Member-only story
FICTION
Psoriasis
A Tale of Body Horror
It felt like a scab, but it wasn’t. His fingernails caught it by accident that morning, when his scalp itched, turning an ordinary head scratching into a blind self-inspection with nail and finger. The patch of crusty skin was about the size of a dime, just beyond the start of his hairline, above his widow’s peak. It felt like dried blood, but when his nail scraped into it, white flakes
drifted down into his vision like snow, and larger pieces of what appeared to be dry skin stuck in the crevice under the fingernail. The spot then became damp, as if it were bleeding, but touching his finger to it only revealed a clear liquid, like tears or pus.
“What the hell is this, dandruff?”
Robert Wooden had never had issues with his skin. In fact, he had never had issues at all. He proudly referred to his own immune system as the Terminator. If he felt himself starting to get ill, he would take 4,000 mg of vitamin C, every morning until the feeling subsided. He could count on one hand the number of times he had had the flu. He couldn’t get dandruff. That was something poor people got. One of the hygienic clues, amidst their foul odor, and dirty clothes, those specks of white in their hair looking suspiciously like lice eggs, that led him to avoid touching them.
