Growth
Matthew Pritt
Matthew Pritt (he/him) writes mostly Appalachian speculative and literary fiction. His work has appeared in Cursed Morsels, Dark Recesses, and The Colored Lens, among many others. He lives in West Virginia with his five cats, pictures of which can be seen on his Twitter @MatthewTPritt.
I.
When Velti got home from her planetside business trip and found her partner, Mayth, passed out and draped over the side of the bathpod, she knew exactly what happened. She picked up his severed hand from the basin and put it in the chute to the station’s incinerator, then logged in on his comm to set up a regrowth session.
Velti tried to swallow the guilt she was feeling. This was her first time leaving him alone for that long since he finished rehab. And even though he had been doing so well—clean for two years before this—the fight was never over. All it took was a moment.
There was less blood than last time, but Mayth would still be dehydrated when he woke up, so Velti got two hydration tablets. She went back to him, and when she repositioned his body to administer the tablets, she almost dropped him in surprise.
He still had both hands.
Instead of an arm ending in a bloody stump, he had a gaping wound halfway up his forearm. A closer inspection of his body found two more budding hands near his armpit, and a tiny foot growing on the back of his knee.
The last two times Mayth relapsed, he cut his left hand off to get prescribed a regimen of Epitheleon and then went to rehab as soon as he was done. But this was different. All the new hands and feet growing meant he’d found the drug on the black market.
She immediately cancelled the regrowth session.
Mayth woke up when Velti was removing his shorts.
“I’m sorry,” he mumbled. “I didn’t mean for you to find me like this.”
“That’s not what you need to be apologizing for.” She scanned his upper legs for new growths.
Mayth hung his head and slumped back over. “Yeah. I know.”
“Who got you back on it?”
“A guy in the mine. Lost a hand and they gave him enough for a whole arm, so he had some leftover and gave it to me.”
“Gave it to you? You didn’t buy it?”
“No, I wouldn’t do that.”
“If I check your transaction log, I’m not going to find any payments to a Lito M. for 3,000 crowns?”
Mayth turned back and gaped at her. She was holding up his comm with his banking screen pulled up.
“We’ll talk about this later, Mayth. It’s one thing when you stumble, but this is our life. You’re ruining yourself with money I’m making. What you do doesn’t just affect you.”
“I’m sorry. It won’t happen again.”
“No. It won’t.” She didn’t elaborate. She hadn’t quite decided yet what she need to do, but she couldn’t do nothing. She loved him, yes. Was that enough?
She ran her hand over his back and felt a lump between his shoulder blades. Normally, Epitheleon only regrew limbs or hands and feet; the spine was not a common place for new growths. Velti rolled up Mayth’s shirt.
Jutting out of the skin was the start of a new face. The mouth and eyes were papered over with skin, but she could see movement below the surface, like the twitches in REM sleep.
This wasn’t something they could just cut off in the bathtub.
II.
Station Surgeon Ira Bloss checked the chart of the patient, then handed it to her trainee, Dosh Midholm.
“Bud surgery,” she said to Dosh. “Typical Epitheleon abuser. I remember this one. He was in here last year to get a budding head cut out of his back. That would’ve been a good one to train you on.”
“I see the scar,” Dosh said. He handed Ira the scalpel.
“You’ll get a lot of these at this station. More than you did planetside, for sure.”
“Why is that?”
“Asteroid mining is dangerous work. Just look at this patient’s history. Mayth Gladstone, came in five years ago after a work-related incident in which he lost his left arm. Then he was back for two more treatments, both for cutting his own hand off. You see that a lot, too, self-mutilation to get more drugs. Now this is his second trip here for bud removal, with one visit for balance issues in between.”
Ira ran the scalpel over Mayth’s arm and sliced through the four tiny hands dotting his skin. Blood ran out from the incisions and down his arm.
“Please put SkinSeal on those,” Ira said.
“Aren’t we going to cap the new blood vessels before we do that? He’ll have really bad bruising.”
“It’s not worth it. When you’ve done as many of these surgeries as I have, you’ll understand.”
“But it’s standard operating procedure.”
“Put the SkinSeal on and don’t make me ask again. These surgeries are a waste of my time as is, and he’ll be right back here in a few months no matter how careful I am.”
Dosh put the adhesive skin patches over the wounds. “We shouldn’t talk about him like that. There’s no guarantee he’ll relapse.”
Ira laughed. “Oh, to be young and idealistic again. You’ll find out soon enough that more things are certain in this life than death and taxes.”
III.
“Mayth, my man!” Lito said as his coworker pulled up a seat next to him at the bar. Then, to the bartender, he said, “Get this man a drink on me. We’re celebrating his freedom.”
Mayth mumbled something and Lito had to lean in closer to understand what he was saying over the music.
“What was that?”
“I said a divorce being finalized is not really a cause for celebration.”
The bartender placed a glass full of red, bubbling liquid in front of Mayth. “One Volcano Bomb.”
“It’s a matter of perspective,” Lito said. “Either way, whether you wanted it or not, it’s a new beginning.”
Mayth picked up his drink, looked at it for a moment, then set it back on the bar counter. “I shouldn’t have come here.”
He stood up to leave but Lito grabbed his wrist. “Stay a minute. Where else are you going to go?”
“Anywhere.” Mayth shook his hand free.
Lito waited in his seat as Mayth walked away, limping badly. He got almost to the entry door—further than Lito expected—before he turned.
“I do want the best for you,” Lito said when Mayth sat back down. “I feel bad about what happened.”
“You feel bad,” Mayth said flatly.
“Sure I do.”
“You feel bad. This is your fault, Lito! You got me hooked again. Because of you, I had a face growing on my spine. Because of that, I have permanent nerve damage, a limp that keeps me out of the mines, a drug record that keeps me from getting any reputable work, and let’s not forget my partner left me over my relapse.”
“You came to me, Mayth. I didn’t make you take Epitheleon. You paid me for it. You wanted it. Is that my fault?”
“You didn’t have to sell—"
Lito cut him off. “You can’t go around blaming everyone else for your own decisions. And let’s not pretend you were happy with Velti. She resented you because she felt like she had to babysit you, and it made you miserable, too. If she had trusted you, you wouldn’t have felt so boxed in and you probably wouldn’t have come to me. But like I said, I do feel bad about how things turned out, which is why I have a job lined up for you.”
Mayth narrowed his eyes. “A job.”
“You can stop repeating everything I say. Come on, I’ll show you.”
Lito downed Mayth’s drink in one gulp and led him out of the bar through the one of the seedier neighborhoods of the station. They stopped in front of a building with a neon sign advertising “THE STEAMHOUSE” with an old-fashioned train on the logo blowing a plume from the smokestack.
Mayth was out of breath when he caught up. “Is this what you had in mind? A brothel? What the fuck, man?”
Lito ignored the questions and kept going inside. The dusky lobby was full of people, most of whom had extra limbs, dressed in silk robes with custom armholes. A sign on the wall read, “Just wait till you see what’s growing under the robe!”
“Good evening, everyone!” Lito said as bombastically as possible, drawing all attention to himself. He put his arm around Mayth and whispered conspiratorially, “Everyone who works here gets a free dose of Epitheleon at the end of their shift. You can work off your debt and keep using without having to go in any deeper.”
Mayth’s paleness seemed exaggerated in the ghostly light of the brothel. “I’m not gonna work here, man. I don’t care how much I owe.”
“The work is nothing to be ashamed of.”
“It’s not shame. It’s…I can’t do this. I haven’t been with anyone since Velti, and…I’m sorry. I’ll figure out how to repay you. But not this.”
Lito clapped his shoulder. “Okay, okay. I get it. Not this.” He leaned in so his lips almost grazed Mayth’s ear. “I sympathize with you. I really do. It’s just, I have people I answer to myself. I’m stuck in it, too. If anything happened to my daughter, I could never forgive myself. Give me a couple of days to find something else for you. But we’re not in any position to negotiate.”
IV.
Station Sergeant Adam Heller searched the coat pockets of the unconscious courier on the ground of the machine shop between a couple of busted transports. The courier uniform’s jacket was modified with five separate arm holes, and even then, the lumps all over the man’s body proved that there were yet more limbs budding underneath. The man’s ID revealed him to be Mayth Shanklin, but whether it was the guy’s real name, who knew. Who cared. A scan through the police registry didn’t show any history under that name, and people didn’t get to this point without one.
It was common to find couriers in this kind of condition. Officially, they were the station’s postal service, but sometimes they were smugglers or drug runners on the side. It wasn’t hard to guess what this one was doing.
Heller considered putting the poor bastard out of his misery and saying he found him that way. Probably had something terminal and inoperable anyway. Five kidneys, three hearts, a brain in his lungs, or any of the dozens of fucked up things that happened inside Epitheleon users. But there was a social worker, Larkin, on the way, and it was best for him to wait until she got there.
To Heller’s surprise, Mayth stirred. With a low groan, he pushed himself into a sitting position. It was strange to watch multilimbs move. Arms growing off of arms, it was almost hard to tell which were the original. And with some of the limbs dangling limply, it was clear that the nerves didn’t grow in right during budding.
“Do you know where you are?” Heller asked.
“Yeah, I think I’m in I don’t know how I home.”
Heller sighed. “How old are you?”
“Thirtythirtsevenen”
“Do you know where you live?”
“Sector 2A 71 Floor Sector Room 94 Floor 2A.”
Incoherence and repetition within the answers were signs of brain buds, multiple brains fighting for control of a single body. Usually, users were too far gone when they got to this point.
“Okay, Mayth. Stay still. Help is coming.”
Mayth tried to say something else, but it was so nonsensical, Heller couldn’t even guess what the guy was trying to communicate.
Instead, he activated his comm and called Larkin.
She answered immediately. “I’m almost there, Heller. Have some patience.”
“I don’t know if there’s any point in you coming. He’s got brain buds. I’m pretty sure it’s several.”
There was a moment of hesitation while Larkin processed the information. “I should still come. Word is the new station surgeon is trying to develop some new procedures for cases like this, and if nothing else, we can get him into the trials.”
Larkin rushed in a few minutes later. Heller was relieved to have someone to talk to who wasn’t babbling.
“Can home you help help me with Epith find my eleon way help home.”
“Listen to him,” Heller said.
“Does he have family?”
“Fake ID. Nothing turned up, so they’ll have to DNA test.”
“Okay. We’ll figure it out. Let’s get him to medical. They’ll help him. I have room on the transport.”
“I admire your optimism.”
Larkin smiled. “Just say you think I’m wasting my time. He may be too far gone, but if he’s not, his life is in our hands right now. I’d like to have a clean conscience when I go to bed tonight. Wouldn’t you?”
Heller grunted and grabbed Mayth under one of the armpits nearest to his torso. Larkin picked up on the other side, and together they carried him out of the shop.
V.
“Thanks for meeting with me,” Mayth said.
“It’s nice to see you.” Velti sat across from him at the café table. Mayth’s coffee wasn’t steaming anymore, which meant he had been there a while. “I hope I didn’t keep you waiting.”
“No. I came early on purpose. It’s good for me to be out here, around people. It’s harder when I’m alone.”
“You look good.”
Mayth laughed. “Don’t flatter me.” Whether instinctively or purposefully, he ran his right hand over the scar tissue on the side of his face. The skin on his arms was covered in scars, too.
“You look happy. Happy is good.”
“I don’t know if I’d go that far, but I am better than I was, at least.”
Velti set a little box on the table. “I got you something. As a congratulations.”
“For what?”
“A year clean.”
Mayth opened the box, revealing a cupcake with frosting swirled several inches high. A dozen tiny sugar hands, paired up and clasped together, were stuck into the frosting.
“It’s a round of applause,” Velti said.
Mayth stared blankly at it for long enough to make Velti think she’d made a mistake, but then a wide grin spread across his face and he laughed.
“Is this what my arms looked like?”
“Not quite as appetizing, if I remember. Those are edible, by the way.”
“Thank you for this, Vel. But you have the date wrong.”
“Did I? I thought it was August 19th.”
“It was. Until April 4th.”
Velti couldn’t quite place the feeling that rose in her suddenly. She was disappointed, but not in Mayth, exactly. It was more that her planned celebration of his anniversary, which should have been about him conquering his addiction, had become a reminder that it was never going to be behind him.
“Hey, Velti. It’s okay. It was a one-time thing. It just reset my clock, that’s all. I can celebrate four months and fifteen days.” Mayth took the cupcake from the box and took a bite. The hands crunched loudly as he chewed them.
Velti relaxed. No, he’d never truly be free, but he was here now. She lifted her mug to her lips. “To four months and fifteen days, then.”
When Velti got home from her planetside business trip and found her partner, Mayth, passed out and draped over the side of the bathpod, she knew exactly what happened. She picked up his severed hand from the basin and put it in the chute to the station’s incinerator, then logged in on his comm to set up a regrowth session.
Velti tried to swallow the guilt she was feeling. This was her first time leaving him alone for that long since he finished rehab. And even though he had been doing so well—clean for two years before this—the fight was never over. All it took was a moment.
There was less blood than last time, but Mayth would still be dehydrated when he woke up, so Velti got two hydration tablets. She went back to him, and when she repositioned his body to administer the tablets, she almost dropped him in surprise.
He still had both hands.
Instead of an arm ending in a bloody stump, he had a gaping wound halfway up his forearm. A closer inspection of his body found two more budding hands near his armpit, and a tiny foot growing on the back of his knee.
The last two times Mayth relapsed, he cut his left hand off to get prescribed a regimen of Epitheleon and then went to rehab as soon as he was done. But this was different. All the new hands and feet growing meant he’d found the drug on the black market.
She immediately cancelled the regrowth session.
Mayth woke up when Velti was removing his shorts.
“I’m sorry,” he mumbled. “I didn’t mean for you to find me like this.”
“That’s not what you need to be apologizing for.” She scanned his upper legs for new growths.
Mayth hung his head and slumped back over. “Yeah. I know.”
“Who got you back on it?”
“A guy in the mine. Lost a hand and they gave him enough for a whole arm, so he had some leftover and gave it to me.”
“Gave it to you? You didn’t buy it?”
“No, I wouldn’t do that.”
“If I check your transaction log, I’m not going to find any payments to a Lito M. for 3,000 crowns?”
Mayth turned back and gaped at her. She was holding up his comm with his banking screen pulled up.
“We’ll talk about this later, Mayth. It’s one thing when you stumble, but this is our life. You’re ruining yourself with money I’m making. What you do doesn’t just affect you.”
“I’m sorry. It won’t happen again.”
“No. It won’t.” She didn’t elaborate. She hadn’t quite decided yet what she need to do, but she couldn’t do nothing. She loved him, yes. Was that enough?
She ran her hand over his back and felt a lump between his shoulder blades. Normally, Epitheleon only regrew limbs or hands and feet; the spine was not a common place for new growths. Velti rolled up Mayth’s shirt.
Jutting out of the skin was the start of a new face. The mouth and eyes were papered over with skin, but she could see movement below the surface, like the twitches in REM sleep.
This wasn’t something they could just cut off in the bathtub.
II.
Station Surgeon Ira Bloss checked the chart of the patient, then handed it to her trainee, Dosh Midholm.
“Bud surgery,” she said to Dosh. “Typical Epitheleon abuser. I remember this one. He was in here last year to get a budding head cut out of his back. That would’ve been a good one to train you on.”
“I see the scar,” Dosh said. He handed Ira the scalpel.
“You’ll get a lot of these at this station. More than you did planetside, for sure.”
“Why is that?”
“Asteroid mining is dangerous work. Just look at this patient’s history. Mayth Gladstone, came in five years ago after a work-related incident in which he lost his left arm. Then he was back for two more treatments, both for cutting his own hand off. You see that a lot, too, self-mutilation to get more drugs. Now this is his second trip here for bud removal, with one visit for balance issues in between.”
Ira ran the scalpel over Mayth’s arm and sliced through the four tiny hands dotting his skin. Blood ran out from the incisions and down his arm.
“Please put SkinSeal on those,” Ira said.
“Aren’t we going to cap the new blood vessels before we do that? He’ll have really bad bruising.”
“It’s not worth it. When you’ve done as many of these surgeries as I have, you’ll understand.”
“But it’s standard operating procedure.”
“Put the SkinSeal on and don’t make me ask again. These surgeries are a waste of my time as is, and he’ll be right back here in a few months no matter how careful I am.”
Dosh put the adhesive skin patches over the wounds. “We shouldn’t talk about him like that. There’s no guarantee he’ll relapse.”
Ira laughed. “Oh, to be young and idealistic again. You’ll find out soon enough that more things are certain in this life than death and taxes.”
III.
“Mayth, my man!” Lito said as his coworker pulled up a seat next to him at the bar. Then, to the bartender, he said, “Get this man a drink on me. We’re celebrating his freedom.”
Mayth mumbled something and Lito had to lean in closer to understand what he was saying over the music.
“What was that?”
“I said a divorce being finalized is not really a cause for celebration.”
The bartender placed a glass full of red, bubbling liquid in front of Mayth. “One Volcano Bomb.”
“It’s a matter of perspective,” Lito said. “Either way, whether you wanted it or not, it’s a new beginning.”
Mayth picked up his drink, looked at it for a moment, then set it back on the bar counter. “I shouldn’t have come here.”
He stood up to leave but Lito grabbed his wrist. “Stay a minute. Where else are you going to go?”
“Anywhere.” Mayth shook his hand free.
Lito waited in his seat as Mayth walked away, limping badly. He got almost to the entry door—further than Lito expected—before he turned.
“I do want the best for you,” Lito said when Mayth sat back down. “I feel bad about what happened.”
“You feel bad,” Mayth said flatly.
“Sure I do.”
“You feel bad. This is your fault, Lito! You got me hooked again. Because of you, I had a face growing on my spine. Because of that, I have permanent nerve damage, a limp that keeps me out of the mines, a drug record that keeps me from getting any reputable work, and let’s not forget my partner left me over my relapse.”
“You came to me, Mayth. I didn’t make you take Epitheleon. You paid me for it. You wanted it. Is that my fault?”
“You didn’t have to sell—"
Lito cut him off. “You can’t go around blaming everyone else for your own decisions. And let’s not pretend you were happy with Velti. She resented you because she felt like she had to babysit you, and it made you miserable, too. If she had trusted you, you wouldn’t have felt so boxed in and you probably wouldn’t have come to me. But like I said, I do feel bad about how things turned out, which is why I have a job lined up for you.”
Mayth narrowed his eyes. “A job.”
“You can stop repeating everything I say. Come on, I’ll show you.”
Lito downed Mayth’s drink in one gulp and led him out of the bar through the one of the seedier neighborhoods of the station. They stopped in front of a building with a neon sign advertising “THE STEAMHOUSE” with an old-fashioned train on the logo blowing a plume from the smokestack.
Mayth was out of breath when he caught up. “Is this what you had in mind? A brothel? What the fuck, man?”
Lito ignored the questions and kept going inside. The dusky lobby was full of people, most of whom had extra limbs, dressed in silk robes with custom armholes. A sign on the wall read, “Just wait till you see what’s growing under the robe!”
“Good evening, everyone!” Lito said as bombastically as possible, drawing all attention to himself. He put his arm around Mayth and whispered conspiratorially, “Everyone who works here gets a free dose of Epitheleon at the end of their shift. You can work off your debt and keep using without having to go in any deeper.”
Mayth’s paleness seemed exaggerated in the ghostly light of the brothel. “I’m not gonna work here, man. I don’t care how much I owe.”
“The work is nothing to be ashamed of.”
“It’s not shame. It’s…I can’t do this. I haven’t been with anyone since Velti, and…I’m sorry. I’ll figure out how to repay you. But not this.”
Lito clapped his shoulder. “Okay, okay. I get it. Not this.” He leaned in so his lips almost grazed Mayth’s ear. “I sympathize with you. I really do. It’s just, I have people I answer to myself. I’m stuck in it, too. If anything happened to my daughter, I could never forgive myself. Give me a couple of days to find something else for you. But we’re not in any position to negotiate.”
IV.
Station Sergeant Adam Heller searched the coat pockets of the unconscious courier on the ground of the machine shop between a couple of busted transports. The courier uniform’s jacket was modified with five separate arm holes, and even then, the lumps all over the man’s body proved that there were yet more limbs budding underneath. The man’s ID revealed him to be Mayth Shanklin, but whether it was the guy’s real name, who knew. Who cared. A scan through the police registry didn’t show any history under that name, and people didn’t get to this point without one.
It was common to find couriers in this kind of condition. Officially, they were the station’s postal service, but sometimes they were smugglers or drug runners on the side. It wasn’t hard to guess what this one was doing.
Heller considered putting the poor bastard out of his misery and saying he found him that way. Probably had something terminal and inoperable anyway. Five kidneys, three hearts, a brain in his lungs, or any of the dozens of fucked up things that happened inside Epitheleon users. But there was a social worker, Larkin, on the way, and it was best for him to wait until she got there.
To Heller’s surprise, Mayth stirred. With a low groan, he pushed himself into a sitting position. It was strange to watch multilimbs move. Arms growing off of arms, it was almost hard to tell which were the original. And with some of the limbs dangling limply, it was clear that the nerves didn’t grow in right during budding.
“Do you know where you are?” Heller asked.
“Yeah, I think I’m in I don’t know how I home.”
Heller sighed. “How old are you?”
“Thirtythirtsevenen”
“Do you know where you live?”
“Sector 2A 71 Floor Sector Room 94 Floor 2A.”
Incoherence and repetition within the answers were signs of brain buds, multiple brains fighting for control of a single body. Usually, users were too far gone when they got to this point.
“Okay, Mayth. Stay still. Help is coming.”
Mayth tried to say something else, but it was so nonsensical, Heller couldn’t even guess what the guy was trying to communicate.
Instead, he activated his comm and called Larkin.
She answered immediately. “I’m almost there, Heller. Have some patience.”
“I don’t know if there’s any point in you coming. He’s got brain buds. I’m pretty sure it’s several.”
There was a moment of hesitation while Larkin processed the information. “I should still come. Word is the new station surgeon is trying to develop some new procedures for cases like this, and if nothing else, we can get him into the trials.”
Larkin rushed in a few minutes later. Heller was relieved to have someone to talk to who wasn’t babbling.
“Can home you help help me with Epith find my eleon way help home.”
“Listen to him,” Heller said.
“Does he have family?”
“Fake ID. Nothing turned up, so they’ll have to DNA test.”
“Okay. We’ll figure it out. Let’s get him to medical. They’ll help him. I have room on the transport.”
“I admire your optimism.”
Larkin smiled. “Just say you think I’m wasting my time. He may be too far gone, but if he’s not, his life is in our hands right now. I’d like to have a clean conscience when I go to bed tonight. Wouldn’t you?”
Heller grunted and grabbed Mayth under one of the armpits nearest to his torso. Larkin picked up on the other side, and together they carried him out of the shop.
V.
“Thanks for meeting with me,” Mayth said.
“It’s nice to see you.” Velti sat across from him at the café table. Mayth’s coffee wasn’t steaming anymore, which meant he had been there a while. “I hope I didn’t keep you waiting.”
“No. I came early on purpose. It’s good for me to be out here, around people. It’s harder when I’m alone.”
“You look good.”
Mayth laughed. “Don’t flatter me.” Whether instinctively or purposefully, he ran his right hand over the scar tissue on the side of his face. The skin on his arms was covered in scars, too.
“You look happy. Happy is good.”
“I don’t know if I’d go that far, but I am better than I was, at least.”
Velti set a little box on the table. “I got you something. As a congratulations.”
“For what?”
“A year clean.”
Mayth opened the box, revealing a cupcake with frosting swirled several inches high. A dozen tiny sugar hands, paired up and clasped together, were stuck into the frosting.
“It’s a round of applause,” Velti said.
Mayth stared blankly at it for long enough to make Velti think she’d made a mistake, but then a wide grin spread across his face and he laughed.
“Is this what my arms looked like?”
“Not quite as appetizing, if I remember. Those are edible, by the way.”
“Thank you for this, Vel. But you have the date wrong.”
“Did I? I thought it was August 19th.”
“It was. Until April 4th.”
Velti couldn’t quite place the feeling that rose in her suddenly. She was disappointed, but not in Mayth, exactly. It was more that her planned celebration of his anniversary, which should have been about him conquering his addiction, had become a reminder that it was never going to be behind him.
“Hey, Velti. It’s okay. It was a one-time thing. It just reset my clock, that’s all. I can celebrate four months and fifteen days.” Mayth took the cupcake from the box and took a bite. The hands crunched loudly as he chewed them.
Velti relaxed. No, he’d never truly be free, but he was here now. She lifted her mug to her lips. “To four months and fifteen days, then.”