She had an itch so bad, she couldn’t scratch it away. It was the last thing Viv needed. Her kids were a fucking mess. Angie was back on the sauce and Nicky was in the hospital. The last thing she needed was a goddamn itchy leg.

Viv got up and made coffee. And while drinking her coffee, she thought. It wasn’t easy. There was a lot to think about. For example, were the girls going to be ok? Viv’s twin granddaughters were thirteen years old and the floodgates of their rage seemed ready to burst. One told Viv it was her fault Mommy drank. And the other was becoming obese. It broke Viv’s heart. But this itch! She pulled up her robe and scratched the shit out of her leg. It was burning red and swollen. She looked closely. Was something moving under her skin?

In an attempt to distract herself, Viv turned on Fox News. Always made her feel better. Like who is Brad Pitt’s new girlfriend? Viv was not someone to read the fine print. The neighborhood used to be Italian. Not anymore. It’s funny. When she was angry, Viv’s mother screamed at her in Italian. But then she refused to pierce Viv’s ears. “We don’t want people to think we’re immigrants!”

Now the other leg started to itch. Viv drained the mug and stormed into the kitchen where the light was good. She stripped off her robe. Within the redness she could make out thin lines snaking up and around her leg. The lines connected small dots popping up all over. The dots grew into bumps right before her eyes. Ewwwwwwwwwww! Fa schifo! Something was crawling under her skin.

Skeeved to the point of what-the-fuck-is-going-on, Viv went downstairs to take a shower. She scrubbed herself up, down, back and forth with the scrubby. Three times in a row. Drying herself off, the itch persisted. Bumps now covered both legs. Shit! She had to go visit Nicky in the hospital. Something happened. He says he fell. He didn’t fall. Someone beat the shit outta him. At a loss for what to do, Viv wrapped each of her legs in an ace bandage. And the girls. She also needed to see the girls.

Driving across the bridge to Staten Island, Viv noticed red welts rising between her fingers. She could also feel them spread behind her ears. She tried to ignore the itch by cranking the radio. Katy Perry was singing about tigers or some shit. Viv imagined she was Katy Perry with those fake teeth, fake tits and fake hair. She wished she could be so young and pretty. She wasn’t a person who could handle the truth. Meanwhile Viv’s skin was smoldering. She did her best not to scratch. The next exit was Angie’s. Thank God.

When she arrived the girls were screaming their faces off. Viv couldn’t make heads or tails of it. Angie inserted herself into battle only long enough to give them each a slap. Bri got it in the face while Britt took one to the back of the head. “Nanny!!! I want to go home with you!!”

“Whatever you want, baby.” But it turned out that neither twin went home with Viv. They ended their brawl by slamming themselves away in their rooms. And Angie poured herself a glass of wine. Why did they all hate each other so much?

“Have you seen your brother?” Viv asked.

“I don’t have a license, Ma, how’m I supposed to get there?” Viv didn’t really care whether Angie visited her brother. She was just trying to give the cue that she was about to leave. “What’d he get into anyway?”

“He owed Philly five grand.”

“Five grand, for what?”

“How should I know?” Angie was now on drink number two. Or was it number ten? Viv didn’t want to ask, think about it, or know. Back in the car, she couldn’t help but scratch. It was fiery under those ace bandages. She wished she hadn’t put them on. Maybe she could take them off in the hospital?

Nicky seemed to be in ok spirits. Banged up but making jokes. It was hard for Viv to joke about her son’s criminality, but she went along with it. Better than cussing him out like she wanted to. She wanted to cuss Angie out too. Her children were a disappointment. She and Nick Sr. did everything for them and still they turned out stunted, broken, damaged. By what? They bought them whatever they wanted. Every frikkin time they asked.

Viv wanted to ask the doctor what to do about her itchy rash, but she didn’t trust this dark skinned lady who entered the room. That’s the doctor? Jesus H. Christ. Viv excused herself from Nicky and went down the hall to find a real doctor. The itching was out of control. She had to duck into the bathroom. Once inside, she ripped off the bandages. Never before had she felt such an insidious burn. These were not mosquito bites, she told herself as one of the bumps expelled a tiny little mite.

In that moment, the entirety of Viv’s epidermis began to bristle. There were bugs! Living under her skin! Oh Holy Hell on Earth. She felt the crawling and re-wrapped her legs. More tightly this time. And ran into the hallway.

Viv followed a man in a white coat yelling, “Doctor! Doctor!” He turned to face her, also dark skinned but not quite as dark as the lady. “Doctor, I need help!” Viv was in a  panic. The young man guided her gently toward a chair along the wall. “I’m an NP. Can I help?” NP? Nurse Practitioner? Jesus Fucking Christ. Viv couldn’t calm down. She sank to the floor, howling “I need a doctor, I need a doctor!” Mites streamed from under one pant leg, then from another. Streaming not in rows but all at once into a ever growing quagmire encircling Viv who screamed until she passed out from the horror of it all.

When she woke up, she was in a hospital bed. It was dark. She tore off the blanket and inspected her legs with the flashlight on her phone. They were red, but the mites were gone. She got up and left. Once home, she fell fast asleep and dreamt hard. The doctor and nurse were chasing her through the hospital until she opened a door to a beautiful garden. A basket appeared on her arm and she moved through the garden picking tomatoes, peppers and squash until her basket overflowed. The next thing she knew she was making a sauce and frying cutlets in her kitchen. The doctor and the NP were sitting at the table with Nick Sr., Nicky, Angie, Bri and Britt. Viv served them all with a smile on her face. Everyone was speaking Italian. She woke up and felt guilty about yelling at strangers.

The next morning Angie called. Bri and Britt were staying home from school because they could not stop scratching themselves. She said she tried to put Calamine on their rashes, but they just scratched it off. “Useless.” Viv listened. She considered admitting that she gave them the parasite. But instead she said, “make sure the girls shower.”

“No shit, Ma.”

It was all too much. Viv wished she were in a fancy hotel room in a fancy city like Paris or Rome. She would order room service and take a bubble bath. But instead she watched the bugs stream down her legs, and said, “I have to go make breakfast.”

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Laurie Collyer is a film and television writer/director who started writing short fiction and creative essays last year. Her first two films Nuyorican Dream and Sherrybaby screened at the Sundance Film Festival and won accolades from a variety of festivals and organizations including the DGA and the Golden Globes. She was a Sundance fellow and a resident of the Cannes Film Festival. Another film she wrote and directed, Sunlight Jr., a social realist love story about abortion, can be seen on Tubi today. She also directed the independent comedy Furlough, TV miniseries The Secret Life of Marilyn Monroe, and episodes of Billions and Law and Order SVU. Her films have streamed on Netflix, HBO, Hulu, Amazon and Showtime. These days, Laurie is more concerned about reality than entertainment, so she devotes much of her time to working with refugees and volunteering at a cat shelter. And writing. Always writing.