Sticky.
A short-story about a sweaty bed. Names have been changed to protect the identity of the victims.
“I’m thirsty. Would you mind sharing? I don’t need much. Just a little now and again. If it’s not much bother. You have plenty spare.”
Ade had been coming down with a cold all week. Slight tickly throat, cold sweats, small aches. Ade was making sure everyone at his work knew that his impending doom was approaching. His colleagues tell him to rest, stay at home before it gets bad, and not to infect the whole office. None of them really wanted him to take time off, especially paid time off, they were all just sick of his mithering.
It was the weekend anyway – so at least his colleagues had the satisfaction of knowing Ade was probably being insufferable, but in his own free time.
Saturday is laundry day in Ade and Keeley’s flat. The weather, unusually warm and dry for October, is giving them a fighting chance to wash it, and hang it out on the balcony, and it might even dry by tonight.
“I think you’ve given me the lurgy again.”, said Ade.
“Really?”, said Keeley
“It’s all those disgusting kids you teach not washing their hands after sticking them God knows where.”, said Ade.
“Here we go. Man flu dead ahead, captain. Lower the jib, the waters are going to get choppy!”, Keeley joked in a not-joke kind of way.
“I think I might have covid. Shall I do a test?”, asked Ade.
“You’re not even ill yet. Maybe we should cancel dinner with your parents tonight?” Keeley fired some shots.
“No, no, I’ll be okay.”
“Really!.”, said Keeley
Ade shuffled into the bathroom to stare open-mouthed-tongue-out in the mirror, for any signs of proof that sympathy was indeed warranted from his wife. Keeley meanwhile peeled off the pillowcase from the pillow and threw it on the floor with the rest of the dirty linen.
“Ewww. Why does your pillow always smell so much of vinegar?”, said Keeley
“I’m definitely not well. I think there’s spots on my tongue”, said Ade from the bathroom.
Keeley picked up a pillow and held it up to the window’s sunlight, pulling it into her face to give it a sniff,
“Even when you are not ill, It’s fucking rank, Ade”.
“Yep definitely some white spots in there”, said Ade
“Have you thought of drinking more water before you go to bed?”, said Keeley.
“I think I’m losing my sense of smell too”.
“Are you actually listening to me?”
Ade shuffled back into the bedroom, slightly slower than the previous shuffle.
“It’s not that. I drink enough. I just sweat. It’s, what I do.”, said Ade.
“You sweat so much. It’s disgusting, and you don’t think about changing the sheets.”
“It doesn’t smell that bad.”
“You’re supposed to change the sheets before they start to smell. You could change them once in a while, you know. You are such a bloke sometimes, have you googled it?”
“Being a bloke?”
“The sweating.”
Ade hadn’t googled anything. “Of course I have. It can mean anything, nothing, cancer, you know. I read they can de-activate your sweat glands now”
“Right. You should see the doctor.”
“About my throat?”
“About the sweating!”
“Yeah and have him tell me it’s normal?”
“Your pillows are yellow and stink. That’s not normal.”
“It’s fine.”
Ade had a history of yellow-stained ammonia-smelling pillows since he was a child. It was just his thing. Just the pillow. He had a sweaty head. Keeley was more annoyed with his personal hygiene than it was a threat to his general health but had hoped that Ade might keep on top of the housekeeping for “once in his life”.
“You strip me without need because your mate finds your fluids repulsive. Let me clean them for her, let me drink them in. Let me suckle.”
Ade’s parents, Janet and Rathish, arrived for their bi-monthly dinner. Bringing with them again, The Massive Lasagna.
“Mmmm lasagna. Again! Thanks, Janet, that’s so kind”, said Keeley
“I know you both like it.”
“Really? Really!”, said Keeley.
“I’ll just pop it in your oven to warm through shall I.”
Conversation for three or four hours was the usual format. This is similar to a Neighbourhood Watch meeting, with Janet updating everyone on the social movements of every residence of her and Rathish’s cul-de-sac. Rathith grumbled agreement when nudged for an opinion, and Keeley grinned through a grimace. Ade’s thoughts were elsewhere. More elsewhere than usual.
When Janet had finished her mumsnet sit-rep, the chat finally opened up to allow other non-Janet business.
“Do you remember when I used to have night terrors, Mum?” asked Ade.
“Bit of a tone change, darling”, Keeley asks, topping up her wine glass.
“Yes, my dear”, Ade’s mum said, “you would wake up shouting, screaming, and sweating”.
“Yeah pretty hectic”, said Ade. “Pretty sure I inherited that disorder from you. Normal to hear you scream ‘There’s somebody moving around downstairs!!!’ in the middle of the night, waking us all up.”
Keeley smirked into her glass and nudged Ade under the table a nudge universally known to mean “behave yourself”.
“Yes, well. Shame, you had such growing pains. Have you seen that boy again? The one who would stand at the bottom of your bed?”
“Not since…”
“You’ve never mentioned that before!”, Keeley takes a glug.
“Not since moving out, no”, finished Ade.
“The boy with the smile. Didn’t you used to say it was a little Victorian boy?” said Ade’s mum.
“He was just grinning and staring, right? You had quite a vivid imagination back then, son,” said Ade’s dad
“Christ I knew you used to suffer night terrors, but what the actual fuck was that?”, said Keeley.
“Mum, no, I mean, yes. Anyway. I’m really struggling with my night sweats at the moment – do you remember what we did you get them to calm down?” asked Ade.
“You just grew out of them”, said Janet.
“Do you remember the time when I could have you all to myself?”
After that night, Ade’s nocturnal sweats worsened. During the week that followed, for five nights straight, he had woken damper and damper. His sleep hadn’t been broken, nor did he or Keeley recall him having any nightmares or terrors.
So waking up wet with sweat wasn’t unusual for him. This time the frequency of the episodes was unusual. As was the increased amount of sweat. By Friday it was getting close to pissed-the-bed wet, waking up wrapped in cold moist sheets and clothes.
“I don’t think you’re very well,” said Keeley.
“Really!”, said Ade.
It had taken the whole week for her to concede that he might actually have a problem.
“You are carrying a bit of fever at night.”, said Keeley.
“See, I told you! I’m definitely ill or something. Probably that new swine flu off the news.”
“Just take some paracetamol will you, it’ll keep the fever down maybe.”
“Sure”
“Do it for me. Take some medicine and stop being Mr Macho.”
“Sure sure.”
“And make sure you drink. You are useless at hydrating.”
“Okay! Look I’ll take some now. See!”, Ade drops a couple of tablets into his mouth and grimaces. He grabs a glass of water and chugs it down in one go"
“See!”
Keeley sighs, shakes her head, rolls her eyes, and smiles.
“Yes. Rest. Lie with me. Preserve your essence, so you can spend time in me. Let me imbibe you. Soak me.”
The next Saturday morning, Ade and Keeley woke to the tune of drilling from their neighbour. Ade checked the clock and made a little fist to celebrate hitting 10 straight hours of sleep. While he felt like a new man, this feeling was dampened by well, the dampness of his duvet, sheets, and mattress, which were sodden underneath him, as were the backs of his tee shirt and lounge pants.
They were all wringing wet, as if Ade had sleepwalked into the kitchen, cooked a gallon of vegetable broth, thrown it over himself and the bed, and then slid back into his wet nest. The bed didn’t smell of anything bad per se, not ammonia, or urine, a little like the sea, not fishy, but like good sashimi, fresh, oceanic, organic, that ozone smell. It wasn’t sweat, nor blood or plasma. But yet it wasn’t just water either.
“Maybe that IS what happened”, Ade mused for a micro-second, “sleep-cooking!”. His brain worked through the steps needed for an unconscious man to make a pan of broth in a dark kitchen, only to realise that even asleep he probably would have had the good taste to at least chuck some noodles and shrimp in it.
Ade stripped and dumped the sheets in the washing machine, along with his pyjamas, and dragged the mattress outside into the sun to dry off. Blasting it with the hairdryer wasn’t going to cut it this time. Not even one of those fancy blast-your-skin-off-like-in-a-cartoon Dyson ones.
“Return! I still need quenching. I must draw more. Your essence sates me. Please, a little more, just a drop. A little longer and I’ll be finished. I promise.”
Sunday morning, Ade’s alarm rang out with the PTSD-inducing ringtone familiar to the elevated heart rates of Ade’s colleagues and Keeley. He punched snooze, fist-bumped the air again, and kicked off the duvet, rolling to the side to turn the alarm off.
“Fuck fuck fuck”
“What’s wrong darling?”
Ade had sweated so much last night, that the bed sheet stuck to his back. He was spent, and could barely lift himself up. He rolled sideways out of bed, the clinging sheet rolled out with him. He stood up, utterly exhausted.
“Fuck.”
Ade winced as the sheet tugged at his back. The cotton was stuck to his skin like an Elastoplast.
“Oh my God, Ade.”, said Keeley, “Look”.
Ade rotated to look at his back in the mirror. The sheet clinging to him was stained with rust-red rings of blood and puss, dried into the cloth, and bonded onto him like molten plastic on a burn victim.
“Stay still. Let me have a look.”, she said.
Keeley took a handful of the sheet slowly pulled it down from Ade’s shoulder blade, and gently pulled off the sheet. Ade winced and Keeley paused. It was peeling the skin off his back.
Ade bit down harder on his lip and Keeley started again, pulling down with more purpose but less speed, while Ade watched in the mirror. Ade grunted with the pain and grabbed onto the side of a dresser. He clamped down, prepared for the pain.
“Yuuughhheaaahhh”
Keely let go of the sheet. She put her hand on her mouth, gasped, and took a step back.
Ade’s skin was so soft and so loose, that the weight of the sheet, and the looseness of his flesh underneath, allowed the skin on his back to slough off effortlessly. The sheet and the skin off his back fell to the floor.
Ade could now see a huge open wound in the mirror, and Keeley in the background, shocked, silent, tearing up. His back was bright red, and skinless, it wept with a clear pink plasma, which ran down his legs. The fat and flesh had rendered away. He could see the exposed opaque ligaments stretched between bone, like strings on a cello. The white islands of Ade’s vertebrae poked out of deeper flesh. With each breath, white puss pooled and dripped out from the exposed architecture of his ribs and spine. Ade blacked out.
“My delicious font. I am so thirsty, my desires for your flesh grow stronger. Why don’t you give up all your sweetmeats?”
Four weeks later, Ade was allowed to leave the hospital.
The medical staff agreed that it was most likely an auto-immune response to a virus and that the steroids would help to keep it from happening again. The skin grafts had started to heal really well, and Keeley took much delight in reminding Ade that he “has his butt on his back for life”.
“Good to be back in your own bed right?”, said Keeley. “it was nice to have the bed not smell of vinegar for a month too!”
Lying on his side, Ade laughed, smiled, closed his eyes and spooned Keeley. He drifted off into a fabulously deep sleep.
The next morning his alarm rang out. Ade’s heart raced as it used to every morning. He reached over to hit the snooze button but was stopped. Frozen. The alarm played on. He couldn’t lift his arms, or sit up for that matter. He was trapped. Not paralysed, but felt tied down, bound, wrapped, swaddled.
Panicked he strained to look down to see his bindings, but couldn’t lift his head. He looked out into the bedroom mirror to gather his bearings.
Ade’s own reflection was of a man in shock, engulfed and sunken into his bed. Lying prone, the top layer of his naked body poked above the surface of the mattress a few centimetres, like he was floating in a shallow cloth pool.
His pyjamas had melted off him, they hung in bits, eaten away like in acid, pooled in tatters next to his body on the bed. Like clothes cut from a patient in an emergency room.
In the reflection, Keeley was lying next to him in a way. She was a ball – her body tightly curled and compacted, twisted into strands like an elastic band ball, her bedclothes and her long hair were tangled up through it, teeth and cracked bone jutted out, painted nails and cracked fingers poked out here and there. The ball, half submerged in the bed, looked like waste, leftovers, offal, like a bird pellet. Screwed up like a wrung piece of chamois.
He blinked to clear his vision, to validate this surreal scene. He screamed over and over, but nothing but choked muffles emerged. He pushed his screaming harder and louder, but there was no change. His lungs were packed with wet cloth. He was not breathing air anymore and felt his skull and brain had melded with the hot, wet, cushioning.
There was a shift below him, a digesting motion inside the bed. Ade felt himself being pulled deeper into the mattress, millimetre by millimetre, pulled as if in quicksand. Slowly, slowly, deeper, deeper. Ade was mixing with his host. He was becoming a solution, absorbed, then digested. He felt the springs inside him.
The edges of his eyes hit the mattress, and his vision started closing in around him, with just the front few features of his face left exposed before he was pulled below the surface of the bed.
Ade felt his heart rate drop. It went from thumping out of his chest and then slowed, tightened and squeezed. The massaging rhythm was regular and calming. He felt the cloth packing out his chest and pressing on the inside of his ribs, the stuffing packing around his heart and lungs controlling his breathing and calming him. Ade started to feel safe at last.
Ade’s alarm becomes quieter in the background, then muffled, then barely audible, then silent.
“Slurp, slurp, slurp, slurp, slurp, slurp, slurp, slurp, slurp, slurp, slurp”
Thank you for reading! Haha!
Sweets dreams and, as ever, I’m super stoked and blessed that you scrolled to the bottom of this. Weirdo.
If you know someone who might enjoy Between The Cracks (or if you would like to collaborate on projects), then do share on them there socials, or email them.
Loved it. A little close to home possibly
I’m an incredibly sweaty guy