Mange by A.C.
Photo by Karolina Grabowska for Pexels
The fox fell ill in the middle of summer. It was the dead season anyway, with half the world fighting the post-traumatic dizziness, the other half fighting for the right to show their pimply faces. There were people with a mission out there, attempting to keep things going, mostly succeeding, and themselves all the worse for it. Then there were we, not wanting to work and not wanted to be working by anyone but directors we’d never seen. Some mid-and quarter-life crises were two years overdue, but we lacked the energy to play them out.
“Anna, was it?”
“Yeah.”
“What’s your favourite season?”
“November. Why?”
“Huh. No reason.”
“You can play Solitaire on that computer if you’re bored.”
“Oh. Okay… Anna?”
“No, there’s not internet access anymore. IT’s a bitch.”
“No. I mean, that too. Damn. But is this a regular occurrence?”
“It’s our local fox, so yeah.”
“And it’s allowed into the buildings?”
“You know, since its ancestors owned this park long before we built a museum here – what’s wrong?”
“Foxes unnerve me.”
“But this is London.”
“I’m afraid of foxes everywhere equally.”
“Okay, what animal do you like?”
“Crows.”
“Well, foxes are the crows of the mammal kingdom.”
“Disliked, underappreciated and discriminated against?”
“Precisely.”
“Well, then, Anna, what do you think our animal sympathies say about us?”
I had fallen for the fox quickly and completely. Although I tried to hide it, some of the newer hires, young girls killing time between liberal arts degrees, suspected and speculated. In those spaces between their whispering mouths, I led a love life like nobody I’d ever known. I fed that gossip with my silence, understanding the girls’ desperation for novelty. Like the unluckiest few, I also came here for a moment, only to have time stop for me.
The management was unhappy about my relations with the fox. Confronted about them, I said that if I stayed, the fox would too; it would be fed, appreciated and publicly pet so I could feel superior to all those without the ability to tame fiery beasts. The latter never happened, but for the three following years, I was content. There was finally one creature on that hill that didn’t make my blood boil.
“So, what’s the story of you two?”
“Me and my imaginary soulmate Miguel?”
“Is that the fox’s name?”
“Jesus, no. Miguel’s a douchebag I knew back at uni.”
“A good, logical choice of a name for an ironic imaginary partner, then.”
“Thanks. What’s with the look?”
“I want to know about the fox.”
“You were scared of it yesterday.”
“I’ve changed.”
“You’re one of those who like pina coladas and getting caught in the rain, aren’t you?”
I eventually told Theo that, simple as it was, I fell for the sight of something vibrant and unruly in this place where even squirrels came exclusively in military grey. He laughed but only a little. He then told me that though he’d never been to Jamaica, he still had dreams of it, regular reminders of the time his father was still around, speaking of their homeland in French, which Theo now didn’t understand at all. I briefly considered disclosing that I was born in a place with French ties too, a hill which some baby queen once called a ‘jolie bor’, then three hundred years later, there I was. However, that hill was also my sister's birthplace, and back then, I found topics related to her hurtful, for reasons only loosely linked to the fox. It might have been that I’d expressed a lack of understanding towards her General Anxiety Disorder and she found that hurtful. “You’re like an animal,” she said. “You’ll rip apart everyone weaker than you and you’re okay with that. So maybe we shouldn’t speak for a while.”
“Where will you be buried?”
“A cemetery?”
“Well, that’s basic.”
“Where would you like to bury people?”
“No, I mean it’s a basic answer for you. Your entertainment value went down.”
“Have I told you about this one time in early childhood when I was prophesised to disappear without a trace?”
I indeed felt things differently to most people, and I’d told nobody but my sister. I had a skin-crawling suspicion that my case was not in the least general and couldn’t be fixed by breathing exercises and a sunflower lanyard.
“Do you believe in mental illness?”
“Obviously. Why?”
“Just checking.”
“Do you believe in ghosts?”
“No.”
“That was a very decisive no.”
“I know where this leads. And I draw the line at the new age stuff.”
“Since when are ghosts new age?”
“Since they got appropriated.”
“By whom?”
“Fabiana from marketing.”
“The lady who insists all the card machines be aligned with the north?”
“I once got stuck in an elevator with her.”
“Good lord.”
“So, if you happen to believe in astrology, I’d appreciate it if you kept it to yourself.”
“What do you believe in then?”
“Physics and mathematics. Abstract art. Musical theatre, even – a little bit.”
“We should catch a show one day.”
“Have you seen the fox recently?”
When that first coughing fit grabbed the nation, it was as if the fox fever was spreading along with it. Every employee living within walking distance from the museum – with the meaning of ‘walking’ widening by the hour – was overpowered by sympathy for the animal they’d considered a biological threat back when they were allowed to leave their houses without a suitable excuse. Behind my locked door, I was flooded by photographic compositions of dog food and overflowing bowls. I had always, mind you, kept my fox just that little bit hungry, that little bit desperate, so as not to lose the only thing I’d ever found that seemed to understand me. Now, it looked like I’d lose it to that mysterious disease. Or, rather, to a bunch of underpaid low-lives and their urge to avoid their own company.
“Shame about West End, huh?”
“And the rest of the world, I guess.”
“You guess?”
“It was a long day.”
“Lockdown’s not treating you well?”
“Couldn’t sleep. Dreamt about the notice boar.”
“About what?”
“The notice boar. You ever looked at your briefing sheet?”
“Can’t say that I have.”
“For more details, see the notice boar. He’s strolling through my dreamland now, shouting about pricing changes and guidebook sales.”
“A notice boar sounds like a character from a musical, doesn’t it?”
“Not really, no.”
“Uhm. What’s your favourite musical?”
“Legally Blonde.”
At the time Legally Blonde had not graced a London stage in years; I also suspected the notice boar of being an omen of sure doom. Four months later, however, the world was still spinning, Theo’s DJing side hustle had not progressed and Legally Blonde opened with record sales.
“Anna! Good to see you at last.”
“Is it?”
“Just let me be polite. I need a favour.”
“I’m not serving that drunk-looking redneck, Bianca.”
“Huh? No, I need a Tinder buddy.”
“A Tinder buddy?”
“According to my pre-pandemic vision board, I’m getting married this year. I need someone to help me hunt.”
“And you’re asking me?”
“Come on. You’re not that ugly.”
“But I’m dating Theo.”
“How? You two have nothing in common.”
“He’s a musician, you know.”
“What does that have to do with you?”
“I like music. Who doesn’t?”
At the beginning, there were sporadic patches, inconspicuous, I’d like to think, unnoticeable from a distance. I was causing some additional distraction myself, having entered the gingerhood phase all women in my family experienced on their journey back to our native blonde and peaceful death. The customer representatives with the aural equivalent of a bitch face complimented me all morning long. With the addition of a skirt and some hair ribbon, I hit it off with the middle-age anime fandom too. Suddenly, I was the prom queen to a bunch of judgmental lower-class individuals, paid twenty pence an hour over the legal minimum.
“You look Irish now.”
“Thank you.”
“It wasn’t a compliment.”
“Excuse you?”
“No, I mean, nothing against the Irish. I just liked it when you looked Ukrainian.”
“I didn’t. Everybody thought I was French.”
“Well, yeah, because of the way you speak.”
“I’ll fix that too.”
“Why would you do that?”
“Become fake British? To begin with, not paying my rent six months in advance would be nice.”
There’s a scientific discipline, acarology, devoted to the study of mites – arachnoids mostly less than one millimetre in length. Physiologically, they are similar to ticks, and most species carry two to six pairs of salivary glands; a few species do not possess an anus. They start their life with six legs and end it with eight. Being one of the most diverse and successful invertebrate groups, they are found in the fresh and salt water, soil, forests, pastures, ornamental plants, on humans and foxes.
“Have you seen the fox today?”
“Briefly. Are you—”
“Did it look off to you?”
“Can’t say it did. Are you coming to my set on Thursday?”
“Of course.”
“It’s not really your thing, though, is it?”
“Does it matter?”
“I mean—”
“I like your music.”
“You don’t, though. Just admit it. You’re a Swiftie.”
“I like it enough. I’m coming.”
“There might be a better use of your time.”
“I never said anything like that.”
“I know. I’m just saying there might be. You may want to think about it.”
There are two general kinds of mites – mites living in the hair follicle and burrowing mites, which dig in and through the skin. At any given moment, a living organism might be a host to millions of them. At any given moment, your immune system might fail you. If it does and you develop an allergic reaction, you have mange.
“Guess the fox is in a bad way, huh?”
“You only now notice?”
“I’ve been lying to myself, I think.”
“Such a beautiful tradition of yours. Listen, I was thinking of bringing my sister in tomorrow so she can take a look at you.”
“A look, sure. But you don’t want me speaking with her. I don’t even speak with my own sister.”
“Why?”
“Because she doesn’t want me to speak with her.”
“And what did you do to cause that?”
“You think you’re so smart, don’t you?”
“When was the last time you were in a conflict you didn’t cause?”
“Three weeks ago.”
“Really.”
“Yeah. I fought Bianca because she said we had nothing in common.”
“Are you going to call RSPCA?”
“Aren’t they going to put it down?”
“They’re the experts.”
I tried homeopathic potions in jam sandwiches, saging the fox’s den and praying at night. At Fabiana’s suggestion, I suffered through half of a crash course on The Secret. My attempts at the miraculous power of positivity made Theo laugh. He laughed some more when he found out that the fox wouldn’t touch the spiked sandwiches. Maybe it knew I was using the cheap strawberry stuff the local café gave away for free, he suggested. Maybe the fox had its pride. Or maybe it’s because I didn’t cut off the crust.
“My sister’s coming in an hour.”
“Will that require me to get off the phone?”
“Are you serious?”
“I’ve been holding for three hours. Didn’t even serve a single customer.”
“You and RSPCA deserve each other, then.”
“I didn’t know they were such a corporation.”
“Maybe they’re simply busy?”
“With what? This is their job.”
“Maybe they’re holding too.”
“You never told me how the gig was.”
“Not much to say.”
“Really? What about – Hello! Sorry. Thought it was an opening, but they were just changing the tune.”
“What are they playing?”
“Sounds like Rachmaninoff, I think?”
“You wouldn’t know Rachmaninoff from Yiruma, would you?”
“What are you asking me for, then?”
Injured wildlife often need immediate help and our officers are limited in numbers, the RSPCA website said. The quickest way to get that help is to deliver the animal to a local vet. After two tries of catching the fox, involving a stolen Tesco trolley and an umbrella, I went back to their phone lines which were ‘under huge pressure’. Three days later, I reached a young man named Joshua, who promised to schedule my case in, right after a potentially rabid dog in Kent and two orphaned parakeets. Joshua had a very sensitive voice. I worried he’d realise how little I cared about the parakeets, or the dog, or the children it might infect.
“What’s that?”
“Nothing that would concern you.”
“Okay. Geez. Just wanted to start a conversation.”
“You’re done with the RSPCA then?”
“Hopefully. You haven’t heard?”
“Nobody’s talking about it.”
“Really? It’s as exciting as it gets here. What are they talking about?”
“Other people, maybe. Just a wild guess, though.”
There was barely a tuft of fur left on the fox by the time RSPCA arrived. The team consisted of two women and a man who was not Joshua. They were rather unimpressive; they didn’t expect such a challenge with this one, they said, but the fox learned fast. In this regard, it took not after me but my sister. I thought about texting her that, just to make her giggle, before remembering she knew nothing about mange or the fox, or me, anymore.
As RSPCA was hauling the fox into the back of their car, a small crowd of museum workers assembled, eager to squeeze some freedom out of that nine seventy worth of an hour. Bianca talked at me about some Tinder date with a guitar, and her nail polish side hustle and maybe going back to school. And about Theo, him landing that job he wanted and how some people just get so lucky.
“Can I say goodbye?”
“As long as you keep a safe distance.”
“So I can’t come any closer?”
“I’m afraid not. You’re allergic?”
“Horribly.”
“Would you like some eye drops? I’ve got them in the car.”
“No, thank you. What’s next?”
“We take it to our hospital and see if there’s anything we can do for it.”
“And if there isn’t?”
“We’ll do our best. We recently brought in those seemingly hopeless parakeets – ”
“Could I have those eye drops after all?”
I soon began sending RSPCA daily emails, and as Theo’s notice period ended, I received a reply at last. Thank you for your interest and care for the fox we named Eclipse, they wrote. She was a very old vixen, and after receiving antibiotics and antiparasitic treatment, she was transferred to a foster pen for what we thought would be her final week with us. We are very sad to say it then became apparent that weakness in her rear legs was due to a kidney failure. After we unexpectedly found her in a collapsed state, struggling for breath, she was humanly euthanized.
“You’re coming to the drinks?”
“What drinks?”
“Theo’s leaving drinks.”
“Right. I guess it would look odd if I didn’t.”
“Why’s that?”
I went to the drinks where I told nobody about the fox as nobody asked. I listened to Theo’s remarks about the new job, identical though better paid, and wondered what happened to changing the London music scene, or at least Camden’s, or the nearest four blocks’. I didn’t ask for his new phone number or my Ramones t-shirt back. Trying to keep my composure, I mostly thought about the hill. There is a moment, right before you go down, where you see all the City at your feet. It always glistens. It makes you go down that much more obediently, temporarily forgetful of how easily certain things get wounded and how quickly they fester.
A.C.
A.C. (she/her) is a second-favourite child, a daydreamer, and a Pisces. She has published in Litro and Close To The Bone and danced the foxtrot in Piccadilly Circus.