I’m here! I’m back! And I’ve finally arrived at the third part of the prologue that sets the stage for the rest of Bonesick Act 1, already in progress. New around here? Too busy to read things this summer? Catch up on Part 1: Twenty Years Ago and Part 2: The Pitch.
This is a longer one, so let’s jump right in.
The Candidate
“I feel like a tuning fork that’s out of tune—a de-tuning fork?” A few candidates in the circle chuckled knowingly at the comment from the thick man wearing a mask, hat, sunglasses, and gloves. Everyone in the circle wore some version of this ensemble. It looked like an Invisible Man cosplay convention, aside from one in a red latex bodysuit and one who insisted on wearing an old Captain Kirk Halloween mask. But this was required protocol for these meetings in the musty church basement, every second Monday of the month, 7 pm sharp. Disguises and first initials only. Leave your identity at the door.
Donning a black balaclava with just two openings for his eyes, Toby nodded along with the masked man’s de-tuning fork description. This caught the attention of the group’s leader, who went by “B.” She shifted her gaze towards Toby before he could look away.
“You feel the same way too?” B prodded. She seemed young, too young maybe, judging by her camouflage.
He squirmed in his squeaky folding chair and replied, “Yeah, kinda.” He paused for a moment before he described his specific variety of skin sensations exacerbated by his melancholia. “For me, it’s like I’m wearing the reverb from an iron door that someone just slammed inside of a cave. It just vibrates incessantly all over. It’s obnoxious.” He didn’t bother to look around for agreement.
B encouraged a couple more replies to this week’s investigation. Over the past five sessions, the young woman had interrogated the group of SkinFree candidates with the typical therapy stack: What trauma led you here? How does it make you feel? What methods have you tried to navigate these emotions? Do your friends and family support your decision to go through with the Procedure?
Toby loathed sitting through everyone’s egomaniacal sob stories. Mental illness, drug addiction, homelessness, assault, attempted suicide—all variations on the same theme: life is a fucking struggle—he didn’t need the reminder in excruciating detail. In last month’s meeting, an older lady alluded to a baby she’d surrendered. The searing fire poker of personal shame that lanced through Toby’s chest cavity was enough to send him up out of his cold metal chair and straight to the stairs. B had to chase after him with the mildly convincing fact that he’d have to complete all six meetings eventually.
While he shared a thought from time to time, Toby kept his dirty laundry list of sub-standard life choices to himself. He didn’t need to prove anything to these masked strangers shoegazing into their own muck. He hurt inside and out. The mental anguish that crawled into bed with him each night and woke up beside him each morning was reason enough to take the next step and go through with this—as radical as it seemed to normal folks. It was time to peel off the weak, tender cloak that did nothing to protect any sense of self-worth. Every mistake only added to the pile of evidence that he was a waste of space.
After Latex explained how his skin felt like bugs, B checked the clock above the fire exit door and wrapped up the meeting with some platitudes about better days to come. She reminded the candidates of the final session’s assignment: bring postpartum alleviation mementos to discuss with the group.
Most of the candidates gathered around the coffee maker after the meeting. Some lifted their masks to take slurps of tepid caffeine and discuss the details of their upcoming procedures. Toby bolted for the stairs. Even amongst this odd pack of depressed misfits, he was an outcast.
He climbed the basement steps up to the church’s narthex. His footsteps echoed against the marble and lofted ceiling. He snuck a peak at the cathedral’s interior. Strategically placed lights softly uplit carved architecture that was as opulent as it was oppressive. The earthen, musky scent of Frankincense still lingered from Sunday’s Mass—bitter nostalgia of his youth, when his father led the Evening Praise and Prayer service before everything collapsed.
Although this was a Catholic establishment, not a Protestant one, Toby had vowed never to return to any denomination after his father abandoned him, his mom, and his entire hometown. But here he was: inside of another church, stuck in some horrific time loop, doomed to relive his most challenging memories. He picked up a stray service bulletin from the floor and flipped through its contents. He didn’t recognize any of the hymns, and the structure was different from the services his dad preached. On the back, there was a list of staff members, one of whom was Sully: his SkinFree sponsor, bartender, and only real friend on earth.
Sully was the one who gave Toby the SkinFree pamphlet. Sully was also the one who convinced him that B’s meetings were by far the least awkward of the challenging bunch. So Toby agreed to the required six-month stint in the basement in tandem with his weekly one-on-one wellness sessions, all of which would lead up to the procedure. Only 55 days to go. While his pal Sully had endured the same group therapy theatrics, he never went through with the procedure. He backed out two weeks beforehand. But Toby still trusted Sully’s guidance. Sully knew what it felt like to want to tear off your skin so no one could make assumptions about you. Sully never made him feel like a heretic for going through something as absurd as replacing your skin with some cryptic company’s outer space material. Sully just listened.
Toby leaned the weight of his body into the church’s thick wood door. He felt the crisp night air pour through the crack and grab at the openings of his balaclava mask. A young female voice pulled him back.
“T? Could I check with you on something quick?” B had followed him up the stairs. He kept his shoulder pinned to the door.
“I gotta run,” Toby replied with a nod toward the outside. “Maybe next time?”
“It’s about your workplace,” B interjected before he could push through the door. “The staff is having trouble setting up the transition. Apparently, you haven’t completed your post-op prep account with them yet?”
This wasn’t just any workplace. It was Nüch, the biggest company in the country, top ten globally. It was so mammoth that Toby’s health insurance covered the entire SkinFree procedure, no questions asked. The problem was his boss. Without a social life, Toby had poured most of his waking hours into various positions in the creative department of the grocery conglomerate division. He had made himself indispensable. So while Toby would undergo post-op recovery for the next eight months or so, the VP of the department was obviously in full panic mode. He’d have to do some actual work for once.
“Yeah, my boss is being a pain in the ass about it,” Toby admitted. “Tips?”
“Ok, let me ask you something,” B replied. “Are you the kind of guy who builds his entire self-worth around his job?”
Stunned by B’s brazen sneak attack, Toby took his shoulder off the door and let it close. The fresh night air would have to wait. “Um, ok, whoa. I don’t know if that’s the problem.”
B continued, “The thing is, we have all your records. You took three personal days since you started at Nüch. Most of your recovery time is covered by five years of rollover vacation.”
Toby glanced down at the church bulletin still in his hand. “We all have our vices.”
As if he were a frightened creature she’d have to trap, B gingerly took a few steps toward him. “Toby, listen, I apologize. I’m not here to slice and dice your personal life. That meeting ended eight minutes ago.” She laughed to put Toby at ease, but he wasn’t amused. She continued more seriously, “You have to set up your prep account, or you may not have a job to come back to.”
“Would that be so bad?” Toby asked.
“Well, that’s up to you, I guess.” B got distracted by echoed voices behind her as a few candidates climbed the stairs. She moved in closer to Toby. “See, everything about this process is specifically constructed to provide you with the best outcome—a smooth transition into, well, a completely different life ahead of you.”
“I’ll manage.” All he wanted to do was skip to the part where he didn’t have to be the Toby-shaped sad sack he’d been dragging around all these decades.
B inched closer. “T, I know how you feel about Group. Like you don’t fit in here.”
“I’ve never fit in. Anywhere.” Toby paused as he considered how much more he wanted to share with B. He watched her eyes flicker behind the pale, expressionless mask she wore, issued by her company.
He reluctantly continued, “The other night you asked what pushed us to this option, and I didn’t answer.” Toby shifted his weight and crossed his arms against his chest. “You know how amputees suffer from phantom limb? That’s how everything feels to me. Only it’s my existence that’s the ghost. Yet it's operating as if it’s real.” He stopped and immediately regretted his admission. Out loud it sounded hollow and cliché.
B gave Toby’s words some room and nodded before asking, “Would you like to do something else with your life? After the procedure?”
Toby groaned, “Oh I don’t fucking know. No matter what prescription of woo I try, I’ll probably feel like this. I’ve done it all, ya know? Started with fad workouts, went vegan, saw a psychic, microdosed. I read all the self-help hits. I even went on a silent retreat for God’s sake. I still feel lost.” Toby’s exasperation ricocheted across the surrounding marble. “But I haven’t tried this, so I might as well toss myself to the wolves.” He waved his hand in B’s direction.
She whispered as her shoulders dropped, “You think we’re wolves, T?”
Toby felt frustration crackle under his chest. “You’re part of the industry… this wellness complex that capitalizes on our trauma. But we’re all too weak to resist. We’re at the end of our rope, one step away…” He trailed off and shifted his focus to the candidates hovering at the other end of the narthex.
B interrupted, “If you think this is some sort of snake oil factory, then we’re gonna have to have a different conversation altogether.”
Toby returned to B’s earnest stare. Regret oozed like molten lava through the cracks and he began to recant. “No, no, I don’t, B. I’m just… honestly, I’m so tired.”
Toby closed his eyes. To calm down, he tried to grab a handful of comforting memories, collected decades ago. There was Angela, age 8. Her happy house on Jackson. The bedroom closet she hid him in when he ran away from his sad house. The scent of detergent and pine wood. The grilled cheese sandwich she snuck in so his growling stomach wouldn’t give him away. But his recollection was too delicious to evade his hungry ghosts. In moments the memories, plump with serenity, became starved shells clinging to the walls of his skull.
Toby opened his eyes and continued, “Sorry, B. Clearly I don’t share enough in Group.” When she didn’t even snicker, he paused to think of a way to reassure her. “You know what convinced me to give this weird, wild ride a go? It was the concierge—when I sent in my application, she reignited something in me.” He rubbed his chest.
B sighed, “Eliza’s amazing. I’m grateful she reached you. T, we’re all on your side. I’m only asking you to take this seriously. If you go through with the procedure, it’s going to feel like…” she paused as she struggled to come up with a metaphor, “...well, you’re not dead, you’re not alive, you’re—”
“A more complex third thing,” Toby added. “Whatever it is, it’s bound to be better than this.” Toby looked up. “Listen, I gotta go. I get it. You’re just doing your job.”
B shook her head. “Forgive me for all this. When I’m at Group, I’m on autopilot. Rules and regulations. Crossed T’s, dotted I’s. This entire process is hard for all of us. To be completely honest, you deserve better.” She lowered her voice as she nodded her head back toward the candidates, “You all deserve better. These folks, they’re lost just like you. We’re all a little lost. We have that in common at least, don’t you think?”
Toby turned to survey the sad little group of misfits; his shoulders drooped. Caught between misery and company, he couldn’t concede to the comforting arms of either one.
B noticed the fall in Toby’s demeanor and lifted her gloved hand to reach for his. But he plunged his shoulder hard into the church door. A blast of frigid March air reached out for her instead. She watched him remove his balaclava. She caught a quick look at the mess of black hair at the top of his shaved skull as the door’s hydraulics gently reduced her view to wood and shadow.
She stood alone, embraced only by the cold. Her skin prickled against the anxious whispers from her candidates, just weeks away from their more complex third thing.
References
The 16th-century composer Palestrina is a dear fave of mine from my college days. Now I didn’t take a “banned music over the millennium” course, but how cool would that be? In this instance, I’m referring to when polyphonic music was controversial in the 1560s. Important councilmen thought the intermingling of voices made sacred text difficult to understand. Palestrina depended on papal patronage to make a living and when Paul IV dismissed him for such blasphemous music, he was basically screwed. Luckily, Paul IV croaked a few years later. Legend goes his successor, Pius IV, was like: You’re cool, Palestrina, go ahead and compose a full polyphonic mass. Palestrina composed Missa Papae Marcelli, and the rest is history.
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One final THANK YOU to my Foster people — Jude Klinger, Sena Gürdoğan, and DJ May — who helped with edits to the first draft of this one. Since June, that draft changed and lengthened quite a bit, but I appreciate the love nonetheless! Again, I’m not sure I would’ve written this three-part prologue had it not been for the Season 3 workshop. Here I was, thinkin’ I’d be on some leisurely break this summer!
With that said, I’m not quite sure what’s next in store. Sure I’d love to start up Act 2 (Tarot Card No. 8). But I’d also secretly love to polish Act 1 with some rewrites and a lot more drawing. I also have big thoughts and dreams about making it literally tangible. Opinions? Give’m to me!
Post-Script: I asked and you answered. “Whatever you want, I’ll be here” sounds great! So let’s do something different.
Welcome to my mini-project inside this project: Inktober x Bonesick. In the canon, the following three parts exist after the Prologue you just read, but before Tarot Card Zero. Enjoy!
This is lovely. Ugh, our Toby. And this B character! I’m intrigued.
I love your style, it's so vivid and fresh! Really identify with Toby's thoughts regarding the group presentations--a barrage of reminders that life is a struggle.