Stephen McQuiggan was the star of such iconic movies as Bullitt, Papillon, The Magnificent Seven and … hold on a second, that was Steve McQueen – so who the hell is this Stephen McQuiggan guy? Hang on, I’ll Google him – turns out he’s the author of the novels A Pig’s View of Heaven and Trip a Dwarf. Trust me; I’m as disappointed as the rest of you.

UP TO SCRATCH.

‘I don’t want to see you anymore,’ Ellen told him. Looking back, all his troubles stemmed from there.

At first Lloyd had blamed the pure orange he drank with his granola every morning, then the cherry tomatoes he loved to snack on during the afternoon quiz shows (he even considered that he might have been bitten by some creepy-crawly and went so far as to change the bed linen), but after ruling them out, one by one, he was left with the conclusion that his sudden outbreak of virulent hives was down to Ellen.

 He was allergic to rejection.

The hives first appeared the day Ellen had so unceremoniously dumped him after three, seemingly blissful, years together. They had been snuggled up on the couch, watching his favourite gameshow, Out Of The Blue, when Ellen decided to take the title literally and announce that they were through, over, finished – thank you so much for playing, hope you had a lovely time, here’s a chest full of heartache to take home with you as a consolation prize.

Lloyd had shamed himself with his pleading but Ellen merely switched off the television, with a look that said she was performing the same function on their relationship, and left. Numb with shock, Lloyd could do little more than curl up into a foetal ball and torture himself with poisonous thoughts – there was another man; it was all an elaborate prank designed to test his love; she had found the porn on his phone. Eventually he plucked up the courage to call her. Ellen told him, in no uncertain terms, and with a liberal sprinkling of Anglo Saxon, never to phone her again.

Deflated, distraught, and feeling like he had aged forty years between blinks, Lloyd dragged himself upstairs to bed, pulling the duvet over his head like a shroud. He was awoken by a violent, buzzing itch between his toes early the next morning. In the pale glare of the bedside lamp he discovered a series of small red dots, raised barrows of malicious mischief, sprouting all over his feet.

Unable to achieve satisfaction with his fingernails alone, Lloyd took his house keys to them, sawing them back and forth until the itch transformed to a screaming sting and the blood ran down his soles and seeped into the mattress.

By the time the sun came up he found his legs liberally sprinkled with hives. At first they were a blessing, as their maddening insistence took his mind off Ellen. Yet by midday his chest and back had broken out too, and Lloyd decided it was high-time he went to consult with a doctor – he had had hives before but never this many, and he began to worry they may well be the precursor of something more sinister altogether. A disease, perhaps: A disease brutal enough to bring a teary eyed Ellen running back to his side.

‘Have you been eating anything you wouldn’t normally eat?’ the doctor asked; just humble pie, thought Lloyd, shaking his head in the negative. The doctor told him not to worry, prescribed a slew of creams and unguents, and sent him packing with a leaflet on allergies. ‘Come back and see me next week if it hasn’t cleared up by then.’

Lloyd made his way home, forced to take mincing little steps that drew homophobic slurs as a hive had emerged in the crevice of his butt cheeks. He couldn’t wait to get indoors and scratch it. He drank plenty of water to flush out his system, took a scalding hot bath that felt like acid on his bleeding wounds, and had an early night.

He awoke around 2 a.m., his whole body ravaged by a delicious bitch itch. His groin was on fire. He noticed, with a horrifying calmness, as he pulled down his pants that even Little Lloyd was now affected. His entire body was now festooned in angry red lumps. They hung in bunches from his thighs like clusters of poison grapes, and a turkey wattle beard of hives swung beneath his neck.

This isn’t normal, thought Lloyd, this is very fucking far from normal – I need to get myself over to the hospital, pronto.

But as soon as he tried to get out of bed he was consumed by an itch so all encompassing he thought he was going to pass out. He turned his hands into rigid claws and dug them deep into a burning mass just above his left ankle, scratching so hard he felt he must surely ignite with the friction. Blood spattered the sheets, huge gobbets of flesh clogged beneath his fingernails, and still he scratched on, gritting his teeth as the pain hovered between ecstasy and insanity.

He decided to jump into a scalding hot shower, praying it would alleviate the maddening itch and wash away the worst of the unwitting carnage he had wrought upon his own hapless body. It felt as if a swarm of angry bees were dancing just beneath the skin, their furry bodies rubbing just beneath the surface. In his delirium, he hoped to drown every last one of the irritating little bastards.

Underneath the steaming spray, Lloyd grabbed a brush and set to himself with a reckless abandon. The water gave him some ease and, panting from his exertions, he finally stopped his frantic scraping – but the water seemed to have washed more than just the blood away. Turning off the shower, he slapped away the steam with a throbbing hand to get a better look.

That’s impossible, Lloyd thought as he gazed down upon himself to find a large section of himself was … gone.

There was his foot, and there his ankle, then nothing but a few streaks of skin until his kneecap. He could even see the blood smeared and sodden bathmat through where his leg should be. He prodded it with a tentative finger and it touched flesh, flesh that wasn’t there. He could see a few drops of water outlining its shape, but he could also see the tiles on the other side.

What the … Had he scratched himself to nothing?

Only the insane itch that wrapped his body in a prickly bear-hug stopped him from believing this was a dream. He tore at his skin again with increased fervour until, stepping out from the shower, he caught his reflection in the befogged mirror on the back of the door. He looked like a disembodied head wearing elbow length gloves.

Various little pink strips still remained here and there, transforming his image into some sort of post modern sculpture of humanity. In a queasy, half hysterical fugue, he took the scissors from the cabinet and cut away the rest of the skin; it didn’t hurt, allayed his suffering if anything. When all that was left was the hair on his head, he shaved it off, scalp and all. His eyes and teeth faded as he regarded his emptiness, as if embarrassed to be left so exposed.

‘I’m invisible,’ Lloyd marvelled, the manic edges of his laughter echoing off the bathroom tiles. All those childhood fantasies of possessing such a power, such a gift, came flooding back into his mind in a heady rush – voyeuristic dreams of girls’ changing rooms, of listening in on his friends’ conversations, of robbing banks and causing general mayhem.

But all those fantasies were superseded by the sudden, overwhelming need (a veritable itch) to spy on Ellen, to see if she really had been cheating on him and to her royally fuck her up if she had. Cures could be sought out later – it was time to deal with the cause.

He had some obstacles to overcome (this wasn’t the movies, after all), before he could put his plans into action. He would have to walk to her house (a driverless car would attract too much attention and prevent his, obviously God given, mission) and he would have to walk there naked. He couldn’t wear clothes for the same reason he couldn’t get behind the wheel, and it was bloody freezing outside.

Lloyd had spent his entire life trying to hide his lack of substance and now was not the time to highlight it.

Making his way down the High Street was a nightmare, crossing the road a hellish game of chance. If I was struck by a car, Lloyd wondered, would my guts be visible, or would they remain as opaque as my intentions, my body ground into the asphalt, unseen and unmourned?

He couldn’t help himself from goosing a few fine looking ladies on the way though, and from slapping a traffic warden who had given him a parking ticket the previous Friday. His laughter caused a small boy to cry as his mother looked to the sky for the source of that insane rattle.

He was shivering like a palsied dog by the time he reached Ellen’s bungalow. Her spinster cycle was leaned up beneath the window sill, so at least she was home – but how to gain access himself? He tried the back door and found it open, taking great delight in slamming it closed as he made his entrance. Ellen rushed into the kitchen, looking right through him with a confused frown on her face; nothing new there then.

She shrugged and then returned to the living room; Lloyd knew that shrug well, he had been dismissed by it many times. Well, no more – he may be truly invisible to her now, but his days of being ignored were over. He reached out to the dishes drying on the worktop and swept them onto the floor where they smashed in a satisfactory storm of powdery chips.

Ellen let out an even more satisfactory yelp as she came running back in and Lloyd had to bite down on his hand to stifle a snigger. There would be plenty of time to call out her name, whisper in her ear, and cackle maniacally until she fled the house in search of an exorcist, but he planned to build up the tension bit by bit.

Ellen checked the windows then stood awhile surveying the destruction before systematically, and oh so efficiently (as was her wont), tidying up the mess. Lloyd grew aroused as he watched her bending over and wiggling her way to the bin, thinking how easy it would be now to run his hands all over that body any time he damn well felt like it.

He left her to stew for a while, making his way upstairs (and yes, he clumped on every riser) to rummage around for signs of her infidelity; a whiff of aftershave on her pillow perhaps, a discarded jumper, a text message on her phone. He found nothing incriminating, save the usual disheartening tidiness that piqued him to the core since it highlighted how little she missed him.

He heard the television come on downstairs, the theme tune to one of her beloved soaps blaring out jauntily, and he decided to go back down and cut straight to the chase and start playing havoc with her mind. Let’s see if she can still follow the plot, he fumed, when her dear Aunt Emma’s lamp is hovering a few inches before her nose.

As he reached for the door he found it was a struggle to move the handle. All his energy seemed to be seeping out of him in waves. He felt himself dissipating, as if his internal organs were slowly fading away. He gazed down at where his chest should be, but he couldn’t see, he couldn’t tell. He barely had the strength left to draw a breath. He tried to call out for help but his voice was gone. He slumped down onto the floor with a thin sigh. If Ellen were to come through the door now she would grind him into the floor without even knowing it, and wouldn’t that be fucking apt. 

The phone rang, strident as mocking laughter, and Lloyd crawled to the table where it squatted beside a vase of fake flowers and a framed photo of Ellen’s mother – the wizened up old prude she was already halfway to becoming. He tried to reach up for the receiver but the effort it required was beyond him.

The ragged little gasp of his exertion was drowned out by the television as Ellen hurried from the living room to answer the call. She snatched up the phone with an anticipatory smile, seemingly unaware her kitten heels were impaling Lloyd’s left hand. His agonised scream was no more than a sigh.

‘Oh, hi,’ Ellen trilled, frowning down at the carpet as her other heel dug into Lloyd’s cheek. ‘No, of course I’m not busy, call round anytime you like. It’s been far too long, Suzie, it’ll be good to catch up…Lloyd? no, I’m not seeing him anymore. To be perfectly honest he was never quite up to scratch, know what I mean?’

Through his pain and humiliation, Lloyd felt the fiery itch flare up again one last unbearable time.