Skinning
By E.S. Wynn


As I reach into the sink, my hands find another corpse. There’s so much blood in the water. So very much blood.

It’s easy once you’ve done it a few times. My knife is sharp, it goes in clean, smooth, slides along muscle, separating membrane from skin. The knife comes away wet, but not bloody. Not yet. The blood comes from cutting muscle, from slicing out the back of the body, pulling the organs out like a string of sausages bound together by snot.

Fingers slide into the opening made by my knife, crawl spider-like between layers of flesh until they find their purchase. Skin gives way with the sound of tearing, ripping, and then the muscle is glistening under a film of fat and veins. Fingers arch as I peel the rest of it free, peel it up across the torso and back toward the headless neck. A few quick cuts is all it takes. The skin comes free, the body dropping into the silent sea of thick scarlet and naked corpses, mingling with its brothers in the wet frame of a stainless steel sink.

I wash my hands, pick up the knife, reach for another corpse.


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E.S. Wynn likes the idea of Lovecraftian California.