The inspiration for this came from a dream I had where I pulled all the skin off my face and it didn't hurt. It was a weird dream... not really a nightmare because I wasn't scared...
Danny Phantom doesn't belong to me. If it did it would probably be a bit more violent and I would have made the ending a bit different...
Anyway, if you find any typos or misspellings please let me know, I'm always looking to improve the readability of my stories.
(ps. I made up the name of the sickness, so don't go looking for it XD )
CHAPTER 1
Danny woke up, stretched, and scratched his cheek. 'Why does my face itch so much?' he thought. As he pulled his hand away from his face, he gasped. There, under his short fingernails, were flakes of what looked like his skin. Immediately, his heart started racing. Danny flung himself out of bed and rushed to the bathroom, his footsteps echoing in the morning quiet. Once in the bathroom, his heart nearly skipped a beat as he looked in the mirror. The skin on his left cheek had three shallow gouges in it, the underlying layer was a slightly darker shade of pink. That wasn't the worst. The edges of the marks looked loose, and his skin itched all over his face, like it wanted to crawl right off of him. Reaching his hand up, he gently tugged at one of the edges of a gouge, the skin peeled away easily in a strip nearly half the size of his palm. He freaked out. He stared at himself in the mirror, eyes huge and pupils dilated. Somehow, pulling off that strip of skin hadn't hurt, in fact it was a bit relieving, making the itch lessen. He picked at his cheek a bit more, pulling the first layer of skin off his cheek, then a knock came at the door.
"Danny! Would you hurry up in there, I have to take a shower before going to school you know!"
It was Jazz. Danny had to think fast, he grabbed the cup of water next to the sink, opened the toilet lid, and proceeded to make awful retching noises while pouring spurts of water into the toilet to complete the mental image for his sister.
"Uh, never mind Danny! I'll call you in sick today! Bye!" Jazz spurted quickly before rushing downstairs to use her parent's bathroom, she hated the sound of someone throwing up.
Danny almost smirked, the vomiting routine worked every time. Now of course, he had to get past his mom without letting her see his face. Closing the toilet seat, he sat down on it to think.
"Mom?" Danny sniffed, making his voice a bit raspy, "I don't feel good and I threw up this morning, can I stay home from school today?" He shuffled into the kitchen with a blanket wrapped thoroughly around him, covering the left half of his face.
"Oh my! Of course you can sweetheart!" Maddie exclaimed worriedly as she gave her son a light hug, "I heard Jazz calling you in sick, so you just go back to bed and get some sleep. Your father and I will be going on a trip for the next three days, and we absolutely can't cancel it, so you make sure you drink plenty of water and have some nice soup when you get hungry."
"Yes mom." He stated, keeping up the raspy and tired voice while he turned to go back up the stairs. Maddie smiled at his back before heading out the door.
As soon as he got to his room, Danny dropped the blanket and hurried to his phone, hitting the speed dial for Sam. The phone rang twice before she picked it up.
"Hey Danny what's up?"
"Something weird is happening, I need you to call in sick from school today."
"Ok, my parents are on another trip, so you and Tucker can meet me here."
"Uh..." Danny stalled, "I don't think Tucker needs to know, besides wasn't there a math test that he was really looking forward to today?" He knew that Tucker would probably freak out and call his parents, and Danny had a sneaking suspicion that his current predicament had something to do with being half ghost.
"Riiiight, he shouldn't have to miss out on THAT." Sam drawled sarcastically.
"Please Sam?" Danny nearly begged.
"Fine, fine, I won't call Tucker. Just be over here as soon as you can." She hung up.
Danny waited until his parents' van pulled off down the street before going ghost and phasing through the wall. He gasped, after phasing through a thin swath of skin on his right arm sloughed off. He subconsciously brought his hand to the left side of his face and as soon as he touched the itchy, tingling skin, a patch fell off in his hand. Again he panicked and swiftly landed on the ground in the alley behind his house. Obviously being in his ghost form made the situation much worse, so he transformed back and ran into his house to grab a coat and a scarf.
Sam was waiting impatiently on her bed, she checked her watch. 'Danny should be here by now,' she thought, 'What's taking him so long?'
She was broken from her thoughts by a knocking at the front door. That was weird, Danny almost always just phased through her window. When she hurried down the stairs and opened the door, she became even more confused. Danny was standing there wearing a rain jacket and a scarf that was wrapped around half his head. She squinted and peered up to make sure her suspicions were correct. Yup, not a cloud in the sky or a cold breeze in the street. Something weird was going on after all. Danny practically scurried into her house.
"Hey Sam." he said, his voice muffled by the scarf.
"Danny what's going on? And why are you wearing that?" She looked pointedly at his attire.
"Uh, let's head up to your room first." He looked around as though he expected her parents to pop up at any time.
Sam rolled her eyes and led him up to her room, she stood by her bed as he paced back and forth, as if deciding something, finally coming to a stop four feet in front of her. He looked at his shoes. 'What is he doing?' Sam wondered, 'He can't be asking me out, could he? He's way too clueless for that, right?' The thought of Danny asking her out, or maybe hugging her made Sam's stomach flutter. Then he slowly took off the coat and unwrapped the scarf.
She gasped and rushed to him, "Danny! What did this to you?" she nearly yelled, gently grabbing his head and angling his face so she could see his cheek better. She gasped again and let go, putting a hand to her mouth and staring at him with wide eyes, tears threatening to blur her vision. Danny frowned.
"How bad is it?" He asked.
"You can't feel it?" Sam asked in wonder.
"It's really itchy and it feels kinda like air is touching some stuff it shouldn't be touching." He said, reaching up to touch his face.
Sam quickly grabbed his wrist, keeping him from touching what looked like a very nasty, deep wound, "Don't touch it." She stated flatly, willing him to see how serious this was. As she let go of his wrist, she thought that the skin there felt a bit loose, but was too distracted by his face to take much notice.
He seemed to get the point, and headed towards the small mirror on her dresser, peering at his face. Now it was his turn to gasp, it had gotten worse, much worse. What was earlier just a patch where a single layer of skin had been missing, now there was a layered crater in the skin, dipping down to a hole about the size of a nickel. He could see the dark red muscle and tendon of his cheek through the hole. His skin was literally coming off. He stared.
"Danny? Danny? How did this happen?" Sam asked a bit frantically.
Danny sighed and tore his gaze from the mirror to go sit down on Sam's bed. She followed him and sat down beside him.
"Well..." He sighed, "It started this morning..."
After he finished telling her the whole story, he absently scratched his arm, it was beginning to itch there too.
"Danny!" Sam exclaimed, pointing at his arm. The skin there was starting to peel off. Sam took hold of his arm to get a closer look. He blushed slightly as she ran her fingers lightly over his arm and hand, peering closely. "Danny, look at this." She stated, and held up his hand for him to see, spreading his palm out flat. Where there are usually just creases at all the joints of his fingers, there were now breaks in the skin, slightly curled at the edges as if it was peeling itself off slowly.
"That can't be good." He stared at his hand, trying not to focus on the way Sam was sitting so close and touching him.
"No, it's not, we better find out what's going on, I think you're right about it having to do with you being half ghost. We need to get to the Ghost Zone and find someone who knows what's going on."
Danny nodded, "My parents aren't home right now, so it'll be no problem getting into the Ghost Zone, but how will we get to my house without being noticed, I can't use my ghost powers..." he trailed off, looking dejected.
"We'll just take all the alleys and stuff, I've snuck off to your house enough times without being caught by my parents when they were out looking, I know a good route." Sam reassured him, 'and if we get seen, I can always turn the tables on his invention, the fake-out make-out' she thought, smiling inwardly.
They made their way as quickly as possible along her secrete route. Danny not wearing the jacket and scarf because Sam said they were more likely to be noticed if he was wearing something weird, and she thought that the scarf and the jacket might have made things worse by rubbing against his loose skin.
They had to cross the street a few times, but it was late morning, so traffic was minimum on both the road and sidewalks. Then, as they were about to exit an alley, someone came walking by on the sidewalk. Sam acted quickly, grabbing Danny, shoving him lightly against the wall, putting his damaged right arm by his side so that his hand was on her hip, and covering his left cheek with her hand before locking her lips onto his. Her stomach tingled merrily.
Danny was stunned. Sam was kissing him, his heartbeat sped up. Then he noticed the person walking by glance in their direction and he swiftly closed his eyes, enjoying the moment for just a bit longer until Sam broke the fake-out make-out and whispered, "Is he gone?"
Glancing at the retreating back of the stranger, Danny nodded, secretly disappointed when Sam stepped back away from him and peered around to make sure no one else was coming. His heart was still rapidly beating in his chest and his lips tingled slightly. He had nearly forgotten the irritating itch crawling around under his skin, but now it was back and he was forced not to dwell on the fake-out make-out for long. He had to fix what was happening to him.
The duo ran into no other obstacles on their way and were able to start up the Specter Speeder and whoosh out into the Ghost Zone. Sam was driving, of course, and Danny directed her to the land of the Far Frozen. Maybe Frostbite would know what was going on.
When they arrived, Frostbite greeted them cheerily, but soon became grave as they showed him Danny's situation. It turned out that Frostbite had never seen anything like that before, but he did know of someone who might be ably to help.
"Go to the Ghost Doctor, Dr. Shpytz, he might be able to fix you up. He knows everything there is to know about ghost sicknesses." Frostbite said.
They thanked him and went off in the direction of the hospital, it was right where Frostbite said it was. The hospital floated in it's spot in the Ghost Zone, a huge building with an arched entrance containing a sign that read "Emergency Entrance Here" Danny didn't see another entrance, so assumed that Ghosts never made appointments.
"It's a good thing that Tucker isn't here." Danny said as Sam parked in front of the steps to the entrance, she nodded silently.
Inside the waiting room there was a ghost who was sneezing hysterically. The two humans sat in some chairs opposite the sneezing ghost. They didn't have to wait long. A tall ghost with a kind face wearing scrubs entered the room.
"Who's turn is it next?" He asked in a friendly manner, not at all menacing.
The sneezer, as Danny now thought of him, held a tissue to his nose and pointed at Danny, "He's worth tha meh." the sneezer said, before promptly sneezing again.
The doctor turned to Danny and Sam, "What's your name, son?" he asked.
"I'm Danny, and this is Sam." Danny said, pointing to Sam as he said her name.
"Ah, you're not from around here are you?" the doctor looked a bit more closely at the teens.
Sam looked nervously at the sneezer and back to the kind face of the doctor, "No sir," she said, "can we speak somewhere more private?"
"Of course, please come this way." As he showed them through a door, he caught sight of Danny's face and a worried frown replaced his friendly smile.
Once Danny was seated on an examining table and Sam was seated in a chair next to him. Dr. Shpytz began poking and prodding at Danny, his frown deepening as he plucked at the edges of the hole in Danny's cheek and the cracks at his joints. He had Danny take off his shoes and found several layers of skin rubbed off of the bottom of his feet. Finally, he went back to Danny's face and stuck his gloved finger against the muscle showing on Danny's cheek, sliding his finger under the edge of the loose skin and tugging gently outward. Danny could feel his skin peel away from his muscle as cold air swept into the pocket formed by the doctor's finger. Sam must have seen this too, because she gasped and covered her mouth with both hands, looking quite scared. Danny tried to give her a reassuring smile, but it faltered as the doctor removed his finger and Danny's skin sort of sagged back into place. He could still tell that it was no longer attached to his cheek muscle.
The tense silence was broken, "Well," Dr. Shpytz stated, "He's got Slupstygmetrigof."
Danny and Sam looked at him blankly.
"It's where the skin separates from the muscle and becomes itchy and painful. If not treated soon enough it will cause the victim to scratch off all their skin," He paused briefly, "And at that point it will never grow back." He flipped through a book that had been sitting on the counter, and showed them a picture of a ghost who presumably had the same sickness. It was awful. The ghost looked like he had been run over by a lawn mower. All the skin on one side of his face had been completely stripped away and his lidless eye stared hauntingly at the camera. His lips were gone and white teeth gave him a two-face look.
Sam and Danny looked at each other, then back at the doctor. "Can he be cured?" Sam asked tentatively. She hated to imagine what it would be like for Danny to have to live as a ghost for the rest of his life, because surely a human can't survive in that condition for long.
"Yes."
They sighed in relief.
"… but the treatment will be quite painful."
Danny winced. He had to grip the edge of the table hard, all this talk about his skin was making it itch more. He almost felt like ripping it off, almost. Sam looked at the doctor and nodded her head, then looked at Danny, her eyes pleading for his confirmation. He couldn't resist her. He looked at Dr. Shpytz.
"I'll do it."