skirts with their legs shorn of flesh. It seemed only days later, though it may have been weeks, that a friend of mine, Marissa, was on talk shows and magazines. The skin had fallen from her torso but instead of simply bunching it up, she took scissors and thread and turned it into skirt so that she was covered and clothed by her own flesh.
Marissa didn’t last long. None of the original fashionestas did. They thought they were showing off their design skill, really they were flaunting their vulnerability. Infection spread through their ranks like HIV through broadway.
While melting increased the death toll, it didn’t move the needle nearly as far as would be expected. For one thing, it only seemed to affect those under the age of twenty, twenty-one. Something to do with hormone production. Additionally, we learned pretty quickly to combat the effects of melting. Me personally, I glue my skin back down. I’ve been doing so for half a year or so. I keep waiting for the morning I look myself in the mirror and see it’s started to rot. But it hasn’t happened. If anything, my skin looks clearer than it did before I melted. Other people, though, they like to show off their musculature and have taken to using clear plastic wraps so they can keep out harmful bacteria while displaying their goods.
I keep waiting for them to set up camps, to isolate us from our families and loved ones. Yet they don’t seem forthcoming. In a way, the town has become our camp. They’ve ordered us not to leave. Until they know more about how it functions they can’t risk us getting loose. That’s the biggest mystery of all: how does it spread? Was Derrick Penderton the first or only the first we know of? Can it spread asymptomatically? Why doesn’t it hurt? Is it evolving? Are other parts going to start melting?
They don’t know and neither do I for that matter. I’ve enough to deal with already just trying to get through adolescence.
I didn’t ask for this.
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