The Oeuvre

by Greg James

  Amanda hauled herself to her feet and clambered forwards into the driver’s seat, “You do realise that when we start this thing, the skins are going to swarm, right?”

  “I do realise that, yes. Let’s go.”

  “Aye-aye, cap’n.”

  Amanda let the clutch go, pushed in the ignition key and turned it. The engine of the old ice cream van juddered into life. Marie smiled at Amanda and Amanda smiled back, this time the smile was warmer.

  The ice cream van clattered along the streets, bald tires slip-sliding across tarmac, the hubcaps rattling, threatening to fall off and roll away. The wheels occasionally found traction as they ran over a stray skin, catching it and grinding it down into dead cells.

  Marie’s heart thumped with satisfaction each time that happened. The headlights of the van had been smashed in long ago so Amanda drove along at an even twenty, slow enough to keep an eye out for signs of life but fast enough to frustrate the skins.

  In the rear-view mirror, Marie could see the fluttering moth-like scramble of many skins, they were steadily growing in number and she could hear them chanting their perverse mantra.

  “Suckyoudry-suckyoudry-suckyoudry!”

  She could feel the hairs on her own skin prickling at the sound made by those croaking throats.

  “There! There! Look, over there!” Amanda shouted.

  Marie saw it, a light; pure electric light emanating from a window.

  The closer they came to it and the closer the skins came to them. It was coming from the windows of a shop, a small cornershop, the light seeping out around faded posters and tattered card displays. Marie glimpsed brightly-coloured prozzie cards and felt-tip pen scrawls advertising garden fetes, flats for rent and car boot sales as she stopped the van. The skins were so close.

  Marie took her hand and they opened the van door together.

  *

  Marie was shaking at the door, banging on it, shouting through the glowing glass – it was locked. Looking back, she saw the skins swarming over one another, a cannibalistic tumult of empty, whispering sacking. Wizened mouths and eye-holes muttering constantly, starving and yawning.

  “Suckyoudry-suckyoudry-suckyoudry!”

  So close she could see their beaten scars, weathered tattoos and beauty spots - the markings of all the people that the skins had once been. Marie felt a hand on her shoulder draw her away from the door.

  Amanda smiled, winked and hefted the crowbar. “Under the passenger seat, just what we need.”

  She braced it against the door frame, wedging it into the slit of space there.

  “Come t’us, let us eat you up, chubby-chubby tits!”

  There was a crunch, a crack and the door opened. A tiny bell jingled, making the skins wither in on themselves, retreat and cry out, flailing at the meat escaping them. Inside the shop, Amanda slid the bolts hard across. Marie slid two hefty boxes across the floor from under the counter and jammed them up against the door.

  “I had to break the lock.”

  Marie nodded, “I know, but this should keep them out.”

  “For a while. We need to be quick and see if anyone is in here.”

  “They must be. The light - it's the only normal one we've seen.”

  “Perhaps but I don't trust this world, the way it is now.”

  “Did you trust it the way it was before?”

  “True, you're right. Let's check the upstairs. They could be hiding.”

  Something could be hiding, thought Marie, but she didn't say that out loud.

  The shop itself was stacked from floor to ceiling with shelving. There were two parallel aisles that you could get down if you kept your arms flat by your sides. Bottles, tins, cans and jars teetered in the corners. There was everything in here you could want as long as you didn’t mind processed food.

  This is an organic produce freak’s nightmare, Marie thought.

  At the back of the shop, there was an open doorway, lengths of yellowed plastic tape hung down across it. They fluttered, scraping over one another. Behind the hanging tape was darkness. They could smell breadcrumbs on raw meat and hear the dull, unvarying hum of fridges. Marie raised a hand to reach in, to fumble for a light switch. The tongues of tape snapped at her, crackling like a corpse’s vocal cords. Amanda reached forward, retrieving Marie’s hand then, kissing it on the knuckles gently.

  “Let me go first.”

  Through the storeroom, they came to the stairs that led to a small flat over the shop. The door was open, handle shattered and lock splintered. The shadows and shapes beyond, barely resolving, creaked and sighed as the two women approached. A band of light sliced through the gloom of the flat, slipping through the crack of a further door within. Through one door and then another to reach the light, thought Marie, very deep.

  The flat smelled of boiled vegetables, spilt sulphur and the walls were plastered over with old stains. They came to the door through which the light was shining, the light that led them to this place. It was as patched with mould and marked by decay as the rest of the domicile. Amanda let her palm rest against the surface of the painted wood and Marie did the same, feeling a sensation that was neither heat, nor static but something else, utterly weird.

  She pushed the door, let it swing in slow; revealing the room that like the Pharos of Alexandria had led them here. It was then that the suited figure in the threadbare armchair rose to its feet and turned to face them, trailing long strips of yellowed cloth that clung to its face. Cataract-bright eyes blindly stared and a mouth without lips or teeth wetly gnawed at the empty air.

  The man was dead, his skull bludgeoned in. Amanda stood over him, wiping scabs of brain from the crowbar onto her sleeve. Her brow was pebbled with a cold and oily sheen of sweat. Marie knelt down by the body, tentative fingers reaching for the mask of tattered cloth, peeling it back to reveal a skinless patch of the man's face.

  “Jesus!” said Amanda.

  “It's like one of the skins, this thing on his face, like he wanted to be one of them.”

  Amanda gagged, “So much that he cut the skin off from his own face? Urgh. Let's go.”

  As they left the Pharos room, Marie cast a look back at the dead man, bit at her lip and then she turned out the light, leaving him to rot in the dark.

  Amanda was looking out through the gaps in the shop's window display, checking on the skins. They were still there, drifting around, scrabbling about.

  We’re the only fresh food left, after all, she thought.

  “So, what do we do now then?” Marie asked.

  “Stay here.”

  “Like you did in the van?”

  “Like I did in the van.”

  “But that means we’ve just gone from square one to square one.”

  “Yep.”

  “I thought the plan was to get out.”

  “That was the plan if we found some other people and if we then had numbers on our side. We have neither.”

  “We should still do something. We can’t just sit here.”

  Then, Amanda was hugging her so tight that it hurt her ribs. Then, she was kissing her and, for a moment, Marie held back. Then, she was easing, relaxing, melting a little, she let the kiss go on.

  Why am I doing this? Letting this happen?

  But it was too late for thinking.

  Marie squirmed as Amanda’s fingers penetrated her, working at soft velvet and silken folds until they were wet, wriggling and turning them as Wendy’s muscles sucked hard on her knuckles. She ran the grain of each of her fingertips over the bud nestled there, coaxing it, teasing it until Marie smiled and her muscles became a strangling ring, pinching at the roots of Amanda's fingers. Then, she was giving in, giving way, running over with a warm wash of slickness and Amanda withdrew her fingers, licking some of the shimmering deposits from it.

  “Y'know, you taste good.”

  She let Marie lick away the rest and then they slept together.

  *

  It was the scratching that woke her. Sh
rugging off slumber, Amanda uncurled from around Marie. Marie snorted in her sleep, mumbling a little, Amanda’s departure disturbing her. Then Marie came to because Amanda was shaking her hard.

  “The glass! The skins’re breaking through the glass!”

  Marie was on her feet slithering, sleepy-eyed, down the aisle towards the shop front. The great panes of glass were grinding and grating, coming loose, cards and paper adverts scattering across the floor. The glass shook violently. Tins fell from shelves; denting, splitting, spilling their contents, creating processed puddles of pease pudding, soggy grains and beans. The glass was not going to hold out much longer. Great cracks were spreading across it and the skins outside were exulting, letting out triumphant shrieks. They would be in the shop soon. Marie could hear them, muttering, chittering and rustling amongst themselves, deciding on the one they would bring down, suck dry and pick clean.

  “We’ve got to get out of here.”

  “Where though?” asked Amanda.

  “The back way, through the store room, it's the only way out of here.”

  Into the blacked-out storeroom, crossing that threshold of long, licking plastic tongues once more.

  Krakt!

  A spidering web of white was spreading across one of the glass panes. They could both hear the creak and crack of perished fingernails gaining purchase. Amanda snatched up Marie’s hand and dragged her along to the storeroom's portal. Its shadows were waiting for them, through that hanging yellow fringe. The corpse was still upstairs, Marie saw it rising behind her eyes as the strips of yellow were hanging down, fluttering, beckoning before her eyes. She pushed the rattling plastic aside, plunging in as she heard glass crashing to the ground.

  The skins were in. There were no choices left.

  Over the shelves, through the aisles, around the counters came the skins. The gristled holes of their nostrils snuffling and snorting; picking up the scent of the fresh meat they had stalked here.

  “comeout-comeout-whereveryouare!”

  Sagging lips tore on the jagged edges of broken tins, tasting tomato sauce, wishing it were blood.

  “Littlegirls-littlegirls you-cannothide-forever!”

  Rustling towards the rear of the shop, the skins felt a chill hurry over them, noticing a rustling that was very like their own.

  “Suckyoudry-suckyoudry-suckyoudry!”

  The plastic lengths masking the doorway rattled at them, threatening them. The skins caterpillared closer to the snap-cracking yellow strips. The skins hissed at them, it was the sound of sandpaper being drawn down hard over itself, they spat into the noisome dark, into the portal where their meal had fled, where they could not follow.

  “They’re not coming in!” crowed Marie, “They’re not coming in after us, Amanda.”

  “Yeah, I know.”

  “Well, we’re safe then, aren’t we?”

  Amanda shook her head, knowing Marie couldn’t see it, there, in the dark, not yet.

  “Yeah, they’re not coming in. You know why they’re not coming in?”

  Marie went quiet, she heard it move, breathing.

  “We’re not alone in here, Marie.”

  Marie was listening to the sound, tracing its location by echo because it was not coming from the humming fridges. It was coming from right behind her. A heavy hand fell on her shoulder and a stale powder pattered into her hair. Marie pulled away and turned around. It was one of them, a thing from her dream. Its strange skinless flesh was not truly flesh but another substance altogether flowing and shimmering in time with the stilted breaths that issued from a mouth that had rotted away to become an oscillating cystic hole lined with the flaking nubs of what once were teeth. It lunged forwards; dead fingers snagging in Marie’s hair as they did before, pulling her towards it. She swatted at the tightening knuckles, trying to twist around, to bite. It was no use. It drew her into a last embrace, into a kiss that tasted of bitter nightshade and prickling soft nettles. Fingers hooked in between her skin and her flesh, stripping one from the other. The pain was not immediate, it came slow and crawling, following the unpeeling pathways being created, laying bare the brawn of the meat, then the blood and the bones. Marie heard a sad and lonely cry, and she knew it was her own.

  Then she died.

  Amanda stood back, just watching the show. A slight, sad smile playing over her face.

  Marie's skin lay dead and empty at her feet; wet eyeholes staring out at what she had seen. The enseamed depths where the wet thing that was wearing Amanda's skin came from; where the meat that the skins consumed was deposited, violated and endlessly torn apart by numb, gnawing mouths. The thing called Amanda went to the thing that ate Marie's meat, allowing its gross embrace, receiving its loathsome kiss; and she let it suck upon her until she too was dead, empty and dry.

  The Shed

  She had always wondered about the shed at the bottom at the garden. She could not remember a time when it had not been there. More significantly, she could not remember a time when Father had ever been near it. He’d certainly never entered it while she had been around. She was, of course, around a lot because there was nowhere else to go in town. It was small and plain and the people were uninteresting. Dull long faces glimpsing out through the voile hanging in the dull, long windows of their dull, long houses. That was all she had ever seen of the townsfolk; those empty, empty faces.

  When she lay awake at night; imagining patterns onto the dull, long ceiling of her dull, long bedroom, she listened to her parents talking. Their conversations were dull and long; without emotion or inflection. They lulled her to sleep; allowing her to rest in a sympathetic oblivion before awakening to another dull, long day.

  There was so little to wonder about, it’s no wonder that she came to wondering about the shed at the bottom of the garden. It was old and the wood was warped. On one side, it was steadily sinking into the perpetually damp earth. It never seemed to stop raining here; in this town, in this life. She was sure it’d been raining on the day she was born and had never stopped since; downpours, drizzle, cloudbursts, and torrential. Even when the air seemed to be clearing, rain would begin falling again. Moss and mould clung to the darkly-soaked wood of the shed; creating growths that resembled gristled skin. It had no windows and only one door held fast by a padlock. Despite, the padlock, when the wind got up that door rattled and banged about. At least, she thought it was the door. There was nothing else that could possibly make that much noise in the night.

  She’d had some dreams where the rattling and banging were not the wind but the work of something else; a presence, a life-form growing in the shed – but that must be wrong because that’s not how babies were made. With that thought, she would sigh, turn over and go to sleep.

  The single interminable grey season of life wore on; rain, mist, fog and storms came and went. The house grew colder; an unsavoury immanence settling as dust settles itself over old things locked away in abandoned places. Mother and Father were no longer talking. Conversation had been exhausted and it looked like it had exhausted them. Meals were served barely warm with a sauce rather than gravy; everything tasted of nothing. Mother no longer tended the garden. She let it grow green, wicked and wild in the rain. She watched Father, his face somehow duller, somehow longer, as he observed mother’s behaviour; doing nothing himself except watch television and read the daily newspaper.

  He observes but he does not see, she thought. It was as if something had left him; gone away elsewhere, some last, vital trace. He simply sat and watched the rest of his life go by whilst shovelling watery potatoes and jellied beef into his mouth at regular intervals; smacking his lips with sloppy abandon and little dignity. He then retired to his chair in the corner and slumped there; barely looking up, never glancing at either of them until it was time to go bed. Though sometimes, Mother just left him there to sleep in the dark – if he did sleep.

  Thus, she lived even more alone with Mother; separated by silence, unable to talk of what was happening, what they were seein
g and feeling. The atmosphere in the house grew more and more pregnant with black awfulness. When she was awake in bed, she listened to the rattle and bang of the shed door in the midnight wind and thought on how it sounded like blows being struck against the wood from inside; desperate to break out. She wondered at the sound for long minutes and then longer hours until she could do nothing and her tired brain could do nothing but surrender to sleep.

  It began happening to Mother soon enough: a dulling of the eyes, a lengthening of the face, lustre leaving her skin. She started drinking; leaving emptied bottles, rather than plates, to form a chinking choir in the sink. She no longer cooked. All the food was either dry or cold. Everyone in the house suffered from stomach aches.

  Outside, the shed was sinking fast in its untended green. She tried not to look at it. Her parents sat silent, side by side, when she turned out the downstairs light. Both of them had arranged their chairs by the bay window at the front of the house. The window was covered over by dust and grime. Her stomach rumbled bitterly. Her tongue was parched. She slept and dreamt of Mother and Father dying as they sat down there doing nothing; staring out of that window in the same manner as every other man and woman in town. White long faces in deep dark rooms. Never sleeping. Never eating. Never drinking. Never resting. Never doing anything other than stare. Stare and wait and watch the rain. Waiting for something to happen. Something that never did.

  At dawn, she was awoken by a banging and rattling from the shed. She curled tightly in on herself as the thought was born in her mind – it sounds like there’s more than one thing trying to get out of there now.

  Mother and Father were not in the house when she went downstairs. She didn’t know why. There was a leaflet lying on the dining table; tattered and damp, the plain lettering blotchy. They’d gone to a meeting at the town hall. No details as to its purpose, just the time, the day and the place.

  So, on this day, she decided it was time to do what she had to do. Wading through the thick grass, she came to the door of the shed. The door was barely a door. The crumbling matter growing over the structure had fused the door and frame; making them one.