Rejection Story
Matthew Ryan Fischer
It was psychosomatic. Kip was sure he was just being
psychosomatic. He felt the itching, he felt the crawling. All over him. All
over his skin. He scratched. All the time. They were there – on his skin, under
his skin, crawling all over him. He knew it. He couldn’t see it, but he knew it
was there. They were all over him at all times.
Kip swatted and scratched. He showered again and again. He always
felt dirty, always unclean. His skin was wrong. He felt things that weren’t
there – bites from creatures and the gentle trace of invisible things brushing
beside him.
He felt pain as he pulled out his hairs, one by one. He thought if
he felt pain, he wouldn’t feel the presence of that which wasn’t really there.
He was wrong. All he accomplished was creating himself a great deal of
suffering.
The fingers touched his skin so softly. They gently caressed his
skin. They slid over him, touching the tips of his hairs, creating goose bumps.
It might have been sensual if it hadn’t been so creepy and irregular. Kip
wanted to see, whoever it was, whatever it was. He wanted to know.
It was all in his head. He told himself over and over. He knew
nothing was there. He knew no one was there.
The fingers reached inside and grabbed his heart. Not his heart.
Not his. Someone else’s. He had been lucky once. Lucky when someone else hadn’t
been. His heart, but not his heart, but his life had been saved anyway. He had
been eternally grateful. He wasn’t grateful anymore.
The fingers tugged on his heart, pulling at it, tearing at it. The
beat was irregular. The beat was lost. He was erratic, insane. His heart was
beating too fast, his mind was racing.
It was all in his head, he told himself. There was no one there.
He was glad for the heart. He was thankful.
The fingers wrapped tight and tugged.
The beat stopped.
The heart was gone.
Kip’s body froze. His skin shattered into a million little pieces
and flaked away.
His body dropped to the ground. His soul lifted away.
The heart was not his. The fingers made sure he knew it.
And Kip’s extra time was taken.
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