Darla, Darling, Dearest

 

Danny awoke with a start. His head throbbed. He felt like a steel mill crucible: full of scum and hotter then hell, and not in the good way. He had passed out on top of his netbook. He could feel the keyboard’s indents in his face and the hairiness of teeth uncleaned. The laptop was dead, but a check of his phone set the time at about 3 am. He ached all over. He needed a shower.

Getting up was an exercise in pain management. It flowed over him and across him without rhyme or reason. An elbow would become a miniature vaporization of Gomorrah, a wall of hellfire and misery, and then it would switch to a knee, never staying in the same spot for more then a few seconds, sometimes it was everywhere, sometimes it was concentrated on a single point. He dragged his body into the bathroom, slowly stripping off his clothes.

It was like no hangover Danny had ever had. He wondered murkily if he had come down with something. As he dragged his flaccid, gross body into the tub he looked at it with disgust.

His body was his shame. Back when he was a wide receiver for the Lyon County Lions, and he was in peak physical shape, he had found his body revolting, but not ugly. He was fairly sure the reason was he wasn’t gay, and that most guys don’t like their bodies, thats why gay guys are always so fastidious about their looks. They like guys, so they like their bodies. QED.

After Danny graduated, though, he stopped caring. He just couldn’t bring himself to drive the 30 minutes to the nearest gym when he wasn’t honing his body into a tool for use on the field. His body had deteriorated quickly after he had stopped working out, and now he had what people were calling “dad bod” at 21. It was hairy and flabby in all the wrong places. It sucked to look at.

And so he didn’t. Danny focused instead on the other burly man. The one with the sledge hammer pounding rivets into his brain. He turned on the shower. Thankfully the heat of the water cooled the fiery red ache, and so, he began to scrub himself down. It was at this moment he finally found the bumps of a very specific rash on his back.

After letting off a long string of expletives, Danny jumped out of the shower grabbing a the cheap plastic hand mirror and began desperately turning this way and that, hoping against all hope that the symptoms he was feeling were not in any way related to the strange lumps on his lower back. Eventually, he caught sight of the one thing he had been dreading to see: A red welt concentrically circled by a equally angry rash.

The SHHH of the shower was the only noise as his ass dropped to the floor of the bathroom. The cheap linoleum crawled cold tendrils on his butt, while his chest tightened and equally icy roots sprouted through his body along his veins. The horror of what had just happened to him drowned out all thought. He stared at the floor with glassy eyes as his mind’s emergency generator kicked on.

Lists. Lists provide order. He needed a list. Ok, what this exactly does this mean? One: he had been bit by a tick in the past week or so, although he had no memory of this happening. Two: he had contracted an illness from said tick that he had the supreme pleasure of parsing which. Three: given the bit mark, it could really only be one of two, both of which were terrible and ruin his life. OK. Fuck.

Lists. Remember the lists. Don’t get distracted. Concentrate. Two tick born illnesses that leave a target. Lyme and is strange awful cousin Narragansett’s. Two very different paths to damnation.

Lyme attacks your nervous system causing brain fog and chronic fatigue. It would disrupt his ability to take care of his father. It would add to the mounting medical debt they were both still drowning in. It would leave his mind and body useless for random episodic flareups that he would have no control over for the rest of his life.

Narragansett's, on the other hand, was considered even worse by most people. Folks generally don’t take kindly to waking up with a new set of genitals. The consequences were equally dire. Danny really did not want to have to take testosterone, or abandon his father to his fate, or marry a man. ‘Sett’s made him feel weird too. It always felt like the sickest darkest part of his mind wanted

him to get it. The twisted perverted fantasies he sometimes allowed himself always involved him becoming completely unhinged, murdering his father, burning the churches, and running around naked after giving himself it.

He couldn’t be that person. He would not be that person. Giving in to his base desires just because he had left the church was just proving them right about everything. He would be the dutiful son without god. He would not get ‘Sett’s. It was just not an option he could entertain.

Unfortunately for Danny, it was nearly indistinguishable from Lyme in the early stages. Only once the physical changes started, could you at all be certain. He was clamping down on the panic attack now, and so his mind helpfully supplied him with the best tool for getting out of it: denial mode. He didn’t have it! He just imagined it! And even if he did have the rash it was probably Lyme!

He checked his back in the bigger mirror and there it was, the target shaped rash. The harbinger of bad days to come. An omen, marking him as one of the accursed. “Well fuck” Danny whispered to himself. This was going to suck. At best he was looking at taking antibiotics for months, at worst he was going to lose his trouser snake. None of his friends would respect him anymore. He would be run out of town for defying gods will. He pulled himself back into the still running shower in a desperate bid to calm his nerves.

Danny quickly deflated to the bottom of the tub. Assuming the regal and august shower-based fetal position, he followed the grand tradition of humanity in emotional distress and broke down into tears. He would have to wait until 24 hours from now, and not lose body mass to be certain that he just had Lyme.

He was scared. Danny knew some people gave themselves Narragansett’s intentionally, but that wasn’t for him. Opening that door led only to chaos. Besides, he was straight as a rail. He would never be happy with a man, as much as he would love to be a mother. He would have to get the hormone treatment. In a god-fearing community like this, all he could expect would be universal scorn. Those who got Narragansett’s were punished by God. Those who fought against it though, they openly defied gods will.

Darrow’s aggression would be unleashed on him. Pops would kick him out and die alone just to spite him. Mike would turn his back on him. Everyone would leave him. He would be homeless and have to put a life together from scratch. Except...

Joan.

Why did he not think of Joan? She was a lesbian. She would be safe to talk to, and had just been trying to talk to him yesterday. Danny got to his feet. Admiring the texture of his wrinkled waterlogged hands, he shut off the water. Well actually, he knew why. He sighed. He needed to get over his bullshit if he was going to get though this without splattering his gray matter on to a wall. He pulled out his phone.

4:38 am.

Shit, he had forgotten that he was up far earlier then it was safe to call a person. He realized with a resigned sigh that he should probably just text her. Realizing that “hey I might have Narragansett’s come over” was an absolutely wild thing to text someone you haven’t had a full conversation with in years, he very tactfully sent her an invite to hang out in the store and catch up.

No response was forthcoming. He stared through his phone unsure of what to do next. the only person guaranteed to be up this late was Mike.

Mike was a Vet-bro, and a troublemaker. His goal while they were still in school was to join Blackwater and become a well paid merc for the us occupation of Afghanistan. He joined the army to get paid training, and was, to his horror and dismay, made a logistics officer. After four “dedicated” years of service sending bags of Frito-Lay's to the guys who actually killed people, and getting shot at without the ability to shoot back. He was back in town as a reservist. Now he just got drunk and slept on his parents couch.

The phone rang three times before a slurred “Heeeeeelllo?” greeted Danny.

“Mike, its me!” Danny blurted trying not to sound too shook up.

“Oh shit…….. Danny! I missed you at Corker’s!” Mike’s voice carried the forlorn pleading of drunkards everywhere wanting desperately for their friends to validate their lifestyle.

“Yeah anyway I just woke up..” Danny started remembering why he usually checked out of the bar before the real bender started.

“Yo!” Mike cut Danny off “Me and Raymond are nursing a forty out in Threshmen’s corn field! You missed a hell of a combine joy ride bro!”

Danny took a deep breath. Maybe it wouldn’t be the worst to admit to Mike? Maybe, just maybe, he would be at least a little accepting? “I’m sorry I missed it man, but look I think I might have Narragansett so I’m kinda on one right now.”

“Oh SHIT! Dude you sure its not Lyme? I can’t fucking lose my Bro like that.” Danny didn’t know what he expected.

“No clue man, I’m rooting for Lyme but that’s still gonna suck.” Danny said, trying desperately to believe that it was the truth.

“Yeah no kidding” Mike sounded forlorn.

Mike was, for whatever reason, one of two people Joe trusted with the store when Danny was out. “You want my shift tomorrow?” Danny asked hopefully. If he did that Mike would have booze money and Danny would be able to stay in bed with his fever. Win-Win.

Mike sighed “No can do, compadre. Got a gig driving Threshman's tractors this season. How’d you think I got in this field?” That made a grim sense to Danny, but why Bob Threshman would trust the local ne'er-do-well with a tractor the size of a three story building was beyond him. “Anyway,” Mike continued “I guess you’re gonna have to rope Fabien in or tough it out. I’m really sorry about all this man, but I know you can get through it like we always do.”

Danny breathed out accepting that. “Don’t worry about me, man, I’m a fucking cockroach.”

Danny ended the call right there.

Danny still had nearly three hours before the shop had to open, so he went to bed properly this time. His face hit the soft pillow with a graceful thud and no sooner had he stopped moving he was out like a light.

-

The alarm woke Danny this time. The ache felt like it had just gotten deeper into his bones he struggled pulling himself up. Shaking with the weight of just his upper body. The fire and brimstone of a few hours ago had been replaced by a drone of amorphous, universal, dull throbbing. He sat in bed for what felt like eternity. He had no clue on how to broach this topic with Pops. No clue on how he was even going to get through the day working, and now he had pulled Joan and Mike into this mess. He felt like he could cry, but no tears came. He must have cried them all last night.

Swinging himself off the bed Danny tried his best to get dressed for the day ahead. He put together his normal late spring outfit, a cotton plaid button up over an undershirt and jeans. It was easy to put on, and not as boring as other everyday guy fashions. It worked better when he had had a sixpack, but it still hid the most offensive parts of his anatomy. He couldn’t deal with weighing himself again.

He began dragging himself out of his room. Hoping to god that his father wasn’t up yet, Danny peaked through the door. No luck. There he was sitting in his office chair eating cereal and browsing Facebook on his tablet. Danny tended towards the “skip breakfast” type. Less time stuck in awkward silence only to be broken by the occasional prod toward becoming the Man his Pop so desperately wanted him to be.

Danny stepped into the room with a flat “Morning Pops.” He judiciously tried to maneuver passed the small folding table at the center of the room, the only horizontal surface in the cramped living room that wasn’t packed with junk. Joe looked up from his tablet for only a moment, grunted something that could be vaguely considered a greeting by Australopithecus, and went back to doing who knows what.

Danny knew he was going to have to tell his pop about his infection eventually, but he stupidly decided on just presenting him with it once he knew what he had. For now it was better to just pretend that he was a much more mundane form of sick. “So… I woke up with a fever?” Danny admitted in a questioning tone.

Joe took in a deep breath like he was calling on Jesus to give him patience, which, now that he thought of it, Danny supposed Pop probably was. “Well, you gotta work today, Threshman’s coming in for extra fertilizer.” He looked his son dead in the eyes. “Sick or not, if no one loads him up he’s not gonna come back.” It wasn’t actually that dire. Sure, Threshman was probably the largest land owner in the area but he also grew up with Pops. He could easily reschedule. “Get Fabien to do it then.”

Fabien was the only part time employee of the general store (Mike was not reliable enough to even make part time worker). The Kenton Patriarch tried to schedule him as little at possible, so he mostly did odd jobs around town. He was a good guy, and Danny wished he could just be friends with the man, but he was technically his boss, and so that power deferential made it largely impossible.

“No.” Pops dismissed the motion out of hand. “Maybe if you're still sick tomorrow I’ll bring him in, but you gotta power through this, ok?” He looked at Danny with soft caring eyes. “If you just lay in bed all day you won’t recover as fast.” Danny rolled his eyes and dragged himself down stairs to begin opening.

-

By the time the shop had been swept, and the sign on the door had been flipped to open, he was already exhausted. He went through the motions of ringing up the morning shoppers in a largely dead state. He boggled vacantly at nothing, while one of the town teens shoved Snickers into his hoodie. Not even bothering the token “HEY!”, as the kid darted out after making eye contact with him.

Time was like water, then like a glacier, then back to fluid. It was like the rotation of an oblong wheel fast then slow then fast. He could not keep track of it in a way that made sense. It felt like he must of dozed off on his feet more times then he could count. He kept awake with a death grip on the counter that some tyrants known for squeezing their people would envy.

Then just as the darkness was encroaching his vision, and his feet began to wobble, the heavens opened and the angels began to sing. A woman with a bob stood in the door silhouetted against the late morning sun. She was wearing muddy work overalls, but that didn’t matter at all. He had met his saving grace. With Joan here all would be right. An all too genuine grin spread across his face.

Joan smiled back “Hey Danny!” However her smile turned worried when she got a better look at him. “Oh god you look terrible! Did you come down with something?” she rushed forward to feel his forehead. “Oh my god your burning up! Why aren't you in bed”

Danny, who at this point hadn't even managed a ‘Hi’, simply croaked “Pops.”

Joan guided him to the stool and sat him down “Dammit Mr Kenton! How dare you do this to your only kid!” She glared up at the ceiling . “I know you can hear me!”

Danny just smiled. It was nice to have the person who would actually fight for him back, he thought. It was nice to have friends. Now he felt like he was safe, so he relaxed into the siren call of blissful sleep. Jolting only a little awake when he fell off the stool and onto the floor. That part of him that was still marginally aware hoped that the mumbled “Narragansett” as he fell was enough explanation for Joan to do what was needed.

There was more shouting, but he couldn’t be bothered to listen. He felt he was being dragged somewhere, but he didn’t look at anything but the backs of his eyelids. He experienced the hum of an old truck being brought to life under his body, which just lulled him into a deeper trance until he was totally out. When the papers later described this as “kidnapping” he would disagree. This was rescue.