The Lamplighters

Stratum corneum

The huge man looked at Vera’s lifeless body, coldly. Now the kill was over, his real work could begin. He always preferred them when they lay like this—silent and still, not raving and wriggling.

Selecting his finest scalpel from the workbench, he pressed a restraining hand down firmly on the girl’s chest and cut into her, just below the neck. His hand as steady as a tiller’s, he made yet more cuts in beautifully straight lines. Each one was a crimson ribbon, each one intersecting in his perfect design. Soon the girl’s skin was divided up, like tectonic plates floating above the lava of her viscera.

Satisfied with his pattern making, he put the scalpel down and picked up the flesh-comb. He marveled for a moment at its sleek design, surgical steel head, ivory handle. Inserting it into the first intersection, he began to peel back the skin carefully. The red ribbons became folds of velvet meat, which he folded lovingly and placed in the basin next to the gurney.

The hardest part was always around the nails, and the face. His mouth locked into a grimace of concentration. The greatest care was required to lift these layers of derma without tearing them. Softly, softly, he worked the skin upwards from her face.

Then, disaster. He caught sight of his reflection in one of the girl’s eyes. The dead black pool of her pupil revealed him at once. Why had he looked? Why was she looking? The connection broke the spell, and his concentration, at once. Before he could halt his movements, he felt the skin tear at the corner of her eye socket.

Clenching his teeth against the rage, he put aside the flesh-comb and put her eyes out. Both of them. With his thumbs. There, she could mock his mistake no longer. He tore the scalp from her head with a violent wrenching motion. Plunging her blood-slicked hair into the metal waste bin, he struggled for a moment to regain his composure.

Exuding calm, deliberate breaths he vowed to blind the next one before he skinned it. He couldn’t afford the tiniest mistake. Absolute perfection was required of him, and of his prey. But the base matter before him was substandard, distracting him. For absolute perfection, he would have to wait.

He would have to be patient.