Chapter 33:
Horrid 29. The Skin You Outgrew is Still Moving
HG's horrid shorts
I found it in a box in the attic: a "person-suit" made of every shed cell, every peeled sunburn, and every clipped nail from my childhood. It was a hollow, leathery shell of the boy I used to be. I laughed and tucked it away, but that night, I heard a wet, crinkling sound from the corner of my bedroom.
The skin-suit had inflated. It wasn't filled with air; it was filled with a black, viscous bile that pulsed like a fevered heart. It stood up on shaky, boneless legs, its empty eye-holes fixed on me. It doesn't want to be a memory. It wants the bones back. It lunged, its leathery fingers wrapping around my face, trying to peel the current me off the muscle so it can slide back over the skeleton. I can feel it tearing at my eyelids now, its dry, dead skin itching to be "alive" again.
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