Under the Skin

by Michel Faber

  ‘Could be,’ said Isserley in a small voice, barely audible. She was wrung out. Evanton was very near now, and she would need all her remaining energy to ease him out of the car.

  ‘You’d make a fucking good model,’ he informed her, looking her up and down again. ‘Page three material.’

  She sighed, trying to flash a wry grin.

  ‘Maybe I’d need smaller breasts, eh?’ she suggested. ‘Like them supermodels.’ Her awkward imitation of his uncouth phrasing sounded false and pitifully ingratiating; she’d lost her grip. God, what must he think!

  ‘Fuck them supermodels!’ he urged her, in a tone almost of gruff reassurance. ‘Your body’s way better. They’re not natural, them women. They must take stereoids. Like them Russian runners. Shrinks their tits and gives ‘em a deep voice and a must-ash. The things that go on in this fuckin’ world. There’s no limit. And nobody puts their foot down. Mystifies me.’

  ‘The world is a strange place,’ she agreed. Then: ‘We’re almost there.’

  ‘Where?’ he demanded suspiciously.

  ‘Evanton,’ she reminded him. ‘That’s as far as I’m going.’

  ‘Oh, I don’t think so,’ he responded, in a dull, almost inward tone. ‘You can go a bit further than that, I’m sure.’

  Isserley’s heart began to beat harder.

  ‘No,’ she insisted, ‘Evanton is as far as I go.’

  The hitcher reached inside his overalls and pulled out a large grey Stanley knife with its bright triangular blade already unsheathed.

  ‘Just keep going,’ he said softly.

  Isserley clasped the steering wheel tight, struggling to keep her breathing under control.

  ‘You don’t want to do this,’ she said.

  That got a laugh out of him at last.

  ‘Turn left just before the next road,’ he said.

  ‘It would be better … for both of us …’ she panted, ‘if we just stopped … and I let you out.’ Her left index finger was trembling above the icpathua toggle.

  He appeared not to have heard her. An old church with windows cemented shut was looming on the left-hand side, with a long gravel path beside it, disappearing into scrubland.

  ‘This is it coming up now,’ he advised her quietly.

  Isserley looked in the rear-view mirror. The nearest car was perhaps a hundred yards behind her. If she could just bring herself to step on the accelerator, and then slow down at much shorter notice than usual, she could, by the time it caught up, be safely parked in a layby, windows opaque.

  She flipped the icpathua toggle.

  ‘Turn left here, I said!’ the hitcher yelled. ‘Left!’

  Panic rising up in her like a gas through a liquid, she misjudged the gears of her car and yanked at them with a stomach-churning braying. In the same moment, she glanced down at the passenger seat. The trousers of the baldhead’s overalls, she realized now, were as thick as cowhide and covered in an extra yellow layer of something resembling tarpaulin. The icpathua needles had simply failed to make an impression.

  She felt a sudden stab of pain in her side. It was the point of the Stanley knife, digging into her flesh through the thin fabric of her top.

  ‘Yes! Yes!’ she hissed anxiously, flipping the indicator toggle up and turning into the path he wanted. Gravel clattered under the wheels and thumped loudly against the belly of the chassis. Her hands wrenched at the steering wheel, overcompensating for the sudden turn, and with every heaving breath she felt the sting of the blade in her side.

  ‘O?, OK!’ she cried.

  He removed the blade and, with his free hand, reached over to steady the steering wheel. His grip was firm but gentle, as if he were teaching her something about driving. His hand was twice the size of hers.

  ‘Please think … about this,’ panted Isserley.

  He didn’t reply, but removed his hand from the steering wheel, evidently satisfied that she was doing an adequate job now. The car was puttering through a neglected landscape of low scrub and the rotted remains of hay-bales. Up ahead, a cluster of cheap purpose-built farm huts loomed, skeletons of fragmented concrete and twisted steel. The A9 had all but disappeared from the rear-view mirror, peeping through indistinctly like a distant river.

  ‘Turn right where you see that pile of tyres,’ the hitcher instructed her. ‘Then stop the car.’

  Isserley did as she was told. They had come to rest behind a solid wall three metres high and ten metres long. The rest of the building was gone, but the wall remained.

  ‘Right,’ said the hitcher.

  Isserley had her breathing under control now. She was trying to concentrate all of herself into her head. Only her wits could save her, for she could not run. She, who had once been able to sprint as fast as a lamb. She could not run.

  ‘I have friends in high places,’ she pleaded.

  He laughed again, a short dry sound like a cough.

  ‘Get out of the car,’ he said.

  They each opened a door and stepped out onto the rocky earth. He walked round to her side and closed the driver’s door. He pushed her against the flank of the car. Still holding the Stanley knife in one hand, he took hold of her black cotton top in the other, grabbing a handful of the material and yanking it upwards over her breasts. He was so strong that his wrenching of the bunched-up cloth, trapped under her armpits, almost lifted her off the ground. Hastily she raised her arms and allowed the top to be pulled away.

  ‘We can have a … a wonderfully pleasurable experience together,’ she offered, cupping her breasts in her gently quaking hands, ‘if you let me.’

  Impassive, red-faced, he positioned himself at arm’s length from her. Then, reaching forward, he began to knead her breasts with the hand that wasn’t holding the knife, each breast in turn, repeatedly trapping the nipples between thumb and forefinger, rolling them like pellets of dough.

  ‘Does that feel good, yeah?’ he said.

  ‘Mmmm,’ she replied. There was, of course, no feeling in her breasts at all, but there was plenty of feeling in her spine, which he was pressing against the bowed surface of the car. The cold, electrifying sweat of pain and fear prickled on her shoulders.

  He kneaded her breasts for an eternity. His breathing and hers mingled, cloudy in the frigid air. Far above, a pale sun came out and reflected off his dome-like head. The car’s engine made a ticking sound as its parts lost heat and were infiltrated by the chilly weather.

  Finally, the hitcher let her nipples go and took a step backwards.

  ‘Get on your knees,’ he said. While Isserley was hastening to obey, he ran his free hand down the central slit of his overalls, snapping the fasteners softly to reveal a surprisingly white singlet inside the filthy black and yellow wrapping. The overalls unfastened all the way to his crotch, yawning open. He pulled out his genitals, furry scrotal bulb and all. He stepped forward so that his penis swayed in front of her face.

  He held the Stanley knife to the nape of her neck and let her feel the edge of the blade through her hair.

  ‘I don’t wanna feel no teeth, understand?’ he said.

  His penis was grossly distended, fatter and paler than a human’s, with a purplish asymmetrical head. At its tip was a small hole like the imperfectly-closed eye of a dead cat.

  ‘I understand,’ she said.

  After a minute with his urine-flavoured flesh in her mouth, the knife-blade on her neck was lifted slightly, replaced by hard stubby fingers.

  ‘That’s enough,’ he groaned, squeezing a handful of her hair.

  Stepping back, he allowed his penis to slip out of her mouth. Without warning, he grabbed her elbow and pulled it upwards. Isserley didn’t have time to tense her muscles into a characteristic vodsel shape, and her arm bent freely at several joints, a zig-zag of unmistakably human angles. The hitcher did not appear to notice. This, more than anything else so far, filled Isserley with nauseous terror.

  Once she was standing, the hitcher nudged her further along the car until she was agai
nst the bonnet.

  ‘Turn around,’ he said.

  She obeyed, and he immediately grasped her green velvety trousers and tore them down to her knees with a single jolt.

  ‘Jesus,’ he growled from behind her. ‘You been in a car accident?’

  ‘Yes,’ she whispered. ‘I’m sorry.’

  For a heady moment she thought he was discouraged, but then she felt the flat of his hand on her back, pushing her forward onto the car’s bonnet.

  Desperately, she searched for the right word, the word that might make him stop. It was a word she knew, but had only ever seen written – in fact, only this morning, a vodsel had spelled it out. She’d never heard it spoken.

  ‘Murky,’ she pleaded.

  Both his hands were on the small of her back, the butt of the Stanley knife pressing against her spine. His penis was poking and shoving in between her thighs, straining for entry.

  ‘Please,’ she begged, suddenly inspired. ‘Let me show you. It will be better for you. I promise.’

  Allowing herself to slump flat against the bonnet, her breasts and cheek squashed against the smooth metal, she laid her hands on the cheeks of her buttocks and pulled them apart. Her genitals, she knew, were buried forever inside a mass of ugly scar tissue caused by the amputation of her tail. But the scar lines themselves might resemble the cleft of a vodsel’s sex.

  ‘I don’t see nothing,’ he grunted.

  ‘Come closer,’ she urged him, turning her head painfully to watch his domed head looming near. ‘It’s there. Look.’

  In a flash, exploiting the fact that she was balanced on the bonnet of the car, Isserley flung her arms backwards and upwards. She flung them like two whips, and her aim was precise. Two fingers of each hand plunged into each of the hitcher’s eyes, right up to the knuckles, right inside his hot clammy skull.

  Gasping, she yanked her fingers out again and slammed her hands on the car’s bonnet. She managed to right herself just as the baldhead was falling to his knees; in a frenzy, trousers around her ankles, she leapt sidelong out of his way as he pitched forwards, his face rebounding against the bumper with a meaty smack.

  ‘Ugh! Ugh! Ugh!’ she cried in disgust, wiping her fingers hysterically on her naked thighs. ‘Ugh! Ugh! Ugh!’

  She pulled her trousers up and stumbled over to her discarded top, snatching it off the ground where it lay.

  ‘Ugh! Ugh! Ugh!’ she cried as she fought her way back into the wet and muddy garment. A slick of grit scraped her shoulders and elbows as she pulled the sleeves down to her quaking wrists.

  She scrambled back into her car and switched on the ignition. The engine coughed back to life; she revved it noisily. She reversed away from the baldhead’s body, gears clashing, then stalled.

  Just as she was about to restart the engine and drive off, she couldn’t resist wiping her fingers one more time, with the cloth she used for the windscreen. She noticed that a sizeable wedge of one of her fingernails was missing. She bashed the steering wheel with her palms. Then she got out of the car and went back to the hitcher’s body to retrieve what must at all costs not be found and analysed.

  It took some time, and required her to improvise tools from the surrounding vegetation.

  When she’d finished, she got in her car and drove away, back to the main road.

  Other cars beeped at her as she tried to turn into their midst.

  She had her lights on high beam.

  If she wanted to join their peaceable procession, that was not allowed.

  9

  ISSERLEY DROVE DIRECTLY to Tarbat Ness, to a jetty she knew there. It was at the bottom of a short and dangerously steep road marked by a traffic sign depicting a stylized car falling into stylized ocean waves.

  Isserley drove carefully, parked neatly near the tip of the jetty, pulled the handbrake back as if retrieving something which might get lost otherwise. Then she leaned her arms on the steering wheel and gave herself permission to feel whatever was coming to her. Nothing came to her.

  The sea was dead still and steely grey. Isserley stared at it through the windscreen, unblinking, for a long time. Seals were known to play here; there was a sign saying so, somewhere on the road behind her. She stared at the sea for perhaps two hours, determined that nothing should escape her. The sea grew darker, an expanse of tinted glass. If there were any seals hidden below, none broke the surface.

  In time, the tide rose silently, licking at the jetty. Isserley didn’t know if the water would rise so far that her car would be lifted up and carried into the sea. If the water sucked her under she supposed she would have to drown. She’d been a strong swimmer once upon a time, but that was with a very different body from the one she had now.

  She tried to motivate herself to switch on the ignition and drive away to safety, but just couldn’t manage it. Thinking of somewhere else she could be was an impossible challenge. This was the place she’d decided to go when she’d still had the spirit to make decisions; now that spirit was gone. She would stay here. The sea would either take her or it would leave her be. What did it really matter?

  The longer Isserley waited on the jetty, the more she felt as if she had only just arrived, had only been here for a matter of moments. The sun moved across the heavens like the deceptive glow of distant headlights that never got any closer. Water from the North Sea knocked gently on the underside of the car. Isserley continued looking through the windscreen. Something important was eluding her. She would wait here until it came to her. She would wait forever if necessary.

  A large cloud in the darkening sky was changing shape all the time. Though she was unaware of any wind, there must be powerful forces up there, shaping the cloud, finding it unsatisfactory, sculpting it into something different. It began as a floating map of a continent, then got compressed into a ship, then grew into something very like a whale. Eventually, towards nightfall, it lapsed into something larger, more diffuse, abstract, meaningless.

  Darkness came and Isserley had still not had enough time to decide what to do next. The car rocked slightly, butted from beneath by the haunches of the waves. She would go when she was ready.

  The night passed in seconds, surely no more than a few thousand of them. Isserley did not sleep. She sat at the wheel and watched the night pass. Sometime during these dark hours, the sea gave up trying to intimidate her, and slunk away.

  At sunrise, Isserley blinked several times. She removed her glasses, but the problem was the windscreen itself, which was misty with condensation. Her own body was steaming hot and clammy, as if she had been sleeping. She could not have been sleeping. It was impossible. She had not let her guard down for an instant.

  She switched on the windscreen wipers, to clear the luminous fog. Nothing happened. She switched on the ignition. Her engine coughed feebly and shuddered, then was still.

  ‘If that’s the way you want it,’ she said aloud. Her voice shook with rage.

  She would have to do something about that.

  An hour or so later, the windows had cleared by themselves. Isserley became aware of a pain in her side. She brushed at the spot with her fingertips; the fabric of her top was stuck to her flesh with what must be blood. She tugged it loose irritably. She had assumed she was uninjured.

  Experimentally, she tried to swivel her hips where she sat, or lift her thighs. Nothing happened. Below the waist, she might as well be dead. She would have to do something about that.

  She wound the window of the driver’s side down a fraction and peered through the slit. The tide had retreated from the shore, exposing jellified seaweed, half-decomposed jetsam, and bony rocks pimpled with those little molluscs that people – that vodsels – collected. Whelks. That was the word. Whelks.

  In the distance, two figures were walking along the shore, towards Isserley’s jetty. Isserley watched them advance, willing them to turn back. Her beam of thought, for all its furious intensity, failed to cross the divide. They did not turn back.

  At a range of fifty metr
es or so, Isserley identified the figures as a female vodsel and a dog of unverifiable gender. The female vodsel was small and delicate, dressed in a sheepskin coat and a green skirt. Her legs were stick-thin, sheathed in black, shod in green gumboots. The hair on her head was long and thick, blowing across her face. As she walked along the rocks, she called the dog’s name, in a voice wholly unlike a male vodsel’s.

  The dog wasn’t naked; it wore a red tartan coat. It wobbled as it walked, struggling to keep its balance on the slimy rocks. It looked around frequently at the female vodsel.

  Eventually, when the two of them had come close enough to Isserley for her to consider putting her glasses on, they stopped in their tracks. The female vodsel waved. Then she turned around and walked away, the dog at her heels.

  Isserley exhaled in relief. She resumed watching the clouds, watching the sea.

  When at last the car seemed to have dried out in the sun, she tried switching on its ignition again. The engine started obediently. She switched it off. She would go when she was ready.

  Turning her head to the passenger side, she stared down at the pock-marked seat as she flipped the icpathua toggle. Two silvery needles stabbed through the upholstery, two thin jets of liquid squirted into the air.

  Isserley leaned back in her seat, closed her eyes, and started mewling.

  10

  ISSERLEY ALWAYS DROVE straight past a hitch-hiker when she first saw him, to give herself time. That’s what she’d always done. That’s what she would do now. There was a hitcher in her sights. She drove past him.

  She was looking for big muscles. Puny, scrawny specimens were no use to her. This one was puny and scrawny. He was no use to her. She drove on.

  It was dawn. The physical world did not exist for her, apart from the ribbon of grey tarmac on which she was driving. Nature was a distraction. She refused to be distracted.

  The A9 seemed empty, but you couldn’t trust it. Anything could happen, any time. That’s why she kept her eyes on the road.

  Three hours later, there was another hitcher. It was a female. Isserley wasn’t interested in females.