I don’t know what’s happening.
I don’t know how it’s happening.
It’s all falling off.
It’s tearing and coming apart, and I can't do anything to stop it.
I’ve tried. I’ve tried sewing and gluing and stapling it back together, but it all comes apart to no avail.
At first, I tried sewing them up, piercing my skin with a thin needle and dragging the thread through. Surgical sutures don’t come in a normal first aid kit, so the fibers caught on my flesh as I pulled it. But as soon as I tied the knot, the string tore my skin as if I'd tried to sew myself closed with cheese wire.
After many desperate attempts, I went and rummaged through my desk to find a stapler. With the needle I had tried to be careful, sanitizing everything with rubbing alcohol and wearing latex gloves. But after several failed sutures, I was reduced to a state of shock and dull panic that caused me to leave my better judgement on the side of the road, alongside bloodstained lengths of poly cotton thread.
I lined the open stapler up with the wound, the split in my skin now rougher than it had been originally after many failed attempts at closing it. My hands shook slightly as I prepared to push down, the blood that was still running through my veins, pumping with adrenaline that helped me ignore the pain.
There was a loud ka-chunk as the ends of the metal entered my flesh and bent into place, sharp, but not sharp enough to be intended for medical use. Small pieces of skin tore off around the staple as it pushed through the edges, leaving the tear even more uneven.
Ka-chunk
Ka-chunk
Ka-chunk
Ka-chunk
Ka-chunk
Sharp metallic pain shot through my thigh as the staples pierced my flesh in quick succession, followed by the sound of ripping flesh as the skin pulled away from itself. The staples sat uselessly over the wound as I hyperventilated, the dull panic that caused my shaking earlier turning intense and cutting.
This can’t be happening. Why won’t it close?
I stumbled back over to my desk, my legs threatening to give out under me from the pain. I rifled through the drawers once more, retrieving a small bottle of super glue. People used this to close wounds in survival situations, right? This would work. This had to work. I staggered back to where I sat on the floor There were thin streaks of blood on the hardwood where I had been, taking the shape of the burst seams that covered my body. Some of the worst were almost six inches long; most were closer to three. Small bits of skin from my failed attempts littered the floor around my seat, some still held together with a staple. As I sat back down my breathing slowed, but my heart still pounded in my chest with twisted anticipation for what was to come.
I took my place and inspected the lacerations— could they really be called lacerations if nothing seemed to cause them? I uncapped the glue and started applying it to one side of the cleanest tear. I tried my best to not get it on the fat that sat beneath my skin, yellow, irregular, and bulbous in shape, covered in red. I pressed the sides together. An itchy, burning sensation spread along the length of the wound.
I sat there for 15 minutes letting the glue set my injury into place. When I finally let go, a deep pulling sensation covered my thigh. The same sharp burning feeling from the staples started to return tenfold. It covered my leg in a blanket of agony and threatened to pull large chunks from my flesh. I was frozen, I couldn't move. I don’t know what I would've done, what would’ve fixed it. The tear opened again, wider and gaping as what I had glued stayed together and the pressure forced unharmed flesh open.
I stared at it for a moment: the new, ugly gashes that forced themselves onto my thigh. My breaths were deep and ragged as I came down from the hell that felt unending in the moment. Relief seeped through me along my nerves as it finally stopped, my grip on my thigh slowly releasing.
I sat there with my thoughts, though they were unfinished and broken. My mind was a maelstrom of “why”s and “what if”s. I didn’t know how long I'd been sitting there. I didn’t know when the pain spread all over my body again.
I remember feeling sharp pains all over my body when it started. It felt like it began in my bones and shot up through muscle and fat and veins, quickly making its way up to my skin, leaving my pale flesh spotty with yellows and purples as something pierced the vessels and left my skin covered in bruises. The pain had started a while before the tears; maybe three? Four weeks? I’m not sure. Once the pain got too intense to go out anymore, I stopped keeping track of the days.
I look down. I can see something inside the wound, sprouting out from under the thick layer of fatty tissue. I don’t feel any resistance as I slowly lift up my skin to get a better look at what’s underneath.
My hands dart from the opening in my flesh, hitting the floor beside me and adding to what is quickly turning into a very thin layer of blood covering the hardwood. My breathing quickens again, the panic returning in full force as I attempt to comprehend what I have found beneath my skin.
What looks like a small spike— no, a thorn– emerges from my wound. Small and slightly off white with semi-translucent crimson all over.
That can’t be a thorn. I don’t know what it is, but it cannot be a thorn. And it cannot be the cause of all of this. One little thing couldn’t do this. And it’s probably not even there! I must be hallucinating from the pain.
I want to stop. I want to call someone and have them take me to the hospital. But who would want to see me like this? Literally falling apart, bursting at the seams. I doubt that even the most seasoned paramedics and EMTs could stomach the sight of what I've become. Peeling and horrible, almost as if a sunburn went all the way down my body. Nothing but a pile of meat and tissue. Pathetic and disgusting. And even if they could stand to look at me, what would they do? There is no skin to graft. Stitches and staples do more harm than good. It’s impossible for me to survive this, and they’d probably let the confident doctors in to gawk at my condition as I lay there dying, delirious and pumped full of pain meds. I’d become an entry in a medical journal before I've had the chance to be frozen in the morgue. Maybe I should just deal with this myself and let some poor fucker find my flayed form on the floor. I’ve been sentenced to death; might as well find out who makes up the jury.
I gingerly lift up the edge of the wound and begin to pull. There is no struggle other than gentle snaps of tissue as it gives way to the tug of my fingers. I never realized just how thin skin is. I knew it was made up of incredibly thin layers, but I always assumed it went deeper than this. I don’t feel scared anymore. It feels like this was inevitable, like I was meant to go in some horrible way with my whole life ahead of me and only the city ambiance for comfort.
About a third of the skin on the front of my thigh comes up like a sheet. There is no extra pain. No excruciating agony added on top of what I already felt. Just the constant undercurrent of discomfort and pain that I've sat with for the last few months. I stare at it apathetically, placing it on the floor with little regard. I look back at my exposed muscles and fat, a gaping hole in my thigh that once held a tattoo of flowers, lily of the valley, for my mother. She used to say I was like The Illustrated Man, covered in pictures that told stories. I don’t think she’d like the one that I'm telling now. There are more thorns, the tallest of them at the border of the gash, but there are plenty more just peeking through within the perimeter. They somehow retain their whiteness, despite the red that surrounds them all, blood and muscle trying to smother its brightness.
I keep peeling. It’s the same as before: horrific, the skin lifting as if turning the page of a book. I peel away part of an illustration of a zippo lighter, drawn to look like it was engraved with a flaming skull. A sense of relief washes over me as the flesh comes away, and the pain fades ever so slightly. It doesn’t make sense that mutilating myself would make me feel better, but I don't think I care anymore. I just need to not feel so awful.
I keep peeling and pulling. Images and drawings that took hours upon hours fall away from my body as I frantically search for release from the unrelenting anguish that has held me for weeks.
Maybe it’s always been there, actually. Maybe it just got harder to ignore.
More spikes become visible; more muscle and fat and tissue. I slowly become more naked than I have ever been, stretch marks and moles and freckles removed to make space for sharp bone and blood. With each piece of skin I shed, the aches and pains let up. I feel like I can breathe again, like I lived for so long inside of a coffin that was several sizes too small and I never noticed.
The floor steadily fills up with my shredded flesh. The pain is barely there now. Nothing but ghostly aches as a reminder of what I had once been. I see my body in the mirror, now a mass of muscle, bone, and viscera, wet with blood and shining red underneath the warm light of the bulbs on my ceiling. Small patches of skin hang onto my back, the ones that I couldn't reach. I’m sure that they’ll fall off in time, however much of it I have left. I look like an ècorchè that was never meant to be anything but a mass of brownish clay, too disturbing to have color.
I can’t bring myself to be scared of the figure in the mirror. It is me and I am it, after all. It's pointless to be afraid of myself. Eventually you get past a point where it makes more sense to be scared of what other people will think or do to you because of it.
I can move more now that it doesn’t hurt much. I go to touch one of the many spines that poke out of my tissue. It makes sense that you can’t feel without skin, I guess. But…
I dig my fingertip into the sharp point of the bone, curiously testing the limits of what is left of my senses. A sharp ache blossoms where the spike entered the tissue, small and stabbing, travelling through the rest of my finger and down my hand. I keep pressing down, searching through the red and yellow for a sign, for something. I don’t know what I'm looking for but I am frantic with the need to find it. And I do.
After almost a minute of forcing bone into my muscle and moving my finger from side to side and up and down, I flinch away. Something animal in the back of my brain flicks on and forces me to pay attention to its screams and pleas and growls of “stop”. The pain I pushed into myself wasn’t good or fun. It had little exhilaration or anticipation. It felt nothing like the feeling of dripping candle wax or pushing on a bruise; it was just pain for the sake of pain. And something still human in me—something still alive in me—made me stop.
There is mostly relief, but deep inside of myself there is also something disappointed and scared. Scared of what I'll become and that I'll still be able to feel it. Disappointed that I won't be able to disappear into my own mind until this is all over. It doesn’t hurt, not like anything I’ve felt before, but I'm drying and scabbing and a deeper pain is blossoming from underneath my muscle.
Fuck.
I was being ridiculous when I thought that peeling off my skin would help with pain. It was idiotic and rash and I should've just called an ambulance. Maybe then I could've lived. Maybe I could've at least been in less pain. It’s coming back stronger and deeper, closer to bone and radiating up to the tips of my thorns.
My jaw shakes with anger. My hands clench and ball up, digging thorns into flesh once more. Breaths come fast and shallow and frantic as my brain cycles through thoughts without precision or care, not stopping to linger on any one in particular.
My hands move without warning, grabbing the closest object to me and throwing it. The stapler hits the wall with a heavy thump and leaves a decently sized dent at the point of impact. I stare at it for a few moments, eyes slightly widened and mouth agape.
I scramble to my feet as screams rip from my throat. No words escape me, just a stream of incoherent screeches and yells as I destroy whatever I can get my hands on. Pillows rip open and blankets tear as I use the sharp points of my new form to ruin the room around me. Glass and ceramic are now no more than shards as things are thrown and smashed. Plastic is bent and broken at my hands. I do not worry that neighbors could hear. I am enraged. I am infuriated. I am done.
I am but a mass of flesh and organs and pain. I am unthinking of anything other than my emotions and my hurt. Every action I take is torture; I cannot bring myself to care. I am inhuman. I am disturbing. I am disgusting.
Time does not pass. The Earth does not spin. All that exists is this room and the need to unmake it. My vocal cords bleed and rip. Thorns grow out of me with every yell and scream, becoming longer and bigger. I ruin. I demolish. I decimate.
I fall to my knees. Agony laces my every limb. Adrenaline is the only thing that prevents exhaustion from overtaking me. My anger hasn’t lessened; it still wracks my brain, shakes my body, and fills my soul.
I need to destroy something. But there is nothing left.
The tips of my fingers dig into my shoulders, thorns acting as sharp nails. The spikes tear through my muscles rapidly, severing the intricate weaving of meat that holds me together. I grip chunks of my chest tissue, rending them from my body and dropping them uselessly at my sides. Fat and flesh and sinew is pulled away from my form as I create a cavity on the upper left side of my torso.
I reach my ribcage, the gateway keeping me from my grail. I curl my fingers under my ribs— one above and one below— and roughly pull apart my bones. They break away with a loud snap, but the grotesque noises my body is making do nothing to phase me. I continue to rip myself apart. I squelch and crack and crunch. I do not stop until I reach my destination.
I reach into the hole in my chest and yank out my heart, tearing away pericardium and covering my hand in thick blood and bodily fluid. The organ appears warm and inviting— wet, glistening, and soft. My vision is slowly blackening at the edges and becoming fuzzy. Finally.
As I feel the pain start to fade one final time, I’m enveloped in a thick warmth. I bring the vessel to what used to be my lips. I caress it with my teeth, now sharper than before, small pinpricks opening on the meaty surface.
I violently bite down, my own flesh and blood flooding my mouth as I wither and wane and fall apart one final time. I move the viscera around in my mouth, letting the coppery taste blur every other sense as I lie there. My eyes cross and uncross. My vision narrows. I feel my organs ticking down. Eventually, the realization sets in.
It’s over, I sigh.
I will be free.