Somatophobia

(3,332 words)

That morning, I held Adam’s hand and told him the world wasn’t so bad. He said it was hell and that he pitied our daughter. I put my lips to his cheek and rubbed his broad shoulders, telling him things would get better. That the slow march to autocratic oligarchy was like a sine chart and that the wave always swung in the opposite direction.

It was Tuesday. We’d both called in sick because Sophie was actually sick, asleep upstairs in her room.

Adam was already drunk, or maybe still drunk. I took the vodka pint from his shaking hand and sipped, even though I hated vodka, because I wanted him to know I felt what he felt. That I needed to dull that edge, too.

Outside, a car alarm blared and cut off suddenly. The neighbor’s dog whined. Through the window, Mrs. Miller paced on her porch, rubbing her temples, cursing. Jessica, her daughter and Sophie’s closest friend, sat on the steps, head down, earbuds in, oblivious to her mother’s distress.

Adam ripped the vodka from my fist. “Ever wonder if we’ve crossed a line? One we can’t come back from?”

Adam’s blue eyes were bloodshot, and he looked at me like he always had: like I was a baby who knew nothing but how to seek comfort. And his gaze held this mixed aura that I hated, this blend of contempt, pity, and love. I wanted to slam him against the wall and kiss him until his teeth hurt.

Instead, I took back the pint. “Does it matter? By the time we see a line, we’re already past it.”

I turned away, flicking through my phone. The usual: news clips, doom scrolling, desperate people trying to explain the latest political disaster.

One thing stood out. A handful of accounts mentioning lightheadedness and dizziness. Floaters in their vision.

I ignored it. Sipped the pint.

Adam went upstairs for a shower.

The news played in the background. Our usual Tuesday night program. I wasn’t paying attention until the anchor, Simone Clark, mentioned the symptoms.

On screen, underneath her talking head, one word appeared in white font on a red banner:

Somatophobia.

“Doctors in Boston report an outbreak of Somatophobia, a condition causing an extreme, irrational aversion to the human body. Much like arachnophobia, it triggers panic, nausea, and dissociation in response to flesh, both one’s own and others’. Severe cases involve profound disconnection, with patients describing their bodies as grotesque or alien. For more, we go now to Derrick Null at Olax Health Center.”

The TV became a split screen. Derrick stood in a hospital ward, his eyes dilated. His face twisted in a scowl. He lurched forward and hacked.

“Derrick?” asked Simone.

Derrick convulsed, then vomited. The hallway feed glitched and went black.

“Holy shit,” I muttered.

“We . . . we appear to have lost Derrick. We’ll try to—” Her voice caught. She gazed at the camera. Then held her hand before her face like she was inspecting a dollar under a light.

“Are you . . . seeing this?” she whispered. Then dry heaved. The camera flipped to the floor. Screams ripped through the studio.

“Jesus Christ.” I flipped off the TV.

Silence.

“Adam?” I called.

For a split second, I expected his voice from upstairs, casual, maybe amused: Coming, Booshka, just a sec. Instead, there was only the buzzing of appliances. Then, Sophie’s shriek.

“Sophie?” I yelled.

“Dad!” she shouted. “Dad, what’s happening?”

Guttural yelps exploded from somewhere above me. Then coughing, and a thunderous crash.

I closed my eyes. Dotting lights played across my retina like the afterimage of a dying star.

“Sophie, shut your eyes!”

Screams erupted from our neighbors. The world howled as one, a terrified thrum.

“Dad, I’m scared.”

“Keep your eyes shut!”

Upstairs, Sophie retched. Something smelled of sour garbage.

“Adam!”

My skin fell slack. My tongue, a limp piece of meat, twitched in my mouth.

I slowly opened my eyes and looked at my hand. There was no difference between fingers, tendons, veins, and fat. My skin sagged, shifted like wet dough. I could sense my blood slithering beneath, like insects crawling under rice paper. I was a machine of nerves and rot, stretching and tightening with each breath. My stomach lurched. I barely had time to turn before vomit spewed onto the black of the TV screen.

When the vomit slid to the floor, I saw my reflection—and joined the pained chorus.

* * *

That first day we sat in darkness, eyes shut tight, trying to forget our bodies—the heat of our breath, the pulse in our veins, the weight of our skin.

Sophie clawed at her arms, scratching until she bled. We shouted until our voices gave out, but she didn’t stop until she collapsed, whimpering in the corner.

Outside, the world howled. Neighbors screaming in sync, as if the whole block was one living, suffering thing.

We whispered theories in the dark on how it spread so fast. A virus? Radiation? Or something worse, more deliberate? The question itched at the back of our minds, a dull drone beneath the terror.

Sophie’s voice cut through chaos, shrill with panic. “What’s happening?” she asked, again and again.

Adam and I argued in strained whispers—what to say, how to keep her calm—but all we landed on was:

“Keep your eyes closed, honey. It’ll be all right.”

We moved like shadows, opening our eyes just long enough to grope for food: dead-ahead stares, avoiding our bodies, the sight of them, the reminder. Every accidental brush sent nausea curling through us.

Eating was horrible for Adam. He gagged with every bite. Sophie, shivering in the corner, whispered, “Don’t think about it. Just eat.” I forced down mouthfuls, tasting blood, trying to meditate my way out of my skin.

Nights were the worst. The house echoed with choked sobs, the sick thrum of blood in my ears. On the third night, Adam found whiskey. We drank it all. Even Sophie. It was the first time she stopped shaking.

And all this time, between the gut-wrenching fear and worry, the nausea and insomnia, I wrestled with what this awful thing meant. The silent death of touch. The loss of every subtle, tactile moment between me and the ones I loved. I would never again kiss Sophie goodnight, never smooth back her hair, or wipe away her tears. I could not hold her when she was afraid, could not reassure her with the simplest, most human comfort: warmth against warmth.

And Adam.

Over fifteen years we had never lost our passion for each other—sure, it had changed. But we fucked, often enough. That intimacy was more than just desire. It was a tethering, a way of anchoring ourselves in each other.

And perhaps that was the strangest part of this disease. My longing, it never left me. The need for touch, for closeness. It remained, ever-present and gnawing. But what good was hunger in a world where the feast had turned to rot?

* * *

Ten days into our waking nightmare there was a knock at our door.

Adam got it. He stood and with his arms firmly against his sides, walked with his head upright toward the door. Once there, he shut his eyes and opened it.

“Hello?”

“Mr. Clemons,” a man’s voice began. It was deep, serious. “We recognize the distress you and your family have experienced. As representatives of the United States government, we are here to ease the horrific burden of The Psychological Event.”

“Uh,” said Adam.

“Yes,” a woman said. “In partnership with Olax Co., we have developed tools to assist those affected by The Psychological Event. How many people occupy this household?”

“Three,” said Adam. “Can one of you tell me what the fuck—”

“Here you go, sir,” said the man. There was a clatter.

“Sir,” said the woman. “Here, let me help you.”

Then came a faint buzzing, like an overheated laptop.

“Oh,” said Adam. “Wow.”

“We have a lot more people to help,” said the man. “It seems you understand.”

“Yeah,” said Adam, his voice cracking. “Thank you. Holy shit. Thank you.”

* * *

The Olax glasses stabilized our perception. We’d gone from perpetual horror to a grim simulation of normalcy. The glasses made it so that our appendages appeared as innocuous blobs, shrouded extensions of our consciousness. Sophie and Adam, once writhing monsters, now appeared as blurred shapes. Colorful and soft.

We could move through our days, talk, eat, even smile—but the old awareness lingered. A faint pressure at the back of the mind, the trace memory of loose flesh and sloshing blood. We lived on the thin line between knowing and forgetting, our nerves shot, knees bouncing with the effort of pretending.

Still, we functioned. Better than before. We walked around, eyes open, play-acting that the world hadn’t putrefied—until the glasses slipped.

Then—bone chilling screams.

Sophie, after she’d curdled our blood, looked at me. We’d pushed her glasses back firmly against her face, careful to avoid touching. “It’s okay, baby,” I said.

“But . . . it’s all still there,” she sobbed. “Underneath.”

She was right. It wasn’t simply the unmediated sight. To touch, even behind the crutch of our glasses, was to risk remembering the sick wriggling skin, the feel of decomposing matter inside our stomachs. Once, half-asleep, I’d reached for Adam, my hand brushing his shoulder. He stiffened, exhaled. I gagged, letting my hand drop to my side, bile rising in my throat.

After that, we stopped trying. Reaching out to touch, to comfort. Instead, we avoided one another. The glasses were a thin veneer, nothing but a small bandage on a disemboweled corpse.

* * *

Within a week, the Olax glasses were upgraded to feed us entertainment, sanitized and seamless. Old memories—edited and optimized—felt comforting, even as reality decayed. When we weren’t watching augmented TV or scrolling through social media with our eyeballs, advertisements played. At first, we hated the constant barrage. But soon we barely noticed it. In fact, I found myself humming the jingles. Sophie did, too. I even caught her whispering an Olax ad in her sleep.

While Sophie and I drowned out the horror of The Psychological Event, Adam devoured news clips and articles detailing the crumbling world outside. At night in bed, a pillow between us so that our disgusting forms wouldn’t collide, he’d relay the stories he’d read. Mass suicides, hospital patients abandoned in dark rooms, entire countries falling into chaos, authoritarianism.

“And Olax Co.,” he said. “I saw they’re working on some new product. They say it’s bigger than the glasses. A full reality, not just augmentation. Total immersion.” He shook the blue outline of his head. “Fuckin’ weird, right? How fast they responded to all this. The glasses, the updates, now this immersion system.”

I half-listened, my mind drifting back to a video of a monkey spinning a basketball on its finger. “They’re a tech giant. They probably had the prototypes sitting around. Just convenient timing.”

He cleared his throat. “Yeah. I don’t know.”

I shrugged. Right then, I didn’t care about Olax, the news, or the wider world.

What I needed was solace in mindlessness. Whenever that numb feeling cracked, despair seeped in. That the world had ended. That it had ended in such a way I might never again feel the comfort of my husband.

“Tom, you all right?” he asked, still reading his article.

“Yes,” I lied, my eyes wet.

Once, he would have pressed his forehead to mine, his breath warm against my skin.

But in this world, we sat in silence. Completely separate. Disgusted by the thought.

* * *

Days passed in a stupor. The world had stopped. Our jobs, frozen. Everything closed. We sat around in the glasses. Waiting for rations deliveries and government orders for whatever came next.

Olax ads polluted the backdrop of our lives. Words in fragments, their meaning only half clear: Surrender to the OlaxVerse. Find peace. Or: Choose freedom. Choose escape. A piano droning over the sanitized copy. The longer we steeped in it, the harder it was to remember what had come before.

From time to time, emergency broadcasts interrupted our digital haze. The president at a podium promising solutions, apologizing for rations shortages, military overreach.

At first, our neighborhood still clung to its routine. Colorful blobs walked dogs. Waved from porches. Gossiped on lawns. Then, at night, we began to notice vans with Olax graphics carrying large black objects out of neighboring homes.

We all reacted to this new world in our own ways. Some fought to preserve calm. The constant distractions of the glasses, Mrs. Miller’s endless rearranging of her living room, Mr. Miller’s meticulous pruning of his yard. But others couldn’t ignore the horror.

Our neighbor David one morning woke the whole block: Pigs for the slaughter, he shouted, over and over. His wife, Sara, whimpered, begging him to stop, but he kept at it until he collapsed into a ball on their lawn, gasping.

The next day their house was empty.

Over time, fewer and fewer neighbors walked the streets. We knocked on doors. Waited. Listened. Sometimes, we heard the hum of a TV left on. A dog barking inside. A baby crying.

Occasionally, Sophie would ask about Jessica.

I lied, said the Millers were keeping to themselves. But I’d seen the dark windows, the empty swing set in their backyard, and felt the force of the changing world—like a sand mandala blown apart, beautiful patterns scattered to the wind. I met Sophie’s gaze, her outline trembling, and felt a pang for the world we’d lost. The one where two little girls could laugh without fear.

Then, one night, we put Sophie to bed and walked across the street to the Millers’ house. They’d invited the neighborhood, or what was left of it, over for a dinner party.

* * *

“We’re doing it,” said Mrs. Miller, adjusting her projector twice, pulsing limbs smoothing out whatever clothing she wore beneath the glasses. “I can’t handle another slip. Not when there’s a way out.”

Mr. Miller crossed his purple arms, then uncrossed them, glancing at the throbbing light. “You all should consider it.”

They’d paid the access amount and decided to Affirm the Olax way. We all got the ads:

Shed that gross old skin and come to Heaven. Enter the OlaxVerse. Escape The Psychological Event forever.

“That’s what we wanted to talk to y’all about,” said Mrs. Miller, her eyes darting to the wall, where a family photo—the blurred outline of Jessica at six, missing her front teeth, hugging a Labrador—had slipped slightly out of its frame, the corner bent, the glass smudged. She flinched and looked away.

In my Olax glasses, she appeared as a red outline: sharp, glowing.

“We believe we should all Affirm,” said Mr. Miller, his purple outline shivering, cloudy-amethyst fingers clenching and unclenching at his sides. He glanced again at the mercurial projector, then at his wife, as if searching for a cue. “We’ve all felt the terror, before the glasses and even after—when they slip.”

“It’s truly awful,” added Mrs. Miller, glancing in his direction, a hint of resentment flaring in the digital aura around her silhouette. “A horror.”

“It is,” said Mr. Miller. “But it doesn’t have to be.”

Mrs. Miller flipped off the light switch. The projector vibrated, illuminating the wall.

“Those who haven’t seen, this is where we’re headed.”

“Consider it,” said Mr. Miller, his voice calm, the practiced edge of a salesman.

Piano music began playing. Upbeat, propulsive. Then, Olax—the same ad Sophie had whispered in her sleep:

In the OlaxVerse, life doesn’t have to be scary. We can all choose.

A figure stood inside a glowing sphere, eyes closed, body limp. The screen flickered and their face faded—pixel by pixel—until there was nothing left.

Surrender your form and become free. In our state-of-the-art simulation your consciousness determines what you see AND how you appear.

The same figure now stood in a field of yellow flowers, its grey body stretched, becoming an emerald dragon, scales glistening.

Take a deep breath, relax. We, here at Olax, have developed your ultimate solution to The Psychological Event.

The screen cut to a futuristic cityscape. Neon lights, flying cars. Various avatars with big, demented grins on their faces.

Trade in your glasses for the life you were always meant to have—

Mr. Miller switched on the lights. The projector’s pulse died. The room was silent, except for the new-age drone of the Olax piano still looping in the background.

We sat there, staring at the frozen image on the wall. Grinning avatars, neon skies.

Adam’s jaw clenched. “When you Affirm . . . what happens to the bodies?”

Mr. Miller adjusted his glasses. “They’re . . . taken care of.”

The small crowd murmured.

“And Jessica?” Adam’s voice cracked. He looked past them at the family photos. “She’s just a kid.”

“She is,” Mr. Miller said gently. “Just not here anymore.”

Mrs. Miller cut in. “We all need to realize that these . . . things.” She gestured vaguely at her body. “Aren’t us anymore.”

“Not us?” Adam’s voice rose. “Jesus Christ. Then what are we?”

“You want to live in constant fear when you can leave it behind?” Mrs. Miller shot back. “Stay here if you want, Adam. While you’re busy clinging to your pride, your daughter’s suffering.” She exhaled sharply. “Jessica isn’t suffering. She’s free.”

I pictured Jessica and Sophie playing in our backyard, their bodies strangely beautiful in the light of memory.

Adam shook his head. “So that’s it? You just uploaded her? Like a damn PDF?”

“She’s safe now,” Mr. Miller murmured, his purple form pulsating in my glasses. “Just try to understand.”

I imagined the three of us in Olax’s machine, three cartoons with empty smiles. Would those digital echoes have anything real left inside?

Mrs. Miller scanned the room with glowing wet eyes.

“We’d like for you all to come, too,” she said.

The thought of Sophie cowering and shivering after a slip flashed through my mind. It had happened that morning—she’d collapsed into a yellow blur against her bedroom wall, Olax filter muffling her screams. All I could do was speak to her from behind a veil. Our separation was absolute. We were already digital phantoms, unable to touch, unable to see each other as we truly were. Maybe, in this other world, I could hold her again. Maybe, in there, whatever was left of her wouldn’t be afraid.

I glanced at Adam, then looked at the floor. “How do we Affirm?”

Adam glared at me, his eyes shimmering blue.

“Thomas,” he said. “Really?”

I shook my head. For a moment, I pictured us in college, lips grazing in the quiet dark, a time when the weight of our bodies had meant something beautiful rather than something monstrous.

“Just sign here,” said Mrs. Miller. The Olax piano continued droning in the background.

I reached for the clipboard.

The ad continued, on a loop: Choose Freedom. Choose Escape.

Adam pleaded. His voice broke. Something about Sophie, about trying, about hope.

Out of the corner of my glasses, I saw his hand twitch.

But he never touched me. Never reached for my arm.

And I knew he never would.

Not in this world. Not in these bodies.

I signed.

Adam’s breath caught.

I watched his blue shadow on the wall, a hunched outline, then felt the cold weight of my choice settle into my bones.

That night, I took the pillow between us and dropped it to the floor. Adam sighed, a low, defeated sound. I was forcing him to confront the space between us, the silent repulsion that could only be bridged in the OlaxVerse.

We lay in the dark, bodies edging away from each other, shrinking like nightcrawlers in the sun.