“You’re late.” Norison Jenkins looked up from her tea at the figure that had just entered the room.

“Oh piss off, Nor. It’s late and I’ve had a long night.”

The man who had just stumbled in through the front door looked a terrible mess. He had long dark circles under his eyes and was sporting a large black bruise atop his left cheek bone. His clothes were torn and ragged, and his hair was matted and looked as if he had run through the bushes in the neighbor’s yard (which might, Norison realized, very well be true).

“Hey, don’t blame me because you’re all black and blue, Connor,” Norison replied, returning to her tea. “It’s not my fault you’re a bloody idiot and don’t listen to a word I say.”

Connor huffed down into the nearest sickly green armchair with a dull whumph. The cushions sunk down several more inches before deciding on a degree of dilapidation and sticking with it. He stared at the mottled brown carpet, hardly recognizable as its original burgundy now that it was littered with stains of various types and ages. He noticed a stray bottle cap and flicked it towards the couch with his toe.

“Ew, Connor, that’s disgusting,” Norison said as Connor began to pick at the bruise on his cheek. “When are you gonna get rid of that skin, anyway? It looks like it’s starting to rot.” She wrinkled up her nose for added emphasis.
“Hey, I’ve gotten used to this skin, alright?” Connor replied, though he stopped picking at the bruise on his face and instead took to fiddling with a shredded piece of shirt hanging off his cuff. “I’ll shed it when I feel like it.”

“It’s old, and it’s getting musty.”

“It’s still got a few more uses left in it!”

Norison rolled her eyes and slammed back the rest of her tea. “I’m going out.”

“What? But I just got home!”

“Yeah but you stink.”

Connor sniffed his armpit and shrugged. “Not any worse than you do.”

“Oh ha ha.” She gave him a good punch in the shoulder as she got up to leave. “It’s that damn skin you’re wearing, Connor. Take it off,” she added over her shoulder.

“Fine,” he snipped back, but he didn’t move until he was sure she had left the room.

Connor sighed, looking down at his old familiar skin and stained, tattered clothing. It had come with the package, and it hadn’t exactly been in the best shape when he’d acquired it, but he’d still been rather fond of it. But as he looked it over he noticed the mottled green patches, the festering scabs that apparently had never quite healed properly (having a different type of blood than that of the skin you’re inhabiting can have that effect). He picked a spoon up off the table and examined himself in its tea-stained surface. His face didn’t look much better, either. Sections of skin were beginning to turn brown and flake/peel in thick dead chunks, and the bruise under his eye was slowly turning the same putrid green as the one on the opposite side of his forehead. It looked like he had gotten something lodged in his eyebrow (glass, perhaps?), but he didn’t feel like picking it out.

Instead, he put the spoon down and grimaced. “This was a good skin,” he said, looking down at his graying muscles and withering wrists. “It’ll be hard to find another one like this.” He sighed and slowly began to peel the flesh away, starting at his shoulder joint. He tore through the shirt right down to the soft tissue where the bone should be, pulling the paper-thin skin down towards his wrist and finally tugging it off at fingers like a glove. He wriggled his true fingers and half-frowned, then began to peel the other arm, the legs, the torso, the buttocks (his favourite part), and finally the face. He sighed as he tossed the last of the old skin onto the carpet, looking like some grotesquely realistic Halloween mask.

“Well there, now that’s a helluva lot better.” Norison was standing in the doorway to her bedroom, looking rather smug with her hand on her hip. “I told you it was getting gross. I’m surprised that thing wasn’t infested with parasites,” she said as she walked into the room and began to clear dirty dishes off the heavy wooden coffee table. She paused and looked down at the skin for a moment. “It wasn’t, was it?”

“No,” Connor replied, feeling rather irritated. He hated it when she acted like their mother.

“Well good. Now clean that up before it rots,” she said, gesturing towards the discarded skin as she brought the dishes into the kitchen.

“Yes Mother,” Connor intoned under his breath.

Norison came back into the room and grabbed a jacket off the couch that didn’t look like it had a shelf life much longer than Connor’s old skin. “I’m still going out, you know,” she said. “Don’t let anybody see you like that. And for god’s sake, get a new skin. Hopefully something more appealing than that last piece of garbage you had on.”

Connor grumbled his acknowledgment, which apparently was good enough for Norison because she smiled, grabbed her keys off the cluttered coffee table, and headed briskly towards the door.

“Ciao, darling,” she called affectedly. The door closed before he could respond, leaving Connor alone with his shed skin.