Pick Your Poison

He doesn’t know how it starts— a slackening of skin over his heart, a rising bubble of flesh that aches just to look at.  He doesn’t know what this is.  If it’s a disease, he’s never heard of it.  So he does what he thinks is best— slams a hand over the growth just to find that it’s hollow. Collapsing to one knee, not from the pain, but the feel of it.  The give of what should be hard bone to his palm fills his throat with bile, the acid burn gurgling into his mouth.  His nose. 

Another bloated bubble of skin stretches up from his thigh.  Is he naked?  When— Where are his clothes?  He scratches at it.  The nails he pretends not to bite barely leave a mark.  Instead what he gets is a deep, penetrating pain.  His eyes squint in confusion as jagged lines slowly carve a single word into his skin—

Bleed

“What is happening!?”  And he thinks it’s a shout.  A scream.  Feels the rasp of it in his throat, but can’t hear anything over the rushing in his ears.  Nothing until—

“Where is your armor?”  The voice is deep.  Like a tectonic shift, it shakes up from the ground.  

He looks up, rendered nearly blind from the pain he can see only the vaguest idea of a man.  A silhouette of something large.  Heavy.  

“My… armor?”  It’s slurred. Barely words at all.

“Where is your armor?”

He looks down, hoping to understand what is being asked of him, only to see more wounds opening on his other leg.  He hardly feels it now, a sheet of paper placed on a steel ton weight.

Bleed

And then it’s everywhere.  The same word marking him over and over until there is no surface left to spare, all the while the same questions rattling through him,

“Where is your armor?”

“Stop! Stop, stop, stop,” clawing at his skin, he tries to erase all of what’s being asked of him.

Asked of him…

Silence. It bristles at the edges.  Through the haze, he sees the man has gone. All that’s left are the lightest pinpricks along his palm.  With the patience of a cross stich, he watches the new word form.

Please

“Mr. Avery?” A cotton clouded voice lays over his ears, one he can barely hear.  “Mr. Avery?”

A woman in an angel white chair leans over her clipboard to meet his eye.  “This exercise can only be successful if you both participate.  Your wife has shared her feelings, will you reciprocate?”  

He looks at his wife’s wide open eyes. The hope that’s barely allowed itself to breathe there. Gritting his teeth, he shrugs,

“There’s nothing to say.” And watches her hope go out.