Welcome to Flashes of Sanity! Your weekly dose of flash fiction on 500 words or less.
This week’s entry: Shedding Skin
Enjoy!
He inhaled with a smile smeared over his face.
My collection. All my lovely demons.
One by one caressed each one. All his different skins. All his different faces.
Jack the plumber. Gone with the stab of a shovel. So blunt. The neck still wore the scars.
Matt the prostitute. So kind. So fragile. So, so easy to drug. He took the skin in his hand and pushed it against his face. The perfume was still thick.
Tomorrow, he thought, today I have other business.
His hand continued past all he could be and all someone else once was. Greg, accountant. Bill, millionaire. Fred, friend. So, so many. Yet never enough.
His hand stopped at one pale hide. Hugh, butcher.
You, he thought, once again it is time for some dirty work.
Carefully he slipped into his new identity. Would he be recognized?
Hardly. After all Chris, carpenter had never met Hugh before.
He crossed the room to a door at the back. Each step heavy from heel to toe.
They shall echo, he reminded himself.
“Please.” Chris said as the first light hit his eyes.
“Hush.” Hugh pushed his finger against Chris’s lips. “I will free you now.”
“You will?”
Hugh scanned the carved skin still attached to Chris’s body in thin strands. “Yes, we have enough.”
“Can you at least kill me quickly?”
“As you wish.” Hugh slammed his hammer through the brain.
Then the collecting began. And a new Chris the carpenter was added to the wardrobe.
It was still not enough.
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DBJ 