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Message: <blockquote data-quote="loxmyth" data-source="post: 665304" data-attributes="member: 1255">Monday, 6:15amMurphy apartment, Calumet ParkMacario sat up for a moment before immediately lying back down again.  "I'm up, I'm up," he called to his mother, though it was sort of muffled by the bed.  But as usual, he didn't want to abandon the comfort of his warm bed to the frigid air in the house.  Cold.  Why was it always so cold?  So he tried to go back to sleep.  Unsuccessfully, because of what felt like a hole in his belly.  He fought it for a while, but in the end, voracious appetite beat out complete sluggishness.He pushed off the four layers of ragged blankets, covered with the saturday morning cartoon characters of his youth, and rolled off his mattress.  Which was basically what his bed was, a boxspring and a mattress.  He didn't mind now, though - apparently they were all the rage with the rich folks these days and they called them futons.His small room was pretty bare: a few potted plants he had liked the look of grew on the plank that sat across the radiator below his small window, his bed, a dresser his mom had found secondhand somewhere, with half its drawers missing.  He had the few pairs of clothes that still fit him in the drawers, and piled books in the open spaces.  A small wardrobe held his ratty winter jacket and a suit that was a size too small for him for special occasions.  And a mirror, intended for wall mounting but lacking the frame with which to do so, leaned against the far wall.  A few sketchbooks were scattered around the bed; he had been drawing himself to sleep that night.He went to examine himself in the mirror, dreading it as he always did.  And immediately what he saw made him want to cry.  His face was peeling again, the sheets of dead flesh hanging off his face like tissue.  Rushing back to his bed, he saw that other flakes of his body had been sloughed off during the night.  Swearing under his breath, he quickly stripped off the covers and the lowermost layer of blankets, and opened the window.  Cold he could feel through to his bones almost paralyzed him.  Quickly gathering his strength, he flagged the sheets, sending those pieces of him to rain down like powder in the back.  Once he was done, he shut the window, sat down and cried.  He longed for the days when all he had to hide were sticky sheets.Quickly, he went to the shower.  If his mother saw his tears, she'd suspect something.  And Macario never wanted her to look at him the way she did that first day, with fear and revulsion.  He'd never let that happen again.Showering was like running through ice; and it never got warm enough for Macario, so he stayed only long enough to wash off the peeled skin and reveal his new, perfectly healthy skin beneath.  That's what baffled doctors the most; the way he seemed perfectly healthy - except for the fact that his skin would fall off every now and again.He dressed in a thick checkered shirt he called his Lumberjack jacket, and some faded jeans that had been patched in the knees.  He carefully combed his finger-length hair out to a very small afro, and carefully washed around his eyes again, hoping the puffiness was out.  Then he gathered his school stuff.  The report he and Roz were supposed to be working on was almost done, and he had all of Dave's homework finished as well as his own.  Dave Goldstein being his only friend who was somewhat popular, Macario made sure the school's all-star MVP always did well on assignments.By the time he came down for breakfast, he could smell the oatmeal porridge that he knew would be waiting for him on the table.  "Morning mummy," he greeted her brightly, "how you feeling?"</blockquote>

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