Nelka

“No one can touch her. She has quite a temper…but she only gets mad…only gets mad when it fits the circumstances—say, she’s drunk, in a room full of a relatives she doesn’t keep in touch with. At the most inconvenient of times. Always—you’ve got to see this girl. They’ve got her cooped up in this plastic suit so no one touches her. Not because she doesn’t want to be touched; I doubt there’s anyone in the world that would be a more apt candidate for hypersexualnymphomonomaniaparalysis; no, it’s not that—it’s that if anyone touches her…they die. Drop dead. And she’s gorgeous. Drop dead gorgeous, I’m telling you.
“That’s why she’s in that suit. It’s not plastic; I don’t know what it’s made of, but it can’t be perforated. Nothing can get through. She’s like that girl from the X-men comics, except she’s for real, and people have died. I’m going to say it again just in case you didn’t comprehend me clearly enough died okay died from touching her. Just a little prick. Anything. No one can explain it.
“I say…well, I say they execute her. Lethal injection. She’s a liability to any element or situation she’s involved in.”
I hadn’t met her yet. She sounded like quite the character; who wouldn’t be livid, incensed, raging mad in her position. Love, out of the question, but that’s no biggie, already out of the question for most people. Me, at least.
No, I don't fall in love with her despite her mortal flaw and live happily ever after. That was my psychology 101 professor; he's one of those remorseless, gossiping perverts that somehow obtained a licence to teach. Likewise, his classes were entertaining, to say the least. I say that a lot, "to say the least", so get used to it. I'm going to try and not be the misanthropic, inordinately cynical insecure sophmore you've most likely pinned me as thus far.
Our college. It sucks. I don't grovel over meal plans because I don't eat. I was fortunately diagnosed with genetic-induced OCD; my psychopharmocologist made it sound all Ted Bundy; if medication was sewage I'd be a septic tank, full, sinking, lost at sea with gills.
My mother does send up Muscle Milk and protein bars every now and then. I'm not a hungry person. I consider them treats, even though I'm supposed to be living off them.

I first ran into her outside my dorm. She was just sitting there, stooped, smoking a red. I hate reds. She'd removed her mouthpiece I assumed; assumed she probably wasn't supposed to do that. I strayed over, asked her if she had a spare "stoge."
"Fuck off."
I threw up my hands as if putting them against a police car. I pulled out my own pack, Newport 100's, got lucky with the matches first try. She smiled at me.
"Aren't you supposed to have that thing over your mouth. I heard a rumor that you could kill someone."
"Sure, I could kill someone. But I was never here, and I'm not addicted to cigarettes."
"Ah, I see." I played around with my feet, drawing with the dirt. "So that's how it is."
"If you want to live."
"Who-ho," I muttered, unflappable to her threats. I don't pity people that expect it because they're crippled and miserable. I wouldn't have enough left for myself. "Are you a freshman?"
"More of a laboratory experiment passing as a student."
"Ah." I was at a loss for words. I was beginning to care about her…predicament, at least empathize with it. No, sympathize; just felt empathy for a moment. Who wouldn't, right?
She lights about another cigarette, not exhaling the smoke.
"Why do you smoke reds if you're going to do that."
"All I could get my hands on."
"Here," I rummaged a cigarette out of my pocket and handed it to her.
"Thanks dzieciak." She lit the cigarette, and proceeded to smoke both at the same time. I moseyed over to her and stooped, caricaturing her posture. She flicked me with her index finger; if I wasn't on fifty milligrams of Valium at the time I probably would have gotten the shivers, maybe butterflies in my stomach. My psych 101 prof. was right: she was something else.
"So," I made it evident that I was dangling my legs, and even going as far as to look at them. "Why don't you just kill yourself."
She begins to laugh hysterically, as if she was anticipating someone to ask her that, or at least, not treat her like a beautiful girl wrapped up in some kind of Cerberus plastic.
"Tried and tried." She takes another drag. "Tried and tried and failed." Reminisces for a moment, then, shaking her hand, and cigarette, in the air, "Tried and tried and was obstructed! Always obstructed. Życie."
"Failure."
She simpers. If only I wasn't hideous I'd be charming.
"You haven't hit on me yet, or made fun of me because you can't hit on me."
"I can't hit on you?"
"Well you can, but you'd only be making a fool of Romeo."
"That was a little too witty, even for a girl wrapped in plastic." I light up another cigarette, glib, as company wasn't something I was accustomed to. "And I wouldn't hit on you. Wouldn't want to embarrass you. Nor am I attracted to you."
"So then why are you talking to me."
"What, a guy can't have a colloquial conversation with a girl without there being sexual undertones?"
"No." This answer annoys me, as it alludes to the passionless cavity our society has become in regards to sexuality. That's not why it annoys me. I put out my cigarette, bade her farewell, and saunter back to my concentration dorm room.

The next time I ran into her was near the laboratory that the undergrads weren't permitted to enter but paid for; she slept there, in a airlocked cleanroom. They change her garments in biohazard suits; spacemasks and everything. I'm intrusive as to know if they run tests on her. I'm thinking it has to do something with her immune system; a superimmune system, one that not only protects her but exterminates others on contact.
She was smoking a cigarette again, squatting behind a tree as opposed to sitting. I swooped in to see if I could incite some conversation, as she was the only student on campus I really had the inclination to talk to.
"What do you want," she brusquely demanded, looking absently and irreparably in despair straight ahead of her.
"Nothing. "
"Then fuck off."
I waver to leave, "what's the matter."
"It's none of your fucking business. Who do you think you are, anyway; you think because you spared me a cigarette that you're now my goddamn confidant? Get the fuck away from me."
"I'm surprised you even remember me doing that, because I don’t," I lie, convincingly, frustrated and resentful at being so easily hurt. "And for someone who," I stammer, "someone who doesn't want anyone in their 'fucking business', you sure do encourage it: sitting—wait, no, squatting—behind a conspicuous tree, smoking a cigarette, and not just smoking it, taking fifteen second drags and not exhaling when I was in highschool I think they called that 'ghosting'," I begin to pace in circles, emphasizing words with my hands, "you think that's not begging for attention? Imploring? Soliciting it, for Christ's sake.
"But alright, alright, I'll leave you be." I swagger off. Promenade.

A month goes by and I don't confront her. Once I even wait for an hour outside the laboratory, reading with a beret on, pretending to read. I am not sure if I'm infatuated with her or I'm concerned about her. I feel the compassion that robs you of your livelihood, not that I have one.
Another month goes by and then there she is, where I first encountered her, stooped, smoking a Newport 100. It's five in the morning, the time I usually go out to score some opiates or dope.
"Where have you been," she blurts out, defeated, needy, fermented with the impression of an emotional waif.
"I wasn't aware I had anywhere to be."
"Where are you going," she won't look at me. Or she can't bring herself to. I'm too drugged to determine or express that compassion that robbed me of my livelihood.
"That's none of your business."
"Don't do this to me," she beseeches.
"Why not? It's how you treat everyone else." I look both ways, crossing the street. "I don't pity you. You're not missing out on anything you weren't born with. You're no different than some angst-ridden drug-addled teenage girl," I reconsider. "In a wheel chair."
"Where are you going," she asks again, this time initiating a direct staring contest.
"What are you trying to penetrate my affect. Or, no, wait, my mood."
She gets up, flummoxed and irate, and hugs me. I grasp onto her, clutching onto her back, pressing my fingers into her, squeezing as hard as I can.
"I can't tell the difference between skin and plastic anymore, anyway," I mutter, languishing and drooping off.
"Wait," she yells. "I need you."
"…You need me?"
"I need you to do something for me."
I nod.
"I need you to kill me."

I felt rejuvinated. I felt as if I had some kind of purpose, or, moreas, I woolgathered that I had some kind of purpose. I knew that I could never kill her. I'd had daydreams of sight-seeing into the academic quad with an assault rifle and shooting everyone in sight, then standing off against the SWAT team—hence daydreams. But here was someone that was incontrovertibly more significant than me, someone who rendered me with a feeling of purpose…as I have repeatedly divulged; someone that would no doubt desert me unless I abided by her, what I now perceived as, ultimatum.
I waited a week before searching her out again, wasn't very difficult to find her; stooped in the same position in her plastic microcosm. I self-consciously waded over, once again looking both ways; just being around her made me feel like I was doing something shameful. It occurred to me that up to this point I had never discerned the color of her eyes behind the plastic. I leaned in close to her and looked closely and still couldn't make the color out. I was surprised that she didn’t recoil.
"What are you doing."
"Checking the color of your eyes."
She rolls them.
"So can you help me or not."
I plunge my hands in my pockets; my conditioning to deliver bad news.
"Let's say I even consider this—what's in for me? Life without parole?"
She rolls her eyes again.
"We'd stage it as a suicide, overtly."
"So then why don't you just do it yourself, fool."
She glowers at me.
"I can't."
I scoff flippantly.
"You want me to murder you because you're too—"
"Look, if you can't help me I can easily find someone else."
I lean in again, once more attempting to discern the color of her eyes.
"No, you can't."
She spits and lights a cigarette. She has natural blonde hair; most likely European descent. She has a German or Polish accent, I ironically can't tell the difference between the two.
"If you don't kill me…then I'll kill myself," she threatens, leaning towards me, her mouth jeopardously close to my own. I don't flinch and shrug.
"There's your solution then…though I suggested that—"
Fuming, near outraged, she murmurs, shaking, "can't you see that I want you to convince me to live."
"Why would I do that?"
She begins to tear off her plastic suit, struggling, working herself into a fit at her inability to rid herself of it.
"Because you're a cripple? Can't touch anyone? Yeah, yeah; kind of like the rest of us. I told you, I don't pity you, and I meant it. I don't give a flying fuck if you kill yourself or not."
She haphazardly tackles me onto the ground, smothering my mouth with her cheek so her mouth doesn't graze mine. I feel her body deadbolt with mine, a moment I freeze-frame as it was freezing outside already. Somehow she instills her estrangement from the corporeal in me, grinding her plastic coated cheek into my mouth, the back of my head into the ground.

It wasn't long before I was transferred into a single. She began to show up at dorm room every day in a hazy manner, taciturn, demure, violently avoiding eye contact. She had a curfew, blushed the first time she mentioned it and continued to do so every time she deferred to it. Once, when I was risklessly sitting adjacent from her across the room, she managed to discomfit her suit. She whirled her hair; felt her own body, drawing her hand up from her feet to her face as if she'd never touched it before. I never said much.
"Who taught you the word 'fuck'."
"I don't remember. I learned it at a very early age."
"You say it better than most Americans."
"Fuck you," she chuckles coyly. I can never tell if she's flirting with me or just shy or shy because she's flirting with me by mistake and not meaning to. I weigh two-hundred and seventy pounds so I've never taken the opposite sex seriously, and don't intend to start now.

One day when she comes over, brooding as usual, she asks me if she can try something out. I'm writing a paper on psychology plus sexism so I nod without looking at her. After awhile I roll my head back against the wall, picking apart a sentence to the bare bone, and I glance over at her and she's stark naked, pellucidly natural (no laser surgery, unshaved, etc.). I return to writing my paper, simultaneously bothered and aroused that she would have the nerve to strip in front of someone so repulsive as to be inaccessible to her.

Months went by, soon we technically lived together. She remained reticent, barely uttering a word, and she stopped abiding by her curfew, so she slept in my dorm. I do not know why she found solace in me, if she even did, or whatever fascination caused her to trust me over any other neighboring obesity. I was contritely wishing that she would strip again, as it was something that I was dubious I would ever witness again in my life performed voluntarily.
My wish was soon granted, as I arrived home late one night and she was nude, staring at herself in the mirror.
"What's your name."
She gazes at me, bewildered.
"Nelka."
I sigh. "Angelo."
"Angelo."
"Yeah. That's my name."
"It's feminine."
"Thank you." I unburden myself, settle down. "You're naked."
"Yes."
"Why."
Her eyes, glazed over with some sort of sincere lacquer. "I have never seen my body before."
"How old are you?"
"Nineteen."
"Do you actually attend classes or do they just experiment on you in the laboratory."
"What do you think."
I worship the succoring half-moon that glistens and undulates as she shifts her spine. Her sylphlike, symmetrically defined scapulas. I don't describe breasts. I had never seen an actual vagina in person before. I found it…elegant.
I brooded pensively; would it be worth it to touch her, just once, and end my life, bound for misery and isolated dejection? I seemed to have saved her, but she was promptly ruining me. I began to obsess about her every second of the day; the images of her naked glued beneath my eyelids—I could never close my eyes. My GPA nose-dived; I resorted to medication gluttonously, distinctly not the prescribed kind.
"Angelo, what is wrong."
"You." She considered this response, then returned to her own brooding.
"Why?"
"Either I love you or I don't find life worth living for and want to touch somebody once before dying."
"Don't be silly, you melodramatic fuck. You will touch someone someday. Soon I'm sure. Despite your, what do you call it, fatness."
"Why do you live with me."
"Because you are harmless and are interested in me for who I am, not what I am."
"I'm harmless?"
She scoffs.
"It's a compliment, głupiec."
"Why do you assume that I'm interested in you."
"I obserwować you, watching me thinking. You wish to know what I think about."
"I wish my tolerance to benzodiazepines was much, much lower."
"I suppose I should thank you."
I grimace, displacing myself and my gaze to my mattress.
"Don't. You're vampiric. Go live, aren't you convinced yet?"
"I will let you touch me."
I gaze at her as she strips, indecisive. I pop around one-hundred and fifty milligrams of Valium, something around there; didn't count the pills. There's always liposuction, I giggle. Africa!
She approaches me, artlessly seductive, until she's an inch or so away from my potbelly. I wait for the Valium to kick in and palm her forehead with celerity as if checking for fever.
She smiles astutely as I register that I'm still very much alive, albeit high. She hugs me.
"Dziękuję, dzieciak," she hisses, and leaves abruptly.

To this day, I've never seen her since.