This was… impossible.

Itchy and impossible.

Itchy, pink, and impossible.

I didn’t want to believe it. They said it only happened once. Maybe, though, they were just wrong about that. Or maybe it was just another part of his curse.

I didn’t usually get sick. In fact… I almost never got sick. This was not fair. It had been twenty minutes, tops, and that was not a poison ivy bush. It wasn’t.

That didn’t mean that I wasn’t sick, though. I couldn’t stop itching. And the calamine lotion was not working. Again.

Clayton did not believe this. It was impossible. He could not be sick. He never got sick. It was like the bane of his entire school experience. No time in the nurse’s office. Not a single sick day. Not even when he needed one. Not that it would have been easy to convince his foster parents that he wasn’t lying about that, but he just… didn’t get sick. Sure, he called in to work every now and then and there were definitely days when he was sore from something or when he didn’t feel good because of lack of sleep or something, but on the whole, he didn’t get sick.

He’d joked about it once—called that his super ability, and the other guy had just laughed and said that it was a lame ability and not that special. Plenty of people stayed healthy enough never to catch what went around the office. Clay was just one of them.

He kind of would like to go back to that.

Kind of… a lot.

It was impossible, but it was here. There. Everywhere. He had them all over the place. Little pock marks. That itched. And nothing worked. He was kind of screwed in that—one, he didn’t keep most over the counter medicines around as he never needed them; two, he wasn’t sure he could even risk taking a medication due to the unpredictable nature of his ability, and then, well, there was the other part.

The he couldn’t leave his house as he had no clothes part.

And he couldn’t drive.

And he couldn’t do much of anything.

He was stuck. He was stuck as an eight year old. He didn’t have any kids clothes around to put on—he’d have to find a way to buy some of those, a set for each age, probably from the secondhand stores, but even then, it could get expensive, and it wasn’t like he could do it now.

No matter how many times he tried to switch out of this form, he couldn’t. He was eight years old and slowly going insane from having the chicken pox. He was pretty sure that he’d already had it before, but he definitely had them now. He couldn’t get any kind of relief, either. He’d tried the calamine lotion he had, he’d used it all—he did get mosquito bites occasionally, but that bottle had been brand new.

Now it was empty.

The itching hadn’t stopped.

He was in hell.

He sighed. One way or another, he was going to have to figure something out. He knew that the store was not going to sell him any allergy medication, no, but he could probably get more calamine from them, especially looking like he did. That brought him back to the clothes, though. He had on one his shirts, and it covered most of him, so he was good there—as long as he stayed in the apartment. If he went out… Then he was a strange pantless kid that was going to get in a lot of trouble.

Clay started itching his side as he walked into the other room. At least he was big enough to get in and out of the refrigerator so that he wasn’t starving. He was, however, going to have to make a list. A list of all the things that he would need in a situation like this. He’d have to stock his medicine cabinet, then he’d need the clothes, and then… he should just build a fallout shelter and live there.

Or become a hermit.

Or he could try telling someone else about his ability. Sure, the girl hadn’t believed him, but she didn’t know him. Maybe someone who did would be more understanding. Every hero needed some kind of ally, right?
Well… he was so not a hero, but he did need an ally. A friend. Someone who would go to the store and pick up a few things for him, at the very least. Maybe he should have gotten a roommate when he first moved in. Of course, the things that said roommate would have seen by now…

Clayton sighed. Then he itched a scab and cursed. He hated the chicken pox. Wait, wasn’t there something about oatmeal? An oatmeal bath? He’d taken a couple baths already—they did seem to help, but maybe if he added that oatmeal to it, he could finally stop the itching.

Or he could drown in a bunch of oatmeal.

That actually didn’t sound that bad at this point.