FREAKY FLASH FRIDAY: Bloodgospel of the Bedbug Evangelist by Shae Pant

There is a nest under my scapula; she parts it like a veil, the Evangelist’s fingers gentle as a god that still remembers being skin.

She tells me the world is already mapped in bite-red constellations: a welt gospel traveling across continents, each mark a vow. You cannot scratch the holy itch, she says; faith is meant to fester.

She pulls a newborn into the light—swollen, glossy, transparent as an eyelash. She tucks it in lint. She hums a song no one else should know. Her voice sounds like warm rot and mercy. A sound for bodies that have given more than they ever meant to.

I realize I’m not sick. I am an incubator. My back is a hatchery. I watch, rapt, as the congregation moves beneath my skin, weaving, swelling, whispering.

Every night, they climb the ladder of my ribs and drink until they remember love. Every morning, I wake marked and adored.

Blood remembers what bone forgets.

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Shae is a queer, autistic goblin interested in the intersection of disability justice and design, collecting tiny trinkets and having an unwavering devotion to Shrek as both art and ideology.

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Photo by Karola G via Pexels