Last week, my friend Alex started to exhibit symptoms of, well, let's call it an unusual skin condition. On Monday, during our econ lecture, he complained about small bumps and blisters forming on his back. I brushed it off, and reminded him that changing one’s bed sheets every six months, along with an irregular hygiene schedule (the man smelled like he needed a shower then and there) could do that to a college frat boy. Ignoring my stab, as if he’d barely recognized it, his attention focused on something else entirely, he said the bumps felt and looked a bit like chickenpox.

“Have you had chickenpox?” I asked him, as childhood memories of small, red, prickly points bedazzling me and my siblings' skin blushed into my mind. Picturing an adult having chickenpox felt out of place, the word itself so closely tied to childhood - like a grown man crying as their ice cream fell on the floor.

“Of course I’ve had chickenpox, dumbass,” Alex replied. “Why else would I compare this shit to chickenpox?”

“Well, maybe it’s just some advanced form of Herpes then. You know, starting from your balls, the bumps start to spread into other continents - like Columbus in search of India - traversing through the horrid canal of your taint and the treacherous seas of your asscrack, until they’ve reached their America: your lanky, sweaty back.”

Alex was obviously annoyed at me, but couldn’t help but chortle out a laugh through gritted teeth. “Super-herpes,” he replied a minute later, amused at the phrase he’d concocted.

The next time I heard from Alex was on Wednesday. He texted me that he’d be ditching class that morning to go see a doctor. He wasn’t the type of guy to visit any medical professionals, let alone a doctor - once he’d broken two of his fingers playing basketball and he’d just taped them up for a month and waited for the bones to heal. Granted, both fingers did heal, but once they cocooned out of his homemade cast (materials: toilet paper and duck tape), they pointed in different directions, the bones having healed in a curved pattern. When he got sick, he’d half-assedly cite research concerning super-bacteria, which would - according to him - ransack humanity if we keep prescribing antibiotics for everything from common flus to random pains. And of course, he was correct, albeit also not. But that was Alex for ya; in one swift sentence he could go from well-informed and dignified university student to a baboon flinging shit at the wall. So - if Alex was going to a doctor, he’d have to be real scared. I wished him luck, and reminded him that super-herpes probably wasn’t a real thing, hoping to lighten the mood a bit.

On Friday, I hung out with him during lunch. We’d made plans before, after he said everything went OK at the doctors. As I carried my “meal” (a slice of pizza and a nondescript sweet bun) on a wobbly and twisted plastic platter, I spotted Alex sitting alone at a big, round metal table - the ones that were made for six or more people. His hands were under the table, and a hoodie (the same one he always wore, and by which I recognized him) veiled his face as he slumped forward on his chair. The lunch hall was packed, but it seemed like no one dared to sit next to him. As I approached the table, I realized why.

Alex looked half-dead, his skin pale and his posture constantly trying to nestle his body toward a fetal position. Although the baggy hoodie gave his torso a Michelin Man look, his arms and back made contact with the thick fabric. And those parts were bumpy; like he’d stuffed rocks of varying sizes under the sleeves and backside. Some of those rocks seemed to pulsate, moving independently of him.

“Hey Alex,” I uttered unsurely, my voice immediately unveiling the concern I felt.

Alex looked up and smiled, still keeping his hood on. His face was ravaged by blisters and bumps, which is when I realized what the rocks under his sleeves and back were. He smiled half-heartedly, and as his face moved so did the clusters of red blisters, some caught in the fluorescent light and shining as if coated by sugar. Super-herpes? More like, Super-acne, I thought, immediately annoyed at myself for making a joke, even if it was only to myself.

“Hey man. So, uhh, super-herpes seems to be real,” he said, “and I’m a real Swamp Thing now I guess.”

I sat down opposite of him, noticing that on his platter he only had a bottle of water and a half-eaten apple. He looked like he needed about seventeen Big Macs and five chocolate milkshakes.

“Holy shit dude, are you okay? What did the doctor say?” I asked.

“Well, they don’t really know what it is.” Alex replied. He took a pause before continuing, his face forming a slight frown. I thought I saw puss leaking down his neck.

“I mean, they don’t know what it is, but they said it shouldn’t be too harmful. The spots started to get real itchy, like something was tickling the insides of my skin. The doctor prescribed this ointment that I need to lather all over the spots. That was fine until I got more and more of them. I woke up to like twenty new spots every day. And yes, you perv, I may or may not be lathered in the stuff right now, like a lubed up dildo.”

“I did always think you held a slight resemblance to a dick,” I replied, although the mood immediately rejected the joking atmosphere, even if Alex feigned a smirk. “Have you gone back to the doctor, though? That doesn’t seem normal, man.”

Alex gave a long sigh and burrowed his elbows on the table. “The doc said there really isn’t much to do right now. Unless I come up with a fever or other symptoms relating to an infection or something, I should just try to rest and keep monitoring the situation.”

“Sounds like bullshit,” my words clocking Alex on the chin and grabbing his attention. “I’m sorry to say this… but you look like shit. You need to go back there and not leave until they help you out. That’s not normal.”

“Even if I wanted to, they won't see me until Monday. They’re only open for emergencies for the weekend.”

“This is an emergency,” I said.

“Not according to them, it’s not.” The frown started taking on traits of frustration.

“Fine, go to a private clinic then,” I insisted.

“With what money? You know I’m broke,” Alex argued and lifted his arms as if to show all the money he did not have.

“Fuck, man… okay, fine. But you promise to go first thing on Monday? And if it gets worse just go into the ER anyway.”

“Okay, fine. You’re right. I’ll book the appointment today, okay?”

Alex didn’t fight me on the subject further. I guess my reaction upon seeing his face was enough confirmation needed for him to believe the situation was serious. After I was done with my lunch, and he had nibbled on another quarter of his apple, we left for our respective dorms. I insisted that he text me for anything he might need, and to eat some real food and rest for the weekend. He nodded in agreement and gave me a sincere thanks.

As Monday rolled around, I hadn’t heard a peep from Alex. He didn’t show up for econ, and I didn’t see him at lunch either. After lunch I texted him “hey, how’d the dr. go?”

No answer.

Later, as I checked again if he’d replied, I noticed he hadn’t even read the text; the checkmark under my message still grayed out. After my final lecture of the day ended, I decided to trek up to his dorm and see if he was in his room.

Genuine concern gritted my facial muscles into an angry frown as I walked across campus to the large brick building. Alex was sloppy regarding timetables, responsibilities, and other adulting activities, but even for a frat boy this type of communication breakdown was concerning. As I entered the building and started to climb up the stairs toward the third floor, true concern gripped me, and I readied myself to call an ambulance. I'd never called one before, but for some reason I felt like tonight I'd need to. At best, he’d have gotten better and celebrated by drinking himself dumb. At worst, I thought, I’d find him drenched in sweat, running a high fever, and him mumbling something about super-bacteria. I couldn’t picture any good endings at that moment, and readied myself for the worst.

I knocked on his door, winded from the long stairs. No answer. I put my ear up to the door and listened. I could hear someone talking in the neighboring room, indicated by a distinct muffling of the sound which was present in all dorms, but Alex’s room was dead quiet.

“Alex. Hey, it’s me. You in there?” I asked as I knocked on the door for the second time. After another pause, I thought, fuck it, I guess I’ll just break in then.

Although the university scalped each student from hundreds of thousands of dollars, they didn’t allocate much of their funding towards maintaining their buildings. The dorms sported a lot of 80’s flare in the form of wallpaper, furniture, and most importantly: doors and door locks. Years and years ago, someone had figured out that lifting the door up slightly from the handle and then yanking it left in a quick motion would sometimes open up the lock mechanism enough, so that a mere push would finalize the act and unlock the door. This secret wasn’t particularly well kept, but it didn’t seem like anyone was abusing the trick either. Checking the hallway for other students (none seen, some heard in their rooms), I lifted the door up from its hinges and pushed the handle to my left.

Click.

I slowly gave the door a push. The lock system crackled as if a phantom key had just been turned inside of it. The door opened, and I quickly stepped inside, victorious of the shitty 80’s lock mechanism.

The room was dark, the only illumination coming from the bedside lamp. I had to stand and wait for a few seconds as my eyes adjusted to the new level of lighting - I didn’t dare take a blind step and stumble on laundry or beer cans, which usually resided in randomized piles across Alex’s floor.

My eyes relaxing into the brooding, inky light of the room, I saw a dark figure laid on the bed.

“Alex? Is that you?” I asked, eyeing the bed. The thing did not respond.

I walked closer, my hand scanning the wall for the overhead light switch. “Alex, buddy, is that you?” My fingers touched a plastic edge, quickly finding the flaccid switch in the middle of it. I flicked it upwards, the uncovered lamp above immediately burning my eyes, the soft lighting betrayed by the harsh fluorescent lamp sending a pressure to the front of my skull. I blinked a few times to regain my vision and focused on the figure once more. It was definitely Alex, laying on his back with his arms tucked in and legs outstretched - but something was different.

Once I realized what he’d become - that this wasn’t the Alex I’d last seen - a pit was produced in my stomach, and I wanted to vomit out everything I’d ever eaten, just to clear and purify the insides of my body.

His skin no longer had blisters and bumps. Instead, each under-the-skin bulb had blossomed into thick tufts of black hair that grew outward from inside his body.

The hair protruded upwards in bulbous, curly strands - the texture reminding me of the hair that emerges during puberty; thick and dark. Beside each spot, the former blister’s skin had been ripped apart and left to hang beside the hair, like the spots had exploded and left a crater into the skin itself. I was looking at the tens, hundreds of hairy caps, fresh puss and blood oozing from some, others having thick scabs and coarse strips of dried human paint. It wasn’t until that point that I realized Alex was completely naked, besides the patchwork of hair upon his body. I noticed that his fingernails were coarse and caked with dead skin and blood. Had he scratched them until they popped, I thought, or had they popped regardless, him scratching himself raw while his pulpy skin popped like a bag of popcorn, handfuls of hair shooting up through his rice paper skin. I shuddered at the thought as my body started to itch uncontrollably in hard to reach places.

My shock was interrupted when Alex gasped loudly, his body jolting awake.

“Alex, ALEX, dude are you OK? What the fuck happened here?” I yelled as I closed the gap between me and the bed, nearly stumbling on a dirty sweater left on the floor. Coming in closer and looking at his face from above, I saw his eyes, which were crowded by hair-bulbs like the manicured bushes surrounding the science building. "Hey man, it's me," I said, trying to seem relaxed. Alex didn’t respond.

His eyes - both milky and bloodshot - stared into mine, begging for help. He didn’t move, but instead shook in a slow motion, like the way someone with early stage Parkinson’s might hold a spoon, except instead of just a hand it was his whole body. Looking deeper into his eyes, I noticed that small strands of hair had sewn his eyelids into an open position. I saw him try to blink, the reaction twitching the muscles around his face slightly, but the eyelids wouldn’t come down. Alex was unable to blink.

The ambulance took him to a hospital. I tried to ask them what was wrong with him, to which they gave no reply. I was promptly pushed out of his dorm, and soon I was back in my own room, sitting on my bed. The worry and fear started to release and tears welled up in my eyes. Holy shit, what the fuck, was all I could think about as Alex’s unblinking eyes meandered in my mind. A teardrop descended onto my left arm, which I swiped off with the other hand. When I did this, I noticed a bump on my skin, and the fear and worry I had for Alex made way for sheer panic.

I looked at the bump - the size of an edamame bean - poked it with my finger, and tried to see if there were hairs sticking out of it. How hadn’t I noticed this before? Was it there before? The panic started to intensify; my throat clenched up and a vague need to get out started to overtake my body.

I jumped up and made my way to a small dresser I kept knick-knacks in. I rifled through drawers, opening and closing them violently as I rummaged and threw old notebooks and dried up pens across the floor. The bottom drawer produced what I had been looking for: an x-acto knife that I’d bought mistakingly when I was supposed to buy a regular box cutter instead.

I sat back down on the bed and steadied my left arm as best I could on my lap. Using my right hand, I plunged the tip of the knife into the bump, dragging it across the small half-globe, making a small incision into the skin. The adrenaline kept the pain receptors vacant, and I only felt a slight pinch as a small stream of blood formed around the cut.

I stretched the skin with my fingers to open up the incision. Inside, under a thin veil of ooze, was a small ball of dark hair, wet from blood and clear puss. I gasped and quickly clenched my jaw and flexed my muscles as a single thought remained, in my mind, consuming all others: get IT OUT.

I plunged my index finger and thumb inside the hole and grabbed the tuft firmly. As I tugged, I could feel hairs embedded deep into my skin and bones being pulled from tight crevices inside my arm. The arm twitched oddly, as if the hairs being pulled flexed and relaxed certain muscles inside it, like a ventriloquist controlling their puppet. The pain was immense, like pulling out a mixture of splinters and strands of steel wool jammed under fingernails.

The ball of hair finally released itself. I looked at it, pointing it towards the skylight, and saw that the ball connected to a tail of long, hair-thin strands, similar to the rest of the hairs. It looked like a dark, mucusy jellyfish, or like a hairball covered in saliva after a cat has puked it out. I threw the thing in the trash and tried to forget about it - the thought of those thin threads burrowing inside of my arm making me feel nauseous and weak.

Did I get the bumps from Alex? If so, who did he get them from? And it’s not like me and Alex are intimate, so how did it spread? I have a fuckton of questions and zero answers. I’ll try to see Alex soon, and maybe ask around if other people on campus have gotten weird bumps or blisters. LMK if ya'll have any experiences like this.