The suburbs will eat you alive (part ii)

Don't approach the 'cool kids' in the skatepark

At the end of last year, I moved back in with my parents and back to my hometown. In two weeks, I will leave again. I wrote this short story in the weeks leading up to the move back. I was anxious about being back in a small town for the first time since the pandemic and became stuck on the idea that you can never truly escape your hometown, no matter how much you reject it as a teenager.

These months back in my small suburban town have been much more freeing than I imagined, partly because I escape up to London a few times a week, partly because I’m less pompous and melodramatic than I was at 17. Yet this story was born from the ideas I used to have about the suffocation of small towns. So, if you’ve ever lived in one, have settled in one or moved back temporarily, you might enjoy it.

Read part 1 here.

Daniel sits in the kitchen and examines his finger where the skin has peeled off. He is always picking at scabs or scratching dry patches of skin. This time is different though. There is no pain or frustration in his movements. Only a total absorption in what is about to happen.

I watch as he peels the skin back further. He peels it all the way back to his elbow and he doesn’t even flinch. I’m thankful that I already threw up today.

“What’s happening to me?” he looks up. “Am I dying?”

“We should call a doctor,” I say, staring at the screaming, pink flesh on his forearm.

He nods. I dial 111. As we listen to the dial tone, I pick at the skin around my cuticle where my nail bed ends and my finger begins. It slips off as easily as peeling back a sticker. The phone rings and rings. No one answers. I try again. There is still no answer.

“This is fucked,” Daniel says, shaking his head.

The rain taps against the kitchen skylight above. The ocean swell of the suburb must make its menacing presence known. To dream of a quiet life in a small town is futile. There will always be background noise. There will be rain and traffic and the relentless tik-tok of a clock somewhere reminding you of your own miserable existence.

We sit, facing each other, listening to the persistent shower. Grey everywhere. All the time. All around us. This town does not allow for any sunshine. It does not allow for freedom. It steals it. It’s pushing against my teeth.

I rush to the bathroom. I push my tongue against my front teeth and my pulse quickens. I feel the tooth come loose from the root. I watch my reflection in the mirror as I pull it out before dropping it in the sink. It strikes a musical note as it hits the porcelain, spinning round and round before settling atop the plughole. I watch my reflection in the mirror. It’s like watching someone else. The house is swallowing me whole.

The raindrops on the window look like jewellery. As they drip down the glass, they look almost special, but I know they are as dull and prosaic as everything else here. Everything in this town is melting. Everything is falling apart.

I walk back to the kitchen, holding the tooth in the palm of my hand. “We should leave,” I say.

“And go where?”

“We’ll try the bus stop. We should get out of here before anything else happens. We need to find someone to speak to.”

Daniel picks up his jacket and we step back out into the dim residential street. Our socks dampen as we squelch through the grass, but we feel too strange to notice it. The sky has an oppressive weight, as though it will crash down and crush us in its grip.

We approach the bus stop with relief. There is a bus already waiting there, ready to take us down to the coast where we will breathe sea air and live new lives and get better again. The windows are fogged up with condensation. The bus doors are closed.

Daniel and I exchange uneasy glances before he knocks to get the driver’s attention.

“We’re not going anywhere soon,” the driver barks in a harsh monotone without opening the door. “Broken down.”

“Has it happened to you too?” Daniel calls out.

“What?”

“The fingernails. Have your nails fallen off?” Daniel pleads through the glass.

The driver turns away, shakes his head and stares out at the damp tarmac that leads up to the station. “Dunno what you’re talking about.”

We stand deserted on the pavement like two wet, stray dogs with no one to run to. The stench of damp fills my nostrils. Worms have surfaced from underground. They are out of place. Soggy collateral damage.

I look through the fogged-up windows and see a girl sitting on the bus, waiting for it to leave. When I look closer, I see Olivia, the weird girl from the year below. She smiles at me and reveals her missing teeth. Even from this distance, I can see her eyes are bloodshot and her cheeks streaked with tears. I try to smile back, but it meets my lips as a grimace.

We trudge down to the park looking for something to do. The skatepark is desolate. Wet leaves line the ramps. An abandoned skateboard is propped up against the railings.

The kids from yesterday are all huddled under the shelter passing round a joint. Usually, we’d ignore them. Usually, we’d walk right by. Usually, we’d be invisible. But Daniel is in a confrontational mood. I stand behind him as he speaks.

“Hey,” he says, standing awkwardly, his posture tilted slightly to one side in a feeble attempt to seem relaxed.

They smirk. “Hey,” the one nearest to us says in a sarcasm-laced tone.

I watch the one holding the joint. I look at his hands. He still has his fingernails.

“Is it happening to you?” Daniel says.

“Is what happening to me?”

Daniel takes his hands out of his pockets. He holds them out in front of him. They look monstrous in the dull afternoon light.

“Mate, what the fuck?” one of them says, his forehead creased in disgust.

“That’s so grim,” adds another.

“Haven’t you noticed?” Daniel urges, his frustration growing. “Look at the pavement. You can see the fingernails on the ground.”

They look at him like he’s speaking another language. Like he’s fallen down from space and landed in this damp provincial park by mistake. I want the ground to open up so we can disappear. I want the park to swallow us whole. The group starts convulsing with laughter as though they are one, singular creature with eight heads and thirty-two lazy limbs.

I’m about to turn away when one of them stands up. It’s the emo kid I see on the bus to school sometimes.

“It’s happening to me too,” they say, “And I think I know why.”

The now-seven-headed creature turns to them in bewilderment. Stick your head out of the crowd and you’ll lose it. Stick your head out of the crowd and the creature will eat you alive.