The Body Eternal

She is standing in front of her wardrobe. The wardrobe is nothing special. Narnia is not inside just past the fur coats. It has not been in her family for a century handed down from generation to generation and winding up bestowed upon her by a great Aunt. She did not find a letter taped to the bottom confessing an affair a previous owner had with a wealthy banker in London who was married to a famous actress of the day. None of these things were associated with this particular wardrobe. It was just a cheap pine wardrobe she picked up at a furniture market.
There is nothing extraordinary about her either. She is just a girl standing in front of a wardrobe. She has short black hair that doesn't really frame her face very well, but it is easy to manage. Her eyes are blue and look out of place. She seems confused, stood with her hands on her narrow hips looking at this wardrobe, whose doors are closed. She's imagining. She's imagining what could be inside this wardrobe that is nothing special. She is imagining all the pretty things that might be inside if she had the money to buy them. She is thinking of how wonderful it would be to open the doors and find all the clothes fit her well and suite her awkward shape. Or she is thinking of how wonderful it would be to open the doors and for it to contain one thing on a single wooden hanger. This one thing would be perfect. It would be perfect for her.
She is still thinking this when she takes a hand from her slim hips and places it tentatively on the handle of the wardrobe. She hesitates and brings the hand sharply to her pursed, pink lips and touches them with straight white fingers. She smiles underneath these straight white fingers and removes them to reveal the smile just as it is fading. She is being silly. It is a wardrobe. She is a girl. There is nothing to hesitate about. She places her hand on the door handle more confidently this time and opens it gently. Inside is not what she expected.
Inside is not at all what she expected. There are seven suits on seven white hangers. The suits are not bespoke or tailored. The suits are skin. The seven skin suits hang on seven white hangers in her wardrobe. They are clean and are split in the middle, from the groin to the neck so that they hang open like arms. Inside they are smooth as the white hangers that hold them. She wonders if they will fit her.
She wonders if they might fit her and so she takes a step back from the wardrobe and removes her night-dress, letting it drop to her ankles. She steps forward. She steps forward and reaches into the cupboard to take the first of the seven suits. It is the same height as her. She steps into one leg and it seems to shrink to meet her own skin. She steps into the other leg and the same thing happens. She reaches into one arm. She reaches into the other arm. She slips her own head through the opening at the neck and pulls on the head like a jumper. It is more comfortable than she thought it would be. It fits her perfectly. The eye holes feel like her own sockets. There is not that sensation that glasses-wearers have of there being a line cutting off your peripheral vision. She can see perfectly. She reaches between her legs in a parody of some sexual act and finds the little silver zip that sits there. She pulls it up between her breasts all the way to the tip of her chin where it is hidden. She turns away from the wardrobe.
She turns away from the wardrobe to look in the mirror. It is a full length mirror mounted on her wall. It is her own two eyes staring back at her, but it is not her body. It is the perfection of her body. Her face is framed by long locks of black hair. Her hands sit on full, sensual hips. She takes a sharp intake of breath at the shock of her beauty. Like a lover caressing new flesh she runs a slim hand over the side of her new body and shivers at the touch of her touch. It feels like when you have slept awkwardly, perhaps with a hand underneath your pillow or something like that, and you wake up and try and move your arm and can't do it. You reach your other arm to touch the seemingly dead one that doesn't belong to you and you rub some life into it and it feels like old age, numb, expiring. This is what her flesh feels like. Like it is not her own. But it is her own. It is her own now and she wears it like it was her skin.
She wears it because it is her skin and she wonders if she should cover it when she leaves the house. She wonders what she will cover it with because her wardrobe only contains seven suits of skin. Seven skin suits on white hangers. She wonders if it needs covering at all. She thinks it would be a pity to spoil such a gift with clothes. Turn such a gift into a horse for clothes. Never let a gift look like a horses mouth.
She doesn't want to make her gift look like a horses mouth and so she decides, like the emperor's new clothes, to walk outside her house in nothing but this suit of skin. She is not naked. She feels protected by this mysteriously fitting sheath of tissue and hair and flesh. She does not think that anyone will notice, not because they do not want to believe she is naked, which she isn't, but because there is nothing to see. She is not parading herself - she is parading someone else's skin. She is hidden within this cloak of invisibility. She feels omnipotent. She feels a rush of anonymity and a flush of possibility. This is not her skin. This is someone else's skin and she can do anything she likes with it.
She can do anything she likes with it and no one can stop her. She can carve the name of a lover with a blade into the small of her back. She can pierce her flesh with pins of steel and pieces of rubber. She can tattoo tribal marks along her arms and back and never worry that they are too permanent. She can allow a flame to remain under the palm of her hand until it starts to burn. She can hurt and harm and it will not be her own skin she is marking but another's - suit that can be removed and discarded like a snake sheds it's scales.
She did not want to take such drastic measures, such reckless thoughtlessness with her gift. It did thrill her to know that she could.
She stepped out of the house. It was a warm summer's day and the air was balmy against her naked body. She walked through the park and passed dog walkers and young lovers and no one looked twice. She stood by the lake and smiled at the flock of swans swimming on the calm water. She would have liked to have spent the afternoon with a loaf of bread doling out morsels to her favourites, but she had nothing with her. The wind was beginning to pick up and she brushed a hand through her hair and a few strays came out like plucked feathers. She did not think anything of it.
She walked through the rose garden wondering at all the different names. Centifolia. La Noblesse. Octavia Hill. Taora. Faithful. Strange that a rose would be named Faithful. Roses were what lovers gave and left on a pillow when they returned to their wives. She remembered the garden of roses that her grandfather had. His roses were not so interestingly named. Ambridge. English Elegance. Evelyn. Names of places and qualities and people, as if the roses had personalities or traits. She went to pick a bloom and as she broke the tender stalk a nail came off her finger, just peeled off like a rose shedding a petal. She did not think anything of it.
She left the garden and walked back towards the street, which was busier now that it was later in the day. The market would be open by now and so she headed in that direction. She was not surprised that no one had noticed her suit of skin. Somehow she knew that it would be ok to just walk like this. Not only ok but somehow important. Important to be seen, to leave the house and feel the air on her.
She was feeling hungry. She reached the market and found a fruit stall. She realised she had no money. When the fruit seller wasn't looking she reached her hand towards the red apples and took the shiniest one she could see and walked away casually. She smiled at her audacity feeling the thrill of that first moment of crime. She had never taken something without paying before.
She bit into the taut red skin of the apple and tried to catch the juice with a flick of her tongue as it dripped from the corner of her mouth, through her fingers and ran down her arm. She took the apple out of her mouth and began to chew the pulpy flesh. She noticed a white square sticking out of the apple where she had taken a bite. She looked closer and noticed that it was a tooth. She did not think anything of it.
She did not think anything of it and took another bite of the apple. This time more teeth came out of her mouth and the clear white juices running through her fingers became tinged and pink with blood. With every bite more and more teeth came free and more and more blood flowed down her clear, white arm until it was stained and sticky with juice and redness. She threw the apple down to the ground where it fell among the array of discarded molars, canines and incisors. She ran a pink tongue along her gums to find them empty and bitten clean.
She ran from the market into the nearest public toilet. She looked in the mirror at her stained face and arms that were streaked with blood. She turned on the tap and ran the water until it was warm and taking some paper from the dispenser began to wipe herself clean. The blood came off easily, like paint, but with it came layers of her new suit of skin. The layers peeled off like a scab to reveal her own, true skin beneath. She had to remove the blood but no matter how careful she was the layers still kept coming off with every stroke of the towel. Trying not to be hysterical she ran from the toilets.
She ran from the toilets onto the street. A man walked past her. 'What have you done to yourself?' he asked. She did not know what he meant - all the blood was gone. She looked down at her body and noticed that where the skin had peeled off more blood was seeping from beneath the suit. It was not red like normal blood should be, but was light and opaque like raspberry squash. She wiped at the blood and more skin began to fall away. She pushed past the man and ran towards home. The wind was picking up. As the breeze blew through her hair it took with it locks from her head that flew up like flames into the sky and were lost among the clouds and trees. By the time she reached her street she was bald.
A man passed her on the stairs and winced with horror at the sight of a toothless, bald girl covered in streaks of blood with swathes of skin peeling from her body. he ran up the stairs but with every impact her feet made on the steps a toenail came away from her body, leaving a trail of white squares like breadcrumbs from the forest. Were the breadcrumbs to lead someone to them or to show them the way home? She couldn't remember.
She reached her door and collapsed into her home. She went into the bathroom and looked in the mirror. Her cheeks were marked with black tracks of eyelashes - one lash for every tear she had cried on her way home. She needed to wash the blood from her skin and she turned on the shower. She stepped under the cascade of water and closed her eyes. She could feel the flesh fall away from her, feel the skin leave her own. She stood under the water for an hour or more, washing herself clean. She stepped out in front of the mirror and looked at her newly re-born body and shuddered at its corruption, at its age and filth-encrusted pores, it's dull light, it's lank hair. This body was nothing in comparison to the one she had worn so easily for the morning.
She took her dressing gown from the back of her door and covered herself as completely as she could.
She went back to her room and opened the doors of the cupboard feeling that the six remaining suits would not be inside. She held her breath until she saw the six suits on six smooth white hangers just waiting to be worn. She stepped out from her dressing gown and let it drop to her ankles. She repeated the process of only a few hours ago. She steps forward. She steps forward and reaches into the cupboard to take the first of the seven suits. It is the same height as her. She steps into one leg and it seems to shrink to meet her own skin. She steps into the other leg and the same thing happens. She reaches into one arm. She reaches into the other arm. She slips her own head through the opening at the neck and pulls on the head like a jumper. It is more comfortable than she thought it would be. It fits her perfectly. The eye holes feel like her own sockets. There is not that sensation that glasses-wearers have of there being a line cutting off your peripheral vision. She can see perfectly. She reaches between her legs in a parody of some sexual act and finds the little silver zip that sits there. She pulls it up between her breasts all the way to the tip of her chin where it is hidden. She turns away from the wardrobe.
She leaves the house again and walks to the park, this time remembering the bread for the swans. This suit lasts her six hours before the same thing happens. She notices when she gets home that some of her own hair has come away with the suit but she does not think anything of it. She is an addict now, addicted to the feel of fresh flesh. She goes home and repeats the progress.
Third try lucky? The fifth suit lasts five hours. She comes out of the shower toothless and bald and with no nails on her left hand.
The fourth suit lasts four hours. She now has no nails on her right hand. She thinks nothing of it and puts on the third suit.
This suit lasts barely more than three hours and she now has no nails on her left foot but she refuses to give up trying. She entertains a foolish hope that her perseverance will pay off. She does not think that it matters that in indulging her passion for flesh she is losing her own. She knows that the seventh suit will last forever. Will be hers forever. Will last a lifetime and maybe more. Fresh. Vibrant. Never decaying. She holds onto this dream.
The second suit lasts just under two hours. She is exhausted now but only has one more suit to try on. The final suit. The one. She has nothing left to lose except herself, which is the desired result.
The first suit doesn't even last until she leaves the house. As she turns the handle of the door her fingers begin to dissolve. This is not a mere shedding of skin but a disintegration of matter. She feels like the witch in the Wizard of Oz, melting, melting. It is raining now. She steps out into the falling drops like ghostly fingers. Her hair is the first to fall away into the rushing gutters. Her nails and fingers soon follow. The expression from her face is the next thing to fade, like a commedia actor removing the paint from his eyes. She looks now like an unfinished Barbie doll, a plastic shell awaiting characterization. Her flesh starts to fall now so that her face soon becomes a black eyed skull. She turns into a walking skeleton, looks like a dead-man-walking. Lazarus from the grave, rotten and rotting. A gust of wind blows and in the flash of a second she becomes dust in the air. A cloud of mist that flies into the night and is lost. She is flying through the black sky and smiling. At last she has become eternal.