Author: Emily Kinsey

I pull the string from my son’s arm. It’s long—seven inches, at least—and shimmers like spun silver. Exhaling slowly, I put down my tweezers and rub my eyes. That last string took too long; the tail almost got away. If nothing else, pulling strings is the most tedious work I’ve ever encountered.

“Ouch, Mama. That one hurt.”

“I know, baby, I’m sorry,” I say. “You always feel better after they’ve come out, though.”

I carry on despite my weariness. The strings need to come out. If I don’t pull them as soon as they appear, then they start to grow inward, toward his body. It’s excruciating for him—and for me, as well—as digging them out becomes more difficult the further from the skin they hide.

There’s knocking on the bathroom door, but I ignore it; I’m too preoccupied by the strings. The knocking increases, then becomes somewhat of a pounding, then becomes a definitive breaking. I ignore it all. String after string, I am transfixed by the fibers overtaking my son’s skin.

Police file into the room and a man with a badge, a detective, grabs the tweezers from my suspended hand. My husband, David, is with them. He’s not much of a caregiver to our son; I can’t get him to care about the strings.

Someone grabs my other arm just as I’ve pulled out a fresh string from my son’s left knee; it’s greenish brown and reminds me of how the Texas sky looks before a tornado. I grasp it in my fist, triumphant, but everyone is looking at me and not the strings.

“What are you doing?” I ask, distracted.

“They’re just taking you for the weekend, honey,” David says. “Try to calm down.”

“Don’t tell me to calm down!” I yell. Who will help my son with his strings if I am gone for a weekend? I’m forced to the floor by the police and handcuffed. “Get off me. Where are you taking me?”

“It’s delusional parasitosis by proxy, Munchausen Syndrome, essentially,” David explains. “She thinks there’s strings coming out of his body, so she picks and picks at him, creating these scab-like things. She needs help.”

“Ethan—don’t listen to him, baby,” I say, but my husband and the detective are crouched down, speaking to my son in voices so low I can barely hear them.

“Hey, buddy, where did this string come from?” David asks. He’s picked up a new string—burgundy, four inches, with fringed gold ends—and holds it up to the harsh bathroom light.

“I pulled it out,” Ethan says.

“Pulled it out from where?”

“My arm, right here,” Ethan gestures to a fresh wound that has appeared on his forearm. “There’s another right there. It hurts. You need to pull them out, Daddy. I don’t like doing it myself.”

David and the detective look closely at Ethan. So do the rest of the police. They’ve moved their knees off my back, and even though I am still handcuffed, I can now sit up.

They’re staring at the next string. It’s bubblegum pink and is poking its tail from Ethan’s left shoulder.

“What the hell?” the detective sounds incredulous. He kneels closer to Ethan and passes my tweezers to David.

David takes them and pulls…and pulls…and pulls. It takes too long—he’s not as good at the extraction as I am—but for once, he’s trying. When David finishes, he sits back, twirling a nine-inch-long candy-colored string between his fingers with astonishment.

“Thanks, Daddy,” Ethan says. “It always feels better after they’ve come out.”