By Kelton Sears
I.
"Ian, you're dripping on the carpet."Why is it that some people get sick and others don't. It's unfair really. Why is it that one person can contract arthritis, osteoporosis, cancer, melanomas; yet, others can go about their lives only getting the flu once a year? Whatever arbitrary God picks and chooses the lucky ones skipped out on me.
Starting about a week ago, I slowly began to melt.
And I don't want you to think this is a metaphor for something or an expression I'm using. Come to my house. See that puddle on the counter? Those droplets on the stair hand rails? The film on the rug? That's me. Or what used to be part of me, I guess. Now it's just an excuse for Beth to buy those double quilted paper towels. You know, the ones with the little jingle in the ads. Well they don't advertise in the commercial that it absorbs Ian three times faster than the leading brand of paper towels- they just mention spilled juice.
"Ian, I love you, but please- sit on the plastic." My girlfriend doesn't want me staining the upholstery. I sit on the chair she specially draped tarp over for me and it crinkles as I rest in it. When you are slowly melting, you never really feel still. There's always a sloshing inside of you, like you drank too much water. My gut bubbles a little as I rest my sweaty left hand (I don't know how much time I've still got with my fingers) on my stomach.
"Could you get me a popsicle again?... Beth. A popsicle please?" She didn't hear me at first. Her attention is invested in wiping up some more residue I left behind. "Oh, yeah. Hold on a minute, hun." Popsicles are the only thing I eat now. Popsicles and ice cream. I'm worried anything warmer might speed up the melting. I'm no scientist, but I'm not taking any chances. I haven't seen a doctor yet although Beth keeps pushing me to. "For Godsakes," she'll say," give someone else a chance to clean up after you." She really really cares. I don't want to go because:
A) I'm pretty sure they wouldn't have anything to prescribe me.
B) Remember E.T.? Well, Eliot didn't want the scientists to catch his little friend because they'd do experiments on him. And then when the scientists did find out about E.T., they chased after him in those big white suits and... well- I don't want to be in E.T.'s position. Beth can clean up after me, but I can't make a bike fly.
C) I hate going to the doctor.
So for now, it's popsicles and ice cream. Beth's dog is licking a mixture of melted popsicle and me off of the tarp. "Quizno! Stop that!" She rushes over and pulls the dog back. "You'd better hope he doesn't catch what you have now," she says, feeling the dog for any drippy spots. "It's not contagious," I tell her. It really isn't. Beth would've caught it by now if it was. We'd both go into the circus together: "Come see The Melting Man and his Dripping Damsel! Only a quarter- right through here please." That wouldn't be so bad. All people really want is to be remembered after they die, to have a legacy. Whether that be for my stories or for singlehandedly rebuilding the long-lost freakshow dynasty, I don't really care. I mean, I'd rather be remembered for writing really really good articles, but you can't be choosy.
The popsicle is calming my stomach for now, giving me a euphoric rare moment of stillness. And it's not a rare stillness just because I'm melting, it was even rare before that, when I was pleasantly intact. Try this. Turn everything off in your house: TV, Computer, cell phone, and just sit in a room. Sit in a room and try to hear silence. It's nearly impossible. There is always something buzzing, humming, droning on in the background that holds you back from that sort of Holy Calmness that William Wordsworth wrote hundreds of poems about.
The phone rings. It's my boss. Beth wraps a quilted paper towel around the phone handle before handing it to me.
"Hello?"
"Ian, hi, it's Chuck. I need you to come in early tomorrow to edit some of Erica's stuff for Sunday's Edition. Normally I wouldn't ask you, but her stuff is really sloppy in this article."
Erica's the new writer for the newspaper. She's fresh out of journalism school, and it shows. I've been there before, the young, inexperienced noob, so I don't mind helping her out.
"Yeah, no problem. Just make sure to unlock the controls for the air conditioning tonight."
"Why do you always have to have it so god damn cold in your office? It's really beyond me."
"So I don't melt faster," I say.
"Ha-ha Ian. Too bad you don't write the comic strips." (I'm pretty sure the editor of the Daily Bugle said this joke to Spiderman once or twice.)
"Yeah, too bad."
"Alright, I'll remember to unlock it. Thanks for helping out."
"Oh it's no biggy Chuck. I've felt her pain."
I hear muffled laughter on the other end of the phone.
"Ohhhh no. No no no. When you read this tomorrow I think you'll feel more pain than you've ever felt."
"That bad? I'm intrigued now."
"Just- make sure to do lots of editing."
I hang up the phone and walk over to the window.
I know I'm going to die. I'm just going to keep on disintegrating until I just disappear into slushy liquid. I don't want to die, I'm going to try to last as long as I can, one popsicle at a time... I just want to leave something behind when I"m gone other than a mess on the floor. Staring out the window I can see a busker playing on some improvised drums. People just brush by him. He's really good, actually. I grab some spare change from the desk. This guy is going to remember me. I leave the apartment without grabbing my coat. The cold will be good for me.
II.
Outside of the apartment at night, slugs like to gather around in the grass I've taken to salting them. I know it's kind of sick, but it make me feel like someone else at least knows what I'm going through. I squat down and dab a pinch of the salt on their quivering, vulnerable bodies and watch them shrivel up. I wonder how humbling it must be to have all the liquid sucked out of you; to realize that in the end you're just mostly water. Then I realize that it is humbling, because it's happening to me. An this is usually when the cheap escape ends and I get back to whatever I was supposed to be doing, which right now is going to work.
I've been writing for the paper for five years now and it amazes me still how little goes on in the world. I report on tax budgets and fiscal reports, and of course I write about the war. But it's all the same really, another levy, another profit margin increase, another I.E.D. I wish a car bomb would blow up in front of the office. Not to kill anyone of course, just to wake us all up from this weird slumber that we all seem to be stuck in.
Instead of journalism I should've majored in philosophy.
The office is warm so I rush to turn the AC on. Nobody is here except for me and the maintenance guy, who is always here. He smells like Xerox machines and Post-it notes and I think his name is Lawrence. I've never been able to get a real good look at his name tag- just passing glances. Does anybody ever really read name tags? I think sometimes we are afraid to know someone's name, I know I am. I walk over to Erica's desk and find her report on a stack of papers:
Cryptozoology- the Hottest New Scientific Field
When you write about AIDS curing Yeti fur you know that nothing is happening in the world. This must've been a mad grab on Erica's part for some interesting news in an otherwise dull week. And plus, everyone knows the Sasquatch and Loch Ness photos were proven hoaxes.
"What are you doing?"
I spin around startled ad Erica stares back with a look of pained apprehension.
Oh God. You hate my story. I'm so new and vulnerable, please like it- please like me, her eyes say.
Tell her it's shit and that it's a fact that Sasquatch and the Loch Ness are bogus, my stomach tells me.
"Hi," I say.
"It's terrible isn't it?" she asks.
"It wasn't that bad until you got to the AIDS Yeti."
"That could be a good band name," she replies.
"What?"
"AIDS Yeti. It would be a good name for a rock group."
"What kind of music would they play?"
"Obtuse Experimental Art Rock."
We both stare at each other blankly for an uncomfortable amount of time before the maintenance guy walks by.
"You two are in early." His nametag says Gifford.
"Did you know I've thought your name was Lawrence this whole time?" I ask him.
"You could've just read my name tag."
"I know, but I was scared to."
He shrugs and walks away wheeling his cart and whistling "Don't Stop Believing" by Journey.
I stare at my shoes and my mind repeats the mantra, "You are such a shithead," over and over until my stomach starts rumbling.
"You hungry?" asks Erica.
"Yeah, I haven't had breakfast," we were out of popsicles this morning.
"I'v got some instant oatmeal you can have. It's the Maple Syrup and Brown Sugar kind which is definitely the best one out of them all."
I shake my head, "Sorry," I say, "I can't eat anything warmer than an ice cube."
"Why?"
"I'll melt."
She tilts her head to the side a little and chuckles confusedly.
"It's just oatmeal."
We both stand at the microwave hypnotized by the bowl of Quaker Oats spinning round and round inside as the 2/3 cup water bubbles dangerously near the top. I contemplate how I am about to break my cardinal sin but am secretly excited at eating something other than a fudge pop. I wonder what it must be like to work in a an oatmeal packaging plant and how dusty it must get from all the cinnamon sugar particles floating through the air.
"Do you think it would be heaven or hell working all day with a cloud of cinnamon sugar floating by you?"
Erica contemplate my dumb question, I can tell because she pouts her lower lip sideways and her eyes search the sky for her thoughts. "Do you mean it's floating by you or is your head inside the cloud?"
"The last one. A suffocating swarm of sugar just eating at your face."
The microwave beeps an the hum of the motorized turntable stops. I take out the bowl and quietly panic as I feel its heat on my fingertips. I plop it down on the counter and blow franticly.
"I think you should stop wondering about it and find out for real yourself Shake some bags of sugar around your apartment and write a report on your experiences for me."
I cringe as I feel drops of my finger melting off.
"People don't live enough, you know?"
Nodding, "yes, I agree," on the outside and screaming with pain on the inside, I reach down to pick up the spoon. There's no going back now. Every second it gets closer to my mouth I can visualize it clearer: first the oatmeal will slide down my throat, disintegrating my esophageal lining the whole way down. Then, my stomach will deflate like a cheap balloon and I'll crap my melted insides out my as if that hasn't melted yet too.
The oatmeal tastes great.
I won't lie.
But I gag a little when I see some of my fingertip drippings fell into the bowl. It's then that I realize not but ten seconds ago I may have become the first person ever to cannibalize themselves.
"What's wrong?" asks Erica.
Coughing, I wave my hand violently, "nothing, nothing."
She shrugs and turns away.
"You should go on vacation."
"Where would I go?" I ask.
"Somewhere you've never been before. That no one has been to before. Like some untouched part of the Sahara or something."
"Think I'd find La Chupacabra there?"
Erica smiles, "maybe. Or maybe better, it'd find you."
"The Sahara is too hot for me. I've got to keep cool. It's a medical thing."
She turns back around, "fine then. Go to Antarctica."
The fluorescent light flickers off and on with a static hum and we both look up. I'm not sure if it's a shared feeling, but it seemed almost a religious moment to me. This glowing deity up above, letting its presence and wisdom be known to the helpless beings on Earth below. The hum of the light, the refrigerator, the computers outside, the AC, the water cooler all create a symphonic bed that I fall back into that engulfs me. I embrace the drone of life instead of wallowing in it for a second. That split second that the light flickers, I realize that its not a drone forever.
"Want to come buy tickets with me?" I ask.
"What?"
"To Antarctica."
The light flickers again. We look up.
