I’m scared to look into the teacup. I peer in as I swirl the cup around. The brown liquid is much thicker than tea should be. It’s almost more like a dark pudding. Horrified, I drop the cup on the dresser, where it tips and spills.

I don’t clean it up. I don’t want to touch it. I start scratching my arm. It feels good with such long nails. I scratch harder and keep going until it tingles and burns. I keep scratching, stepping closer to the mirror until I’m only a foot or so away.

The face looking back at me is mine. My skin is less pale, but I look older. I move my shirt sleeve up so I can see the back of my arm. I see a very small mark, similar to the one I saw on Hilbert’s neck that day in my room. Was that today? A blemish. It’s small enough that I have to lean even closer. There’s still no sound at all. It might just be a pimple.

I move my sleeve up a bit more, to reveal another mark, this one bigger, and protruding from my skin in three dimensions, like fungus, like lichens. Horrified, I lift my shirt more to reveal that almost all of my torso is covered with the bulging fungus.

I look down at my hands. They’re shaking. My nails are three times as long as they were a moment ago. As I look again at the mirror, I see my neck and face are covered in the fungus, too.

My head is spinning. I scream.

“Help! Jack!” I yell as loud as I can.

I can’t hear myself because of the headphones. I take them off with quivering hands, and as I do, the sound of a violin instantly fills the room. In the mirror I see a small, loose piece of skin near my ear. I move an inch away from the mirror, taking the skin between my fingers, and very slowly pull on it. It starts to peel off, and I keep pulling it until I’ve peeled it all off. Underneath this skin, it is not my face. It’s not my face anymore. It’s Ruth.

I’m looking at Ruth’s face. Younger, prettier.

There are life-forms of two distinct organisms that flourish as one because of a symbiotic union. I know that’s real. I know that happens. I know what Shelley wants.

For us all to keep going, to keep working, to be compatible, to conform and live as one.

I feel my stomach drop. I’m so scared and horrified that I can’t help but stumble backward, falling onto my bed.

I wake, coughing, rolling onto my side, the sheet balled up beside me. I’m panting to get a breath. In total darkness, I feel each arm, my stomach, my face. There is no fungus there anymore, only the single, small pimple on the back of my arm.

I rarely have nightmares. It felt so real.