Skin Crawl

Affliction

I grabbed Amina's sweat-soaked trouser, giving her leg a rough shake even though I knew it was no use. She wasn't going to move, not ever again.

Pia sniffled. She was young but not so young that she didn't understand what was happening. Taking our brother's hand in hers, she gently pressed it. Omari, standing with hunched shoulders next to Pia, squeezed her back. Still gripping Amina's leg, I felt their hands as if they were on my own. That's the way it was for me: I experienced the sensation of being touched without being touched, as if everyone's skin was my skin; a collective membrane of sorts.

Amina wasn't our mom, but she was like one. Our real mother had left just after Omari was born, hoping that Salvation lay beyond our jungle home. If she found it, I'll probably never know. It'd been three years and she hadn't returned, not that anyone was surprised.

There is nothing past the jungle, so the elders said. The jungle is the world from beginning to end. To try to find life outside of it is foolishness, not a path to Salvation.

My siblings and I didn't know a thing about Salvation other than it was something beyond our grasp-a life free of oppressive heat and the disapproving glare of others. It was a mythical place where the river opened its mouth and swallowed the jungle whole.

Now that Amina was dead, we had no one. Our people considered us bad luck even before her crossing, having a father killed in war and a mother who sought Salvation without a thought for her children's welfare. Now that Amina had died, and in a horrifying manner, we would be considered a cursed lot. No one would want anything to do with such afflicted children, especially me. They knew I felt on my own body the touch they gave to each other. A mother kissed her baby's cheek and I brushed my hand to my own, feeling her soft lips graze my face. The butcher kicked old Haji off of his stoop and I doubled over as though my own gut had been hit.

Skin crawler, they called me, just as they had my mother. I hated the name, but at the same time couldn't deny its aptness.

As was their duty, Witnesses came and wrapped Amina in plyu cloth. Round and round her frail body they wove. Soon she was gauzy and white from head to toe, the prey of a jarpa spider caught in a web. The Witnesses said nothing to us, but it was understood that we, as the only thing close to kin that she had, should follow them out of our house to the pyre at the edge of the village. There, where jungle meets river, the souls of the dead rose up to meet the Sky Beyond Life.

For several years, our village had been at the mercy of the Rot, a disease that caused victims' insides to putrefy. The year Amina died, it had swept over us. Our numbers dwindled, and there was real fear that the whole village would be undone. As Amina's pyre was built, we were not thinking of the village's undoing, however, but of our own.

We watched and cried and clung to each other as her body was released to the Sky Life. I sucked on my tongue, afraid that if I didn't, I'd begin lamenting out loud, decreeing my jealousy for Amina's newfound freedom. The jungle walls, those pillars of pith and foliage, closed in on us. The flow of the river, normally soothing, served as a reminder of the limitations of our existence; it would roll us under and smash our heads upon rocks if we ever ventured into it.

Flames engulfed Amina, white gauze turned red, then black. The Witnesses bowed their heads and turned on their heels, following the path to a house within the jungle. There they performed the purification ceremonies necessary for them to be allowed to return to their families in the village. Everyone else stayed away, afraid that the Rot still lingered near Amina, as well as within the bodies of her three stepchildren.

The fire roared inside of her. As her body blackened and a nauseatingly sweet scent filled the air, my tongue finally unclenched in order to cry out into the night. Collapsing to the ground, I lay my head in Pia's lap. She wiped the tears from my cheeks and held my writhing body until it was stilled by the searing heat. If any of the villagers had been there to see me, they would have believed the Sky Life had claimed me too.

It was after dawn when I woke to cooling embers and a breeze draped with ash. My pain was only a memory now, like Amina herself.

Pia pulled on my sleeve. "Hestia, I'm hungry."

Sighing, I rose on legs that would have much preferred to remain stretched out on the earth like another corpse waiting for its turn atop the pyre. Remaining idle was not an option, however; with Amina gone, and with no father or mother, I would have to be the one who saw to our survival.

I carried my sleeping brother through the narrow corridor between spindly palafittes until we arrived at our own weathered home. We'd be allowed to keep that, at least. In fact, now that the funerary rites had been observed, we were ordered to stay within the house until the next moon cycle had passed. This directive was not issued out of respect for the dead, nor out of compassion for us. My siblings and I could succumb to the Rot while the weeks of quarantine crept by for all the villagers cared. As long as it went no further than my family, they would be content.

We waited for the Rot. Sometimes I welcomed it and then cursed myself for not appreciating my life. We waited for our mother to return to us, for our father to return to life. We waited to be freed and for whatever would happen to us next. The one thing we didn't wait for was Salvation. Salvation only existed beyond the jungle, and anything beyond the jungle existed only in my mother's addled mind. Wherever she was, I doubted it was safe. Or that she had been saved.

A/N Thank you for reading the first part of SKIN CRAWL. This is a short story, which will be posted in four parts over the course of a few days. I wrote this tale in 2015 and it won an honorable mention in that year's third quarter Writers of the Future contest. Now, I am thrilled to be able to share it with you all.