Works/Something New

Jessamyn nearly screamed as she tried to sit up. Her back was even stiffer than it had been last night; she couldn't swing her shoulder blades at all, and she knew better than to try to lift her arms. She'd already fallen for that, trying to reach a can last night; she'd gone black from the pain and had come to on the kitchen floor a half hour later.

There wasn't anything but canned food left in the house now.

She felt the new bumps along her back, sharp spines growing in parallel. At least they felt like they were parallel. She needed a second mirror so she could try to get a better look. Mirror -

She managed to stand all the way up. Her neck wouldn't turn, and the pain from her back ran all the way around her ass, all the way down the sides of her groin and it streamed through her hips and inside her thighs down her legs. Much worse. Definitely much worse. She reached for the bourbon bottle - she'd run out of aspirin two days ago - but stopped herself. Better make it last.

She limped over to the mirror on deformed feet. It had become her new morning ritual, including the wince beforehand, the reluctance to stare at herself and see what had become of the map this time. Today when she finally opened her eyes they were the same shade of yellow as before, the nose maybe a little smaller and more turned up but nothing serious. Ears continuing to melt into her head.

It was the baldness that still affected her the most, even though her hair had been practically the first thing to go. The top of her head made her feel freakish in a way that the claw feet and the twisted spine and the other things didn't. Still learning, she thought, and then she smiled a little, and then she started laughing and couldn't stop as she let herself slide down the wall to a crouch on the floor and then she was crying again.

- - -

"Looking for next week's?" asked Laura.

"Huh?" Jessamyn turned around to face her friend. Now Laura was hiding her expression in a sip of her drink, and Jess felt the heat rising to her face. "Haven't you done this enough?"

"I could say the same," Laura replied. She put her drink back on the bar top with a thump, sloshing it. "Look, I know I give you hell about this all the time, but why do you keep doing it? I mean, it's not like I'm trying to marry you off ... but maybe ...."

"Maybe I should look for something a little more long-term. I know. Message received. Thanks." Jess resumed scanning the faces.

"Just washes right off, then, does it? Fine. I won't say anything anymore."

"Laura, lay off!" Jess spun back around. "I do not want - I don't need - a relationship. They have nothing to give me. Okay?"

"You mean you honestly don't want anything from your men but sex."

"I get more than sex," Jess said absently.

"Oh?" Laura put her hand on Jess's shoulder, keeping her from turning again. "What?" she demanded. "What else do you get?"

- - -

She was pulled out of her fit by the itching. God! How could the itch possibly be worse than the pain? She scrubbed herself with fingers that could barely unclench, fingers that had trouble stirring a pot last night. First trying to limit herself just to the worst areas, knowing she shouldn't at all. Then more. Faster, hands clawing all over her body. She shouted obscenities as her hands raced and only made things worse, flakes of dead skin flying around her in a small dry cloud and red lines all over like she'd been whipped.

And then she stopped, looking down at a big chunk of skin - flesh - in her hand that wasn't dry. It wasn't dead. It had come away far too easily.

She stood up very slowly.

Her right hand had caught the underside of her left breast, had ripped almost all of it off - a breast that had been shrinking and sagging for days, finally looking and feeling like a vague empty pouch on her chest, like wearing a dress cut for too generous a bust.

It hadn't hurt a bit coming off.

It wasn't red, underneath the flesh costume. It was a dark green, almost black. And it was wetly slick, oozing out and dripping a little at the torn edges, thick and transparent like glycerine.

She passed out, knees giving way suddenly.

- - -

There had been so many, so many she barely could match names to faces anymore. Maybe not one a week as Laura would have it, but usually two or three a month. Until they had nothing new to show her. It never took long.

But she'd never met one she didn't have anything to learn from. There was always at least some little something, some tiny nugget of character insight. Jessamyn believed that she knew more about men, by now, than any other woman in the world.

She'd lost count years ago.

She'd learned things it was good to do, and things it was good not to do; she'd learned which of her characteristics to play up, and which to conceal, and which ones should probably be concealed but it was sometimes better to advertise.

Every time, she'd remade herself a little, changed a little, become a little better for the next time.

She met Laura's gaze - Laura, still clutching her shoulder, honestly if annoyingly concerned for her - and realized she had no way whatsoever to answer her question.

- - -

She couldn't pull off any more skin. Everywhere else she tried, it hurt too much. She wasn't ready yet.

She wasn't sure she wanted to know, but she did urgently want it to be over. She couldn't go any further until it was done; she couldn't begin to think about how to continue, or whether to .... No, no, she wasn't going to consider that right now.

Which one had it been? She kept coming back to that. It had to have been fairly recent. Had he been ... like this, whatever this was? How had he disguised himself? Would it be something she could do?

She told herself not to hope for that. Put it away.

She would never leave the house like this. She'd starve or suicide first; might as well be frank about it. She'd been working on herself, changing herself, since high school ... and now, to be something like this .... She closed her eyes, wet and sore, just for a moment.

She stood up and moved to the mirror again. Who had it been? How? And another thought: Had he thought she was ... was this his sick idea of beauty, what she was somehow becoming? Was that why he had ruined her?

Still true to form, she thought without smiling. Once again, just like all the times before, she was becoming something new. Once again, her lover had changed her.

But for the first time in her life, she hated the idea.

Copyright © January 2002. Do not distribute or reproduce.