The Boil

by J.S. Hollins

Luis Villasmil

I rashly decided to shave my armpits,  and discovered a baseball-sized sac of pus.  The first time it burst between my fingers,  no pus came out, only blood diluted with  water that reminded me of hot wine, and what I  imagined the blood gushing from Christ’s spear-wound  must have looked like.    The boil only grew larger and I more sadistic — constant squeezing and hot towel presses, yet  no google remedy could get it to explode.    Hours I’d squeeze, watching red skin desperately  trying to let the pus surface. Teasing one little  pore when it turns white,  ready to let out that flood of sickness.    No pore gave in,  and the sickness remained.  I would be incomplete till it was gone.    The pain meant nothing, but the fact  something the size of a newborn-chick  lived within me uninvited did.    Socializing became impossible,  no word could be sincere and listening  was no longer feasible for the boil laughed  in my ear. Ambition, or whatever that thing  that makes people stay on the same track, became  hollow. The only end I lived for was  the killing of the boil.    That boil, thought I would stop squeezing.  That if it sent enough signals to my nervous  system, that I would heed. That boil plays  me for weak, for incapable.

Yet one day it just left, and I did not notice,  and when I did finally make notice of it,  I realized why all my lovers hate me.

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John Hollins is a writer from Columbia, Mississippi. He currently attends University of Southern Mississippi where he is pursuing an undergraduate degree in English and writes for the Southern Miss paper, The Student Printz.