Skinned

The door creaked as it opened, slowly, tauntingly. It dared me to walk up to it, to take my chances and fall prey to its ominous, greedy hunger. Soft yet maniacal laughter echoed through the room&apos;s suddenly chilled, dry air, slowing down as it reached my ears. I sighed, not wanting to play its sadistic game. On some nights, I would sit on my old, worn bed, my eyes sore from all of those hours on the computer, researching what the creature could be, and more importantly, how to get rid of it. That&apos;s when I&apos;d hear the door creaking open, followed by that horrid, evil laughter. I&apos;d step out the door carefully, following the sound of the laughter. It would lead me downstairs, to the place where the other tenants of the building would meet for meals and gatherings. The things it would show me ranged from unnerving to grotesque.This was the third night I had followed it in the past month. This particular night, one of the tenants, an old woman who had stayed in her room most of the time, was tied to one of the chairs at the dining room table. She groaned in a pained, desperate manner, as if begging me to free her from her sure death. But what she didn&apos;t understand is that I couldn&apos;t.

The creature possessed me. My soul was in there somewhere, that was for sure, but it was buried so deep down that God himself would never find it. I felt the creature smile sadistically with my lips, and my legs carried me slowly, against my weak protests, to the drawer where the knives were kept. The drawer opened dramatically slowly, the bright glare of the knives slightly illuminating the inside of the drawer with the reflected moonlight. I saw the horrid, evil smile reflected on a long carving knife that the creature possessing me had selected from the drawer. I stepped forward slowly, every small step taking me closer to the old woman.

"Please, don&apos;t do this. Please," she begged, her voice quavering desperately with fear.

The same maniacal laugh I had heard outside of my door minutes earlier slipped from my lips, echoing ominously through the dark room as I held up the sharp blade, as if taunting the woman. I slipped the knife through her wrinkled, weak skin as her face contorted in pain.The laughter rang through the room once again as I cut more and more until her skin was nothing more than a grotesque pile on the floor, like a Halloween costume carelessly shed and abandoned by a young child once the fun of trick-or-treating was over.

"Don&apos;t you move," I growled sadistically at the woman, as if she had a choice. She sat in the chair, bleeding all over it and the floor.

I walked up the stairs, hearing them creak as I stepped from one stair to another, making my way to my room. As I walked inside, I turned to the cabinet to the left of the door, taking an old Polaroid camera from the back of the dark old cabinet. I made my way back to the dining room where the old woman sat, and turned off the bright light in the kitchen. I aimed my camera at the woman in the chair, then snapped a photo of her, leaving the picture to develop on the table. I sat the camera down next to the photo, then picked up her skin, laying it across the floor like some gruesome rug. I picked up the camera again, then snapped a photo of her skin.

Once I had taken a photo, I took the skin outside and left it on a branch of the tall, ancient oak tree in the back yard, for the creature to collect later on. It wouldn&apos;t use me as its skin this time.