Chapter 1 – Corpses
Worn Like Crowns
When humanity chose to shed its
true nature to play god, they also paid the price by shedding their skin. Now,
the more skin they wear, the more they are tempted to do evil. I am among many of
these sinners and may be the worst. Siegfried is my
name and a curse it may be if people knew my misdeeds. Even so, I still suffer
despite my many honest confessions and acts of penance. There’s no reason I
should try anymore. Everything that I’ve lived for has been burned away to ash,
and with it, my reasons for living. I could’ve done something, but I was too
weak to do anything but walk away.
It's not like I had a chance anyway.
I was working in a place that actively hurt me for a meager wage that was
hardly worth it, to say the least. Puppeteers and masters play with power like
children. They thrive on the business of skincare and the illegal practice of wearing
other skins than their own. On the other hand, the poor can be no different in
taking advantage of their own to make their own lives a bit more bearable. Who
is truly good in this world where the truth doesn’t matter and love has a price
and debt to go along with it?
For these reasons, I will try to
fit in with those who focus their lives on the flesh. I might as well try to
enjoy myself as much as I can. It doesn’t matter if I enjoy myself in the right
or wrong way. All I want is to live a happy life and to feel good living it.
After letting myself be debased and sacrificing much of my skin to get into exclusive
places where those in power “relax”, I finally manage to see the luxuries that
they enjoy, except these luxuries are something more than even I can handle.
People dress in the
skins of other people and even animals to enact their fetishes upon willing and
unwilling people. I knew that those who could afford to make fake skin suits and
those who stole other people’s skins used them for selfish purposes, but I didn’t
imagine that the rumors about them would be true. Here I see a neighbor I
thought I wouldn’t see again. She wanted her son to be like the boy next door
to her. Her son struggled in school, wasn’t well liked, and wasn’t as handsome
according to her. To remedy this, she took the skin off the other boy and
forced her son to wear it. I don’t know what happened after, but I do know the
boy killed himself because of his mother’s abuse and his mother disowning him
for another. Apparently, she has deep connections and was able to get out of
prison only after a year.
This may sound silly, but this is
not the most surprising sight. No, the most surprising thing to see here is
clothes. People struggle to get even the simplest of patches of skin on their body
and these people are wearing clothes. Fine dresses, underwear, pants, shirts,
and the like of various kinds adorn their bodies. To put this ridiculousness in
perspective, the skin of some of the most powerful people in the world is just
as valuable as a simple shirt and pants because clothes show high status. For
some reason, this pushes me over the edge. Despite all the depravity around me,
despite me debasing myself so I could have my own custom skinsuit, I feel that
this is too much. I have always been a foolish man and as I look at myself in a
gold plated mirror, I see a handsome, stronger man, but that is not me.
I cut off my fake skin suit and
throw it to flesh craving slaves. Sure, I could’ve sold it or worn it until I
got out to not draw attention to myself, but I couldn’t stand to live in that
fake skin any longer. While I try to leave in the chaos, several people
approach me. These wear the more expensive skin suits such as those of animals
and important figures with some even wearing clothes.
“Where are you going, Siegfried?” a
man says as he jumps in front of me. He startles me because of the goatskin
and head that he wears.
“Yes, where are you going? We were
going to have so much fun together,” his wife says from behind me. His wife is
cloaked in a lion’s skin and wears a lion’s head.
“I’m…walking out for fresh air,” I
lie.
“Is the smell of Heaven too strong
for you? It’s not like this smell is completely unfamiliar to you since it’s only
a stronger one compared to what you’re used to.”
They have me caught. In my desperation
to get out of here, I stab the man in front of me in the throat with the knife
I used to cut off my skin then throw him to his wife before saying, “The goat
is dead!”
This attracts the attention of many
who begin to fight over his corpse. Many are trampled and killed while fighting
over the animal’s skin as I manage to escape the scene and the underground
building. I don’t think I’ve ever been as happy to see the blood orange sun in
the sky today.
“Where did he go?” I hear someone
say from behind me.
“Check the perimeter while we check
inside. He couldn’t have gotten far.”
Seeing as I’m still being chased, I
try to lose my pursuers by going through the crowds of the town I’m in. Going
through the crowds reminds me of the life I left behind. The struggling families
and the homeless people begging for skin are sights that I don’t see changing
any time soon. There’s no way for me to go back to that life. In fact, it’ll be
a worse life if I do. What was I thinking when I chose to do this? These
distracting thoughts make me take a path through the town that leads me to the
edge of a cliff. Here, there is no escape and my pursuers catch up to me.
“If you come back with us, you’ll be
welcomed back with a newly made skin after you suffer for your actions, of course,”
one of them says.
“The suffering will be pleasurable and
your rewards will be what was promised. A seat at our table, pleasures and wealth
beyond your imagination, a wife or husband of your choosing, and power in the
world behind the veil of our secrecy.”
Hearing this all is very tempting
even though I have no skin on my body, and yet, I feel free enough to make a
decision. Funnily enough, I feel freer than I’ve felt in a while. These people
of the flesh say what they offer is freedom and happiness, but I’ve been
constrained by them. Their dogma of the flesh made me a slave to their passions
and my own as we sook pleasure at the cost of others and ourselves. With my choices
laid before me, I choose death. I jump off the cliff and into the deep dark
unknown and giving myself to the judgment of fate.
No comments:
Post a Comment