This incident occurred a good time ago, and so I am posting my diary entry for analysis by other individuals. I don’t believe in superstitions as much, and rely on scientific explanations with a grain of religion to ease my appetite of understanding.
If anyone could understand what just happened, It’d be helpful in my quest.
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Dear diary,
A common misconception by ordinary humans in the modern world is how skins may be replaceable. Skins are merely a shield to protect the inner segments of the body from any outsider invasions, yet despite that, we do not thank them or play with them, or appreciate them. They’re tirelessly active and working to preserve our lives every day from the womb to the grave. Infact, hardly nowadays do we even train them with serious effect. That’s my job: I’m a Skin Walker.
Now, you might be confused, my diary: Skin-walkers were portrayed in mythology as witches that could shapeshift into animals or individuals, as in, witches that were actively changing their skins. I don’t do that. Instead, I walk Skins. My job as a Skin Walker involves the removal of a Skin from an individual (by all modern definitions: to skin them alive) consensually, and then raise that skin for them as they go to work, are occupied with family life, or anything else. The list goes on.
All of our customers (which were piles of organs held together by ligaments, joints, and were walking skeletons) appreciated our work. The pay is good and the profit so far is something to die for. I get time to spend with my friends, and customers get time to spend with their families and focus on important topics as we take care of their skins. While I’m no dermatologist, but customers expressed an appreciation to their skins being cleansed of rashes, vertigo, hives, and even a reduction in ACNE.
In each skin factory, we receive an application form and a signed contract by an individual wanting to be stripped off their skin for, say, a day, and we’d put a leash on it and raise it with fun activities. We feed it things like the souls of the damned for performing basic tricks like pirouttes, calculated jumps, and much more. We also play with it and teach it. When stripped off from its original wearer, a Skin assumes a (seemingly sentient) fleshy configuration of an animal related to the wearer’s personality, but with added changes like tumors and growths. We had a hawk skin, a wolf skin, a capybara skin, even a damn beluga skin.
So far, only individuals with strong and unique personalities had mythological animals as their skins. We’ve once encountered an individual whom, when stripped, granted us a Golem skin that looked like a human. It screamed in pure agony upon the moment of its conception, and screamed in every encounter with a person before breaking, specifically, a random target’s ribs and leaving them to write in agony while standing over them. We’ve managed to teach it about the harms of violence regardless, and when restored to its owner, made the owner a more peaceful person.
In another instance, we’ve conceived an Axolotl Skin, and it kept on constantly cutting itself off then regenerating parts and bleeding all across the factory. At the end of the day, we’ve contained the clones of the Axolotl then restored it to the owner on the same day, generating him a higher muscle mass.
I’ll never forget “Clary”, or what I call the large chameleon skin that emerged from one of our customers and was highly docile. He managed to, by effectively camouflaging himself, escape from the factory and had us searching for him with the best detectives in aid. Only after 8 hours of searching, we found him in a man’s bedroom, sitting above his face and slowly absorbing his nutrition and skin. After removal, the man’s face was bleeding with invasive pores and pimples on it, all from the bacterium Staphylococcus aureus working together with Clary. Clary has a habit of contorting in an unstable manner, bending his own skin, ripping it off, opening his mouth to let blood out, and more. Nonetheless, we have not scanned for neurological reception of suffering.
After the incident, Clary was then contained to be raised better and never returned to his owner (as his contract did not end yet). Clary himself is creative, painting art on a paper using his tiny, fleshy fingers on paint. One drawing was of a two horned being’s outline, surrounding a perfectly circular sphere with down-to-detail shading. Communication is currently attempted with Clary, to possibly create a new bridge of understanding between people and their skins. Perhaps skins are more sentient than we can imagine, would leashing them and walking them be like leashing a human?
In some cases, some skins might have gory tumors which excrete disturbing substances only to accompany their own aesthetic. Such throwback is memorable when discussing the person with the Phoenix skin, as to quote him, he wanted us to raise his skin for him until he returns, because he wanted to “focus on rebirthing as a person”. His Phoenix skin was like all skins you’d predict: A bird made of pure flesh, but the flesh was rearranged in a manner where the edges fluttered like flames, in a swirling manner. Additionally, at its tips, it had an incredible amount of pores surrounded by golden tumors, each decorated with cysts and pulsating blisters around it. At times, the Phoenix skin bled a substance which I could only attribute to sebum, and it contained a reddish hint of blood with the average white pus. Still in all scenarios, whether the flesh-formed skin is cute, monstrous, or not, I aim to not get attached as that interferes with my quality of work.
A witch has to remain committed to her job, diary, and I’ve been outstanding at such trait.
Nonetheless in all scenarios, everyday work is interesting. Every day, a new skin is brought into the ever-growing collection of temporarily-adopted skins. Thankfully, no skin is stolen at all, and each skin we adopt under our care is restored happily to its owner, now with stronger virtues and improvements. A significant part of my daily life is grabbing a cup of cortado coffee, heading off to the factory, and walking a skin in the sunlight to make sure it begins its day with activity. For that, it receives a soul of the damned as its first treat. I enjoy what I do as the skins are mostly friendly, and I say this because they’re mostly friendly.
Until the day where I had to walk a terrible skin. One abused by its owner, hateful, filled with scars of previous battles. One day, a man, greasy in black curly hair, incredibly tall in length, and having dark green eyes with dark red eyelids and dark circles, walked into our factory’s reception, aiming to receive care for his skin. As he approached our reception though, I’ve felt a type of energy emanating from him, something that put my senses to danger. I just returned from walking a Coyote skin some few minutes ago, from another lady that applied to have her skin raised some many days in the past, and I’ve been resting close to see this man approach. However, his physical body attitude, his energy, that man’s body language, it felt threatening. His eyes seemed dead inside, my diary. He had no soul, no energy, it seemed like he killed himself on the inside and was a skin that possessed a skeleton, not the opposite. As I locked eyes with him from far away, he looked at me, and at that moment I felt like reality completely went black. If he weren’t showing movement, I would’ve assumed he was a corpse that breathed only fumes of death. They say that the abyss stares back when you look at it, and to me, this man felt like an abyss.
I’ve felt a brush in my shoulder only to look and see nothing. What was that? Must be the wind hitting my skin.
Anyways, he paid the amount price for the contract, signed it, and presented his documents from his dark-green dirt-filled coat. They’ve walked him into the Dermatorium. I’ve always disliked the Dermatorium for many reasons, but the main reason is that the extraction of the skin is usually a grueling process that I’d rather not witness, involving the death of Pullers (individuals whom “pull” the skin).
Upon scanning the document after both the receptionist and man left, I’ve noticed the lack of a first name, age, and history before applying for the skin adoption pass. Only a last name was written, with a title. “Mr. Morningstar”. Only after reading that name, did I hear a bone-paining scream. It came from the Dermatorium.
Surely the Pullers must’ve not fucked up the process? Yet, no, my diary. Our customer was gone! Usually during Skin Extraction, only a skeleton, ligaments, bones, a soul, joints, and attached organs remain. This time, there was nothing but a gargantuan, petrifying ball of flesh. It had literally nothing interesting. It was just an orb of flesh that rotated constantly, which you could only feel when touching it, and levitated menacingly in the air. It radiated an aura which I could only relate to “true anger”, “true sorrow”, “true sadism”. It bore no threat, yet at the same time, standing between it and me encapsulated the feeling that the end of this world is approaching, and fast. That orb, that circular collection of flesh, was cleanly shaped. It was exactly spherical in all levels with no abnormality, and was shaped of a light skin that contained zero deformities at all. Even during its rotation, it was blatantly impossible to tell whether or not it was even moving, but it was rotating very fast. It had the type of structure where even if it stopped rotating and continued on levitating, it’d look just as it did when rotating fast.
What did it want? It clearly had thoughts, and it was looking at me. It was examining me, it was examining everything. At that moment, I was merely a fallible human, and my primal instincts of fight or flight should’ve activated. Trying to turn around and look back, I felt the pure effort and gravity act on my body, as if my sins from Hell itself were mounting above my head. What mass is this? I’ve succeeded only then, in turning around.
This was new, not just to me, but to everyone. What kind of animal is an orb anyway? Is it an embryo of sorts? I wouldn’t care much, for examining the giant ball of flesh was of maximum interest. I’ve looked back to the door to see everyone frozen on the outside, but as I stepped closer back to the exit of the Dermatorium, time seems…to have slowly continued, then accelerated gradually to the normal?
I looked to my back again, and some of the Pullers woke up and started running towards me, even though they weren’t bleeding anymore. I screamed in horror, but I was caught while trying to escape. One of them bit my eye off, along with the skin around it, and proceeded to scream about how “Satan’s greatest sin was rejecting his own skin”. I’ve tried to resist further, pushing the maniacal Puller off me, but it was in vain. More swarmed around me and bit my body, ripping large chunks of my arm’s skin next to the extensor carpi off, and tearing chunks of my right leg to expose my femur. Then the Security quickly arrived and apprehended the Pullers, allowing me a chance to escape, and contained the newly born Skin. I’ve been assisted out of the room by the guards, but I was too injured to function anymore.
I was taken by higher-level agents of the factory to be healed then questioned, dragged away from the room then later interrogated. Though I could swear that the further I went from it, the further the room became darker and darker, as if Light was being absorbed into it. Like a hole of darkness, but how can that be possible? A hole of nothingness, made of flesh? I never understood what happened that day. Then, I blanked out.
Thankfully, the company covered the costs of my eye’s healing (and emotional therapy). In just a few months’ time, I was back to work. Though when interrogated, I’ve felt a presence before me, telling me to commit a sin of lying to them. I’ve lied, and told them that I only stepped in as I’ve heard someone calling me, then the agents picked a fight with me and I’ve screamed at them, causing a change in the Skin’s generation as it was pulled. I’ve also informed them that the man escaped out never to be seen again, exploiting the fight as a means to go quickly and never sign a contract of return to claim his Skin again.
Truly, what happened to that man? What kind of animal is an orb of flesh? What did these Pullers mean by “Satan’s greatest sin was rejecting his own skin”? Why is that every time I looked at that object, words escaped my mind?
The answers to all of these questions were unknown. I never understood anything that happened that day, but I will likely know today. I have received a new appointment in my bulletin app by the company, to walk that Skin. To walk that eldritch demon appearing as a sphere will be my job for today. I can’t comprehend it, no, nobody can comprehend what this Skin even is.
We’ve brought Satan’s vessel, its Skin, into this world and will suffer the consequences. But what could I do against management, really? They’d call me delusional since I lied to them anyway, but that could come to my advantage. I could kill it, I could understand it and become one with it, and I could even banish it to God’s realm. After all, Lucifer banished his own beautiful Skin to become Satan, by tearing off his wings and falling from Heaven.
But in the end nonetheless, I’m a Skin Walker. Walking skins is what I do, and this time, I’m walking Satan’s very skin.