She had spent the last three days stripping skin from herself in long white swathes, piling them in the corner of her kitchen while the nagging red number on the answering machine climbed higher and higher.

I’m sick, she had tried to tell the first few who had called, just like she had tried to stuff those swathes into her tiny kitchen trash can. But something in her voice must have sounded more the way she felt, more wild than sick, and they had sounded like she was lying to them, even though she was peeling apart in ribbons and the trash can had overflowed two days ago onto the floor.

Even though she must have been sick, raking at herself with her nails, trying to dig her way to the itch underneath. She paced the apartment with more restless energy than she’d ever had healthy, watching that red number flash up from eighteen to nineteen, where are you, what’s wrong with you, we need you, and where she had dug deepest in herself, the slick gleam of new scales reflected its light.