note & warning: this is based on an old wives tale I heard at the beginning of last summer. I was so taken back by it that I had to make it into a short story. its not really mature content because I feel there is too much that is assumed and the parts where it is blatant, it's still not obvious to the uneducated. graffic, so watch out if your squimmish.
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Candice stared in the mirror intensely, a worried look smothering her features. After several moments of an awkward glance staring back at her, she finally took her middle finger, standing alone, and ran it across the reddish flesh surrounding her mouth. Small bumps, similar to dry, empty pimples, were in tight clusters all along the outer edges of her mouth. Her manicured fingernail scraped against the itchy skin, every so slightly, breaking off a few small, dead flakes.
“Fuck.” She exclaimed in frustration, dropping her hand back down to her rickety bathroom sink. The rash had appeared over the weekend and now she had no choice but to show it off to all the girls at the beauty salon. How would she explain the little dilemma growing around the lips she accentuated every day? How could she explain this?
“Botox injections?” She asked the distorted image in the mirror. A mocking look crossed her eyebrows, as she quickly replied, “That’s just stupid.” She squinted her eyes, trying to get the rash to blend away into the rest of her skin color for just a moment. “Maybe I could tell them my boyfriend forgot to shave. No, they know I don’t have a boyfriend.” She brainstormed for a while longer, trying to keep from looking at her reflection. She finally convinced herself that they would fall for an allergic reaction to some new lipstick. She nodded at this conclusion, attempted to smile, but it sent forth a violent itch. She scratched momentarily, applied some anti-itch cream, finished her morning routine, and went to work.
When she arrived, she was greeted with the same normalcy as always, until Samantha did a double take. Her eerily round, brown eyes and extensively plucked eyebrows, zeroed in on Candice as she exclaimed in a loud shriek, “Honey! What happened to your face?” The rest of the girls picked up on the call like vultures diving on a dead rabbit. The two customers of the morning, Doris who was in for her bi-weekly plucking, and a random elderly walk-in, stuffed under a large oval shaped hair drier, were left with only Fye, the newest recruit, to tend to their every need.
Fye wouldn’t have jumped to their squealing even if the salon was void of customer life. She was there for the paycheck and hired for her talent. The owner recognized the growing number of odd hair colors and styles, and needed Fye’s hands to deliver. Even if she wasn’t new, being the odd one out elected her most of the grunt work and leftovers the other couldn’t get to due to “customer relation discussions.” Fye never openly complained.
As a of flock multicolored nails, attached to questioning, sympathetic hand gestures, and over a half a dozen curious eyes probed her way, Candice felt herself grow red. She hoped it was at least camouflaging the rash. From all sides she was pulled and prodded with questions and somewhat abrasive affection. She did the best she could to satisfy them.
The front door opened and the bell dinged, but the group of women didn’t falter from the inquisition. Fye left Doris with a quick pluck at her upper lip, and an unprofessional excuse on why she had to wait. She greeted the slender, middle-aged woman that walked in, and scheduled an appointment. After she left, Fye walked past the gossip circle, giving them an odd sideways glance before returning to Dorris’s tweezing.
Still deep within the girls clutches’, Candice persuaded with them that it was nothing to worry about; most likely a bad reaction to her new lipstick, but she wasn’t sure. The more she talked, the more her mouth itched. It bubbled up on the right corner of her mouth until it became unbearable. Finally unable to resist, she scratched. When she did, one of the girls gasped “You’re bleeding,” as she stepped back. Candice looked down at her fingers. Mixed in with a few fragments of skin, was a gob of blood smeared on her fingertip. Through slightly repulsed, she was still grateful for the excuse to break from the interrogation. Quietly excusing herself, she made a dash for the bathroom.
Once inside the sterile, overly lit bathroom, filled with the aroma of toxic chemicals, she began wondering why she didn’t call in sick. Her own thoughts were echoed outside of her body, as a familiar voice came from the bathroom door, “Why didn’t you call in?” It was Fye.
Candice scowled at Fye’s reflection in the mirror and replied dryly, “Because I’m already a week late on my rent.”, then turned her eyes back to the mirror, still blotting the small, open wound on her mouth with dry tissue paper. Fye had a sudden flash of her returned rent check from two months back and sympathized. Candice found some comfort in Fye’s expression, and her features softened.
“Do you know what it is?” Fye asked.
“No.”
“How long have you had it?”
“It just showed up this weekend—almost overnight.” Candice replied squeamishly.
Fye twisted her mouth from side to the side, puzzling over what to do next. She smacked her lips and took a step away from the doorway and towards Candice to get a better look, but she couldn’t place what it was.
“Does it hurt?” Fye asked.
“Only when I scratch it and god it itches horrible sometimes.” Then Candice’s hand twitched, fighting back the urge to scratch again.
Fye fiddled with her tongue ring, running it back and forth over her thin lips. After a moment of reflection she asked, “How’s your sex life lately?”
Candice was taken back by the question and put up her defenses again. Her face hardened as she snapped, “What the fuck do you care?”
Fye opened her mouth to retaliate, but then realized how off her question was, so she closed it again, rewording it in her head. A moment later she said, “I knew this chick once, that ended up with a rash on her inner thigh that looked somwhat similar to the one on your face,” Candice’s face tightened, so Fye spoke faster, “and it turned out to be a special soap that her boyfriend was using… to make his pubes softer.”
Candice stood cold faced for several moments. Finally the corners of her mouth curled up and she let out a choppy, tight lipped laugh that echoed in her throat. “No, nothing like that… um, well.” Candice blushed slightly as she told Fye of an incident from three weeks ago.
* * * * *
The beer was starting to get her, but she didn’t care. Every time she took a sip and stared at him past the short, green bottle of suds, his smile seemed to grow a little more seductive. This made her toes curl and pop softly. She didn’t wear her pheromones tonight; she didn’t expect to find anything worth looking at in such a dive of a bar.
From the outside, it was nothing but thick, dingy white bricks, stacked on top of each other. There was the familiar door parked in the heart of the wall with a fresh lock and flickering neon lights reading “McKinley’s” with an arrow pointing to where all the lost souls who found themselves on this part of town could forget their troubles for a night. If they couldn’t forget them, they could at least replace them. Candice decided she could replace some of hers.
She put the beer down carefully, titling it slightly so it would leave a thin trail of sweat along the Formica bar. She slowly moved her eyes from the bottle’s path, back to his off-white teeth poking slightly out of the corner of his slanted smile. She calculated the blink of her eyes to the shift of his stare, anticipating that he would make eye contact as soon as her mascara crusted eyelashes lost contact with each other. With just a few subtle, yet common movements and seemingly random eye contacts, the dance had begun.
Slightly impatient, and wanting to cut to the chase, she pushed her chest out as she moved her hair to her back, all in one fluid movement. The tight, black top held her cleavage in the most alluring manner; just enough to be sensual, but not outright whorish. She opened her mouth slightly to ask him his name. The beer moistened lipstick caused her lips to separate in an awkward, sticky manner. Taking the hint, he beat her to the punch line. He stood up from his bar stool, just three seats down from Candace’s, and started walking slowly to hers. He shifted his weight from one side to other, taking wide steps, as if his scrotum was demanding more room then his jeans would allow. Candace couldn’t help but roll her eyes momentarily. She turned towards the bar so he couldn’t see her full on smirk. When she looked in the mirror behind the bar, she saw him standing adjacent to her, with a few more teeth peeking through his crooked smile.
She replaced her smirk with her best, “yes, you can fuck me after this last beer”, look and turned around. “What’s your name?” He asked, his breath somewhat foul, but nothing she couldn’t overlook after another beer.
“Candace, but you can call me Candy.” She replied, cocking her smile to one side.
He put his left arm on the bar, leaned in a little closer and said, “Candy, huh?” intentionally lowering his voice. The second whiff of his breath reeked of death, and left her wondering if she had any breath ments in her purse.
She leaned back, trying to get out of the path of his air flow, coughed slightly as she continued, “Yea.” Then she covered up her insult by lighting a cigarette. “Want one?” She turned the open pack in his direction.
He shook his head, “No thanks.” But he didn’t fan away the smoke which was covering up his rotting breath nicely.
They continued like this, back and forth, for another two beers and a drunken game of pool. Finally, the damp lights and old men trying to grope her when she walked by, became too much. So she asked him if he wanted to leave.
Staggering over each other, they only made it to the outside of his car; a long, mint green, two door, gas guzzlers. A few long, wet kisses quickly turned into groping. The groping led to digging fingers; both sets of hands weaving their way in and out and underneath clothes. Then, without warning, he grabbed Candice’s hair, not forcefully, but it was solid. He licked the side of her ear, full on, ignoring all rules of sanitation or edict, protruding deep in and around every crevice of her ear. She nearly fell limp from this juvenile make-out custom. Retracting his tongue, he whispered something in her ear, not waiting for a reply as he firmly pushed her onto her knees. She was so thick with alcohol that it only crossed her mind for a moment to try and recognize where they were and question if they were hidden from passers by. All rationality was knocked out by the sound of his zipper falling.
* * * * * *
A week went by and the rash insisted on staying, regardless of how many different ointments she tried. Finally, after the corner of her mouth refused to heal and Fye pestered her to the point of madness during their daily lunches that had become an unspoken ritual, she made an appointment to see a doctor. She tried to explain how much she detested hospitals and doctors at the beginning of their rapidly budding friendship, but it made no difference to Fye, whose persistence reminded Candice of something she hated even more: wining.
Two years ago Candice woke up with the most unusual ringing in her right ear. It wasn’t the common, sharp tone that came from a long night of drinking and loud music, but something more organic. Underneath the perpetual wine was a low vibration which kept her awake the rest of the night. The next morning it was still there—fainter, but present. By the end of that day she had developed a small twitch in her right eye that was set off by any sound remotely similar to the nagging noise in her ear.
She managed to sleep that night, but only after a couple a valiums. The next morning the vibration had slowed and the sound had dimmed, but not disappeared. By lunch time she had to go home. Even though the sound wasn’t as critical as before, a pain had set into her ear. She sat at home for an hour, watching day time television and eating stale popcorn, trying to convince herself that it would go away on its own. However, another night’s sleep and a full day of worked missed finally convinced her to go to the hospital.
A quick look by the nurse into Candice’s ear, along with a semi-muted gasp, produced the answer to her three days of torture. A steady hand and a pair of tweezers pulled out a moth who’d decided to make her ear its final resting place. The nurse explained to Candice that it must have crawled into her ear cavity while she was sleeping, gotten stuck, then slowly died.
Monday morning, two years later, sitting in the dank, nearly colorless waiting room, her right eye began to twitch from the memory of the moth. She rubbed it roughly, trying to only think about the talk she was going to have with her doctor about the rash around her mouth. She hoped this explanation would be as simple as the moth. She hoped, but a few days later, she would be gravely disappointed.
* * * * *
“What did the doctor say?” Fye said over a fork full of lettuce during lunch after Candice’s appointment.
“He told me he didn’t know what it was. He said he had to run some skin tests and that he’d call me when he knew.” Candice said grunting as she poked at her teriyaki chicken.
“How long?”
“Three days, tops.”
The two ate in silence for a few minutes. Candice chewed nervously on her food, trying to ignore the annoying fact that she would have to wait even longer to find out what had developed around her mouth. Fye, picking up on her uncomfortable appearance and decided to break the disappointment lingering in the air. “Did I ever tell you about the time I was institutionalized?”
Candice choked momentarily, then laughed it off. “Why doesn’t this surprise me?”
A devious grin crawled across Fye’s face. “I’m not that obvious am I?” She let out a little laugh, “I was never officially declared insane, you know, just a little unstable. After my third attempt of running away when I was fifteen, my parents decided to seek outside help. Being financially shaky, they could only afford what the state insurance was willing to fork over. This, of course, was not going to be a three time a week visit to a nice, sterile psychiatrist. No, they needed me where their tax dollars could be boosted by the number of heads under one building. So, I was committed.”
She stopped to take a bite of a large slice of cucumber, stuffed the entire piece in her mouth, and chewed with her mouth half open.
Candice, who would have normally be taken back to such indifference to something like this, had began to grown accustom to Fye’s, “shit happens” attitude, and simply urged her to continue.
Before she’d swallowed the entire slice she went on, pushing the food from one side of her mouth to the other between sentences. “The accommodations weren’t that bad actually. I know at one point I had a roommate, but I don’t remember what it was like. So I was either traumatized or bored. Either one is completely possible.
“Anyway, after five days of group sessions, and a micro version of school classes, they tried to put me on anti-depressants. I just laughed and so did my mother when they tried to convince her. The days were repetitious and I found myself bored more often then none. The most useful thing I gathered from the experience was simply the distraction from my current situation; it got me away from dangerous influences, such as the shady group of friends I’d acquired. Ironically, it made me aware of much more, shall we say, unique people and taught me a great skill—how to manipulate authority .
“I think the most interesting day, aside from when I was locked in a time-out room for twenty-three hours for refusing to write an essay on why I shouldn’t curse—an all time record—was when I watched this one kid collapse in front of me. Most of the teens were in there for minor offences like anorexia, depression, a few were suicidal. This kid was a heroin addict and his second day in, his body couldn’t take it any longer.
“As we were walking to lunch in our nice uniformed line, he fell like a rock right in front of me. Being the insensitive bitch that I was—am—I thought he’d tripped and fell, so I laughed a little. When I saw an orderly rush past me, I realized he wasn’t getting back up, and his body was twitching back and forth. Another orderly snapped his fingers in my face and told me to keep walking. As I walked by his face, I saw white, frothy vomit oozing out of his mouth.”
Candice dropped her fork and gagged again. “Thanks. I wasn’t hungry anyway.”
They both laughed.
* * * * *
Even with Fye’s strange stories and anecdotes, the next three days still dragged by in a most excruciating manner. By the second day, Candice couldn’t concentrate at work and, like the time with the moth, missed a day and half of work. By noon on the third day, Candice finally received a call from her doctor.
When the phone rang, her heart jumped into her throat. She managed to swallow the lump into her chest as she listened to the doctor explain why she needed to come to the hospital immediately. There was a firm urgency in his voice that kept Candice from fully recognizing the small, nervous breaks when he spoke. Her stomach churned with confusion and fear as she wondered what it was that she couldn’t be told over the phone. How bad could it be, she wondered.
When she walked into the waiting room, nervous butterflies firmly intact, she was greeted with a couple of odd glances from the nurses and the receptionist nearly jumped when she saw Candice approach the window. Candice stared at her confused and opened her mouth, but the receptionist’s hand shot up. “You will be helped momentarily ma’am.” The awkwardness she was trying to conceal in her voice broke free in the middle of the word ma’am. She still had her hand floating in the air, as her eyes darted from one corner of the receptionist’s window to the other. Then, just as her eyes finally landed on Candice’s, her hand jerked the sliding window shut.
Candice blinked, and then stared wide eyed at the pane of glass in front of her. A few moments later, after she’d managed to finally overlook the strange behavior of the receptionist, she sat down in the waiting room. She took a moment to look around, expecting the room to be flooded with coughing people, patiently waiting for their turn in line. This would help explain how abruptly she’d been treated. To her dismay, the waiting room was void of any apparent emergencies.
She quietly took the first seat that she backed into and grabbed the magazine laying on the end table, two seats to her left. She did her best to keep from looking up, trying to concentrate on the newest perfume or eyeliner, but when the police walked in, she couldn’t take her eyes off them.
She never could figure out what it was that made her nervous around police officers. Aside from a few minor offences that went unnoticed by the watchful eyes of the law, she’d never really done anything wrong. Yet, anytime she was pulled over for speeding or passed a uniformed cop on the streets, her stomach turned and her right hand shook a little.
She tried to avoid watching them out of the corner of her eye, but it was useless. A sense of guilt poured through her like a child with wet paint in her hair, feeling the weight of her mother’s eyes. She forced a fake cough, her head and eyes jerking up with it, bringing her eye to eye with the officers. Her hand shook more.
“Are you Candice Bermstrong?” The female officer spoke as she looked from the receptionist’s window back to her. Candice turned her eyes to the receptionist’s window in time to see the woman, who’d been anything but courteous, turn head from the window and began to furiously type on her computer. Candice, whose hand began to make a noticeable and quick thud against the side table, swallowed deeply,
“Yes.”
“You have to come with us ma’am.” This time it was the male officer who spoke, his dark skin, stiff lips, and mirrored sunglass helped to mask any emotion that he may have had.
“What’s going on?” Candice’s voice broke and then gathered itself.
“Just come with us ma’am.” The female officer insisted.
Candice opened her mouth again, and out of the corner of her eye she saw the receptionist staring through her voyeuristic window again. Candice’s confusion transformed into rage as she shot her a stare that seemed to hiss, “Take a fucking picture, you cunt.” Candice bit her lip to keep from screaming it at her, senting forth a horrible itch, but she resisted the urge to scratch.
When they finally reached the police precinct, Candice was escorted away from the two officers that picked her up from the hospital by a new police man. The tall and gangly man with a name tag that said, S. Davis, didn’t even look at Candice when she was lead over to the front desk. Instead of offering a simple explanation on why she was here, Davis looked at the two officers and asked, “Is this the one they were talking about?”
They nodded in unison.
Candice grew more aggravated with the vague, disconnected manner that they referred to her, but her hand was still slightly trembling and her stomach turning profusely, so she kept her mouth shut.
Davis lowered his head, shuffled some more paper back and forth and then without looking up said, “Room eight is available. Hazelton will speak to her there.”
“This way, ma’am.” The female officer extended her arm down the hall with an open hand. When Candice walked forward, the officers moved back to avoid being touched by her. She was lead to an interrogation room. Right as Candice was sitting down and the officers were leaving, she blurted out, “Don’t I get a phone call?”
One officer grunted. The other responded, “Yes, follow me.” in a very monotone voice. She was then lead further down the hallway to a private cell. It had a metal slab extending out from the wall, concrete floors and walls, and a payphone. She picked up the phone, put in her change, and dialed. Two rings later, Fye answered. Candice explained the situation and a click of the phone later, she felt a little more settled—just enough to keep the tears back.
She was escorted back to the integration room and left there, with the door closed. A good twenty minutes of waiting in a damp and musty room with cold concrete floors, a rickety table and badly cushioned chairs, an officer finally came in to talk to her. By this time, she couldn’t hold back anymore and had produced a fair share of silent tears.
The new officer, a stout man, with semi-greasy hair, thick stubble, holding a clipboard and wearing a name tag that said, Sgt. Hazleton, handed her a handkerchief out of his pocket. Candice wiped the tears from her cheeks, smelled the oil on the rag and quickly tried to hand it back. The sergeant insisted she keep it, quickly shaking his hand back and forth with a stern, yet almost emotionless, expression. Candice put in on the table, where her and the officer’s eyes, rested for several seconds before he broke the silence.
“Please state your name for the record.”
“Candice Bermstrong.”
“When were you born?”
“August 14, 1976.”
“Have you always lived in Castleton?”
“I was born here.”
The officer shot her dry, bureaucratic questions, constantly scribbling down the information without looking at her. Finally, he put the clipboard down and looked at her for a moment, then back at the paper. It seemed as if he was pretending to read off it, but his eyes were on the oily rag on the table.
“Has anyone that you loved died recently, like a husband, boyfriend, or a close friend?” Hazleton said plainly.
Candice scrunched her eyebrows up in confusion and replied through a dry sniffle, “No.” She sniffed again. “What’s this all about?”
He held up his hand again, “Just a couple more questions.” He lifted the paper on his clip board up for a moment, then continued, “Do you know anyone who works with-” He was cut off by knock at the door.
He seemed grateful for the interruption. “Just a moment.” He exclaimed walking to the door.
Behind the door was the female officer again. She didn’t make eye contact with Candice and stood so that most of her body was hidden by the doorframe.
“Her sister is here.” She stated.
Fye’s here, Candice though. Her heart warmed instantly.
“I’m not through questing her.” He replied.
“I know sir. It’s just that Ms. Bermstrong’s sister is incredibly persistent. She overheard lieutenant Callahan and Smith discussing—” her eyes shot to Candice and then back to Hazleton—“the situation. She had something to add that I thought you might find useful.” Her voice lowered and Candice couldn’t make out what they were saying anymore. A moment later, he thanked the female officer and walked back over to the table. He sat down, cleared his throat and continued to pretend as if he was reading from the clipboard. Half way through his inquiry, he finally looked her in the eye.
“It has been brought to my attention that you—“ a brief pause—“met a man at a bar a few weeks ago. What can you tell us about this person?” He coughed.
Candice’s sorrow and frustration were replaced by embarrassment and more confusion was pilled on top of it. She bit her lip. “Um.” She coughed.
“Just start with the name of the bar ma’am.”
“McKinley’s.”
“When were you at McKinley’s?”
“Four weeks ago. It was a Saturday.”
“How did you meet the man in question?”
She coughed again. “He came up to me and introduced himself.”
“Do you remember this man’s name?”
Her face hardened, wondering how much Fye had told the officer and how much he was assuming about her. “I… I don’t remember.” It accrued to her that he never told her.
“And you said it was four weeks ago that you were at the bar?”
She nodded.
“Do you recall what you were wearing?”
“What does that matter?” She said more scornfully then she’d intend.
The officer ignored her tone. “Because we need to inquire with the bartender about who you were with. It will be easier to describe you to him if we know what you were wearing.”
Candice gave him the description and the officer left to call the barkeep on duty at McKinley’s that night. Candice sighed heavily.
Twenty minutes later the officer returned. He had a confusing look upon his face; something between relief and aggravation. He sat down and looked Candice directly in the eye.
“Ms. Bermstrong, what I’m about to tell you will come as a very difficult thing to take. First thing, I want to do is apologize for all the confusion and secrecy, but this is a very unusual situation that you’re in. The hospital called us about the infection around your mouth and because of the law in regards to your particular situation, well, we had no choice but to bring you in for questioning. It’s not an allergic reaction as you’d hoped, but something far worse. The small bumps are caused by mites. Do you know what an Acari or mite is?”
Candice cringed and nodded, unsure of why this would cause police attention.
“Well, these are a specific type of mite. As it’s been explained to me, there are about forty thousand different types of mites. They all have their own unique living conditions. With the pattern that you have around your mouth, well ma’am, I’m sorry, but there’s only one way we assumed you could have gotten it.”
Candice interrupted. “What exactly are you saying? What does me having little disgusting bugs under my skin have to do with the police?”
“I’m getting to that ma’am. I called McKinley’s and the bar tender remembered you. Said he’d never seen you there before, so you really stood out. He also recognized the man you were with. Said he was a regular. Said his name was Larry Stine. I looked him up, and well, when I found out where he worked, it all made sense. You see, the mites that were found around your mouth are the kind that occur around dead bodies in the last stages of decay.” He coughed, looked down, then back up at Candice. “The only way you could have a rash that intense and in that pattern was if you’d had very close contact with a dead body.” He coughed again. “I’m not sure if you’re aware of this, but necrophilia is illegal in this state.”
Candice’s stomach turned violently.
“Like I said before, when we found out where Larry worked, we knew you weren’t involved. We’re very sorry for the inconvenience it’s caused you.”
Candice very quietly asked “Where does he work?”
“He’s a janitor at a mortuary and a part time groundkeeper at a graveyard.”
While Fye waited patiently in the police waiting room for her friend, Candice found she could no longer restrain herself and vomited all over sergeant Hazleton’s oily handkerchief.
