The Human Skins by Karl El-Koura

    Doctor McAllister says I should write down why I think I've been brought here, but is that wise? I know -- if I'm crazy, nothing really matters anymore. But the thing is, I don't feel crazy. I feel like I'm going crazy.
    When did it start? At a party, a house-warming for a pretty girl -- I'll call her D. -- from work who had just bought her first place. I showed up with my wrapped picture-frame-gift and my funny card with a cute scribble that I hoped struck a good balance between flirty but not too forward. I was happy she'd asked me to come -- a pretty girl like that, going out of her way to invite someone she hardly knew to her party. It made me feel special, wanted, desired. It'd been a while since I'd felt that way.
    She answered my second or third ring because the music -- a techno beat rich in bass and accompanied by the steady, almost mechanical spoken-word-singing of a thickly accented voice -- was loud. She wore a low-cut black dress that was supported by two thin strips wrapping over her shoulders. Her skin -- neck and shoulders and arms -- was exquisite, I remember thinking. A little pale for other men's tastes, maybe, but I liked the naturalness of it.
    The smile she gave me! The smell of her when she hugged me in warm welcome... it makes me shudder in horror to think of it now, knowing what I think I know, but at the time I was delirious with happiness. After a rough break-up, you sometimes think that no woman will want you ever again. I was happy to think otherwise.
    She introduced me to her friends, some our age and others (some from work) a few or many years older.
    It was a typical party, with a spread of egg-salad sandwiches and tuna-melts on the kitchen table, and enough alcohol to burn down her new house. Typical until the end of the night.
    Most of her guests had already left, but I was sticking around, hoping that I'd get some time alone with D. We sat in her living room, D. and I on the couch alone, the rest sitting on other chairs and love-seats and the rest sitting on the ground. They were talking, about nothing in particular, when someone said--
    "Let's take it off."
    I was too lost in my thoughts to have followed the various conversations swirling around me, but this suggestion was made with such force that it intruded into my awareness. Everyone else seemed to pause as well, as if the words had the power to freeze us in place.
    Someone said, "You think we should?"
    "I do. Why not?"
    After a show of some hesitancy, everyone (except me, but including D.) stood up and began to shed their clothes. I was watching D., mostly in stupefaction. She slipped a strap off of one shoulder, then the second strap off the other; the dress fell away, crumbling at her feet. She reached behind her back with her hands and unclasped her bra, and pulled it off one arm and then the other. She wore a g-string and her lower back was covered by a dark blue tattoo--a strange design I puzzled over: a creature, demon-like, spread its wings across the width of her back, as if in protective custody. She pulled off her underwear and stood facing away from me, completely naked.
Everyone else in the room was naked too, the floor turned suddenly into a sea of shed clothing. No one was paying me much attention -- not yet, anyway. I was still sitting on the couch, not sure what was happening. The thought crossed my mind that I'd somehow fallen in with a crowd of exhibitionists -- and now, how I wish that was the whole of it!
    It wasn't.
    I was looking at D. again -- my eyes had roved around the room, but had returned to her quickly, as being at least mostly safe territory. With her right arm, she reached up to her left shoulder and pulled off the skin as if she were removing a long glove to reveal hints of gray, wrinkled skin beneath, mostly obstructed by her back. She did the same with the other arm, and then her legs, removing skin from butt cheek to toes. It was unmistakable now: her skin was dark as cigarette ashes and rough and craggy.
    When I looked up, the sea of clothes was covered by a sea of skin -- pale white and yellow and golden brown and black -- and around me stood gray-skinned monsters. It was as if their skin had been burned away from them, and what remained -- from their forehead to their feet -- was this wrinkled mass of ashen flesh.
I didn't scream. Perhaps a life spent watching horror movies has accustomed me to such sights; perhaps I was still too much in shock to react in any way; perhaps a thousand other reasons. But I didn't scream.
    D. -- or what she had become -- turned to face me, her eyes bulging out of her face, her lips thin. She said, "Aren't you going to take off your skin, too?"
    I shook my head.
    "Don't be shy. It's so freeing to be out of that thing."
    "I'm not shy." I was in a daze, is the best way I can describe it. Only a part of me seemed to be there, the rest looking on from a safe place, as if watching one of those horror movies.
    I stood up.
    Everyone was looking at me now, waiting for me to take off my clothes and take off my skin.
    "I have to go."
    "Don't be shy," she said again. Others repeated her words, but I moved past her and weaved around them and left in a hurry. I thought I heard the sound of laughter as I slammed the door behind me.
    The next week at work, she looked beautiful as always and didn't mention the party at all.
    The thought had occurred to me, of course, that I'd imagined everything. But imagined it how? And why? I had to get someone else's thoughts, and there was only one someone I could trust with this.
    I was over at his place a few days later when I decided to tell him what I've just written down. He waited for me to finish, looking at me in an odd way as I spoke -- a perfectly normal reaction to what I was saying, I thought. When I was done talking, he asked me what the big deal was.
    "What's that supposed to mean? Either I'm crazy -- or I work with a girl who can shed her skin like a snake."
    "Of course she can," my best friend said -- a man I've known my entire life, practically. "We all can."
    "This is serious. Are you teasing me? Don't you know it's bad karma to tease a crazy person?"
    Reluctantly, he showed me he wasn't teasing. He rolled up his left sleeve past his shoulder and pulled the skin away from his arm. Underneath was the wrinkled gray flesh I remembered.
That time I fainted. When I came to, paramedics had a mask to my face, feeding me oxygen. My friend's sleeve was rolled down, the skin on his hand and fingers dark on the outside and light brown on the inside, as I'd always known them.
    He never spoke of what happened -- if it happened. Did it happen? How can I be sure?
    Like I said, maybe it isn't wise to write all of this down -- to give written proof of my own insanity. But if I'm insane, nothing matters. And if I'm not -- then I may as well be, if you understand my meaning.
    Can I share one more thing? I haven't had a single night's worth of restful sleep in weeks. I keep having this dream, a nightmare, if it's not odd for a man in his twenties to admit of such things. That's why my roommates brought me to the hospital, you know -- because I wake up screaming, night after night after night.
    In the dream, I'm lying in bed, trying to fall asleep. I can't. Suddenly I'm aware that there are others in my room; I hear their hushed voices and their wheezy breathing and the shuffle of their feet. I turn on my night-light; my room is crowded full of gray-skinned creatures, all looking at me.
    "It's time to shed your skin," one of them says. I focus on him -- he has a box cutter in his hands, sharp knife sticking out of a silver-metal handle. He takes a few steps closer, until he stands over me.
    I try to move, but can't. I'm frozen in place. He places his knife on my throat and slices, around my neck. I wake up screaming.
    Doctor McAllister, I'll be honest with you: I sure hope I'm crazy. Because the alternative -- the alternative is too much to bear. The alternative will make me crazy.