The Burden of Change

Beth had a bad habit of picking at her skin.

Clogged pores, pimples, scabs, you name it, she would rip it apart until there was a gaping, bloody hole in her skin. Armpits were the worst, and the best. So painful, but so satisfying to watch the pus drip out of.

A poor diet and lack of consistent hygiene didn’t help the situation. There were days where she couldn’t rouse herself out of her bed until 4pm, or have anything to eat besides ice cream or cereal. To say she had an unbalanced diet was an understatement. The little satisfaction she had found these days came from making her skin ooze and bleed. She found some sort of distorted pleasure in the self mutilation.

So when she felt the pressure on her right shoulder blade one morning, she was practically frothing at the mouth. It was a Saturday, her day off from work. Her eyes blinked away the glaze of crust that had formed overnight, and she crunched her body into an agonizing, yet fulfilling stretch. As she turned over to lay on her right side, she flinched.

“Fuck,” she hissed, rolling back over as if scalded. Her left arm crossed over to palpate just over her opposite shoulder, and she felt a large, sensitive mound. Instinctively, she wrapped her forefinger and her thumb around it and tried to squeeze, immediately eliciting a cry from herself. It stung like a wasp, and the ache continued even after she had stopped.

Once she was mentally prepared to become vertical, she shuffled tiredly across the hall to the bathroom. The first thing she did was turn her back to the vanity mirror, craning her neck hard to see her shoulder in it.

A large, angry looking cyst had laid claim on her shoulder blade, about the size of a quarter. “Jesus,” she breathed as she turned back around, rolling her neck to get rid of the pain she had initiated. Beth had assumed it was like any other cyst, that the pus would need time to gravitate to the edge of the skin before it could be squeezed out, like the filling from a donut.

So, she continued on with her day, jumping in the shower, taking special care when she used her back scrubber not to irritate it.

The next morning, when she was conscious but not awake, she repeated her normal rising routine. She stretched, and then turned to lay on her left side. She flinched again, then cursed at herself for forgetting the swelling on her shoulder.

After a moment of nearly falling back into slumber, she jolted herself awake. With her left hand, she felt the mass erupting from her right shoulder blade. Then, with her right, she felt around her left shoulder blade. Frowning, she threw her duvet off of herself and started towards the bathroom again. This time, she kneeled and dug through the lower cabinet under the sink, eventually pulling out an old hand mirror.

As she rose, she turned her back to the vanity and examined it with the hand mirror. She was surprised to find that she had two boils, one on either shoulder blade, equidistant. Naturally, she still tried to squeeze the left one, receiving the same stinging sensation as she let out a sharp hiss. Shaking her head as she placed the hand mirror on the bathroom counter, she turned on the shower.

Days later, the two cysts continued to grow. Now the size of a sand dollar, they still showed no sign of eruption. Unable to resist, every day she tried to squeeze them, the pain only growing deeper and radiating further every time. She eventually became so annoyed, rather than physically bothered, that she started warm-compressing the spots every morning before work, hoping they would begin to show white heads. When that didn’t work, she added in a steaming hot bath before bed, hoping to lure out the discharge.

Finally, one night, as she was trying to fall asleep, her fingers mindlessly fondled the right cyst. Without even realizing she was doing it, she started pinching at the mass.

All at once, there was a sharp, stinging pain at the same time as a relief, like pressure releasing. Cursing, she stood, keeping her hand around the area to try to prevent any discharge from leaking down her back.

As she cupped her hand around the mass, she was startled at the feeling of something…soft. Fuzzy, even. When she arrived in the bathroom, she took the hand mirror from the counter and used it to examine her back and choked back a scream.

From the lump had erupted a small, dainty, stark white feather. She blinked hard, staring again at the mirror. It was still there. Fingers trembling, she reached back, still staring, and glided them over the area. It was real, she could feel it. She put down the mirror suddenly, as if it burned her, the movement making a sharp noise against the counter.

There was an explanation for this. There had to be, she reasoned with herself as she made her way back to her bed. It could be an odd tumor, she thought. There are tumors that grow their own teeth, even keratin. She had seen it. Or, better yet, she had too much prosecco with her evening meal and just needed to sleep it off. Forcing her heart rate to decrease with deep breathing, she reached over to her nightstand to obtain two sleeping pills from the prescription bottle. With reasoning thoughts keeping her mind at bay, she quickly drifted off into a mindless sleep.

She awoke the next morning to the sound of a scream being ripped from her own throat.

Her back lit up with a white hot pain like she had never felt, and she quickly flipped onto her stomach, moaning loudly. Her back arched harshly as the ache continued. Again, she felt that release of pressure, but it came with the horrible sound of skin being ripped open.

Another scream erupted as she writhed, rolling herself off the mattress and onto the unforgiving wooden floor below. Her head met the ground harshly, the pain making her ears ring. Soft cries erupted from her, unable to catch her breath from the sensation.

Blindly reaching behind her, she was met with a warm, metallic substance dripping down her body. She groaned as she felt the blood continue to flow down herself, struggling to push herself up with her forearms.

Then, suddenly, the pain started to subside. It was reduced to a dull ache as she slowly sat up, panting hard. By the time she was able to sit up somewhat straight, it was almost completely gone. She breathed hard, her mind continuing to race, trying to make sense of the situation.

As she was distracted by her own thoughts, she almost didn’t realize when her feet lifted off the ground.

“What-“ she couldn’t even get a full thought out, blinking rapidly as she tried to rationalize what was happening again. Before she knew it, she was almost at the ceiling, and still going up.

She heard what sounded like someone flapping open a newspaper at the same time she caught a sinister shade of white in her peripheral.

Craning her head, her eyes grew at the site of more feathers growing from her back on the right. She double checked, and it was the left, two. She began to realize that against her will, she had miraculously sprouted a pair of wings.

Then she felt more pressure on her back as she was forced upward. Heard the sound of her ceiling cracking, and eventually giving in as she continued. Insulation and plywood crashed around her as she gravitated, eventually breaking through the roof of her apartment complex. Blinking at the harsh sunlight, she forced herself to look upward.

She accepted her fate at this point, that something was forcing her to lift up, up into the sky, maybe even the heavens.

She had to continue on, forward and upward. She had no other choice.