Content Warning: Body Horror

 

I’m trapped in this body and I can no longer stand it. Being enclosed in a prison of flesh fills my soul with agony. My unnatural existence should be purged.

 

The sun is setting as I wheel myself in front of my study’s mirror to stare at my abhorrent form: meat wrapped around the bone with silk wrapped around the meat. I bring my hands up to my face and clutch at my cheeks, wishing that they would slough away. I pull at my face as if to dislodge it—but not with any true force. Damaging this thin facade would cause those who I see on a regular basis to look down on me even more. I hate myself but I cannot change just yet.
 

I look long and hard at my reflection; thinking, contemplating, and dreaming for change. But I know change does not come from idle hope, as it can only arise from taking action. I gaze and glare and leer at myself until my energy is spent and I pass out. Just like I do every night.
 

As my mind descends into the Dreamlands, I promise myself that this will be the last time that I fall asleep in this accursed form. I will take action tomorrow, but not now. It is not yet time…but it shall be soon.

 

***

 

When I awake in the morning, my sweet nurse is already here and tending to me. She cleans me and feeds me as usual, all with her fleshy hands. As she goes about her duties, I stare at her skeleton through her muscles and her organs—at her lovely bones. How I wish I could free her from her corporeal prison. But I cannot help her until I help myself. Soon, we will be free. I will make sure of it.

 

My dearest nurse pulls the curtains aside and the sun’s rays find my eyes. It feels disgusting; as if I am a slab of rotting pork being slowly burned. I smell my warm skin and I wish I could strip it from my body. I pull my silken garb over my hands and face before I turn away from the window. My kind nurse frowns but then closes the curtains once more. I do not tolerate having the sun upon me. It feels too human.
 

Hour after hour I peruse my many manuals and tomes. I look over the ways to free a soul from its visceral jail. These are all passages that I have memorized long ago, but it brings me comfort to see the familiar words and to know that they will guide me to my release soon enough. Soon…

 

As the sun sinks below the horizon, my sweet nurse bids me farewell. I watch her leave into the sunset and wordlessly promise to save her after I save myself. It will be tonight. Once the blood moon rises, it will begin.
 

***
 

Dusk dies and the night comes alive, signaling the beginning of the end. I wheel myself around my abode, gathering the ingredients needed for the ritual: a sown flesh effigy, the bones of a beast whose body was devoured by disease, and threads from a wraith’s cloak. These are all things that I've had lying in wait for this very moment. Finally, they can serve a purpose as opposed to slumbering in glass jars full of alcohol and sigil-covered containers.
 

I tear the curtains of my office away to reveal a garnet moon bleeding into the gloom. I then push myself out of my moving chair and l land with a thump on the hardwood floor of my study. There is no pain, as I have not felt my legs in decades. I drag myself to the mirror and begin to connect the components.
 

First, I position the fleshy effigy. Its many pinks and reds stitched together from the skin of many people. It is warm in my hands; as if it is echoing the faint life held by the humans from which it was born. I set it down and then I arrange the bones.
 

I hear that the wolf from which they had come slowly fell to canine distemper; most of their innards were consumed by the virus but the skeleton was left untouched. I place them as my familiar diagrams instructed: around the flesh effigy in an inverted star with many surrounding osteoconstellations.
 

Lastly, I use the ethereal wisps of the wraith’s cloak to bind the flesh to the bone. It is challenging to manipulate the nearly intangible threads, but I eventually manage to put together the macabre monument. Unlike the poor fool that acquired them; who was pulled apart by the very wraith whose cloak he defiled.
 

Next comes the hard part: I need to sever the threads joining the flesh to the bone, but with something from my own body. I pull out a pair of pliers and grab hold of the nail on my offhand’s pinky finger. Agonizingly, I pull it free—as free as I soon shall be. I spend a moment staring at my severed nail with envy before I begin the final part of the ritual.

 

I grasp the bloody nail in my undamaged hand and I cut through the wraith’s threads while reciting the necessary incantation. These words are not of a tongue that I am fully acquainted with, but their meanings ring true. Each holds sentiments of separation, liberation, and unrelenting determination.

 

When I cut the last thread and say the final words, the assembled figure before me erupts in black fire. The dark flames drink the low light of the blood moon’s crimson rays, and with their passing, I can also feel something being pulled from my body. White wisps emerge from my corpus and flow into the small occult pyre.
 

The surface of the mirror becomes foggy, like mists obscuring a moor; signifying that a change has occurred. Then, just as suddenly as they appeared, the black flames vanish. It leaves behind the flesh, bones, and threads—now naught but a pile of smoking ash. I briefly entertain the thought of how magicians use smoke and mirrors to fool common folk, and I wonder if rituals like mine are the origins of such spectacles.

 

I sit in the silent darkness and allow my mind to become still. Once my thoughts are clear, I peer at my reflection in my study’s smoky mirror and clutch at my face. Slowly, I pull at the flesh of my cheeks, and, miraculously, they begin to slough away. I tear more of the same from my visage and am soon greeted by my true face: my serene skinless skull.

 

I laugh for the first time in years. It’s happening! I’m finally going to free myself from this damned meat suit. Eagerly, I rip the silk from my body and then do the same for my sickly skin, malevolent muscles, and odious organs. With each bundle of tendons removed, I feel lighter. With each handful of ligaments plucked, I feel happier. But it is not like with my torn fingernail; it is not painful. It feels good. No—it feels fantastic!

 

In a manner of minutes, I finish my liberation. For the first time in decades, I stand. No more would my weak muscles hold me back. No more would my hideous skin hide my true beauty. I gaze adoringly at my gorgeous skeleton—my lovely true self reflected in a cloudy looking glass. Blood covers my bones, but that will soon run off. With my freedom attained, I now set forth to free others as I promised I would.

 

I burst out of my front door and I feel the cold night air on my freshly unchained body. I bask in the carmine luminance until I hear screaming. With eyeless sight, I look to the origin of the shouts and see two people cowering before me. One is a man in a blue suit and the other—to my surprise—is my sweet nurse in a white dress. What great timing for her to take a moonlit stroll by my abode.
 

“Darling…” my throatless voice rasps as I walk forward with arms extended. The man runs away, struck by an utmost fright, but my lovely nurse’s legs collapse, dropping her upon the sidewalk. I crouch down beside her and caress her face, “Do not worry, I will free you. Just as I’ve freed myself.”
 

At that moment, her eyes widen in recognition. “No…” she whispers.
 

“Yes…” I respond before I set to work. I hold her close with one arm and begin freeing her with the other. She cries and screams, but not for long. After I tear the flesh from her face and free her lovely skull, her cries become laughs and her screams become encouragements.
 

“Don’t stop…” she hoarsely urges, which makes me hasten my movements. It is not long before her sensual skeleton is fully liberated. I cradle my dear nurse as she rests; breathing lungless breaths.
 

“You have tended to me for so long, it is only right that I return the favour,” I say as I run a skeletal hand over her smooth skull.
 

“Thank you…” she responds as she sits up. “I didn’t know that I was trapped…until I was not.”

 

“Few do, my darling. Few do…” As my lovely companion and I rise amidst the shade and scarlet moonbeams, we see people around us. They are screaming and pointing at our beautiful bodies. They do not understand…but they will. “Come, my sweet nurse, let us show them all how it feels to be freed from flesh.”