From “Rust Belt Gothic Vol 1”
Youngstown remembers the taste of the air during the reign of steel. It wasn’t just smoke; it was a chemical cocktail that painted the skies grey and orange, and when it rained, it wasn’t just water that fell. They called it “burning rain,” “acid dew.” Old-timers in neighborhoods huddled close to the mills – Campbell, Struthers, the lower South Side – recalled laundry disintegrating on the line, car paint blistering overnight, and a sharp, metallic sting on exposed skin during downpours. The stone facades of downtown buildings, the bronze statues in Wick Park, the very bricks of the houses bear the scars – pitted, eroded, softened, like features blurred by a corrosive memory. The mills are mostly gone now, the air is clearer, but the legacy lingers, soaked deep into the soil, settled in the river sediment, and perhaps, etched into the very biology of the place.
Dr. Aris Thorne, a recently retired botanist who had returned to his childhood home in a quiet, older section of Struthers, began to notice anomalies. His trained eye, accustomed to the precise symmetry and predictable patterns of plant life, found subtle deviations in his own backyard and the surrounding neighborhood. An ancient oak tree near the fence line showed bark with a strange, almost crystalline lesion pattern, unlike any blight he knew. Maple saplings grew with twisted, asymmetrical branches. The leaves on his rose bushes were often misshapen, curled inward, their veins unusually prominent and dark. Fungi sprouting after rain displayed unnervingly vibrant, unnatural colors – electric blues, sickly yellows – and sometimes grew in oddly geometric clusters. He observed insects, too: spiders with mismatched leg lengths, beetles with fused wing casings, moths with blurred, asymmetrical patterns. Individually, each anomaly could be dismissed. Collectively, they painted a picture of an environment subtly, persistently rewriting the rules of biology.
He started taking soil samples. The pH levels were consistently low, acidic, especially after rain, confirming the lingering effects of decades of industrial fallout. He cross-referenced historical air quality reports and acid rain deposition maps from the 70s and 80s with the areas where he observed the most pronounced anomalies. The correlation was undeniable. The neighborhoods that had suffered the worst of the “burning rain” now showed the most warped flora and fauna. He began documenting his findings meticulously, photographing the twisted leaves, the strange fungi, the asymmetrical insects. It was a quiet, creeping wrongness.
His research soon branched out, driven by a nagging unease. He started looking into local health records, searching for patterns beyond the well-documented respiratory illnesses and cancers linked to the mills. He found anecdotal accounts, old newspaper clippings, and hushed family stories hinting at more. Higher than average rates of unusual skin conditions – persistent rashes, strange pigmentations, areas of hardened, calloused skin – in families who had lived near the mills for generations. Whispers about children born during the peak pollution years with minor but odd physical quirks: slightly mismatched ears, asymmetrical facial features, unusual joint flexibility or stiffness. He found a few blurry, old photos in archived medical journals accompanying case studies of “undiagnosed congenital conditions,” showing individuals with subtle but distinct asymmetries, skin textures that looked almost… pitted. Was it possible the acid rain hadn’t just burned surfaces, but had, over time, through cumulative exposure or even epigenetic changes passed down, begun to subtly etch and warp human biology itself?
He started looking closer at his own reflection, at old family photos. His grandfather, who had worked at the Youngstown Sheet and Tube Campbell Works for forty years, had developed severe arthritis late in life, his knuckles swelling into gnarled shapes. His aunt, who grew up playing near the slag heaps, suffered from a strange skin condition that made patches of her skin rough and discolored, like old parchment. Aris himself had always had slightly uneven shoulders, something he’d never thought much about. Now, it felt ominous. The slow poison of the past wasn’t just in the ground; it might be in his genes.
The catalyst came unexpectedly. A heatwave gripped the valley, combined with a prolonged dry spell, concentrating the residual acidity in the topsoil. Aris was working in his garden, digging near the base of the afflicted oak tree, when a sudden, localized downpour occurred – a brief, intense shower. The rainwater, hitting the superheated, acidic soil, released a plume of acrid steam. Aris breathed it in before he could react, feeling an immediate burning sensation in his lungs, followed by dizziness. He retreated indoors, coughing, thinking it was just a severe reaction to the concentrated pollutants.
But within days, the changes began. It started subtly. A patch of skin on his forearm, where the muddy, steaming soil had splattered, became red, then hardened, developing a rough, pitted texture like sandstone. His joints began to ache, particularly his wrists and knees, feeling stiff and swollen. He tried creams, anti-inflammatories, but nothing helped. Then, he noticed his reflection. Was his left eye slightly lower than his right now? Was the line of his jaw less defined on one side? He measured meticulously, horrified to confirm the subtle but undeniable shift in symmetry. The changes were slow, incremental, but relentless. And they were accelerating.
Over the next few months, the transformation became undeniable, grotesque. The patch on his arm spread, his skin taking on a hardened, greyish, stone-like quality in places, while in others it became thin, almost translucent, weeping a clear, slightly acidic fluid. His bone structure began to visibly shift. His fingers grew longer, stiffer, the joints swelling into hard nodules. One leg seemed to subtly shorten, giving him a pronounced limp. His facial features continued their slow drift, his nose twisting slightly, his mouth pulling unevenly. The pain was constant, a deep ache in his bones, a burning sensitivity in his skin. His hair thinned, becoming brittle, straw-like. He was becoming a living monument to the acid rain’s corrosive power, his body mimicking the eroded statues and pitted buildings of the city.
He sought medical help, desperate. Doctors were baffled. X-rays showed unusual bone density variations and crystalline deposits in his joints and soft tissues. Blood tests revealed bizarre markers, elevated levels of certain heavy metals consistent with historical industrial pollution, but nothing that explained the physical transformation. They diagnosed him with everything from aggressive scleroderma to unknown autoimmune disorders to rare genetic conditions, but no diagnosis truly fit, and no treatment worked. Some doctors subtly implied it was psychosomatic, a delusion brought on by his environmental obsessions. He felt increasingly isolated, a medical freak, his body betraying him in ways no one could comprehend.
Was there a logic to it? It felt like a horrifying, accelerated version of the erosion he saw on the city’s stonework. His body seemed to be attempting a perverse adaptation, hardening itself against a corrosive environment that no longer existed in its acute form, but whose legacy was ingrained in his very cells. The transformation wasn’t just physical. Concentration became difficult, his thoughts sometimes feeling sluggish, disjointed. Was his mind eroding along with his body? Was the Aris Thorne he knew being slowly etched away, replaced by something else, something shaped by pollution?
He retreated from the world, unable to bear the stares, the pity, the fear in the eyes of others. He boarded up his windows, communicating only through email, his hands growing too stiff and misshapen to easily use a phone. He became a recluse, a prisoner in his own warping body, his house now a tomb. He spent his days documenting the changes, taking photos, writing notes, driven by a scientist’s compulsion to record even his own dissolution. He was becoming one of the hushed rumors, a local legend in the making – the mad botanist who was turning to stone.
One night, driven by pain and a desperate need for… something, he didn’t know what, he ventured out, shuffling through the darkened streets towards the river, towards the blighted areas near the old mills. In the shadows near an abandoned railway bridge, he saw movement. Another figure, hunched and asymmetrical, moving with a similar stiff, uneven gait. Their eyes met across the derelict space – eyes that were clouded, mismatched, filled with a shared understanding of pain and transformation. The figure gave a slight, jerky nod, then melted back into the shadows. Aris wasn’t alone. How many others were there, hidden in the city’s decaying corners, living embodiments of the acid rain’s slow burn, a secret community of the warped and forgotten?
He never saw the figure again. He returned to his house, the knowledge a cold comfort, or perhaps just another layer of horror. The city outside went on, debating cleanup costs, celebrating minor environmental improvements, largely oblivious to the deeper scars, the living consequences hidden in its shadows. Aris sat by his window, watching a light rain begin to fall, streaking the dirty glass like tears on pitted stone. He looked at his hand, resting on the sill – grey, hardened, joints like pebbles, barely recognizable as human. The acid rain had stopped falling decades ago, but for him, and perhaps for others hidden in the dark, the burning had never truly ended. It was just working its way out from the inside.