Skinless

I was eating breakfast when my sister came into the kitchen without her skin. I stopped chewing mid-crunch—cornflakes and milk dribbling from my mouth.

I couldn’t stop staring.

While my mother yelled and my sister defended her stance, I stared at the raw meat that made her body, the twitching muscles and tendons. White bone poked out wherever muscle tissue didn’t cover it.

My sister yelled back, talking about equality and unity, how we’re all the same. I watched her jaw stretch and vibratewith every word, her pearly white teeth bared to the world.

A shiver went up my spine and I finally tore my eyes away. I tuned out the yelling and continued to munch on my cereal but the flavor was gone. Something had shifted in the world and nothing would be the same ever again.

#

My sister was one of the first but it didn’t take long for the trend to spread. More and more students were coming to school raw. Skinless. Bodies laid bare to the elements and for all to see.

I couldn’t help looking at my classmates with revulsion. The way their muscles rippled with every motion. Red tissue, always glistening, looking as if ready to bleed at any moment.

But it never did.

I was disgusted, but I was also in awe. Their political statement could not be ignored. Their bodies stood before us, throughout the country, throughout the world, the people discarded their skin to prove once and for all that we are one. All of us are the same. It doesn’t matter what we believe in or what we look like on the outside. It’s the inside that matters and on the inside we are all raw flesh, taut, red, and indistinguishable from one another.

Not completely, but the sentiment was clear. We are the same.

It made me angry that so many dared to remove their skin. To present themselves in such a manner. I hated them for it but if I were honest with myself, it wasn’t them. I was a coward. I was afraid to slip fingers into my skin and tear it away. I was terrified of what others would think of me. Those that kept
their skin, like my parents.

I hated my sister for the last two years of high school because hating her was easier than joining her. I watched my parents turn from her, glad when she finally left for college. And I pretended to feel the same just so that I didn’t have to face the truth that I knew was in my heart.

Her cause was just and true. It was the right thing to show to the world. And I remained in the dark. A coward and hypocrite.

#

When I finally went to college myself, I wasn’t surprised to find so many going raw. I had gotten used to the sight and without my parents hovering over my shoulder I could manage to imagine a world in which I might remove my own skin one day.

But I was still afraid. They said it was painful. They said you needed to truly feel devoted to the cause otherwise it wouldn’t work. I had been denouncing it for so long I didn’t know if I would belong.

Then I met Ruby.

It was her laugh that caught my attention first and when I looked up to her all I saw was red. Red muscles and tendons, stretched tight, shining in the fluorescent lights. I wanted to look away just as I always had but the sound of her voice drew me towards her.

I saw her again on campus and then at parties. We spoke, we got along, she laughed. Oh, how I loved that laugh.

Somehow I shared my feelings, my desires, my fears. We got closer and when she kissed me I didn’t mind the fact that she had no lips. I didn’t care about how her muscles twitched underneath my hands and how she always felt slippery but never wet.

Somehow we found ourselves in the dark, in her dorm, on her bed.

“Don’t be afraid,” she whispered.

Her raw fingers slid over my arms, my shoulders, my back. She climbed up on top of me with her hands on my chest. Slowly, softly, she ran a finger down my sternum opening my skin like a seam. Down, down, down, she went.

It didn’t hurt. It tingled.

She took hold of the loose skin on each side of my chest and pulled. Drawing it away from muscles, revealing my inner workings, my true self.

It began to sting but she remained gentle and sweet all the while.

When she was done, I was skinless. I was one of them. Raw. Just like her.

We were the same.

Kai Delmas loves creating worlds and magic systems and is a writer of many short short stories. In his free time, he reads slush for Apex Magazine and The Cosmic Background. He is a winner of the monthly Apex Microfiction Contest and more of his fiction can be found in Zooscape, Martian, Etherea, Black Hare Press, Wyldblood, and several Shacklebound anthologies. His debut drabble collection, “Darkness Rises, Hope Remains,” was published by Shacklebound Books. Find him on Twitter @KaiDelmas or Bluesky @kaidelmas.bsky.social You can also support him via his Patreon, www.patreon.com/kaidelmas.