text: Move to the city for a few years and make enough money to buy a home in the country to last them a lifetime. In and out like a bank robbery. Robert taking the architecture firm he worked for, for all he could, and Shannon doing the same with the prestigious events company she worked for. They knew going in this was a decade-long plan. They were a smart, educated couple that grew up working class. They achieved where their peers floundered, giving them a shot at living better than their parents ever did. Regular vacations pinched at their savings, as did the cost of living in the city so close to their offices. They had idle plans to marry one day. Children weren’t a want or concern. If it happened, it happened. Promotions at work were on the horizon for both of them. And still neither felt committed to city life. It seemed too good to be true. Real life would come crashing in, wouldn’t it? Nights out on the town would become nights in, wouldn’t they? Diaper changes. Homemade dinners. Losing contact with friends. Vacations no more than screensavers on laptops to be idled over every few years. It had been years since they last talked about leaving city life behind. Staying had become a forgone conclusion. Both were masters at avoiding the hard questions in favour of distraction. But then...would they become the middle-agers like their employers before them? Would they become the broad faced alcoholics in denial? The ones trying to hold onto their youth by using their work influence as a means to stay close to the new blood in the companies they worked for? The new blood would become their child surrogates? And their friends too? And then one day the new blood would become the old blood too? The cycle repeating itself over and over? This was the inevitable future. It had to be. They worked far too hard to maintain what they already had to be ignorant of that. It wasn’t as if a clean break were possible. There would be leaving parties, and a transition of responsibilities, and the ever present feeling of wanting to stay after all. They knew they wouldn’t be young forever, yet they simply didn’t want to leave. They would have to wait until next year at least to even start thinking about leaving seriously. They were going to Dubai for vacation in two months, and Robert’s firm had won an exciting bid with a Chinese company with a fetish for outlandish spending. And didn’t Shannon owe it to herself to maintain her position in her company? She had worked long and hard to get out of her stuffy little cubicle, and now wasn’t it her right as a kind-of feminist to keep it? At the very least she couldn’t give her position up without serious consideration. She was a core influence in team meetings, codes of conduct, workshops and seminars and, best of all, recruitment. The company had handed her the keys to power without the messy accountability. There was always a job to be done. If there wasn’t she would dream up something knew to do to occupy her time, and consequently everyone else’s time. She honestly couldn’t ever see herself giving up this kind of power and control willingly. The greatest threat to all Shannon and Robert worked for came in the form of a viral outbreak in several far off countries. The virus was coined the ‘Bullire Virus’ by the media. The virus symptoms reminded Shannon of the bubonic plague she had learned about at school. The Bullire Virus expressed itself as a large pus-filled boil which could emerge anywhere on the head, face, or body. The boil varied in size from as small as a marble to as big as an apple. Shannon paid little heed to the growing concern over the Bullire Virus even as cases began to crop up in the city. But in two months the virus went from a fringe novelty joked about during team meetings, to a very present concern across the world. Shannon held two seminars on new work safety standards to keep safe from the virus. Despite these seminars one member of staff after another in increasing escalation was diagnosed as positive with the Bullire Virus. These members of staff were immediately sent home with their pay at a reduced, but still very much liveable rate. Shannon would have worked from home right away if not for her responsibility as role model for her co-workers and the new blood. However with just essential staff in the office Shannon found herself with very little to do besides making plans for when things would return to normal. The back of Shannon’s right calf itched something fierce. Sat in her spacious office Shannon checked her fingernails and saw there was blood beneath the nails on her right hand. Shannon looked to her calf and saw what she was sure hadn’t been there not an hour before: a bulbous bullire boil the size of a golf ball. A single line of blood leaked from the edge of the boil where Shannon had scratched and dug in deep with her nails. Shannon had been disgusted by the media images of the Bullire Virus boils, but now it was on her own skin she felt a deep revulsion. The boil itself looked tender and fragile, almost translucent with the pus visible within. Shannon knew pus was nature’s band-aid; a means to smother a possible infection in an attempt to keep it from spreading, but that didn’t make it any less upsetting to look that. For Shannon the boil was almost too big and obscene to take seriously. It looked like some special effect from a cheap horror movie. Shannon cleaned up with wet wipes and used a first aid kit bandage to cover the boil. This made the boil itch even worse than before. Shannon’s eyes watered from the effort it took to ignore the call to itch as she arranged for a cab to come pick her up outside the office. Once home Shannon ran a hot bath and sat on the edge of the bath trying to muster the courage to submerge herself, and the boil, into it. It was known the boils, though fragile looking, were actually quite tough, and very resistant to heat. Shannon felt immense pain and relief as she eased the boil beneath the hot bath water. She sat in the bath for two hours, occasionally adding more hot water and letting some drain to keep it from overflowing in the tub. She stayed until her hands and feet were pruned and she was sure staying in any longer would do more harm than good. Once she was dried and towelled off Shannon called Robert. She told him she had the Bullire Virus. “Just don’t scratch it or it will spread.” Robert told her, parroting the advice everyone now knew. Shannon asked Robert what he intended to do now she had the virus. “I’ll stay in the office for the next few days.” Robert said, then added, “There’s only a handful of us working on my floor anyway.” Over the following three days Shannon’s boil continued to itch. Shannon barely slept. She sought distraction in her work but the itching made long periods of concentration fleeting. Her usual comfort shows ceased to engage her attention. Finally Shannon turned to what always worked when she needed a distraction: drink. One glass of wine became two, and within just one evening she finished a bottle and a half of wine. Later Shannon woke on the living room couch in her pink pyjamas, with one leg draped over the covers she brought down from the bedroom. The stale smell of alcohol filled the room as Shannon remembered where she was and all she had drank. Then the itching began again. It never stopped, but Shannon was awake now to notice it. And now the itching was twice as intense as before. Shannon eased upright on the couch and felt the back of her neck where it seemed half of the call to itch resided. Shannon’s palm cupped what felt to her like a shell-less boiled egg still warm and slippery. Shannon used her phone to see what she knew was already there: a thick, pus-filled boil. Shannon looked to her right calf. The boil that was there before had popped. Dried pus residue and blood coated the back of her right leg down to the heel. Beside the gooey crater of the popped boil was a new, golf ball sized boil. Shannon ran another piping hot bath and sunk herself into it. The pain temporarily kept the itching at bay so she had time to think. Shannon wrestled with indecision over whether to call Robert. She decided against it. There wasn’t anything he could do. It was better she deal with it on her own until he returned from work. The itching only grew worse, prompting Shannon to open and drink more wine. Days passed with Shannon in a state of drunken delirium. She made sure to drink just often enough to stay drunk to handle the worst of the urge to itch, but also just sober enough not to make the mistake of scratching her boils without meaning to. There were several close calls, but the fear of having even more of these hellishly itchy boils on her skin kept her mind just sharp enough to avoid that danger. On the seventh day Shannon stirred awake on the bathroom floor, having spent much of the early morning hours vomiting into the toilet. Her throat both burned and felt parched as she reached for her phone. There still hadn’t been a single message or voicemail from Robert. Shannon climbed to her feet and slurped some tap water like she did when she was a child. She then wiped her forearm and pressed Robert’s name on her phone. The call went straight to voicemail. Shannon sent several messages throughout the afternoon into early evening. There was no response. The boils were singing their itching song; and Shannon ignored them, albeit with increasingly maddening difficulty. The creams she lathered the boils in weren’t working at all. Come seven o’clock Shannon dressed and took an expensive cab ride to Robert’s work building. As far as she could tell the cabdriver was boil free. And Shannon was thankful her own boils were easy to hide. Shannon stepped out of the cab into the empty city street. The night air was cool and crisp. It made her want to both drink and smoke. There was no security in the lobby. Shannon knew the way up to Robert’s floor. Shannon stepped out of the elevator to find the office floor with all its cubicles empty. The lights were dim. Shannon called out for Robert and received no answer. Shannon’s shoes thumped on the office carpet as she passed one cubicle after another. She reached Robert’s office at the far end of the office floor. From outside looking in she could see a lamp was lit on Robert’s desk. And she could see the glare from Robert’s computer screen. Shannon flinched: there was pornography playing silently on the computer. Shannon looked inward. ‘Not again’, she thought. Shannon felt stupid for thinking something truly ghastly could have happened to Robert. He was simply back to his old ways again. It hurt to think he would still do this to her. That he could still put his own indulgences ahead of her. But Shannon knew where her line was. Robert had never cheated. She’d forgiven him for his worst indulgences before. It wasn’t because she was a forgiving person. She wasn’t. She knew she could be downright vindictive, childish, and spiteful, even over trivial things. But she knew what was fair, and she knew that she would be a hypocrite to cry fowl play over Robert and his weaknesses, whilst he never questioned how much she smoked, and drank. Shannon wondered how she had gotten here. Standing outside an empty office. She felt like her past was nothing more than one big joke. And her future was whatever she walked into. In this moment she saw herself as little more than meat and bone in the shape of a human being. Everything was pointless, wasn’t it? Nothing happened for a reason, did it? Yet why did she feel like she was being punished? Why did she feel a kind of comfort in the sadness she felt? Did she feel she deserved this? That this humiliation was inevitable? Was this shame in some way cathartic? When had their relationship become this? When had they stopped trying to better themselves? When had they become the picture perfect couple of codependency? Shannon spotted a strip of golden light down the otherwise dark corridor to her right. The light was coming from the men’s lavatory. Shannon, sensing some trepidation in herself, made an effort to walk briskly toward it. Shannon eased open the lavatory door. She entered, and turned a sharp corner. She could now see Robert. There he was on the lavatory floor. Curled up and barely moving. He lay surrounded in a pool of yellow liquid laced with red. Like custard and strawberry jam. Robert’s body, neck, and face were coated in popped boil craters weeping pus. And there were at least a dozen new boils that she could see. Robert must have heard her enter. He looked up, clearly in pain. As soon as Shannon and Robert made eye contact, Robert began to weep like a child. Shannon didn’t let herself react to this, though she felt like there were fishhooks in the corners of her mouth tugging downward. This wasn’t the time for tears. Shannon cleaned Robert, and dressed the worst of the boil craters. She found him in just his underwear, so she had to carefully dress him back into his work clothes which she noticed he had taken the time to dress out of and hang on a coat hanger atop one of the interior toilet stall doors. The news had shown that many men and women found themselves addicted to popping their boils. The pain mixed with the pleasure, mixed with a secreted chemical from the boil proved to be a vice for those susceptible to it. Shannon wondered what it must feel like to be awake when the boil was popped. If Robert was willing in his addictive impulse to do this to himself for that pleasure, then it must feel, at least in the moment, worth the pain and regret that was sure to follow. Shannon considered taking Robert to a hospital, but on closer inspection she could see the boil wounds looked worse than they were. There was a strong risk of infection, but beyond the revolting amount of pus the blood loss was minimal as to not be a major concern. It took an hour to get Robert out of the lavatory, into and down the elevator, and out of the building. A new cab and cab driver was waiting for them. Shannon paid triple the going rate, which was already exorbitant, to bribe the cab driver into taking them home. Once they were in the cab and moving Robert sat slumped into Shannon with his head on her shoulder. The empty city and its lights passed by their window. It was a long ride home. After much thought and soul searching Shannon said softly, “We need to get out, Robert.” “Okay.” Robert said, his eyes still closed. He was exhausted from what he had done to himself, but he was lucid enough to know exactly what she meant, and he couldn’t’ve agreed more. It seemed fate, or God, or even the Bullire Virus itself had a direct hand in making the clean break for them. The Bullire Virus brought industry across the world to a crawl. Shannon and Robert handed in their resignations via email. Besides several furious calls from bosses and co-workers there was little to be said and done. Robert’s boils went away slowly over the following weeks. During this time both turned to smoking as their vice of choice. Shannon had drunk all of the wine they had in their home, and from that day on neither replenished their stock. Later they would acknowledge their unspoken agreement to give up alcohol altogether. Perhaps if either of them had acknowledged what they were doing in the moment, they might have talked themselves out of abstinence. One boil reduced in size and was gone once per week, until only one boil remained. Shannon with the boil on the back of her neck. Robert with a boil on the inside of his left thigh, which was an unfortunate spot that often chaffed. The one boil they each had left would never leave them, no matter how many weeks went by. Shannon and Robert were out in their new backyard. They could see the city from their new home far away in the country. Their days were occupied with making the most of their downsized home. They found the boils that remained didn’t itch so bad now they were away from the city. Perhaps the air was cleaner. Over dinner six months since they left the city, Robert idly brought up the question of whether they would ever move back to the city, or even visit for a day or two. They had burned many bridges, but they still had friends there, and there was always something new going on. Shannon even entertained the idea, and more than once they were on the verge of booking a ticket for a train to take them into the city. But they never did go back. \- for more from me.