Uncle Fester Comes for a Visit

For the last couple of weeks I've been talking about my festering ankle wound to anyone and everyone who would listen. About a month ago I took a little stumble on some subway stairs and got home to discover a bit of a bloody mess. Poured some hydrogen peroxide on that bad boy, slapped a band-aid on, and assumed it would fix itself, like all those scrapes I got back in the day when I roller skated outside with indoor skates. Alas, how wrong have I turned out to be! The festering wound has, as I mentioned, festered. I'm not exactly helping the recovery along, what with my no antibiotic ointment applying and my stuffy boots wearing. But I think this wound would fester regardless, considering the probably high likelihood of necrotizing fasciitis living on subway stairs.

Sometimes I go without a band-aid, thinking the contact with air will do it some good. It gets scabby in the middle when left uncovered (though still slightly gooey 'round the edges), so I've been known to throw some socks or tights on over it and go about my day with an unband-aided, scabbily festering wound. Today, the wound took its vengeance for this most unhealthy and unwise practice of mine. As I slowly removed my tights, I had a flashback to the moment of tights-removal on that cruel night, the one where I tried to rush past that bum on the steps and was rewarded by fate with a tumble and a scrape. I felt this slight pain on my ankle, this shiny freshness that I hadn't felt since that woeful beginning. I looked down in a crystal clear fog - there was no scab resting atop the goo. THERE WAS JUST GOO. Some demon possessed me to search inside my tights for the missing scab - I turned them inside out, and there it was, dried scab side stuck the the tights, GOO side laughing in my face (and there it sits, for I haven't managed to bring myself to remove it). I sat down and breathed deeply. I rested my head in between my legs, like I was taught in grade school so as to ward off nausea. I looked at the wound again. So festeringly gooey. It has a lip like a crater. No, a volcano. Yesss, a volcano. With an oozing lake of slimey goo instead of lava.