Skin
SkinSkin
The walls here are holed squarely. Each hole breathing and pulsating, windows for the lesser flies and the weight of the humid air. The walls rattle, shake and tremble, bang into other walls nearby, stacked onto twos or threes. Underneath her is Hae napping, next to her is an empty space barricaded with walls; where SoonKyu used to be. The thin metal of the walls are rusted, sometimes chips of peeled paint and rust poke uncomfortably into MiYoung's sides. All of it itched on the first night. It's been nearly two weeks, and her jaw is snapped shut when it comes to the aching sore in her hind legs and the rigid bones in her spine from lying down too long. Across her, TaeYeon is silent. Her head pulled low, tucked in, folded into herself. Her eyes are dark.
She has been that way ever since they took away YuRi and SooYoung in the dark of a breathy night, fetched from the doors of the walls with stumpy appendages with five white sausage-like feelers. YuRi and SooYoung were the liveliest of the bunch, believing in faux fur and leather, and nothing short of happiness and content within the walls.
They pretty much left TaeYeon alone after the third day. It's the same. What's the difference. They'll all die anyway. TaeYeon had always been the pessimist. The one actually afraid of the pain before dying, the one afraid of the slightest rattling and the appendages that take away her friends and loved ones. TaeYeon.
Those eyes are way scared, even in their stubborn need to turn opaque. There are dots on her ears where insects have bitten holes into.
"TaeYeon."
TaeYeon doesn't move. The others wonder if she is still alive and MiYoung wonders if it's possible to die from heartbreak. It's possible. Certainly possible.
MiYoung whines when TaeYeon doesn't respond.
"TaeYeon. Talk to us."
A rattling creature with black circles for feet spews black fumes that smell horrible as it lumbers away with a sputtering bark. More walls on its bare, holed-out back. A sickly-yellow skinned Skin bumps into the edge of a wall at the corner of his lengthy arm--his elbow?--and spits into a furrow.
And yet. TaeYeon doesn't move.
A pesky fly rests on the tip of TaeYeon's ear. It twitches. MiYoung would have jumped if not for the ache in her legs and the confined space the walls had cornered her in.
"TaeYeon?"
More Skins burst from the blue swinging doors. TaeYeon's other eye--not the blind one--follows the lazy stream.
HyoYeon two spaces away from MiYoung murmurs. "TaeYeon. Please. We're here."
Then TaeYeon turns her heavy head to eye MiYoung, her voice a heavy wheezing. "Until when."
To her knowledge, TaeYeon is rather young, only of four years old. And from what MiYoung has seen, you don't get that kind of voice until you reach at least ten years old. MiYoung must be two-ish, because she stopped counting when they grabbed her from the village.
The constant stench of the place suddenly suffocates MiYoung. SooYeon mewls from somewhere away from her.
"Tae--"
"We're all brought here to die." TaeYeon turns to stare at MiYoung with both eyes, the other tinted with dull gray, the other a brilliant, seeing brown. "You know that."
"But there are exceptions Tae, I mean, you've seen--"
"I've seen enough. I've gone blind in one eye because of it. Let me sleep."
They all say nothing. TaeYeon closes both eyes to sleep. MiYoung catches HyoYeon whisper: "It's just our skin."
~+~
It feels like hell watching the white appendages grab TaeYeon's prematured thighs, a pliers-like-contraption clamping TaeYeon's neck into place. Not like she needs it, TaeYeon's body is limp in roughened appendages. They pull at her beautiful tail and MiYoung's mouth opens to say something, to protest, to scream, but it comes out silent.
TaeYeon might already have been dead before they put her on the block. If it wasn't for the way TaeYeon's eyes had looked at MiYoung as the two-pronged-things near her side, MiYoung would have thought TaeYeon played dead the best.
The others hold back; what could they say? The Skins are faces of white. TaeYeon's eyes are frozen on her. MiYoung looks away. She can't look. Please. Don't let her see.
Yoong is scratching at her wall with blunt nails. They've cut those too. She is crying, tears slipping and falling into grayed, dusty tears. They fall onto SooYeon below her. SooYeon doesn't say anything. They've all gone dumb with silence.
All MiYoung sees is TaeYeon's glistening, bloated innards, the bluish-green vines of veins and the pinkish-white of TaeYeon's bones.
MiYoung retracts herself further into the cage. Don't they have a god? There must be; isn't there one? Why--where is god? Why is god not doing anything to stop this? The Skins barely mutter anything as they drag the hooks further down the line, no prayer, no laughter, no nothing. Just the occasional splatter of spittle or red. They wipe it with their white appendages.
god where is my salvation?
~+~
"MiYoung."
MiYoung's head rises up. "Hyunnie?"
"Is that what my insides look like?"
"Hyunnie. No. It's not that. That's not TaeYeon."
"It definitely was her until they took away her skin."
"No. Hyunnie. TaeYeon is free now. She's not blind anymore."
"MiYoung?"
"Yes?"
"What's the worth of our skin?"
"I wish I knew, Hyunnie."
~+~
Yoong is growing too thin. MiYoung feels afraid for the indentations of ribs MiYoung can count on Yoong's sides. It's not enough. It even smells a little of TaeYeon and SooYoung in their food.
~+~
HyoYeon's turn is tragic, even dramatic. She somehow used her muscular, slender-ly suppleness to wrench herself free of the appendages and ignore enraged cries from the Skins.
"MiYoung. MiYoung. Yoong. Hyunnie. Hae. Hae. SooYeonie. SooYeonie," rabid eyes scare MiYoung. HyoYeon is scratching the front of her wall, begging to be let in or let out. "I love you--love you all--understand me? Love you. Love you. Love you--"
It all stops when HyoYeon is upside down, saliva trickling through rotted teeth and onto the hay-filled ground.
MiYoung whimpers.
~+~
"Hae?"
Hae glides his jaw across the walls, satisfying an itch he cannot reach. "Yeah?"
"Why is there so much red inside of me?"
"What do you mean?"
"I mean, like, HyoYeon and TaeYeon and YuRi and SooYoung all had so much red inside of them."
"MiYoung, that's the colour of flush freedom."
"Flush freedom. What's that?"
"Diluted freedom."
"Diluted? Where'd you learn something like that?"
"Oh. I lived in a cardboard box near a school."
"What's a school?"
"A place where all the Skins go to learn stuff."
"Do they learn to take away our skins?"
"I think that's under biology and economics. I guess, yes."
"Then I hate schools."
~+~
Yoong is dead by morning. The Skins take her body away, skinny and malnourished, sick with relief and disease. SooYeon stares up at the sky where Yoong's body had been lying before. She puts her head against the wall.
Only Yoong was supposed to see the sky. That was their deal.
~+~
"Youngie," a whisper calls out to her from across two holed walls across.
Youngie could mean either one of them, SooYoung or MiYoung, but now SooYoung is only sharing and enjoying flush freedom somewhere with YuRi and TaeYeon and then Yoong. So it has to be MiYoung, who it still chained to her reality.
"Yes?"
MiYoung presses her snout into the wall, her jaws snapping. She wants to get out.
"I think I'm next--"
"Don't say that," MiYoung growls.
"Well, I've always been in high demand." SooYeon's eyes are horribly sad, and MiYoung refuses to look at them, but at SooYeon's jaw buried in skin and white fur.
MiYoung is appalled. Disgusted. "You think it's funny?"
"MiYoung," SooYeon comes closer as well, shadows of the holed walls like soft on white, "we're all that's left from the last batch."
"JuHyun. There's still JuHyun. And Hae. There's still JuHyun and Hae."
"MiYoung, you know it. You can feel it. We both know."
"Soo--"
"How much longer are we gonna last? Tomorrow? Two more days? Next week? The Skins have been awfully delayed."
"SOOYEON."
It goes silent.
"Please don't--let's not talk about this, okay? Let's just--I love you. I love you so so much."
SooYeon's smile is forced, stretched tight and it reminds MiYoung of taut leather.
"Okay. Okay. I love you too."
~+~
The next day another fuming, rattling creature with the black circles come back, this time roaring with mighty tenacity and beastly temperament on the dirt road. The Skins yell low, repeated things to each other, gesturing for their hands and calling to be helped with more holed walls with newly acquired loot from somewhere.
The Skins don't really care about precision, dumping the walls callously next to JuHyun's. JuHyun inches to the frightened creature in the wall next to her.
She asks tiredly, "What's your name?"
"Song Qian."
So they've extended their services to China.
Song Qian has a terrible squeak, eyeing Skins beat the rumbling black-circle-footed creature to life, "What--what do these things do here?"
JuHyun doesn't even bother to lift her head.
"We call them Skins. They take away our skins."
~+~
It's down to two. The Skins stole Hae and SooYeon away in the dead of night, hastily finishing the batch and then deciding over black, steaming liquid in cups to let JuHyun and MiYoung to at least see daybreak first.
MiYoung speaks to SooYeon as if she's still there, and converses with the empty walls underneath her where Hae used to nap till dusk. JuHyun watches for fear that MiYoung has gone insane. But then figured that it mattered little, because MiYoung's skin has always been this beautiful grayish-white and even when insane, MiYoung's skin would be a grayish-white.
When the Skins go near SooYeon's walls, MiYoung would scream or yell or holler. The Skins would back away and look at MiYoung strangely. Well, the anger and sadness is thick in MiYoung's voice.
But JuHyun knows it's just invitation for trouble. Even YuRi or HyoYeon dared not to agitate the Skins.
JuHyun watches MiYoung being wrenched from her walls and she closes her eyes. It's time.
MiYoung has always had a warrior's spirit, JuHyun knows that, the Skins label her 'aggressive', HyoYeon had admired MiYoung's fighter spirit, SooYeon envied it, TaeYeon died without seeing it.
MiYoung wrestles and slips through the Skins' appendages and runs before they lunge after her and capture her again, runs away and captures her, runs away and captures her again. MiYoung topples over a few stacks of walls. Song Qian trembles next to JuHyun.
The Skins grunt and forces the pliers-like-contraption around MiYoung's neck. MiYoung's jaws snap and growl, but nothing can be done now.
They drag MiYoung to the block.
"JuHyunnie. Don't cry for me."
"I promise. MiYoung."
"I love y--"
MiYoung grows limp and silent.
"I love you too."
~+~
JuHyun is overlooked. The Skins move on to the next batch. Song Qian turns bitter now, where she used to hum a lovely tune at night, she simply lays her head down and sleeps. Light or darkness, night or day. What does it matter.
~+~
Salvation comes in a dusty morning when dew settles onto the fine tips of leaves and Song Qian wakes up to JuHyun's empty walls.
She looks around, the batches still there, but JuHyun missing. A familiar brown coat hangs from a Skin's appendages.
"All of us die in the end, don't we."
She almost hears JuHyun's tired voice: "All of us die in the end."
~+~
Some other Skins come with tanned skins, some black even. They fill out the entire landscape, freeing the batches from the walls, putting glinting, silvery circular things around the wrists of the Skins. What a weird sight. You don't normally see Skins act hostile to other Skins.
They are the salvation all of them prayed for.
Song Qian is nestled in a warm layer of a Skin's shed shift, a tender pain nursing her left foot, wanting to cry and laugh and pray but too tired to do any of the three.
She watches fire crackle, the rumbling creature spluttering from underneath her. The black-circle-footed creature leaves behind some kind of trail--like footprints. Farm. They call the hell she used to live in a Farm. What that means, she has no idea. And she cares little, only for the skins of her friends to be saved from the burning Farm.
She is too tired. She'll ask about it later.
Song Qian closes her eyes to sleep, seeing MiYoung and JuHyun with a couple of other unfamiliar faces--but familiar all the same as they touch her to sleep.
She never wakes up to see daybreak.
—ジュリエット
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