Before I Grew Nettled Skin

by Abby Nicole Yee

Horrific Scribes Extremity Rating:

I grew the sweetest berries
deadlier than the belladonna nightshade variety
A lone crimson globe was all it took, but like any pragmatic person, I needed 
something in return. (Hidden costs are nothing when you use good bait.)

My berries were an instant hit
I swear to God, I didn’t know how fascinating it was to watch—how long people could ignore
the blood gushing out of orifices while they gorged, unsuspecting, until they couldn’t, 
     taking anywhere from two to five minutes

Nine times out of ten, people keeled over to their right, I observed
to my right: a man with watery eyes, like somebody spit in them and he had to flush out 
all the irritants. He groped one of the larger clusters until it gave, and swallowed them all
like lozenges, one by unnatural one

Two days later he was still alive
I did not know what to make of it, he had looked like any other consumer
so it couldn’t have been my berries. My berries were perfect.
It was he, the slack-jawed monster, who said they tasted so heavenly, and if I had other kinds

I saw him again, eyes swollen but without a speck of guilt
Did you think I would let it slide? No, of course not. 
I could almost smell the rot as I broke his skin and tore my berries out of his guts, 
inside him I felt round

red pieces jammed
in a raw cluster, the mass clumped 
poison, contained. So close, but—
no hints of ripe hemorrhage

But the seeds, intact! About time for a better berry strain, a new 
skin season, onyx-scabbed coat
of the sharpest nettles, one touch
trigger, the toxin made

from his blood, sweet, lethal ecstasy.