Skin Secretions
By Yi-Jung Chen
The news broadcast displayed footage from the fog-drenched highway in Nantou: a Formosan sambar deer—dubbed the “Mountain Beast God” by netizens—stared straight into the camera lens through the hazy gloom.
In the living room, my wife, Wang-shi—whose name literally meant raised merely to survive—stared at the screen with hollow, dark-circled eyes. She muttered under her breath, “It’s him… Twenty-two years ago, deep in the mountains of Nantou under the hazy moonlight, he looked at me just like that. He shoved a divine soul right into my womb.”
Wang-shi suffered from severe paranoia and delusional disorder. Ever since that dream, she had been firmly convinced that the child she bore was not human, but a mountain deity that required endless devotion and blood sacrifice to survive. Bound together by the sacred vow of “until death do us part” made thirty years ago in church, Wang-shi and I were forever locked inside this absurd, tragic prison of parasitism. Beneath my exhaustion lay a shameful, buried guilt: in our younger years, when her delusions first bloomed, I had chosen quiet compliance over early intervention, mistaking her pious devotion for a mother’s fierce, poetic grace.
At the center of our living room stood a massive aquarium containing a pair of strictly monogamous Discus fish.
Their dorsal fins overlapped as they hovered together. Their bodies were covered in a thick layer of bluish-gray mucus that smelled faintly of copper—a protein-rich skin secretion produced at the cost of their own vitality to feed their young. Dozens of fry swarmed them like famished ghosts, violently pecking at their parents’ flesh. With every peck, the old fish twitched slightly as tiny trails of blood leaked into the water.
“Mom, I’m cold… I’m so hungry,” a voice whimpered.
Our twenty-two-year-old son, Ah-Zhe, stumbled out of his bedroom. In this moment, he was the timid, red-eyed primary personality—a boy frozen in time, haunted by memories of childhood psychiatric wards and the confusing weight of a mother who worshiped his every illness instead of helping him heal.
“I feel like my skin is melting… Am I dying?” Ah-Zhe collapsed to his knees, shivering like a frightened fawn, pressing Wang-shi’s hand hard against his own pale face.
Wang-shi stroked his hair gently, her eyes glowing with fanatical devotion. “Don’t be afraid, my child. Mama will give you all the nourishment you need…”
In the span of a single breath, Ah-Zhe’s eyes shifted—cold, sharp, and predatory. The sinister secondary personality—a ruthless defense mechanism forged through years of manipulating his mother’s delusion to mask his own overwhelming helplessness—took control. He stood up abruptly, snatched Wang-shi’s wallet, and let out a vicious sneer.
“Cut the crap about mountain gods! Transfer the rest of your stock mortgage money to my account right now! If you don’t, I’ll kill myself right in front of you and let your precious deity die out!”
This seamless shifting between a helpless, sick child and a ruthless parasite pushed our home to the brink of total collapse.
My eyes bloodshot, I lunged forward and grabbed him by the collar. “You monster! Stop tormenting her!”
“Ah-Rong, stop! Don’t hurt him!” Wang-shi cried out, clutching my arm. “He’s fulfilling his divine appetite!”
“Dad, why are you hurting me? It hurts…” Ah-Zhe’s expression flipped back instantly to the innocent, terrified boy, tears welling in his eyes, yet his fingers tightly gripped the stolen bank card.
My hands trembled as I let go. I looked at Wang-shi. She was glaring at me with cold resentment, as if I were a heretic disturbing a holy ritual. Beneath her hostility, I glimpsed a heartbreaking terror—the terror of a broken mother who needed her son’s divinity to justify her lifetime of unspeakable grief. The vow of eternal devotion had become an inescapable steel shackle. I couldn’t abandon my shattered wife, nor could I sever my responsibility to our dual-natured son.
With a cold, victorious smirk, Ah-Zhe turned and slammed his bedroom door shut.
Silence reclaimed the living room.
I reached out and took Wang-shi’s hand, bruised and raw from fingernail scratches. Together, we walked slowly toward the tank.
Inside the water, the faithful Discus pair remained pressed against each other. Their scales were shredded and ulcerated, yet they hovered numbly, allowing their offspring to devour the very last drops of their life force.
Wang-shi rested her head on my shoulder, whispering with a serene smile, “Look at them… they’re just like us, Ah-Rong. Soon… once we are completely eaten away, the Mountain God can finally return to the forest.”
I said nothing. In the darkening room, I simply held her hand tighter, letting the invisible current of parasitism drag us both down into the quiet abyss.
Bio: Yi-Jung Chen (Jolene Chen) is a writer and elementary school teacher based in Yunlin County, Taiwan. Her work often moves between Chinese, Taiwanese, and Hakka, exploring themes of memory, landscape, folklore, and marginalized lives. Her stories and poetry have previously appeared or are forthcoming in Borderless Journal, The Bokeh Review, Peony Magazine, BlinkerLit, and Wort Journal, among others.
