“What the hell? I showered today,” I muttered to myself. I thought I was being quiet, counting tips at the register, but an elderly female customer scowled.

“Good for you, dear,” she said, then shuffled a few steps away. She pretended to look at the daily specials. I knew if I asked her what today’s Wingin’ It basket was, she couldn't even tell me. My stank was repelling her. Damn it.

That night, at home, I tried several soaps and a new heavy-duty body wash, really getting into the crevices. Nothing helped. As the days ticked by, my armpit got worse. There was now a spreading discolored patch of skin. It looked like Italy, the boot about to kick my self-confidence straight in the gutter.

I’ve never been into perfume, but now, I bathed in the stuff daily. As the suspicious patch expanded towards my elbow, I stopped wearing short-sleeved polos. This prompted my restaurant manager, the almighty Brian, to approach me.

“Nina, we can’t have you wearing sweaters. There’s a uniform policy, you know.”

I self-consciously itched my sore spot. “Right, sorry about that.”

He stared at me. “Are you okay?”

“Uh-huh, I’m just allergic to the polo shirt material. Can I wear sleeves underneath it?”

Brian sighed like the long-suffering martyr he was. “Fine, just no more turtlenecks.”

“It’s a quarter-zip, but okay.”

Brian sniffed, scrunched his nose at something in the air, and went off to nitpick the dishwasher’s performance.

I was safe, for now.

My roommate noticed two weeks in. She brought it up one night after a date. Her date, not mine. I wouldn’t dare approach a boy in my current state.

“At first I thought the toilet was clogged, but then every time you walked past, I caught a whiff, and damn. You gotta do something about your hygiene, girl.”

My cheeks burned with shame.

That night, I did another internet search for my symptoms. The rabbit hole led to a website where you could live-chat with alleged medical professionals and upload photos of your skin condition for inspection.

Hoping they weren’t pit perverts, I clicked Send on the least flattering picture of me ever taken. Italy had expanded to capture its nearby neighbors, and I had a plum-purple Roman conquest situation down my arm. It looked like a map of medieval Europe if a drunk Magellan spilled an inkwell over it. Not pretty. It itched more than ever.

The online expert’s response was not encouraging. “Please make an appointment with a dermatologist in your area, the sooner the better. I’ve only seen such advanced keratoses in case studies of leprosy.”

So, now I was a leper. Great. And since seeing a specialist would require actual healthcare coverage, my out-of-pocket ass would have to seek help elsewhere.

The next day, I was pouring coffee for one of our frequent customers, a sweetheart of an old guy named Franklin, when he said, “Oh, Nina dear.”

“What’s up, Frank?”

He pointed at his mug. “I thought you knew I take it black.”

“Sure do.”

I didn’t get it. Was Frank suffering from early-onset Alzheimer’s?

“You added cream. Honey, I’m lactose intolerant. The stuff turns me inside out.”

A milky yellowish cloud was unfurling in his coffee. It dripped there... from an open sore on my wrist.

That almost turned me inside out. Mortified, I stammered an apology and whisked the disgusting drink away. What the actual fuck? What if the poor guy drank the stuff?

Suppressing my gag reflex, I rushed to the kitchen. I knew the blighted area had spread down my arm, but not about it spewing goo that looked like spoiled Greek yogurt. Gross.

I asked another server to bring Frank a fresh coffee, myself keeping clear from the coffee machine, lest I taint it with my newly brewed batch of non-dairy creamer.

Maybe it was time to see a doctor.

I made an appointment for the best medical care I could afford: The Minute Clinic at CVS. The nurse examined me with the dispassionate affect I imagine one reserves for autopsying a common toad in a high school lab.

“Have you been swimming in any local bodies of water?”

“Just swimming in my sweat in all this heat, am I right?” She glared at me, unmoved by my attempt at humor. “But in terms of actual swimming, no.”

She made a hmm sound and wrote something down. “Any recent sun exposure?”

“No more than usual. Wait, are you thinking this could be a sunburn? It feels like leprosy, how it keeps itching.”

“Don’t be glib,” she barked, startling me. “I’m sorry, but civilians should never WebMD their own diagnoses, especially leprosy. The real thing sucks.”

“Duly noted,” I said.

She prescribed an antihistamine-antibiotic combo and sent me on my way. $160 lighter, I drove home to apply topical cream and swallow my pills.

The cream application didn’t work as prescribed. Poking my angry skin-patch with my creamy finger, there was a hissing noise from somewhere far away. The source: it wasn’t a loud, far-off hiss, but a minuscule sound close by. It was coming from my body. The original Italy stain that claimed my arm and shoulder. Itching beneath my bra strap, my shoulder looked like the aged leather skins on display at the Natural History Museum. Shriveled, hardened, and crisscrossed with deep wrinkles.

The skin blight was hissing.

I dipped my finger into the cream and smeared more stuff on my shoulder. The hissing noise redoubled, and I could see miniature bubbles popping along my skin where I’d applied the medicine. This couldn’t be right, but it looked like my pores were breathing through the cream.

“No fucking way...”

I swear the tiny bubbles mimicked my speech.

nO...FuCkInG...WaY...

“Whoa,” I breathed.

wHoA, my skin whispered.

I was fascinated. All this time, I thought my body had been falling apart. Maybe it was becoming host to something: A new being, self-aware, and intelligent. I may have had it backward. Instead of trying to cover it with clothing layers and perfume, scrubbing it off with soap, or healing it with modern medicine, what if I just... let nature take its course?

It had been developing at an impressive rate. Within a few weeks, it went from a skin rash in my armpit to a breathing, sentient organism attempting to communicate. Was I at the precipice of a new evolutionary step? Each time I accidentally squeezed out pus, was I making first contact?

“What’s your name, friend?” I whispered. There was no need for panic anymore. We could be our real, gentle, intelligent selves.

“Toof-davarah,” the little guy hissed. He no longer echoed my words.

“Ooh, that’s so pretty,” I said. Then tried it out myself: “Toof-devarah, is that it?”

My shoulder buddy hummed and itched with affirmation.

I felt at peace.

Then he spoke again. “Toof. Devah. Rah.”

I wanted to get it right, lest I offend my cosmic little friend. “Am I saying it right? Toof-devah-rah?”

It made a low growling noise.

“ME...TOOF... DEVOORAH.”

“Come again, you what?”

My arm, covered by the new organism like a metal head’s tattoo sleeve, twitched involuntarily.

Huh. That was new too.

My hand jerked up, launching at my face.

It targeted my mouth. The fingers clung to my bottom teeth, loosening them from their gums, back-and-forth, back-and-forth.

It took me several seconds to come to grips with my hand trying to extract my teeth.

“Me... Tooth Devourer!” cried my shoulder. I gasped as several bottom-row teeth were ripped out. “Give... teeth! Must... devour!”

Hell shot through my jaw as warm liquid dribbled down my chin. I tongued the empty sockets where my teeth used to be. What the hell just happened?

My new friend wanted teeth. That was unfortunate, because my own supply was limited to 32. Less now that he got his first handful.

What did he need them for?

I twisted my neck so I could see. My four missing teeth had found a new home – jammed into my shoulder. They made the leather-like skin ooze, carving out the beginnings of a new mouth. It moved, trying to say something.

My hijacked arm attacked again. Ignoring my bleeding mouth, I tried to block its jabs. The two limbs collided in a violent clash that redefined arm-wrestling. With a branch-like crunch, my right arm snapped at the elbow.

Agony exploded in my arm. It hung loosely at my side. Fractured and incapacitated, I felt like a ragdoll. My newly tenanted arm was moving right back to where it wanted to be. My fingers spidering inside my mouth. My mouth gushed, gagging me.

My new body-roommate was not a benevolent presence. I didn’t know if it was a hyper-intelligent being from the deep cosmos or the ghost of a crazed cannibal come to possess me. All I knew was, this thing wanted teeth.

I liked my teeth. I brushed and flossed them every night, well, almost every night, and I would be sad to see them go. My new shoulder-friend and I disagreed on that crucial point. I could also see that he was constructing his own mouth, in the middle of my shoulder, and this was not okay.

Stumbling around the living room, I smashed through furniture in the struggle. With both my arms unusable, I was a kicking mule, unable to grab anything to use as a weapon.

What would his weakness be? I couldn’t think straight. Then I felt a thumb hooking my canines. I bit at it. The toothy shoulder-mouth yowled.

Didn’t he low-key hate that rash cream? Gasping for air, blowing all those tiny bubbles…

To the bathroom!

I shoulder-checked all the artwork off the wall on my way, then collapsed inside the bathtub. Clamping down my unruly arm with one knee, I used my mouth to turn on the faucet. My raw gums howled in protest.

I held my left side underwater, overflowing the tub. Bubbles exploded up from the shoulder-mouth, forced out by a muffled primal scream.

“TEEEEEETH!!!!”

My possessed arm went flail-crazy, attempting to overpower my knee and resurface.

The bubbles rose for a long time. I waited until there were no more bubbles.

Then I waited some more.

Soaking wet, I rose from the tub. My left arm ached, but was back under my control. It felt good to turn off the faucet with my own hand.

I felt an annoying itch behind my left eyeball.

I’m sure it’s nothing, though. Surely, it’ll go away soon.

About the Author:
Mike Rusetsky is a Ukrainian-American author of dark and speculative fiction with a satirical bite. He started out as a playwright, with his original one-act productions Angel of Death and The Plight of Smitty earning critical praise. His recent publications include short stories in anthologies by Outsider Publishing, Black Hare Press, Critical Blast Publishing, Inkd Publishing, White City Press, Storm Dragon Publishing, and in the periodicals Tales from the Crosstimbers, Sometimes Hilarious Horror, and Trollbreath Magazine. Mike is an active member of the Horror Writers Association and the Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers Association. He lives in Columbus, Ohio, with his beautiful wife and their spoiled Alaskan Malamute dog. mikerusetsky.com