He was using again. The hollow-eyed zombie that stumbled toward me used to be one of the hottest young chefs in Santa Fe. Damn near won a James Beard. It’s a long way to fall, but it happens in the blink of an eye. One minute you’re joining the crew after hours for celebratory beers and bumps at the Matador, then before you know it you’re getting fired from the city’s shittiest greasy spoon for nodding off at the grill and burning the eggs one too many times.
“Nicky? Hey. Hi.”
That could be me. Should be me. I took a deep drag from my cigarette and prepared myself for whatever scheme he was about to try to sell me.
Tucked under his arm was a bundle, something bulky and wrapped in fabric. A selfish thought reared up in my mind. I hoped he hadn’t gotten himself kicked out of whatever hole he was living in. It had happened before, and I let him crash on my couch a few times and it never ended well. Chaos follows addicts, no matter where they are, no matter their intentions. Not what I needed. With my steady job at an okay restaurant and a two-year chip in my pocket, I was mister fucking stability. I felt sorry for Blane but didn’t want to jeopardize my own sobriety.
“Man. How’s it going?” I tried to sound casual and friendly. He came in for a hug and I thanked my higher power I’d been working the meat station all evening. The reek of charred prime rib and lamb overpowered his smell—sickness and body odor. I gave his shoulder a couple of fatherly pats and was grateful when he pulled away.
“I need a few bucks. Tough times, you know?”
Of course.
“Yeah. Look. I’d love to help you but—”
“No, man. It’s not like that. Got bills to pay. They’re gonna shut off my gas or some shit.”
I wasn’t sure why he was putting on such airs. I knew all the tricks and excuses, had used many of them myself. I didn’t blame the poor guy. Still, money was tight and I had my own expenses.
“Look,” I said, flicking my smoke down the alley. “Why don’t you come to a meeting with me?”
“No,” Blane said. “Ain’t asking for a handout. I got something for you. For your collection.”
That piqued my interest. With shaking hands, he unwrapped the bundle, and I expected him to reveal a DVD player or an old laptop. But it wasn’t either of those. He held a small, wooden chest. Its lacquered finish gleamed under the harsh, arc sodium light clamped above the rear exit of the restaurant.
“You’re gonna love this shit,” Blane said. “Right up your alley, bro. Worth the money.”
He opened the lid.
~~~
I nearly ran back to my apartment, fifty bucks lighter and the proud owner of the box and its contents. God knew what Blane would do with the cash. He was right, though. The item was exactly the kind of thing I wanted for my collection.
When I got sober, I needed something to do. Something to fill the blank, sucking vacuum once filled by drugs and booze—to crowd out the intrusive want that never really goes away. Some folks get into religion or politics. Fuck that. Others take up writing or pottery or knitting.
It started when I found an old black-and-white photo at the Santa Fe Springs swap meet. A grim-looking family in Victorian clothes crowded around a casket. The woman inside was propped up like a department store mannequin and someone had shoved a bouquet into her hands. On a whim, I handed over a twenty, took it home, and hung it on my bedroom wall.
From there, I added other morbid paraphernalia that caught my interest: a deer skull with strange runes carved on it, a two-headed fetal pig in a jar of embalming fluid, and—so the seller told me—a human knucklebone hanging from a rawhide string. I even saved up a few months’ pay and bought a genuine Gacy painting. Pogo the Clown leered at me each night as I tucked myself into bed, his eyes and smile all sharp corners.
Don’t ask what drew me to hoarding such macabre items. The collection soothed me for reasons I could never quite understand. And the reason was beside the point. It worked, kept me busy, kept me clean.
I opened the box. The thing inside looked like a large roll of old parchment paper, a reddish-brown cylinder tied with frayed string. But when I held it in my hands, it didn’t feel like paper. Brittle and a little oily, it smelled faintly of old cinnamon and rancid meat. I unrolled it on the bed and there was no mistaking its shape. A full human suit of skin.
Someone had dried and preserved it. Fully intact from head to toe and flattened like a cartoon character run over by a steamroller, it was worn and ripped in places. No way to tell if it had been a man or a woman—it contained no identifiable genitalia or hair. I was no expert but it appeared ancient. Mummy-like.
The prospect of rolling it up and shoving it back in the box seemed undignified, so I left it on the bed and slept on the couch. As I nodded off, I pondered how I’d display it on the wall.
~~~
I awoke in total darkness, though I couldn’t remember turning off the lights or the television. My heart was pounding and my entire body buzzed with adrenaline as if startled out of a dream. I went to sit up, but couldn’t. To my horror, I found myself frozen in place on the couch. My ears roared as I fought against the paralysis. No dice. Not an inch of give. I thought, prayed, Maybe I’m still dreaming.
Then I saw it. A shape in the corner of the room. A deeper shade of black against the night’s dark. I could make out a head, shoulders, and the hint of a torso as it stood, watching me. It raised a hand and pointed at me. I wanted to scream, but my mouth wouldn’t obey. I inhaled ragged, rapid breaths and felt I might pass out.
The shadow lowered its arm and disappeared into my bedroom. I hoped that would be the end of it. But I heard a sound like the rustling of dry leaves. That went on for a few minutes then stopped.
When she stepped out of the doorway and into view, I recognized her, even in the dark. Long-legged, curvy hips, and a chest the work of a plastic surgeon from a lost age. I only knew her as Miss July. The last time I saw her, she was naked and splayed across the hood of a 1987 Firebird on the wrinkled page of an old calendar that hung in my father’s garage. At thirteen I had loved that calendar, even though, by then, it was well over fifteen years old—far out of date to serve the purpose of a calendar, but relevant in more important ways. Alone in my bedroom, I spent a lot of time “thinking” about Miss July.
Nowadays, the real Miss July was probably well into her seventies, yet there she stood— just as if she’d stepped out of the photo. She walked to me, peering down over the curves of her oversized breasts. I felt myself getting hard. Miss July grinned. But as I gazed into her eyes, eyes I had known time and again in my fantasies, I realized something was wrong with them. Like the song, Miss July had been my brown-eyed girl, but these light, yellow eyes drilling hungrily into me almost glowed in the dark.
I tried to talk. To ask questions. But my mouth wouldn’t cooperate. Miss July undid the fly of my jeans. She grabbed me and I throbbed in her hand as she straddled me. Slipping inside her felt like sinking into a warm bath after a long day at work. If I could have made a noise, my moans would have roused the neighbors. Were I able to move, I would have reached up and run my fingers through her blown-out eighties hair.
Instead, immobilized, I quaked under her, and my terror only excited me more. Miss July rocked her hips, those shining, yellow eyes never leaving mine. I couldn’t look away. At once fantastic and terrifying, my buildup to orgasm felt as if someone was dragging me kicking and screaming toward the edge of an unseen precipice. My voice, locked in my skull, yelled stop and keep going as Miss July moved in her relentless rhythm, the corner of her mouth turned up in a sphinxlike grin.
I came. Hard. My eyes rolled back. The abyss yawned open below me.
~~~
“Dorado! What the fuck?”
The voice was right behind me. I jumped and nearly dropped my knife. The kitchen was a whirlwind of bodies and fire and food.
“Yes, Chef?”
“Your fucking mise is a fucking horror show. You chop that shit with fucking mittens on?”
The plastic tub of diced carrots, onions, and celery was yanked from my station and dropped into the trash.
“Do it again. Right this time.”
“Yes, Chef.”
“Get your shit together. Quickly.”
He didn’t stick around to hear my final, “Yes, Chef.”
I still worked at Hondo, but had been demoted to the brunch shift. Brunch service is your last chance, the place they send fuck-ups and losers. Brunch is the island of misfit toys, the final stop before they give you your walking papers. In such a situation, I should have felt ashamed and worried. But the truth was, I barely cared. It took every ounce of energy to stay awake through each shift. How many weeks since I’d slept a full night? I couldn’t even remember. I bit my tongue, hard, and tried to concentrate on my knifework.
It felt like a return to the bad old days, and in truth I was surprised they hadn’t asked me to take a piss test. I knew the head chef kept a close eye on the bottles of sherry and cognac in the walk-in, but I hadn’t touched a drop. If I were still going to meetings, I’d have another chip. My phone was full of unanswered texts and voicemails from my sponsor. But my thoughts didn’t revolve around pills or powder or crystal or booze. The only things I cared about—the only things I truly craved—were the box and its contents.
Laying out the skin at sundown became my nightly ritual. A charge of electric excitement ran up my spine whenever I thought about the leathery feel of the bundle in my hands. With reverence I’d spread it out on the bed, turn off the lights, lie on the couch, and wait.
Miss July had been just the beginning. Each night the shadow transformed into a fresh fantasy. Old lovers, crushes from film and TV, total strangers who caught my eye in the real world—one by one, they made their appearances. There were no boundaries. No limits. It wasn’t always a woman. My tastes had evolved since those long-ago days of peeping in at Miss July, and the shadow knew it. Whatever form it took, only its ageless, amber eyes remained unchanged, staring at me as it would a butterfly in a killing jar.
And me? I just lay there, paralyzed, at the mercy of whatever it wanted to do with me. Every encounter with the shadow frightened the living hell out of me, but that was part of the appeal. My helplessness turned me on even more.
Still, the more we fucked, the more I got the sense the thing inside that skin had even less choice in this matter than I did. I could stop the nocturnal visits any time I wanted. All I had to do was simply leave it in the box. Once I even promised to give myself a few nights of solid sleep in between the surreal sexual escapades. But I couldn’t stop. I didn’t want to. It was all I thought about, every hour of every day.
I made it through brunch service and was on my way home by the early afternoon. As I walked, I glanced up at the blue and cloudless and beautiful sky. A meeting was starting soon at the Cathedral of St. Francis, and I was close enough to touch the shadow of its imposing facade. Help was there. I just needed to reach out and accept it.
I passed the cathedral and hated myself for it. Hated everything else, too. The square, the church, the meeting, the tourists, the brilliant sky. I wanted it all to disappear. To pass me by as quickly as possible. Sundown couldn’t come soon enough.
I went back to my apartment and waited for the dark and the delights of the box.
~~~
It was almost sunset, and the garbage cans behind the Royale Café stank of spoiled vegetables and rotten eggs. I waited until Blane came out, a stained apron folded over his arm and an unlit cigarette clenched between his teeth. He looked better than when I last saw him. His cheeks had filled out, and he sported a neat cut and style under his hairnet.
“Moving on up, eh?” I called out. “Junkie to the king of the dishwashers.”
He took one look at me and sucked his breath through his teeth.
“Damn, man. You look like shit. You fall off the wagon?”
“You know what happened, you sonofabitch.”
He smiled thinly and nodded.
“The box. Really gets under your skin, don’t it?” He chuckled at his half-assed joke. “Hard to leave it alone, isn’t it?”
“What is it?”
“Don’t know.”
“Where’d it come from?”
“I don’t know. Would it matter if I did?” Blane dug into his pocket for a battered Bic lighter and sparked up his smoke. He took a drag and held it out to me. I hesitated for a moment before taking the cigarette.
“I got it from a guy who got it from a guy and so on,” Blane went on. “That ain’t the question you want to ask. The one you need to ask.”
I cherried the smoke and watched a gnarled finger of ash grow from its burning end, praying the nicotine would keep me alert and on my feet. The waking world was a walking fever dream, gone all fuzzy at the edges. The days went by in unremarkable blurs. Only the nights were clear. Only my time with the shadow in the skin was worth remembering.
“How do I stop it? How do I quit it?”
“Same way I did, amigo. Give it to someone else.”
“Maybe I oughta leave it on your fucking doorstep.”
“Don’t work that way, friend. It’s got to be offered freely and accepted freely. In person. Those are the rules.”
Blane shrugged. I wanted to punch the pitying look off his face. But a part of me recognized the emotion in his eyes. It was how I felt when I bought the box off him, what seemed like a lifetime ago.
“What if I destroy it?” I asked.
Blane shrugged again. “Just give it to someone else. It’s harder than you think, though. I mean. Do you really want to spend all those lonely nights without it?”
I considered the prospect and trembled. My inner voice screamed that I couldn’t live without the pleasure. Fuck my job, my livelihood, my life. As long as I had the box and what was inside it, I’d need nothing else.
“I’m sorry, man,” Blane said. “I couldn’t think of anyone else.”
“Go fuck yourself.”
“Get rid of it, and soon,” he said, turning and leaving me alone in the fetid alleyway.
~~~
“Do you want it? I’ll sell it to you real cheap?”
I tried not to sound too desperate as I held the box out to a skinny twentysomething wearing a hoodie covered with black metal patches held in place by safety pins. He stared back at me with an expression of disgust and pity reserved for addicts, the homeless, and stray animals. I’d accosted him outside Evangelo’s. It was a warm night. Heavy, industrial music poured out of the bar. The kid swayed on his feet. He was close and his breath smelled of tequila and Pabst Blue Ribbon.
“And it’s, like, real. Like really human?” he asked, eyes narrowing.
“Yeah. Real,” I said. “Legit as hell. Just like what Gein had. For sure. Fifty bucks and it’s yours.”
“Let me take a look,” the kid said, reaching for the box. His fingers grazed the outside and my desperation to be rid of the thing evaporated. I suddenly couldn’t stand the thought of him taking my skin home. Of him touching my skin. Him with my shadow.
“No,” I said louder than I wanted to, ripping the box away and clutching it to my chest. “Never mind. It’s not for sale.”
I stomped off down the street, heart racing.
“Whatever. Fucking weirdo,” called the kid from behind me.
I wove through the streets toward my apartment, mind spinning. Tears spilled down my face. Every stranger I met on the way was both an opportunity to get rid of the box and a threat who might take it from me. Most people looked away and gave me a wide berth as I passed by. Who could blame them? Gaunt, unwashed, and muttering to myself, I was fighting my own inner war, commanding the armies on both sides. It was tearing me apart.
Get rid of the box. Get your fucking life back together!
Keep it. It’s yours. Fuck everything else. Take it home. Take it out. Let the shadow embrace you night after night after night after night after—
I fell to my knees and screamed. It was a raw and guttural cry, rising from somewhere deep inside me, bursting out my lips and traveling upward to the cold stars above the city rooftops. The sound of an animal with its leg caught in a trap. More tears blurred my vision, but I could still make out the figures of the people across the street who stopped, stared, then moved quickly along. I wiped my eyes and stood, praying there weren’t any cops nearby, and finished skulking the last few blocks to my apartment.
I went around the building to the back entrance, stopping at the communal dumpster pushed against the familiar brick wall. The lid was open. The forces within me raged. They tore my guts apart and reformed them. My head ached.
I want it. I don’t want it. I want it. I don’t want it.
“I want this to stop.”
My voice came out low, steady for the first time in months. Seizing the moment, I opened the box, grabbed the bundle, and tossed it in the dumpster before I could second-guess myself. My fingertips had grazed the cracked surface of the box before it disappeared into the trash. Something primal in my brain panicked and demanded I dive into the filth and retrieve it, but I was already fishing my lighter and cigs out of my pocket. I lit the whole damn pack—box and all—and tossed the entire flaming mess on the pile.
It didn’t take long for the garbage to catch. Soon, the big bin belched foul-smelling smoke. I watched it and wanted to laugh, cry, and throw up all at once. I was finally free of it, a sensation both exhilarating and dreadful. I turned to leave. A neighbor was bound to call the fire department and I didn’t want to stick around to explain the mess I’d made. I bolted for my apartment and stuck my key in the door.
Something moved in the corner of my vision.
It stood beyond the pool of the building lights. Tall and nearly formless. Elongated arms resting at its sides. The shape I’d come to know so well. The shape I loved and feared. The shadow.
My throat dried up.
It stood, motionless. Its eyes burned, ochre orbs, and I found them unreadable. Were they grateful? Angry? Sad? I reached out, opening my mouth to speak, but it turned and vanished into the night’s myriad shadows.
~~~
Blane’s eyes flew open, wide and white as saucers of milk. He tried to struggle, but I was larger than him. Stronger. I straddled him, sitting on his chest with my knees pinning his arms down against his cheap mattress.
“Sorry for the late-night house call,” I said. “You’ve really turned things around. Got your own place and everything. Heard you got a promotion to grill cook at the café too. I’m very impressed.”
He tried to cry out, but I was ready for him. I shoved a pair of socks from his laundry hamper into his mouth, shushing him softly as he gagged and choked. I looked down at him, beneath me, helpless and unable to move. Is this how the shadow saw me?
The shadow.
“I miss it,” I told Blane. “I destroyed it. I set it free. I thought I could move on. But I can’t. It left a space in me I can’t fill.”
Blane mumbled frantically through his gag. I nodded my head sympathetically.
“I know. You told me to sell it, but I couldn’t stand the thought of anyone else having it. It’s selfish, I know. But it’s mine. He, she, it—whatever it is—I own it and it owns me, you see? It was stupid to burn it. Stupid.”
I reached into the pocket of my jeans and withdrew the boning knife I’d taken from Hondo when they fired me. Seeing it, Blane bucked wildly beneath me. I caught my ghoulish reflection in the blade. Filthy, haunted, wild-eyed. Exactly the face you fear waking up to in the middle of the night.
“They say if you love something, you should let it go. That’s bullshit. You need to keep it close. Hold it tight. Forever,” I told Blane. “I need it, but its skin is gone. Maybe if I give it a new one. It’ll come back. It’s got to come back. Right?”
I lowered the blade toward Blane’s face. The work would not be easy or clean. It would take until dawn. But I didn’t mind. My knife skills, even in my much-diminished state, were still top-notch, and I was patient.
My hands were the steadiest they’d been in months. The first cut across his sweat-soaked scalp drew a thin line of blood that glittered in the dark. I pulled the skin away and started to peel it downward. It would make such a beautiful gift to welcome the shadow back into my arms.