I reach behind me again, trying to get it to stop, but the interminable itch just will not go away.
At first, it was just a small thing, a little distraction in the middle of the day while I was at work, but it’s kept getting worse as the days go on and, now that a full week has passed and it’s shown no signs of letting up, I am really beginning to wonder what the hell is going on.
I tried to talk to my wife about it, but she ignored me, telling me if it bothered me that bad to go see the doctor, but that guy is, I swear, a quack above all else and I hate going to him. I mean, the last time I went, he told me the reason my leg was paining me was because I was “just getting old” and I would have to learn to deal with it.
Did he listen to me when I said it felt like something was crawling around inside of it? Nope. And yet, a couple days later when the first bug popped out of a hole it dug into my skin, what did he have to say, then? “Oh, my!”
Yeah. That’s it. What a crock. Sent me home with some kind of antiseptic or spread-on bug killer, and I swear I saw him chuckling at my predicament.
Sure, it solved that particular problem, but this itch has been something else entirely. The last thing I wanted to do was spend money my family didn’t have to have some guy tell me it’s all nothing and to put on some damn cream or something.
I know somethings wrong, I just can’t put my fingers on it.
Literally.
It’s right there in the center of the back, between the shoulder blades. That kind of spot that stays a mere inch, maybe less, from the edge of your fingernails, keeping out of reach enough to make you mad.
I’ve tried to figure out why it started. I have the when. One week. Seven days of constancy that can make someone go a little nuts and a lot grumpy.
Like I said, at first, it wasn’t too bad. Just a spot that seemed to get a little worse by the day until, after a few days of it, it started to feel like it was burning. Yeah, I used a back scratcher on it. Hell I bought one just for the purpose of trying to free myself of it, but that did about as much good as sitting in a bathtub full of cold water.
Relieved it for about a half a heartbeat, only to have it come right back when I was done.
When Martha finally deigned to look at it, she said she didn’t see anything other than the redness of my skin where I had been digging it raw.
“How can that be?” I asked, knowing every time I scratched at it, I swear there was a lump of some kind. “Can’t you see anything at all?”
She just rolled her eyes and kicked the blankets over herself tighter.
That’s my Martha. Ever the Florence Nightingale. She’d given me her answer and that was that for her.
When she turned off the light and I started trying to scratch it again, she pushed me out of the bed and told me to go sleep on the couch if I was gonna keep it up. I did what she wanted, as I almost always did. No one can say I am not an “obedient husband” to her.
Wish I could say the same about her, but that’s not the point.
I didn’t end up with much sleep that night, and that’s how it’s been for the past week now. I’m more tired than I can ever remember being, and this damn itch just keeps getting worse.
It had been a nice day seven days ago, the kind of day right between summer and fall when you can walk outside without a jacket but still have that balance between being cold and hot. Perfect day, really.
I decided to make use of the day by going for a walk and, as it often did, that meant going into Peterson’s woods.
Now, most people avoid those woods, what with the thick brambles that tend to grow in it making treks through it difficult. Pretty much the only ones that do go in there are hunters looking to catch a deer unaware (if they can get by without the Sheriff noticing), or small game guys looking to do in a few rabbits for their winter pots.
It’s usually hard to get through, but I knew of some paths through it that made it easy, as long as I kept my eyes open for those crawling vines that sometimes scattered themselves across the empty spaces, looking for the newest and best light they can get hold of. The occasional root might stick up, especially after a big rain washed through, removing some of the top parts of the soil, and I’d have to watch not getting tripped up, but mostly it was good enough that I wouldn’t have to do more than the cursory glances down once in a while.
Other than that, it was just me and nature, as God designed it to be, or so my mom might have said. Man in the wild, even if I did have a suit and tie on.
Of course, after these little excursions of mine, Martha would get ticked ff at me for the state of my clothes, claiming she’d have to clean them up again before I could wear them to work, but, hell, half the time she doesn’t even manage to do it herself, and has the dry cleaners take care of it. She keeps herself too busy with the Ladies Group she’s in.
When those hens start clucking there’s no work that gets done.
So, there I was, enjoying the nice day beneath the boughs of the trees and thinking how nice it would be to maybe get a couple of the guys together to build a shack out there, something I’d dreamed about for a long time. I know it’ll never happen, since, like I said, most people tend to avoid Peterson’s woods like the plague, but, still, it made for nice thoughts.
When I heard the weird fluttering sound, I, at first, didn’t pay it any mind. I thought it was a bird in the trees above me going from bough to bough, or, hell, even a squirrel trying to find its next meal or something. But when it seemed like it was actually following the paces I was making through the woods, I started looking up to see if I could spot whatever it was.
There wasn’t anything there that I could see, though. Just this strange flit-flit-flit as I walked, like an almost silent helicopter hovering way up in the sky. It was wings of some kind, of that I was almost positive, but whatever was making it I just couldn’t get my eyes on.
That is, until I got to a clearer place in the woods, a little break in the trees that spread out into a clearing.
Now, you might think I was, or am, drunk for saying what comes next, but I am god’s honest telling the truth here.
The whole place seemed to dim. It was like a veil of some kind just sort of whooshed over the whole clearing, or an eclipse, maybe, even though the sun was still up there in the sky.
It was the nature of the light, I guess, that is the weird part. Instead of the usual yellowness of it, it ended up taking on this cast of gray. If you’ve ever seen what water looks like after it’s gone through a dish washing cycle, it was similar to that. Milky, almost, chalk turned to dust and mixed in.
My feet stopped moving and I just stood there staring for what must have been a full minute, wondering if a storm was coming up quick and how I might find some shelter from it if it did.
Everything around had fallen into silence, even my breaths, which I realized I was holding in for far longer than I should have in those first few moments in the clearing.
The usual chattering of the birds and small critters doing their thing in the midst of the trees had gone dead, and I thought I had gone deaf, but the breeze was still going and I could hear it in the leaves, so I knew it couldn’t be that.
Then the flitting sound began again, in earnest this time, and I whirled around to see what was happening.
There in front of me, right there at the edge of the break of the trees, was something I could have never imagined. Or, rather, not since I was a little kid still holding on to my mom’s gown while trying to fight off going to sleep.
It was a fairy.
I swear to God, a real-life, genuine fairy, hovering with her wings flapping in rhythm as she looked dead in my face with a smile as big as the outdoors.
She wasn’t big, at least in her body. She was a tiny waif of a thing, real thin spindly limbs and long, brown hair that matched the bark on the trees around me. That hair hung down to her knees, I think, though the dress she wore made it hard to tell in those first couple seconds of me staring with my mouth agape.
Her wings, though, those were huge. They reminded me of a butterfly, only more translucent, and they made a rainbow pattern as they wafted back and forth, keeping her body afloat.
I didn’t say anything. Hell, I couldn’t say anything as I stood there staring like I was stupid into the bluest eyes I had ever looked at before. My brain just couldn’t process it, couldn’t come to terms with the fact that here I was, a middle aged man with a beer gut gazing into the eyes of freaking Tinkerbell in the middle of god-forsaken nowhere. What the hell do you say to something like that?
I raised my hand, though, in a weird wave of sorts, rather embarrassed at my condition in front of this creature that had to come from magic or something. I mean, where exactly do they come from? Does anyone really know? There’re all kinds of myths about them, but who knows where they really originate from?
She smiled at me, the grin getting bigger as she saw my gesture, and raised a hand to her mouth like she wanted to hide behind it.
I wasn’t sure why she was showing herself to me. Wouldn’t she be better off showing up to some kid, changing their life in some kind of mystical way or something?
My mind was locked up, and I just couldn’t think straight. There were so many things I could have said in that moment, questions I could have asked this awesome being out of the imagination, but nothing came out other than a little clearing of my throat. Probably an overload of shock.
Her wings started to move harder and she kind of turned a bit, making like she was going to head off into another direction and disappear from me. Finally, my voice unlocked.
“Wait!” I shouted, breaking the silence of the clearing and snapping that magical moment asunder.
I regretted it instantly, not wanting to damage whatever chance I had to explore all of this strangeness further, but she didn’t panic and fly away. My sinking heart rose back up again as she turned back toward me, that grin still plastered across her beautiful face.
“Wait,” I said again, much quieter this time. “Please don’t go.”
She didn’t say anything, had made no noise at all other than the flapping of those gorgeous wings on her back. She came closer, though, pushing herself forward with the strange method of flight she had.
She pointed behind me, still saying nothing and, for a moment, my eyes stayed locked on hers. I didn’t want to turn, sure in my heart that she would disappear if I did, and I didn’t want that moment to end. I wanted it to go on forever, just me and this beautiful creature together in a spot in the woods made for just us.
She was insistent though, gesturing wildly without vocalizing at all and I finally capitulated, curious as to what she was wanting.
When I turned away, the fluttering of the wings grew frenetic and much closer than they had been.
Before I had a chance to whirl around again, a sharp pain struck me in the center of my back, just between the shoulders. It wasn’t much, really, a needle pricking the skin like you’d get when a nurse draws blood.
There for a split second, then gone again.
Well, I managed to get myself turned around all the way and saw her backing away with that smile still on her pretty face. A long length of tail that reminded me too much of a scorpion was sliding back up inside of the dress hanging off of her thin body, coiling up inch by inch until it disappeared completely somewhere within her.
My eyes widened as she laughed and fluttered her butterfly wings more rapidly than my eyes could really see, and shot up high into the air, racing across the tops of the trees.
Within a few seconds, she faded completely from my sight and I was left alone in the darkened clearing, wondering what the hell I had gotten into.
Or, more specifically, what had gotten into me.
That damn itch is just so hard for me to reach, and I am not sure how much longer I can take it. I know there’s a lump there, growing every day, and I wonder, as I lay awake in the middle of the night, unable to sleep at all because of the terrible ache it’s giving me and the terror that is growing, how much more time will pass before whatever that damn beautiful demon creature did to me is fulfilled.
Am I going to become one of them? Is this how they created a new one of themselves? Am I in the middle of some transformation into a fairy, myself, becoming some weird middle aged paunchy fairy, myself?
Or am I merely the shell for an egg that’s hatching inside of me as I write these words, nothing more than an incubator feeding the coming child?
This damn itch is just getting worse. I guess I’m going to find out soon enough.
