CECE, DISRESPECTFULLY | ✓

42: IMAGINE A WORM BENEATH YOUR SKIN

            Nicolás applies the antiseptic cream to my wounds like he applies oil to his scalp. Not even the corners of his eyes crinkle to suggest disgust at the burst blisters.

Scissors for clipping the gauze dwell on the kitchen table. One of us will inevitably reach for them. It's a trap. He'll stitch me up only to stab the scissors into my gut and cut me open. Everything will spill out. Everything bad in his life is your fault.

Maybe you should save him the trouble. Slit your own throat.

What if you already have? Can't you feel the sticky warmth of blood pour down your chest?

No, there isn't any blood. Except on my hands.

I could snip off every bit of crinkled skin from my palms, red and waxy like a tomato peel. If Nicolás makes an incision and boils my hand, then transfers it to a bowl of ice water, he could strip my skin off as easily, leave behind a granular and mealy cushion.

Would my scars be visible even then? Would he have to dig them out with the point of a potato peeler?

Once the cream is slugged on, thick to keep the skin from drying, Nicolás wraps my hand in gauze again. He covers my palm and all my fingers with the same long ribbon of bandaging with the technical skill afforded to him by every video on YouTube and enough experience to have tried all the possible methods.

Only once the final strip of tape secures the end of the gauze to my wrist, does his gaze climb to meet mine. I can read the question before he can say it and shake my head.

'No doctors.'

Nicolás nods, swallowing his arguments with the lump in his throat.

My stomach churns and I hunch. Horrified, I think I'm going to vomit on him but when I open my mouth, it's a sob that splats to the floor.

I'm too tired to resist, too tired to growl and bite. And so I cry.

Tears ooze out of my eyes so quickly that they're still hot when they collect on my chin. I have to yank air into my lungs between sobs. Each inhale stabs the back of my throat. Pain shoots into my joints from the force that jostles my skeleton.

The knobs of my spine press into my stretched skin as my head sinks lower. They try to escape their fleshy prison like massive termite nymphs. Fuck, do I wish they would. I wish I could reach back and rip the worm out, throw it onto the floor where it would scatter into pearly vertebrae.

On his knees on the kitchen floor in front of my chair, Nicolás tangles his fingers into each other to stop himself from reaching out. He's forced to make do with a voice like running water, cleansing and gentle, a purr beneath its flow. 'You're gonna be alright, Cece.'

I won't. Because I'm evil. And I'm too tired to wrestle it back anymore.

I tilt off the chair to collapse into him. In my oxygen deprivation, it feels less like falling and more like being lifted.

It takes Nicolás a moment before he wraps his arms around me to pull me closer. On the kitchen floor, he holds me like a child while I weep into his chest. I'm sure my teeth nick his throat, sure my claws pierce his shoulders, but Nicolás rocks me and sings a lullaby that isn't in English or Spanish.

As much as the language stumbles on his tongue and as little as I'm able to hear of it over the wailing that must be coming out of my own throat, the melody soothes at least the desire to rip every bone out of my body. It's only when the tethers of my mind have all been severed and I sink into mist that I realise it might be Japanese.