TRUDIE CARTER

Sunburn 

I came to paradise, but my body was in hell. The attack started around seven in the evening. I was resting in the rental apartment, lost between sleep and wake after a long day at the beach. The sun cast its final light on the pillow by my head. It was much too hot, even at the late hour. By now the heat radiated from within me as though it were trapped in my epidermis. To distract myself from picking at the raw, angry skin, I reached for water and poured it down my front. But as dampness grew beneath me, some vicious sensation grew inside me, an urgent, screaming itch that broke out across my shoulders and spread down my back like a fever. The wires of my nervous system combusted into a fire that spread deeper than I could reach. As I writhed agaisnt the mattress, billions of my cells mutated and divided and spasmed in protest. I clutched the bedsheets in my fists and tried to beat the itch from my body. I ran my nails across my back, but scratching was agony because the itch screamed back at me. I made a strange, gutteral noise that I didn’t recognize. The earth shuddered in response and a warm hit of wind threw open the balcony door, hitting a worn dent in the paintwork. From my bed, I could see the darkening sky cut a sharp line across the horizon. The sunset was happening somewhere else, out of view. A fleeing lizard darted across the wall. The next wave of air rolled off the ocean and the door banged harder and I shivered, though I felt hotter than I’d ever been.  

Fresh itches erupted inside of me, a visceral plague that felt like divine punishment come too early. I scrunched my eyes together and prayed. No, please no, I’m sorry, please make it stop. The ceiling fan span helplessly. You’re alone, you idiot, it said. My eyes focused on the squashed bottle of sunscreen lying next to me. Expires 12.06.19, read the label. Fuck. I rolled over and soaked the bedsheet with hot tears of stupidity. I’d been a glistening salmon all day, lathered in sticky useless white cream and olive oil, basting in the tropical sun until my skin bronzed and freckled and puckered. After a miserable winter, after another failed relationship, all I wanted was a tan. To feel better. There would be permanent damage, but I would look good, thriving, healed. Now the itch threatened to keep me indoors for the rest of the holiday. I typed clumsily into the search bar of my phone: sunburn itchy, allergic reaction to sun, heat rash symptoms. Blue hyperlinked text filled the screen. There was the same phrase, over and over: Hell’s itch. Internet forums full of the afflicted. Don’t scratch it, for the love of God. No topicals. Take a very hot shower. 

To the bathroom I went. The room was damp and dirty, with a limp shower curtain that gathered mycelium spores from the air. I switched off the light and stepped into the shallow bath. The shower head stuck directly out of the wall, covered in an ageing coat of plaster. It spat a trickle of lukewarm water at me. I hissed and spat back in fury. A few sad drops couldn’t relieve the buzzing hive of bees inside of me. In my temporary madness, I thought about boiling the kettle and pouring it over my skin. Heavy wind groaned through the cracks in the apartment and I felt the cool air brush my back. In the fading light I squinted at my reflection in the mirror and recoiled. Loser, I thought. My face was red and my hair stuck to my head with sweat. I stared at the creases forming between my eyebrows and the stressed texture around my eyes. Panic rose as the devil in my skin stirred again. The sunburn would lay fresh damage on top of old, add more years to my face. It hit me that the static grooves would only continue to deepen, today and tomorrow and the rest. My eyes swarmed with tears to see myself so frayed. Mid-thirties and alone. The itch convulsed and clutched me in desperation and I screamed at the mirror. I ran back to the bedroom, scraping my skin agaisnt the rough walls as I went. 

The hot, tense air had given way to a storm like something out of the Bible. Sheets of water swept into the room and drenched the clothes in my open suitcase. The door swung and banged on its hinges. The insects were gone. I walked into the downpour and felt Nature’s water pressure hammer me with satisfying power. It hit the itch where it hurt and soaked me clean, and for a few seconds I felt nothing but rain. I stroked the rough edge of the balcony, which was wide and deep, jutting away from the apartment with confidence. It was a straight shot into the thrashing ocean. Across the bay, palm trees waved to beckon me. I was struck by the completeness of the moment, as if my life and all its loneliness were a full circle and one and the same. Take some time off, go somewhere hot, clear your head. I’d been quick to take the trip before Maria moved out. But I was lying to myself, because she was already long gone. She was like a dying plant that rots at the root before the leaves start to brown. A suntan can’t make someone love you.  

A booming voice echoed through the apartment from the opposite wing. It was a man shouting in accented English in words unintelligible but rising and falling like the wind. I crossed the apartment to the terrace that overlooked the street. In the heavy rain, a man stood in the middle of a basketball court, sodden to the core. He held a wet book in one hand and a mic in the other. “Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth,” he boomed, his voice shaken with emotion. “For the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more.”  

Raging with the fire inside me, I pressed my body agaisnt the wall. I started sobbing. 

“Wail, for the day of the LORD is near; it will c-come like destruction… from the Almighty!” The man took a huge, shuddering breath. He mopped his face with a handkerchief, but tears from his eyes and from Nature were falling harder than he could reach. “And… therefore all hands… w-will be feeble, and every human heart w-will melt… and, and they will be dismayed.” His call for salvation reached fever pitch, his voice wobbled as if on the verge of a seizure. “Pain!” he cried desperately. “Pain… and agony will seize them!” The verse droned on, it was about nothing and everything, the end of times and the destruction and revival of every cell in the universe. I had the suicidal fantasy of lying in the sun again, once the itch was gone and my burn faded into a healthy tan. Before long, I’d be in the south of France, smiling and brown and happy. Maria would meet me in a upmarket seafood restaurant and tell me that I’ve never looked better. Soon after, I crawled inside and slept. Face plasted to pillow, mouth open, skin smarting with pain and already starting to peel.

Trudie Carter is a writer, social media expert and moonlight burlesque performer living in Berlin.