Think of the Beach

The first person Eliza had skinned hadn’t screamed. It was foolish, but this had made her think that none of them would. This was not the case.

Of course, the first had been heavily sedated, so that had helped. Even as her body was numb, her eyes had been awake. Aware. She knew exactly what was happening, even as the painkillers and the numbing agents stole the sensation away.

Eliza found that she didn’t like the sound of screaming. She didn’t like the act of it. She didn’t even want the skins, but that was fine. They were all for Jenkin anyway.

It took some trial and error to figure out the best method.

It was easy enough, once broken down to its bare bones. Most people thought that the first step was taking someone, but that wasn’t the beginning. It wasn’t even the planning who to take. No, the first step was having somewhere to take them to.

No, even that wasn’t true. The first step was having a reason to do it.

Eliza had both of those things.

Down the rickety, home-repaired stairs to her basement, only reachable through the trapdoor under the rug, to which she had the only key, there was her basement.

She didn’t have the whole torturer supreme thing going on. Not even any restraints. Just an IV pole, hunched with age and use to the point where it, too, looked like a patient. There was a massage table, found online cheap, used, and prestained. A little table held court above it all, painted black once it was clear the blood showed up garishly against the pale wood. It held the repurposed paint brush holder that now held her tools.

The second step was this: find someone. The trope was find someone who won’t be missed, but Eliza knew better. The trick was to find someone who wouldn’t be looked for.

Easy enough. Trailer trash and dropouts. College-age addicts who’d cut ties with their suburban family too early. The pieces of shit that stay out too late at bars just to grope the waitresses, who’d just as soon mutter slurs when she turned away.

Taking them was the easy part. No one suspected a five-five too-long-on-her-feet nurse to heft that shovel she was carrying—why was she carrying a shovel? Here of all places? Why now, when it’s so dark?—and swing it true. No one reacted fast enough.

She hummed along as she worked. It was mindless tedium, the repetition soothing instead of boring. She was used to this scene: hovering over a bloodied body, holding surgically thin, surgically clean, surgically cold blades while she went.

The sedatives were nice. It let her hear the classical music warbling uncertainly through her phone’s tinny speakers.

It was a work in tiny, steady hands to keep the skin all in one piece—or as close to one piece as possible. Sometimes Jenkin wanted multiple: torso, arm, arm, leg, leg, face. Sometimes he even asked for the fingers individually, though most of the time he didn’t care for hands. All the better, really, as they were a pain to get all the way. Too many grooves, too many angles and turns.

Her favorite was doing the face. She got to look into those eyes as they looked back into her. She would smile, whisper the same lies she did to inpatients who weren’t ever going to get better: “Sh, don’t worry. It’ll be over soon. Just close your eyes, and think of the beach.”

Think of the beach.

Think of the beach.

Think of the beach.

How peaceful.

Sometimes Eliza didn’t wear gloves. The blood, sticky and thick, would coat her hands like honey, like something that would never come off. Tarr-like. She’d have to leave it until she was done with the whole thing; she just hated leaving jobs half-finished. It’d be a patchwork of still-sticky and flaky and gross by the time she was done.

When she was finally finished with the work, she’d wash the skin as best she could, coat it with those nice-smelling oils Jenkin liked, lather lotion across it. He didn’t want her to tan it, but sometimes she thought she should anyway, because wouldn’t that be nice? How many things were there to do with leather these days? Tons. Millions. Shoes, bags, coats, cars, a grip for that hunting knife because the one on it now was tearing and aged.

But Jenkin always said no. He liked the skin as it was, liked it just how it’d been.

It was an arbitrary choice to Eliza. He wanted it fresh but not bloody, cured but not tanned, doctored but not treated. She would just be happy to have any at all.

She never knew what to do with the bodies, after, so she kept them down in the basement. Jenkin didn’t want the rest of the person, just the flesh.

Once the sedative wore off, some tried to scream, to run, but not only were they surely in lots of pain, Eliza lived far enough away from the nearest neighbor to remain safe.

Still, though, she didn’t like screaming. Hated it, if she was capable of hating anything. It grated against her eardrums, made her head hurt. It was one of the few things that made her angry.

Jenkin told her that it was foolish, that humans were made to scream: born doing it, most die doing it, too.

She agreed, because she didn’t want to argue, but still. She just hated screaming.

Sh, don’t worry, she would tell herself, trying to calm. Think of the beach.