Tom felt the familiar angst that preceded the emergence of a spot on his forehead. He put his finger on it, feeling it ready to blossom beneath his skin. It wasn’t visible to anyone but him yet. It was the vanguard of accursed acne, a blemish, a blight, one of many unwanted pockmarks. “Bad company”, he called them, ever since those horrible teenage years when they would pepper his face and ruin his life. They were a constant barrier, an oily veil between him and his peers. During particularly prominent breakouts, he couldn’t bear to look anyone in the eye. It would be like looking into a supernova of pure judgment. He was an aesthetic disgrace, repulsive with his army of whiteheads and blackheads peering out from every pore. If only they were extra eyes. At least they would serve a function then, grace him with a dozen new perspectives. They were worse than useless: they were nature’s insult, only there to cause distress and disgust.
He used every cream he could lay his hands on. They didn’t help. The ads were lies, featuring smiling beauties rubbing their hands over their smooth and glowing skin. They didn’t need any help; he did. They were the perfect antithesis to his craggy moon of a face. He was a boiling egg, about to crack and spray the walls with foul-smelling yolk. It wasn’t fair. If it weren’t for the bad, bad company, those marauding intruders of blood and pus, he could be, if not handsome exactly, then unremarkable. No one would laugh behind his back or look at him in pity.
Then gradually, for no other reason he could tell other than the passage of time, the symptoms started subsiding. He was relieved. Bring on aging, bring on the lines and wrinkles, anything but this degrading scourge. He could finally join the rest of the human species and be ugly in a normal, boring way. These days he only suffered from occasional whiteheads, and they wouldn’t last long. They were still unpleasant reminders of past misery and he preferred to have minimal interactions with others when they occurred. On days he had the luxury to hide away until they cleared up, he would. When he couldn’t do that, he would do everything his power to avoid acknowledging them.
That worked pretty well until Nancy showed up. He liked Nancy. She brought him out of his squeamish skin, showed him that it was ok to jump headfirst now and then and that he could laugh at himself, that not everything is a matter of life and death, that re-invention is possible. There was only one problem, and it was a major one. She loved to squeeze and pop the whiteheads. He could never hide them from her. As soon as she noticed them, she would get an awful, gleeful look, as if she were a large cat and there was a limping mouse just outside reach.
This morning’s blistering intrusion would be the worse one yet. He felt it in his gut. He broke into a cold sweat at the thought of the ordeal ahead. She was still sleeping. It was the start of the weekend. He didn’t even have the escape of work. What if he kept his eyes shut and tried to sleep some more? Would that reverse the process? Of course not. What if he feigned illness all day with his head buried in pillows? What if he wore a bandana, or a beanie? She’d see right through him. He walked into the bathroom, steadied himself and looked into the mirror. To his terror, there was already a section of the surface area that was an angry red. He was lost in a swirl of panicked thoughts. It’s enflamed. It’s going to be worse than ever! He could rub it, make it go away. No, that will only enrage it. He had to stop thinking about it. Stress always makes them worse. There is a rotting elephant in the room, shambling forth with cruel intent. Something was even stranger than usual. The spot seemed to shift, and, in a blink, it was no longer red: it was a bulbous yellow globe. He hid his face and kneeled in front of the sink for a long while. He glanced back and it was still there, slimy and snug between his eyebrows, pulsating almost imperceptibly.
As he turned to leave, he nearly crashed into Nancy standing in the doorway. She was gaping at him, her eyes sparkling, spit lines forming at the corners of her mouth. She was mesmerised.
“It – it’s wonderful!”, she gasped.
“Nancy, please don’t touch it. Not this time. This one’s all wrong, I can feel it. I’ll go back to bed, wait it out. No one else can see me this way”, he begged.
Her eyes did not lose their glint. Quite the opposite.
“No one has to. I’ll make it go away. There’s so much jammed up in there. Oh, it’s ready to go! Let me touch it, just the once. I’m only going to test it, don’t worry. If it’s not there yet, I’ll stay away, promise.”
He instinctively brought his arms up in defence.
“No, no, please, it’s too big, it’ll leave a nasty scar. What if there are eggs in there? You know those stories of people with bugs in their skin? What if it breaks and there are centipedes all over your hand?”
“That’s stupid, centipedes don’t do that.”
“Spiders? Spiders do! What if it’s a spider nest?”
“Come here, it’s going to feel so good when it’s done, I promise.”
“What if my head explodes? I can hear it growing, stay away!”
He walked back into the bathroom, his options dwindling. She advanced on him with twitching eyelids and grasping hands. He feigned to the right. She took his bait. He bolted over the bathtub to her left, tearing the shower curtain off in his mad dash, tumbling outside on all fours. She groaned and grabbed his ankles. He kicked her away and crawled into the storage cupboard, trying to close the door behind him. She was too fast, jumping on his back and pulling his hair back. He made a desperate lunge for the mop in the corner, using it in blind backhanded stabs to get her off him. One of them landed with a thud and she screamed, letting him go. Holding the mop like a lance, he pushed her further back and scrambled over her into the living room. He tripped over his feet and landed through the glass coffee tabletop with a deafening crash. He cradled the mop and whimpered in a foetal position, shards gleaming all around him.
He could hear her panting in the hallway. She got up and slowly walked into the room.
“Just a pop”, she growled. “One quick pop.”
She sat down next to him and took his head into her arms. She delicately brushed his hair off his forehead and leaned close.
“I can hear it too”, she whispered. “It’s calling to me. It needs me to do this so badly.”
Tom had no fight in him left. There would be no shouting and pleading against his fate. His tongue, his skull, his entire body vibrated in unison with the new growth. He felt safe, at the right place at the right time. He was a freshly crafted humming instrument. He was an aquatic embryo deep underwater, learning to breathe. The pulse on his forehead was life itself. The pus-filled pustule was not a parasite. It was the concentrated sum of his desires. It craved to be caressed, fondled, and fingered until it burst, showering the world with its burning affection. There would be a torrent of new sensations for everyone to share. No more hurt, no more fear, no more uncertainty, only magnificent sliding forms with multicoloured liquid insides.
“Do it”, he said, “Do it now.”
“Yes”, she moaned. She put her thumbs and forefingers around the suppurative sphere. It was soft and welcoming. It reminded her of the bright red cellophane candy wrappers she toyed with while waiting for her mum to pick her up at school. It was going to be so satisfying. She quivered in anticipation of the warm stream on her palms. She took a deep breath and pinched.
She was sitting on the floor staring at a discarded mop and broken glass. “Have I been sleepwalking?”, she wondered. That’s dangerous. She should do something about that. She swept the shards and walked through the house, which seemed emptier than usual. She should do something about all this unused space too. She should go for a run, clear her head. These winter mornings always put her in a contemplative mood. She brushed her teeth, changed to her running clothes and left, closing the door on a silent house.
