The Skin Room

by Morgan Fleetwood

  I dragged her into the flat, into her bedroom, laid her on the white duvet, slapped her face. No movement. No breath. I put my hand on her heart and lowered my ear to her nose. Still no breath.

  I opened her chest of drawers, searched among her make-up bottles and tubes, found a pocket mirror, went back to the bed, and bowed over her.

  No mist, no fog. A blank reflection. No life.

  Now what?

  Wasn’t this what I wanted? Wasn’t this my chance?

  I placed my hands over her eyes and cried over my hands. Tears rolled over my knuckles and onto her cheeks.

  I needed a drink to chill my nerves. I hunted around her apartment for a good while before eventually finding a bottle of red Burgundy in a too-warm cupboard. I uncorkscrewed the bottle and drank some of it straight down. It tasted of tannins and tree bark. Some of it dripped onto my clothes, but I did not care about my appearance. Not yet.

  Now I had everything I needed. I went over to the front door and turned the key twice. Clunk, clunk.

  She lay on the bed, unmoving, and I stood above her, watching, as though expecting her to wake up at any moment. I waited for ages, analyzing the scene, before deciding to search the house for the appropriate tools.

  I found a serrated carving knife in a drawer in the kitchen. This I would use later. Then I looked through her bathroom and saw a make-up set. I upturned the contents on the marble counter. There was good stuff here too. It was even better than Sonia’s collection. There was a minty smell in the air, that of dried-out toothpaste. My heels clicked the tiles. I returned to her bedroom. She had mirrors, plenty of them. This was agreeable. There was no point in waiting any longer as I didn’t know how much time I would have with her alone. There might be neighbors prying or policemen wanting to visit. I thought about you, Inspector. You were much on my mind. I thought of Sonia and the way you killed her and I knew what I had to do.

  I drank more wine first, to settle my nerves. The journey here had been long and tiresome. It was nighttime and the streets outside the window were lit by dolphin-colored streetlamps. The neighbors had parked in a neat line, like a multicolored thread, along one side of the street.

  I searched through her drawers for some candles. I knew I would have to do something about the smell eventually. I found some lavender-scented, octagonal-shaped candles in a drawer. I set them down on the floor, around the bed, and lit them one by one. The smell of burning matches tickled my nostrils.

  I turned to the bed and knew that it was time.

  I stripped Natalia naked. I stripped her dead body naked. Such broken beauty.

  Why? Why didn’t I leave her behind at Sonia’s flat?

  What did I need her for?

  Her skin, Inspector, her skin.

  She did not suffer—she was dead. A cerebral incident.

  I took out the Stanley knife and pressed it to the worry lines of her forehead.

  No. Not here. At the back. I rolled her onto her front. Natalia, what glory you possess. I pressured the Stanley knife against the gooseflesh of her nape. Severed. The blood gushed up like trapped oil. The goo colored my fingers—a cherry syrup. Smell of insides, so soon. Already. And I was merely scratching the surface.

  She did not move or groan or twitch or whine. It was like carving ice with water beneath, the color red.

  I moved the blade up towards her ear, dragging a long incision. Her bloodied hair was getting bloodier by the second. I stopped, went to the bathroom, snatched a towel, returned to wrap her hair in it.

  Protection, Inspector.

  A strange kind, I know.

  Now I proceeded with care, pulled her onto her side. Her tongue slipped out between her teeth and I pushed it back in, gripped the Stanley knife, continued the cut, over and around her ear. I rolled her onto her back, kept cutting—a gentle grating movement against the taut resistance of her flesh. The blade went in as far as the skull, the underlay. I scored a line over her forehead, dragging and slicing with the knife. I rolled her onto her other side, snaked the blade over and down past her ear. The blood milked over my fingers. Her tongue slid out again; I pushed it back in, rolled her onto her front, tugging the blade in a long, searing line to meet the first cut. Done. A crown. A scalp.

  Mine. All mine.

  It would not come off at first. There was a stickiness—the resistance of tendons and roots. My hands were splashed with red as though I’d managed a bloody childbirth. And wasn’t this a birth for me, a new beginning? I cut and incised and snipped and prized. The scalp came off with a thick sucking noise.

  I did not bother to wash it. I was so keen to try it on. I stood before the mirror and saw my red dress and my red hands. I took off the false red wig and put on Natalia’s scalp. The blood leaked down my forehead and neck, scalding my eyes. My very own crown of thorns…

  I smiled in a way I have never smiled before. Was it a female smile? Certainly I had not the figure of a woman, only the perfect blonde hair. I entered the bathroom to wash my hands, my dress, my back, my face, even my beautiful new blonde hair.

  I was wet, everything was bloody, soaking wet.

  I dried myself with a towel and left red stains on the previously untainted white. It was time to try out her make-up. I longed to apply her lipstick most of all, though I felt a mixture of attraction and revulsion as I drew her scarlet wax toward to my lips. In the end, I shivered, enjoying the unclean sensation. It made my mouth broader, more luminous. I smacked my lips together, content with the startling, new effect.

  I cooed to myself, words from a song:

  I’ve got you under my skin.

  I’ve got you deep in the heart of me.

  So deep in my heart that you’re really part of me.

  I’ve got you under my skin.

  I left the bathroom and strolled through her living room with its Van Gogh-yellow wallpaper. I passed by the James Dean poster on the wall and stopped to contemplate his movie-star image. He looked burnt out, beautiful, standing there, slightly hunched, hands in pockets, eyes off camera, staring into another world. Was he a dreamer, too?

  I entered her bedroom and tried on her clothes. Too small. Too damn tight. I hung my red dress on a radiator, sat on her bed next to her scalped cadaver, wrapped myself in her warm duvet.

  What next?

  Her skin. The scalp was only the start. I got myself bloody again as I tried to cut off her breasts. The Stanley was less useful here than I had hoped. I strode to the kitchenette to fetch the carving knife I had seen. I saw the magnets, Disney-themed, spread out in a scattergun pattern on the fridge. Surely she must have outgrown those? Were these her childhood icons? Pocahontas, Anastasia? I picked up the knife and watched its light play in my eyes, diamond-bright. The blade was serrated and perfectly sharp. It would be easier now to slice through the succulence.

  I did not look at her vagina or her fur. Untidy places, full of odors.

  I focused on her breasts and squeezed them lightly, first one side then the other, fingering their doughy mounds. In the end, I sliced them off easily and weighed them in my hands, surprised by the fat and the gristle. What to do with two, loose, severed breasts? I searched through her cabinets and drawers and found the largest bra I could find, packed in her bloodied boobs, tied the cups in place, and admired myself in the tall, night-filled mirror. I looked exceptionally beautiful, red lines running down my cheeks, and trickling south from my scalp. Blood lines dripped over my ribs, leaked out from under my bra.

  Was this who I wanted to be? My final manifestation?

  But there was something wrong with my cheeks—how can I explain it? I went back to her body and carved out her cheeks, using the serrated knife to close the job. Then I searched through her bathroom cabinet and found some gauze and plasters. She was, or had been, a resourceful student. With this kit I was able to tape her cheeks to my cheeks, plaster her scalp to my scalp, stick her breasts to my breasts.

  In the mirror, I looked like a bandaged patient in a hospital after a car
accident. Never mind. I felt whole. For the first time, Inspector, I felt utterly myself.

  This was the limelight. My brightest hour.

  It was the way I had always wanted to be. I was Sonia, I was Sandra, I was Natalia, I was me.

  I had reached the final incarnation. The end of all flesh.

  Inspector, I have discovered a new way to be alive. Aren’t you excited? I’m matched to another person, combined.

  But you would not understand. You could never comprehend the extremity of my desires. That was why my next thought was to explain it to you, to color in the gruesome picture.

  I slept on it—lying next to Natalia. I woke up and had the same thought again. It was a kind of epiphany: I would confess, I would tell you everything. It would give me a kind of inner freedom to match my new, outer sense of emancipation.

  I was a woman now, and I would show you how. Going back to the start, to Catania, to Valentina, to the chocolate shop, to her boyfriend, to my time with Carlo on the boat, to Luxembourg, to Sonia, to Sonia’s death, to Natalia, to Natalia’s death, to you, to you…

  I sat down at her desk in her living room, wearing my new outfit. I drank straight from the bottle of Burgundy in nervous sips. I opened the pouch of Sonia’s fingernails and spread them out on the desk in front of me, picked up one, put it on my tongue and swished it down with some wine like a vitamin pill. Then another, then another. I ate Sonia’s traces—tasted her absence. I set the urn on the desk in front of me, but would not open it, afraid of its contents, its gray dust, the dark truth of my sister’s body burnt. Instead, I picked up an empty notebook and pen and started to write on squared, blue-lined paper in my longhand scrawl:

  I went to the bad part of town to look for a bad girl…

  11

  So, this now can only be epilogue or afterword.

  I have posted the manuscript to you, Inspector, the entire bloody thing. I want to be discovered. I am in need. We are all in need.

  This is only a note to myself, a diary, my last thoughts.

  Let me say that the ugly chronicle is finally over. What a haul. I feel as if I have been dragging my male body through page after page and only now I can write authentically as a woman. A lady of sorts, of pieces. It has taken me years of suffering and searching, but here I am at last, my dream fulfilled.

  Maybe you still don’t see why I had to do all this—to shed my manliness, to wear the skin of a woman. It was a longing, a need, built up deep inside me since I was a child. (My mother didn’t want a boy. She didn’t want a boy.)

  My desire to be different, too, from my father, you can understand this, Inspector. I wanted to develop into another species. A half-man, perhaps. An underman. I had to kill, too, in order to achieve my goal—this much was clear. I needed freedom and license to make the requisite adjustments.

  I’ll admit I’m a paradox, Inspector. A complex deal.

  Now everything is as it should be. I stand and watch the candles as they quiver in their wax, lavender-scented. Sometimes they gutter and fail and I must bend down to reignite the flames.

  I do not look at her body much anymore. I do not need to.

  Occasionally, I lie next to her in the bed and flick though one of her paperbacks. I should get to know her, I think. I will read her books, while I wait here, while I wait for you.

  All that’s left for me now is silent agitation. I go to the door now and again, and listen. How many days has it been since I sent you the manuscript, decorated with your daughter’s blood? I’m not sure, but I am ready and waiting for the end. My end.

  You see: now that I am whole, I want to die.

  Now that I have gotten my story out of me, dragged it out into the world like a squealing baby, gray and purple, covered in fetal cream. Now that I am ready, you may come. And yet, you do not. Why is this? I just spent my fifth night in this flat, waking up to the sunlight which floated into the room like the prow of a huge white ship. I woke up drowsily, saw my bloody breasts, still trapped. Tasted the blood on my tongue. Smiled.

  Five nights? Yes, I’m sure of it. So, it begs once more the question: where are you? Did you think the manuscript was a hoax? Are you watching me now through a telescope from a building across the street? Did you not see me on the video cameras at the gas station? Did you not see how I was dressed? Oh, where the hell are you? I’m impatient now, hungry for death.

  I am lucky to have a policeman’s gun. And I am tempted to shoot you as you enter the flat with your officers. That is, if you are at the forefront, and not cowering behind. But, I realize, I must not kill you, for that would end your suffering. Remember Sonia? This is not a question. Remember Sonia. You must suffer for what you did, and you must live in order to suffer. You must see and keep on seeing and never ever close your eyes.

  There is nothing left for me but to die. My final pleasure I have lined up, and it is a bullet. I know I have a couple left. As I place the barrel on my tongue it tastes of pepper and ice. I will shoot myself through the head as soon as you enter the room, and my split head will collapse onto these sticky pages. Blood to add to the blood. Mine and a woman’s: mingled at last.