It was almost the beginning of a New Year and my skin was falling off. Piece by piece it peeled back to reveal raw flesh that stung to the touch. At first, I recoiled but I was soon accustomed to it. Beneath my skin letters were appearing. They glowed at intervals. It was as if my body was communicating a code to me. I woke one morning and found a note on the kitchen table.Â
It will take a while but the sooner you start the sooner youâll know.Â
The letters increased in number every time I slept. I decided to try and work out what was happening to me. I placed a mirror opposite my desk and started a fresh notebook. I labelled it Flesh Code One. The letters had begun to appear on the softest part of my forearm. They glowed a yellow ochre. The first to appear was an X. I documented the date and time of its appearance: December 15, 18:00. I wondered whether I, myself, had carved them into my arm as I slept and, if so, what instrument would I have usedâŠa penâŠa carving knifeâŠmy fingernails? There were no bloodstains in my modest apartment and my fingernails were always bitten down to the wick.Â
Was it possible that something else had done this to me? I lived alone and kept little company. All my working life I had worked nightshifts at the print factory as a security warden. There was never anyone around until the delivery drivers came towards dawn. I usually slept from mid morning until late afternoon. Perhaps I was ill. I was ill enough to imagine that something was peeling off my skin and carving letters into my flesh. I reached for my medical encyclopaedia stolen years ago from my fatherâs uncle. There was only one entry in the index that I was drawn to. I turned to page 672 and began to read.
 âAncient Egyptians under the reign of Rameses III reported a debilitating skin condition that the physicians to the pharaoh could not cure. Young men, who had been recruited to the army and were the firstborn and only sons of their parents, reported the gradual emergence of hieroglyphics on their raw flesh, the appearance of which remained a mystery. The men were imprisoned and eventually executed under the suspicion that they were under the control of the dead armies the pharaoh had defeated. Hysteria and paranoia became rife in the ranks. After the pharaohâs death Egypt began to decline and for many centuries it was said that this strange occurrence was directly linked to its downfall despite there being no solid evidence.â
 It sounded as though I had been struck with the same affliction as the pharaohâs men. But these were not hieroglyphics appearing on my arm and I had never been in the army. The only thing I had in common with these men was that I, too, was the firstborn and only son of my parents. But many men have been in this position and none, since the army of Rameses III, had reported glowing letters appearing after skin loss. I felt sound of mind but doesnât every madman? If I went to the hospital I would have to submit myself to the curiosities of medical science. I knew instinctively that they wouldnât try and cure a case like mine. I would be paraded and humiliated  and my case would appear in the newspapers. I would rather join the circus than appear in a newspaper.Â
At this time, my skin was raw but the sting was bearable. I could live with it. I continued clocking on at work and went on with my usual routine. I dropped in at the cafĂ© for breakfast and then home to bed. Day by day, the letters kept appearing. I applied bandages to the fresh wounds. The flesh around the letters that had appeared early on had begun to heal but marks remained. They had scarred. Underneath my civilian clothing I was a mummified alphabet. Weeks passed and I was just about clinging on. I had tried to crack this enigma but was unable to decipher a thing.Â
A new set of letters appeared down the inside of my right leg. It was in no script I could recognise. These were not hieroglyphs, runes, Cantonese, Parsee or Cyrillic. They were unearthly. I reached for my encyclopaedia of rare and forgotten languages that I had borrowed from my auntâs first husband. There was nothing written on this strange script. I began to feel paranoid. Roman script and hieroglyphics I could deal with but an alien language was beyond even my limits. I envisioned myself as one of those delusional men on a terrible sci-fi documentary recounting my experience of strange visitations from unearthly creatures intent on tattooing their messages to earth up my inner thigh, along my lower back, on the tips of my toes and behind my ear lobes. My situation was becoming utterly nightmarish. No man alive would believe me. No man alive could help me.
I took a week off work and began to write my story. By then, I was covered head to toe in letters. I wrote for eighteen hours straight to distract my mind. I was surviving on as little sleep as possible. By the seventh day, I had feverishly written hundreds of thousands of words. The more I documented the truth of my situation the more the letters disappeared. I wept. I wrote. I wept.Â
I was so encouraged by my progress I became intent on getting down any subject that came to mind. I wrote essays on love, warfare and Provençal poetry and letters disappeared. I wrote obituaries and dramas, novellas and songs. I was almost letter-less.
When I was satisfied with my work and the letters had almost all but disappeared I visited my regular cafĂ©. There had been a changeover of staff. I asked the waitress what had happened. âNew ownership. The previous proprietors and all the staff were killed in a train crash in the Swiss Alps. This happened about three weeks ago.â
I was upset by this tragic news. I had become familiar with all the staff at the cafĂ©. They were all good people and ready to go out their way for the cafĂ©âs regular customers. The chefs were talented and the waiting staff hospitable and the owner was an old friend of my motherâs who was a keen carpenter. What were they doing in Switzerland?Â
There were few letters remaining and the scars had become faint. I called the print factory to tell them I was fit to return to work. The line was unable to connect. I left the cafĂ© and walked the fifteen minutes to the site. The sky was cloudless but the ground damp as if it had just rained. Iâd noticed no rainfall. I turned the corner onto the factoryâs street. The land was desolate. There was nothing but mud, dead grass, some old newspapers and a few empty, plastic barrels. An old typewriter sat by a broken chair and birds circled overhead. I checked the street name Print Street. This was it. The factory site had vanished. I sank to my knees in devastation. I looked up into the blue sky. It began to peel. Blackness was revealed as the sky turned like a page. I heard the sound of an ice cream van warping in the distance and the ground was swelling at my feet. The blackness got greater. A dog walked by and told me that he was the embodiment of history. I wept and my tears were man-sized bubbles that drifted into the nearby canal. The sky turned completely in on itself and absolutely nothing was revealed.
A story. December 15, 2015.
janainaart
vaporwave
tangentwithtanner
izzy806
yousharknotpass
theartofmadeline
