The Covid wreaked its havoc upon mankind. Face masks were required for everyone now but the widow Mrs. Cornelia O’Connor had gotten her Irish up and refused to wear one.
“You sure you don’t want me to get some masks for you when I’m out,” Nicole, her next door neighbor in the apartment complex, asked her. “You should wear one all the time like I do.”
“Ya mean like you do when you’re having loud muffled sex with your masked boyfriend.”
Nicole ignored that remark but she didn’t give up trying to save Mrs. O’Connor.
“The Covid and all its variances have gotten even worse, Mrs. O’Connor. Booster shots are required every four months now ya know.”
“I don’t care if they’re required every day, I ain’t getting one.”
“You have to get one, it’s a way of life now.”
“You mean like farming, alcoholism, and drug addiction. I swear Nicole that if you don’t take that mask off every once and a while it’ll grow right into your face.”
Nicole never took it off, not even when she was having loud muffled sex with her boyfriend, who always wore one too.
Now despite mankind’s attempts to crush the Covid, Mother Nature took her own course and Mrs. O’Connor picked up on it.
“Looks like that mask of yours has grown right into your face Nicole. You better have it checked out.”
“I already did and the doctor said that was perfectly normal. That my body was growing its own immune system. That skin would eventually grow a flap over my nose and mouth protecting me. Said it was something called ‘evolution’. Whatever that is?”
Now Nicole wasn’t the brightest bulb that had ever been screwed into a socket but the mask did prevent her from getting the Covid. It didn’t protect her however from getting pregnant, though she thought it would. She showed Mrs. O’Connor her baby.
“What’s this?” Mrs. O’Connor asked her, “Looks like your baby was born with her own built-in flesh mask.”
“She was. All the babies are being born that way now the doctor said. It’s that thing called evolution. Whatever that is.”
Author is a retired attorney who started writing for something to do in his rusting years.