“It was just too fucked up to be human, but somehow, deep down inside I knew it was.”

The first time the novel presents someone who has the Bug, Keith immediately stigmatizes them, framing them as too ugly to be human. At the same time, Keith can’t help but recognize the essential humanity within the person he is seeing, which suggests that some part of him is resisting the received perception that people who have the Bug should be dehumanized. This underscores Burns’s argument for The Violence of Stigmatization. The frames depicting the person Keith feature a visual motif that recurs throughout the novel: two angled lines (in this case, tree branches) diverging as they approach the top of the page. The motif visually evokes legs spread during sex and therefore underscores the Bug’s association with the latter.

[Keith:] “Why’d you have to trash all his stuff?”

[Todd:] “’Cause he’s a fucking geek! He deserves to live out here!”

Burns deepens the warning about stigmatization when Keith reunites with his friends, expanding the idea beyond the context of illness. Todd argues that Rick Halstrom deserves to be ostracized not because he has the Bug but because he is a “geek.” Todd’s ire therefore suggests that having the interests associated with geek culture falls outside the normative behaviors that society demands. In this way, the novel expands the Bug’s allegorical function; it represents not only illness but other forms of exclusion and stigmatization as well.

[Keith:] “Look, I brought you something good to eat.”

[Chris:] “I…That’s so nice of you, but I really can’t…”

[Keith:] “You can’t? Why not? I brought it just for you.”

[Chris:] “Because…I’m being pulled down…pulled under…”

Chris’s dream exchange with Keith highlights the objectification that Chris experiences. Keith insists that Chris should accept his gift, all the while ignoring the immediate danger of her immersion in the water. This foreshadows her relationships with both Keith and Dave later in the novel; both fail to recognize her agency and her desires as a person, believing that their niceness alone should earn them her affections. The imagery in these panels—specifically, Chris’s subconscious framing of Keith as a sea serpent-like creature—is phallic, hinting at how the experience of objectification has fed Chris’s anxieties about sex.

“He was all I wanted…We were sitting in a big, dark graveyard, surrounded by a million dead bodies… 

But we were alive…we were so alive and that’s all that mattered.”

Chris’s interior monologue in this passage highlights the life-affirming quality of her first sexual encounter with Rob. Though this encounter will eventually lead to Chris having the Bug, Chris is focused on the joy that being with someone she is attracted to can bring her. This furthers the theme of Developing Healthy Attitudes Toward Sex and Intimacy by highlighting Chris’s sexual agency, particularly her desire for emotional connection, against the subtext of her guilt over her “failure” to listen to Rob’s warnings, a decision that changes Chris’s life forever.

“So…this is where it all ends up… 

Swimming around in freezing water…swimming towards… 

I’ll never do it…I can’t stay out here forever 

[…] 

Maybe I’m just making a big deal out of it…It’s probably nothing. 

I’ll be ok…I’ll just get my act together and…I’ll be ok.”

Chris’s escape from the crowd at the kegger party is marked by a simultaneous desire to linger in the dark waters of the lake and a fear of doing so—a sign that she has not yet accepted the change the waters represent. Her internal monologue suggests that she remains in a state of uncertainty at the end of the chapter, torn between escape and the possibility of reintegration. Burns signals her ambivalence by having Chris hesitate after she resolves to “get [her] act together,” as if unsure that it will lead to her desired outcome.

“Maybe it’s this! Maybe now that I’m starting to show you’re getting grossed out and want to move on…move on and find a clean girl!”

Lisa’s rebuke of Rob is indicative of the internalized bias she feels as a person who has the Bug. The key word in this passage is “clean,” which suggests that the people who have the Bug are “dirty.” Lisa resents Rob for being unfaithful to her, but she also feels that she deserves to be discarded as one of the “dirty” people. This underscores the societal stigma surrounding not only illness but also female sexual activity (particularly as her word choice—“starting to show”—mimics the language used to describe pregnancy).

“Blood…her blood, dark and real. I’d been marked with her blood…It was a sign. 

I didn’t know where or when or how, but she was going to be mine. It was going to happen. It had to happen.”

This passage highlights Keith’s instinctive possessiveness of Chris in the moments after their interaction. Keith attaches significance to Chris’s blood as a sign of their bond, using language that evokes a religious ritual while ignoring Chris’s perspective of the interaction. This drives the idea that Keith’s crush is built entirely on projection rather than intimacy.

“It was always the same story. Todd and Dee were constantly giving me grief about it…No matter where I was, I always wanted to be somewhere else… 

But it was always impossible. I was stuck. I was never going anywhere.”

This passage explicates the sense of stasis that Keith feels in his day-to-day life. Keith’s constant desire to be somewhere else suggests his dissatisfaction with the activities he participates in with Todd and Dee. His friends’ criticism suggests that they have no sympathy for his daydreaming, hinting at the widening gap between them as Keith becomes increasingly alienated from his friend group and the attitudes they espouse.

“I was trying to stay with it, focus in on my sadness…find that ache, that empty hole Chris had left me in. 

But I couldn’t. It was drifting away. She was there, leaning over me, pressing down, filling me with her warmth. 

Strong hands on my back, the weight of her body…I could feel her breath on my neck, warm and sweet.”

This passage marks the moment that Eliza starts to break through to Keith, allowing him to focus on the intimacy she is trying to build with him rather than his desire for intimacy with the absent Chris. Burns uses sensory details to reinforce the images of Eliza pressing down on Keith, focusing on aspects like “weight,” pressure, “warmth,” and “breath” to convey the physical closeness between Chris and Eliza. The artwork echoes the shift, as an image of Chris lying nude on her back slowly gives way to a close-up frame depicting Eliza’s tail. This evolution from a more conventional depiction of heterosexual sex to one that is less normative underscores how shedding traditional masculinity facilitates Keith’s character development and relationships.

 [Dave:] “But she’s…I mean, she’s still trying to pass, right? How’s her hands doing?”

[Rob:] “They’re ok, she’s been telling everyone she burned them…keeps ‘em wrapped up in bandages, but…”

[Dave:] “—but how long can she keep that up, right?”

As Rob discusses Lisa’s illness with the residents at the camp, Dave uses the word “pass” to indicate that Lisa is attempting to hide her illness and retain the social acceptance that people without the Bug enjoy. The connotation of the word “pass” in this context evokes the idea of stigma, relating the characters’ experiences to those of people in marginalized communities. This reinforces the novel’s social allegory concerning The Violence of Stigmatization.

“I shouldn’t look like this. I look normal but I’m not. 

I’m a monster.”

In contrast to Lisa’s attempts to retain social acceptance, this passage shows Chris’s efforts to reckon with the invisible reality of her illness and its impact on her identity. The irony that Chris highlights is that she “looks” normal, implying that her “monstrosity” has nothing to do with her mutation. Rather, it is deep within her, akin to a moral or existential failure that sets her apart from ordinary people.

“That’s when it hit me…The awful reality, sitting there eating food I wasn’t hungry for… 

…while they were out there eating garbage. 

I was one of them. It just didn’t show as much.”

This passage reinforces the previous one by juxtaposing Chris with people whose illness is more visible than her own. Chris contrasts herself with the other people with the Bug by underscoring her appearance, which doesn’t show her illness. Nevertheless, she cannot help identifying with them and thus believes that she, too, deserves to be stigmatized. The word choice and imagery also recall Chris’s prior dream of people beyond the arch eating garbage—a symbol of her life after contracting the Bug.

“It was the same foot I’d cut…The skin hanging loose and open, just like on my back. 

I’d had enough. I wanted out. 

I pulled it all off. It didn’t hurt. It came off in one big piece.”

The first time Chris tears off her skin is a turning point in her life, signaling the formal end of her life before the illness and the start of her life after it. The passage references Chris’s earlier foot injury, which is now a memory. By juxtaposing the memory of that pain against the painlessness of tearing her skin off, Chris hints that the pain she experiences as she separates herself from her old life is once again emotional rather than physical in nature.

“In the silver light it was trying to push its way back in again. 

It wanted to show me horrible things. 

Things too sad and ugly to live with. 

Somehow I was going to have to pull myself out of it or I’d be lost forever.”

Keith’s drug-induced hallucination in this chapter features the world turning into a massive organism that pursues him in order to expose his innermost thoughts, which he describes as being “too sad and ugly to live with.” The horror elements of this chapter thus play a symbolic role in marking the end of Keith’s avoidance of vulnerability. The use of Windowpane actively forces Keith to acknowledge his feelings in ways that amplify their terror. The layout of the pages mirrors the disorienting effects of the experience, as the text spills over the boundaries between frames in a way that mirrors Keith’s racing thoughts.

“As I started to talk, I felt something swelling in my chest, straining to get out.

…And then it broke. It came spilling like a flood…My voice loud and raw, straining on the words. 

I don’t know why, but I felt like I had to tell them everything. 

Everything. Every last detail. 

When I was done I was empty. It was silent except for the crackling of the fire. 

It was finally all out of me…I was as pure and empty as the flames moving in front of me.”

This passage marks a turning point in Keith’s narrative arc, as he opens up about his experiences and feelings for the first time in the presence of the camp residents. By finding solidarity in the community that society has ostracized, Keith identifies with them and begins to accept his own status as an “outsider.”

[Rob:] “This is so great…You know I really…I love you, Chris.”

[Chris:] “Wait a second…wait. Don’t say that if you don’t mean it, ok? Never say that unless you…”

[Rob:] “I do mean it. God, Chris, I’d never lie to you.”

[Chris:] “You know what? I love you too…and I’ll love you forever, no matter what.”

Chris and Rob’s idyllic day at the beach culminates in their professions of love for each other. It signifies a moment of renewed normalcy for them both, which Chris marks by evoking the idea of “forever,” which recurs throughout the narrative. For Chris to say that she wants to remain in love with Rob forever means that she accepts the necessity of all the experiences that came before that day, including the bad ones, if only to bring them to a shared moment of perfect intimacy. The artwork depicts them acknowledging their feelings with the arch in the background, underscoring that the moment is a pivotal one that divides Chris’s life into a “before” and “after.”

“The hardest part was trying to decide what to bring with me…having to sift through all of the junk I’d accumulated over the years…stupid little things that had seemed so important at one time.”

This passage parallels the earlier moment in which Chris shed her skin for the first time. Here, she is shedding objects; the passage evokes her separation from her old life through her recognition of the distance between her past and current values. Chris recognizes that some of the things that were once important to her no longer have the same affirmative power. She implicitly recognizes that as her emotional needs change, so does her affinity for the things that used to bring her joy.

“I could hear sounds filtering down from upstairs…laughter, distant voices, the dull throbbing beat of some song I couldn’t recognize…and behind it all, a dog barking…it was Faust, barking his head off.”

In this passage, Burns uses noise to depict a reversal in Keith’s character. Previously, he fantasized about going to other spaces to find peace with Chris. Now that he inhabits a peaceful space with Eliza, the outside world encroaches upon their shared intimacy in a way that implies the threat it poses to their relationship. Keith wants to stay where he is but becomes aware of the danger that surrounds him.

[Chris:] “He looks so creepy.”

[Marci:] “Creepy? We were having fun! It’s like…I guess if you’re not into Bowie it’s kind of hard to understand.”

[Chris:] “I don’t know…it just looks kind of dumb.”

[Marci:] “Yeah? Well I’m sorry! God! Do you hear me criticizing you? I listen to all your stories about your fucked up life and do I say anything?”

In this passage, Chris realizes that the distance between herself and her childhood best friend is part of the cost of her break from her old life. Ironically, Chris draws attention to the distance by stigmatizing Marci for her interest in David Bowie’s music (often associated with “subversive” expressions of gender and sexuality). This provokes Marci and subsequently widens the gap between them.

“We had to watch all these lame movies about human reproduction, but I didn’t mind…I could sit and stare at Chris for as long as I wanted. 

Those movies were always so safe and clean…everything simplified down to diagrams and animated cartoons… 

…microscopic pictures of sperm cells swarming around a giant egg…

The weird part about those movies was that they never showed you the real thing… 

…the actual sex part.”

This internal monologue highlights the irony of Keith’s education, which oversimplifies adolescence and sexual relations as a purely scientific process that happens on such an infinitesimal scale that it becomes practically invisible. This observation is visually juxtaposed against the complexities of Keith’s relationships with people like Chris and Eliza; for instance, one frame shows Keith glancing longingly over at Chris during a lecture, while several others flash back to his sexual encounter with Eliza. The drawing of the egg further reinforces the contrast, as it is notably less stylized than the novel’s overall artwork, instead closely mimicking clinical depictions of sex.

“All I could think about was the McCroskeys…coming back from vacation, walking into their house…”

In the wake of Dave’s massacre, Keith’s fixation on his employers’ reaction implies his recognition that his life is at a turning point. The fact that he preemptively imagines his employers discovering the mess means that he already accepts that he cannot cover up his failure to live up to his responsibilities. He has already given up his conformist lifestyle by choosing to prioritize his desire for intimacy.

[Chris:] “… And if there was some magical way to go back and erase it all, I would! I swear to God! Go back to my boring, normal life…living with my parents, being the straight-A student, the perfect, sweet little daughter…I’d take it all back in a second!”

[Dave:] “I’d never go back, not in a million years. Anything’s better than all the crap I had to go through…going to school and getting beat up almost every day…all those stuck up girls laughing at me…”

The juxtaposition of Chris and Dave’s attitudes toward their past lives underscores their high school’s social hierarchy and how that hierarchy gave way to violence. As a survivor of bullying, Dave is reluctant to return to a life in which he experienced regular violence. Chris is only now in a position to understand Dave because their shared illness means that they are now equally excluded from society.

“I used to know every inch of your body…your profile, the smell of your skin…and now it’s starting to fade. 

I don’t want to forget you. I don’t want to get old and stupid and… 

I’ll remember the time we were out here together…when we were young and you were mine. I’ll remember. I promise.”

Chris acknowledges that the limitations of memory mean that she will be forced to find normalcy in her new life without relying on Rob. However, her promise to remember their day at the beach also serves as a hopeful resolution. It is a reminder that Chris is capable of carrying her past with her into a changed future.