Under The Skin Novels & Stories

And three men walk in. The first is tall, dark-skinned, with a body that belongs in a museum – broad chest, carved abs, arms that flex with each step. He's wearing black pants that sit dangerously low on his hips and nothing else. His skin is oiled. He glows under the club lighting.

Then, she suddenly reached out to pinch the back of Frank's hand, exclaiming in curiosity, "Why is your skin so tough but so soft to the touch? Strange." Frank chuckled, knowing what she was getting at. "In video game terms, my skin is a passive skill that stops everything on its own without activation." Yancy nodded again. "Then can I take a sample for research?" She flinched as Frank smiled, shaking his head. "No way! Are you really that stingy? You just drank my Dom Perignon too, and it's way more expensive than the more popular crap. Pretty please? Can you do me a solid?"

“Maybe you have a future as a back-alley surgeon.” She ignored him, pointing with her probe. “The liver is here. It’s three-lobed.” He didn’t look at the frog. He looked at her hands, then at the vulnerable line of her throat as she bent over the table. “You know,” he said, his voice dropping to a conversational, vicious murmur, “it’s fascinating what’s underneath. The ugly, slimy reality beneath the skin. Everyone’s got it. Even you, Elara. Under all this quiet, desperate trying… What's there? Just nothing more?”

So, witnessing the one before our eyes felt unreal. I ran my gaze down his body. No, not a body...just a...structure. At first glance, you'd perceive them as skeletons but upon a closer look, you'd see the skin. The skin that was so parched, brittle, and thin that it cracked with every movement. It was stretched tight across bones, with no flesh or muscle beneath...like something half-alive and half-dead. The eyes were sunken pits with no eyeballs but just a dim glow. It had no lips, just a wide gap as a mouth and when it spoke, a wheezing sound accompanied its words.

It would be a happy death if the last thing I saw was the way her back arches in response, pressing out and up into that magnificent curve, as if she might be swept away into the night sky by the Moon Goddess herself. Then I saw it. Just below the nape of her neck, a faint ripple moved beneath the surface, almost like a muscle twitch, but different. The skin shivered, the flesh momentarily firming, as if something were pressing up from within. It was barely a flicker, gone as quickly as it appeared, but it was unmistakable.

he says and looks at Delcote. "Need to speak to Skin, verify things with him," Delcote states. "He's there working on a truck." Big King points. "Skin, 'ere." I learnt Skin got his name because he used to be massively overweight and has a lot of excess skin from losing weight. For some strange reason, he suggested the nickname for himself. I watch as Skin moves away from the car and walks over. My eyes widen when I see him. That's not a hit; it's multiple, and it happened before we got back. He wasn't hit for the cover story, so what the hell happened?

The appearance of the "Seraphina-Skin" was the ultimate "Mod" of the human heart. Silas stood paralyzed, his gold-veined wolf form withdrawing into a state of terminal vulnerability. He looked at the woman who had faked her death thirty years ago and then sacrificed her solar-resonance for him, only to see her now as a "Premium Restoration." She was beautiful, her skin a flawless ivory shot through with veins of mercury-silver, but she had no scent. She was a "Hollow Asset," a high-definition lie designed to bridge the gap between Silas’s grief and the Collector’s market.

He approaches a black panel of buttons and begins to type like a mad man. I can't help but watch his dark green body anxiously as he does. He looks like something out of my nightmares. His alligator-like skin covers his entire body, unlike the Gaimo soldiers who only have it in vulnerable places. His skin also seems impenetrable. I would bet it is three inches thick.

“I know what’s best for you.” I let out a bitter laugh that held no humor. “Do you really? Then look at me, Mom. Look at me.” With shaking hands, I tugged at the collar of my shirt, pulling it down and baring my chest. The fabric gave way, revealing the truth I’d hidden for weeks. My skin, once whole, was rotting in patches. A sickly gray and black spread like a disease across my flesh, reeking faintly of decay. I’d covered it with makeup, with creams, lying to myself that it wasn’t real. But now there was no hiding it.

As Drew pulls me closer and kisses me softly under the faint shimmer of lights, I can’t help but think… How could a man so sweet have been hiding beneath the surface all this time? THE END