My knee locked up while I was walking to work, refusing to bend or take any weight. I lowered myself to the dogshit-dotted grass just off the sidewalk. There wasn’t much pain, just a weakness, a sense of failure and fatigue. As suddenly as it began, it stopped, my knee cracking like old wood as the joint released. I staggered the rest of the way to the office. I wasn’t surprised. I have gotten used to the fact that I’m falling apart.

***

“So you’re off all next week?” Sarah asked. She was painstakingly assembling a soft taco from ingredients she had just warmed up in the microwave. The break room was freezing cold.

“All week,” I told her. “I should still be able to get emails.”

“I won’t let them bother you on vacation,” she said, picking through the hot sauces on the table.

“You can still email me if you need anything,” I said.

She mockingly fanned herself with the lid of her Tupperware and cooed.

I laughed and stood up from the table. My knee decided to lock again and I fell over. Sarah went for help.

***

The doctor had no idea what was wrong with me. I could walk and my knee didn’t hurt when she poked, bent, squeezed, or thumped it. She didn’t even want to take X-rays. “We’re all getting older,” she said gravely. She was maybe 30, petite–pretty in a severe, straight-As way. I resisted the urge to pat her on the head.

I walked home from the clinic with no trouble and set about packing my car for my trip. I was taking too much for a week’s stay. I always over-packed: mylar blanket, three knives, five ways to start a fire, jugs of sterile water and a first aid kit the size of a briefcase. Add in a pile of books and coats, long johns, a ski suit… It was late summer and I wouldn’t need any of it. In case, just in case–my mother’s compulsive over-preparedness sinking into me, hereditary madness.

My fingers curled a few times while I was packing, refusing to work properly–trigger finger syndrome–but that had been happening for a while now. My knee ached and sounded like a ratchet when I rose from a squat. I took a NSAID and hoped it would all just work itself out.

I stood in my apartment, looking around, trying to figure out anything I might have forgotten. I grabbed a few more books to take along. The trip was all vacation: reading, fishing, drinking bourbon by the fireplace, Jake and Joey meeting me for the first part of the week. Beer and grilling. Guy stuff. I finally let go of my packing OCD and set out.

***

An hour into the drive, Jake began sending a barrage of texts. They could only come up for one night now, work stuff, wedding stuff. I sent off grunts and emojis, keeping it short while I was driving, until my hand cramped and I dropped my phone. As I groped for it on the floor, my hand went completely dead. I pulled over in the breakdown lane and massaged it until the feeling came back.

Someone young once asked me when you knew you were an adult. I told them it was when your body really betrayed you for the first time, developed something like IBS or diabetes or cancer. It wasn’t quite right–sick children didn’t become adults, not really–but it got a horrified laugh from the girl I was talking to and that was enough. I stared at my tingling right hand and felt this newest betrayal keenly.

***

Another hour, a dozen more texts, and I was at the last gas station before the cabin. I filled up the car and went inside to pay. As I lingered over the cold cases, deciding on a drink, I chose a pint of whole milk, hoping it might settle down my stomach a bit. I opened it in the parking lot and drank the cold whiteness, thick and fatty. I chugged the whole thing in one long gulp. I didn’t buy milk very often, but I wanted more. I went back and got a gallon to take to the cabin, adding it to the steaks and fancy beer in the cooler. I went in for a third time and bought another pint for the rest of the drive.

***

I had everything unpacked and stored away and was reading on the front porch when the boys pulled up in their absurdly small rental car. They were already at full bicker.

“I’m sorry we’re late,” Joey said. “Jake cannot read a map.” Joey looked like Fred Flintstone–a blocky, stout body and permanent five-o’clock shadow.

“How did I know we wouldn’t have any cell service up here?” Jake asked, hands in the air. Tall and paper-cut thin, brown hair tamed by product. It had been a lime-green mohawk when they first started dating.

“That’s why I printed off a map,” Joey said.

I walked down to them, stumbling a bit on the stairs as my knee began to ache again.

“C’mere, you cripple,” Joey said, gathering me up in a hug.

“He doesn’t want a bachelor’s party,” Jake said, hugging me after Joey disengaged.

“I just don’t see the point,” Joey said.

“The point is to get drunk and have fun,” I said, the crispy peaks of Jake’s hair nearly in my mouth.

“I can get drunk without having to hang out with his brothers,” Joey said.

“My sister will be disappointed she won’t get another chance to convert you before the wedding,” I told Jake, poking him lightly in the ribs.

“Remember the time she flashed you at Buster’s?” Joey asked. Jake shuddered comically.

“Oh, whatever,” Joey said. “Everyone loves boobs.”

I helped them get their stuff out of the car and ushered them inside.

***

“Are you seeing anyone?” Joey asked, when we were finally on the porch, drinking beer.

“God, no,” I said.

“You need to get back out there,” Jake said.

“Pass.”

“Maybe it’s time for you to quit women, come play for the winning team,” Joey said, laughing into his beer bottle.

“No,” I said. “I have my job and books to read and a hopeless little crush on a girl at work that will never go anywhere. That’s enough for me.”

Jake snorted and dug into the cooler for another beer.

“It’s not much of a life,” I said. “But it’s all mine.”

“OK, OK,” Joey said. “We had to at least try. We promised your sister.”

“She needs to learn to mind her own damn business,” I said, more angry than I realized.

Jake and Joey passed a look they thought I didn’t catch and let the subject go.

***

“Are there any fish at all in this lake?” Jake asked, a joint dangling from his mouth. “We’ve been at this for an hour now.”

“The listing for the cabin said it was stocked,” I said.

“Maybe something ate them all… something in the lake,” Joey said, his booming evil laugh reaching out for the far side of the water and coming back.

“I don’t think we are having any fish for dinner,” I said. “But I brought steaks.”

“I wanted a pic with me holding up a fish for my Insta,” Jake said morosely.

“Oh, God,” Joey said. “That’s so gay.” We all laughed.

“OK, I’m going to go start the grill,” I said, reeling in my drowned earthworm and breaking down my pole. When I stood up on the dock, my ankle gave way under me and I took a stumbling step into the lake.

I bobbed to the surface to Joey and Jake laughing, Jake on his stomach reaching for me. I couldn’t raise my arm to take his hand, I couldn’t kick to keep my head above the surface. I sank like a stone into the dark cold water.

***

The three of us, soaking wet, lay on the dock in the setting sun, warming ourselves.

“What happened?” Jake asked. “Did you forget how to swim?”

“My legs wouldn’t move, my arms,” I gasped out. I hadn’t inhaled any lake water but I barely had the strength to take a breath. I tried each of my limbs. My left leg still didn’t work and my right shoulder popped very loudly when I stretched it out.

“What the fuck?” Joey asked. “That is not a noise a healthy human body should make.”

“My foot wouldn’t move when I stood up,” I said. My left leg shivered violently and I could use it again.

They both picked me up and helped me inside.

***

Our lake-drenched clothes in the washer, Joey and Jake let me take the first shower while they put on heavy bathrobes and opened a bottle of bourbon. I sneezed in the shower and shot out a glob of algae. I threw up about half a beer and felt a bit better.

“I hear dry heaving!” Joey said outside the bathroom door.

“Go away,” I said tiredly.

“I’m lighting the grill.”

“OK,” I said.

Trying to dry my back, my left wrist creaked like an ancient tomb opening.

***

The living room was thick with resinous smoke and Joey and Jake were giggling.

“What the hell is that?” I asked, pointing to the yard-tall bong on the counter.

“It’s the wedding present you bought us!” Jake said. I had sent them cash in advance of the wedding.

“I have impeccable taste,” I said, reaching for it.

Jake worked the lighter for me. The huge hit landed on me like a bag of hammers.

***

Ensconced in the overstuffed chair where the boys had installed me, they fed me steak and weed and bourbon until I felt great.

“Are you happy, old man?” Jake asked.

“I nodded and grinned,” I said, nodding and grinning.

“He’s narrating,” Joey said.

“What is wrong with you? Have you seen a doctor?” Jake demanded.

“They don’t know,” I told him.

“Go to a better doctor,” Joey said. “How long has this been happening?”

“If my trigger finger is part of it,” I said, showing him my curled right pinky, “A couple of weeks.”

“Weeks?” Joey asked.

“We have to go in the morning,” Jake said. “But we can’t leave you alone like this.”

“I’m fine, look at me, I’m fine now. I drove all of the way here,” I said. “It never lasts very long. I’ll just stay away from the lake that doesn’t have any fish in it anyway.”

“I should call your sister,” Joey said. “You shouldn’t be up here by yourself.”

“Don’t do that. She’ll just come up here and make a huge scene,” I said, drifting off a bit. I shook my head and stood up. “See, I’m OK.” Bloated from all the food and beer, I felt overbalanced, wobbled a bit.

“Yeah, you’re doing just fine,” Joey said dryly.

***

The next morning I woke up dry-mouthed. I could hear Joey and Jake bumping around in the kitchen. As I lay there, I flexed my fingers, rotated my wrists and ankle, bent my knees and elbows, and stretched my arms and legs out. I seemed fully functional.

“Mornin’, sunshine,” Joey said as I walked into the kitchen. I grumbled in reply and sat down at the kitchen counter.

He waved a platter of fried potatoes, onions and bacon in front of me. “Hangover food?” he asked.

“It’s obscene for you to be this happy this early in the morning,” I said, coughing up something thick and horrible and spitting it into the sink.

“So nothing?” he asked.

“Just a glass of milk,” I said.

“Milk? You’re just going to drink a glass of milk?”

“Milk?” Jake asked, walking into the kitchen. “Who drinks milk? Like cow milk?”

“I like almond milk,” Joey said.

“Oat milk,” Jake said. “Easy to digest.”

“I digest real milk and dairy products just fine,” I said, taking the gallon from the fridge and pouring an extra large glass.

“It comes out of cow titties,” Jake said.

“You ate a steak just last night that came out of a cow, you know,” I said, and drank off half the glass. Cold, so cold. Delicious. I topped off my glass before putting the gallon back into the fridge.

“But that’s meat,” Joey said. “Milk is gross.”

“Mucus, it’s mucus,” Jake said, malicious humor and genuine disgust in his voice.

“Stop food-shaming me,” I said with mock petulance. “Get out of my cabin.”

***

By the time they were showered and packed up to leave, I had drunk almost half of the gallon of milk in the fridge. I was obsessed with the flavor.

“I’ll see you at the wedding,” I told them beside their car, getting long, crushing hugs from them both.

“Are you sure you’re OK to stay here?” Joey asked, too hairy to be so mothering.

“I haven’t had a problem since I fell into the lake,” I said. “Maybe that’s all it took, getting a little lake water on me.”

“Call your sister, or us, or anybody, if you need to,” Jake said.

“I will, all I have to do is go down to that gas station, cell service picks up there,” I said.

I walked up to the porch to end the fretting. I waved goodbye and they gave a light tap on the horn as they drove away, dust kicked up from the road swirling around.

I went inside and cleaned up the kitchen, finally settling down to read a big fat book.

***

I woke up the next morning tortured by thirst. I had a leftover steak and flash-fried haricots verts for dinner, nothing super-salty. Why was I so damn thirsty? I went downstairs to the fridge. The empty gallon of milk was beside the sink. I got a Coke out and cracked the can open. Such a satisfying sound. I took a drink and spit it out in the sink. It tasted foul, acid and rot–I poured it down the drain. I opened another can and smelled it; the fluid stank like toilet bowl cleaner. I threw all the cans in the fridge straight into the trash. A bad batch, I thought.

I had a few glasses of tap water, flat and dead-tasting, but I felt better.

I surveyed the fridge and the small set of pantry items I had brought for the week. I decided to go back down to the sketchy gas station before it got too late in the day.

***

I came home with two gallons of whole milk and the first pack of cigarettes I had bought in two decades. I don’t even know why I bought them, some impulse. I smoked one out on the dock and vomited into the water. It was warm and sunny. I took off my shirt and basked in the sunlight like some enormous lizard.

When it got into the late afternoon, I went up to the porch and scrolled through the emails and texts I had downloaded while getting a cellular signal. Joey and Jake made it home safely. Sarah had sent an email of inconsequential events at work and a pic of her sitting in my office chair. I queued a few replies for the next time I had a signal.

Nothing in the fridge looked very appetizing. I had more milk and went to bed before the sun had set.

***

I tried to lay in bed the next morning to read, a vacation slugabed dream, but the renewed thirst made me get up and go downstairs. I drank milk at the kitchen island and read until it was warm enough to go out on the dock again. I shucked off my shirt and shorts and fell asleep on the rough, warm wood slats

Both my ankles sounded like ratchets when I tried to get up, and my breastbone hurt like the last time someone punched me in it. I took a moment to piss in the lake. My stream of urine was dark brown, like strong tea.

I went inside, fretting about the pops and clicks in my joints and the urine. I hunted through the fridge. I hadn’t realized that I had finished the second gallon of milk the night before. My hands were swollen and hurt, all the fingers tending to curl into a loose fist unless I made the effort to keep them flat; my hips felt loose in their sockets. I thought about going to a local ER but I was so tired. I fell asleep in the overstuffed chair.

About 2am, I woke up and struggled upstairs to my bed, collapsing on the cornpone duvet. Everything hurt, like I had been in a violent car crash. I resolved to leave tomorrow, two days early, and get looked at again by a doctor. I took 10mg of Vicodin and went back to sleep.

***

I remembered waking and falling asleep a number of times, seeing the sun in the windows but only just registering in brief moments I was awake.

It was dark when I stayed awake long enough to reach for my phone to check the time. My arm wouldn’t move. The other arm wouldn’t move either, or my legs, or neck. It hurt to breathe, my lungs half-filling under my immobile rib cage. I screamed through teeth I couldn’t part.

It will pass, I told myself. When it did, I’d go to the nearest hospital and demand they take what was happening to me seriously. I had pissed myself at some point and it stank like burning garbage; I couldn’t even shift myself out of the wet spot that went down to my knees and up to my mid-back.

What if I was stuck like this? I wondered how long it would be before someone tried to find me. Three days when the landlord came to clean the place for the next set of guests? It wouldn’t be until the next Monday before I was missed at work–five days, maybe six–texts asking if I was OK piling up unanswered. I could only live without water for three days, and at least one had already passed. Maybe less time if my kidneys were fucked.

I screamed again, screamed and cried until I passed out, weak and thirsty.

***

Pain.

Woke up to tearing, searing pain. Knives running up along each finger and toe, to arms and leg, splitting me open like rotten fruit. My chest bloomed open. I couldn’t even scream as my mouth opened wider and wider until my jaw cracked, gristle popping, bone splintering.

Pain.

***

I rotated my knees off the bed and stepped out of his flesh and blood, taking my internal organs and eyes with me. I looked down at the ruin of him, butterflied open on the bed, the waiting meat.

I walked to the bathroom, bare bone feet clicking on the tiles. I looked at myself in the mirror for a little while, wiping away blood to admire the white gleam of new bone.

I took a huge bath towel out of the cabinet and spread it out beside the bed, dropping his bones onto it one by one after prying them out of the meat. They were fragile, dotted with holes, drained of marrow and calcium. I saved his skull for last. The parietal and occipital plates came off as I pried at his face and lay there in his flayed head, a bowl filled with blood and spinal fluid.

Finally, my tendons drying and beginning to creak, I had cleaned his body of bone and lay down on the bed in it, getting comfortable. The flesh began to close over me after a few minutes. I slept through the rest.

***

I woke complete, my flesh closed around me to cushion my precious new bones.

I examined myself in the full-length mirror in the bedroom. No scars, none the fissures I made pulling myself from this… chrysalis.

I showered and dressed in his clothes–shabby, ill-fitting, they’d have to go. I stripped blood-drenched bedclothes and took them down his car, a pathetic electric shitbox, and loaded them in. I’d find a place to burn them. And go shopping for a decent car.

Cleaned out the cabin: food, bongs, baggies of marijuana, empty beer bottles, trash, the rest of my clothes. I left his books behind. Maybe the next person that stayed here might want them, I certainly didn’t. I smoked his cigarettes.

The last thing was to take the towel filled with his bones down to the dock and shake them out into the water, taking a moment to stamp the skull to pieces before sweeping it off.

Free, finally free, I drove off to make more of his life than he ever did.