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He had a habit of boiling himself. Most times he got out of the bath, it felt like he had washed twice, once getting in, and then at the end, when he would have to soap the pungent sheets of sweat away from his arms, neck and back, where it collected endlessly in the thick steam, and continued to stream after he’d got out, sitting in his room with his face a deep red, breathing away the pulmonary frenzy like a dog.
But today he took his time, he had been rattled at work, so he stayed, enjoyed the water, smoked the joint, hit up some jazz on the radio, and piled through Javascript - The Good Parts by O’Reilly press for nearly two hours until the water was luke warm and the radio had been stalled for a good half hour, the app finally stumped by the flakey WiFi.
He was in those final, stretchy minutes, promising he’d quit the tub at chapter end, before ignoring his own advice and ploughing on, another cigarette lit, when he heard the pop. It was barely noticeable, like a soap bubble, but he knew instantly where it had come from. He shifted, ass groaning across plastic, water sloshing, tossing the book to the floor, and lifting his foot, grabbing the ankle and bending it towards himself, seeing the fungus for the first time.
He started draining the bath, wrapped himself in a towel, and trod gingerly to his room, where he inspected the wrinkled, puffy flesh in the late evening summer light thrown by the bay window.
It looked similar to his thumb, which hadn’t really altered. His big toe had the dead texture of dim sum, and in the middle, along the bottom and side, was the same red crescent, only this time it stood out dramatically against the wrinkled, soaked skin.
He probed at it, felt it tingle, calling from within to be purged, so he pushed it gently between the flat of his thumbs, seeing it swirl from red to purple, something within rising up. The pressure built, his brow furrowed as he pinched as much strength as he could into the boil, and then they appeared, seeping through the lattice of pores, perfect, tiny spirals the colour of bone, breaking through the skin like puss but spinning like drill bits, each one a shockingly perfect shape.
He brushed at them, expecting it to break and ball like snot or puss, but each one just broke away intact, a collection of little sucker cups on stems, the pores they had broken from welling with pale pink water.
