There’s something about the way skin tears that excites me; how it peels away as I put knife to flesh and bare the true face of its host. I can’t compare that feeling to any other, then again, have I ever felt this much and so many conflicting emotions at once before? To feel both mesmerised by Mother Nature’s composition, of what lies beneath the surface, made of several layers of tissue, to feel the edge of the knife gently unravel each layer, yet feel so… disgusted? So vulnerable? Beneath the skin, once it peels off and is gone, we’re all the same. Too similar, so uncannily similar.
I’ve always been an odd person. My obsession with the
morbid, however, was not a result of this. You know those kinds of people, the
ones who always seem kind and good-natured, yet are the most horrible beings? Only
they’re good at hiding their true selves and fooling people into thinking the
opposite. People always told me similar things growing up: “You’re such a kind
person, so pure and innocent like falling snow.”
Just thinking of myself as “kind” and “pure” makes my skin
crawl, especially since I know what I am.
I am a murderer. But not the kind you think of.
I don’t hate people, in fact, I’m not sure I’m capable of feeling
anything. I just want to skin people, see what they look like beneath all that
heavy, leathery tissue, to see their true forms and relish in the insight that
only I have seen them, like really seen them. To stare into those
hollow eyes once the skin is out of the way… how can I describe such a feeling?
And the way that tissue feels on my skin as I place it over my face, and thinking
for a moment, a fleeting moment, that we’re the same. Truly the
same.
I like that part of the whole process more than anything, to
put on my perfectly peeled mask and pretend I’m someone else. I’d wear the
females’ clothes, craft wigs out of their beautiful, glossy hair, and put on
some make-up. Then I’d dance the whole night, just dance away and pretend I’m
the prettiest girl ever without being called a faggot or perverted loser.
Growing up in an all-boys school, I was used to being called
all sorts of names and slurs, yet I didn’t mind any of them. I actually liked
it; it made me feel like I was different, unique even. But I hated the idea of
being told what to act like or look like. It wasn’t like I was overly feminine,
either. Honestly, I received a lot of attention from females, especially in my twenties.
They found my shyness cute, my awkwardness as some kind of mysterious
attribution, and my effeminate features as a “pretty boy” trait.
Naturally, I chose a female as my first real murder.
I’d killed animals before, practised on them to be more precise, and
even murdered another human far too many times in my mind. Too many
times, actually. And those vivid imaginations only made me even more eager to
kill, to peel the skin off another human, and use it as my own.
Kayla was her name. Gorgeous thing. Despite looking so
petite and feminine, she put up a real fight. I’d just taken off her bra and
kissed her tenderly when I got the urge to taste her. Violently so. But not the
kind of urge heterosexual males feel towards females; this was another kind of
urge, one that was not sexual. I’ve never once felt sexual attraction to anyone
or anything. Even this sudden urge lacked that sort of intimacy. I was just
curious. What did this pretty thing look like beneath all those layers? Was she
as pretty inside as she was outside? What did she taste like?
So, I pinned her down and punched her against the bed. She
kept screaming. Kept telling me to stop. At one point, I wanted to. I really
wanted to. But I couldn’t help it. Her soft, peaked breasts, the way her
beautiful face distorted in horror, and the way she tried to push me away
excited me in ways no words could describe. I guess I did feel some sort of
sexual release back then, but it only happened that one time and only with her.
I tried to replicate that feeling afterwards, always trying to mimic what I did
to her with the others, but couldn’t.
Years later, I realised that I was in love with her, only I
didn’t know it. I had never experienced love, and so I didn’t know how to
express myself. I just wanted to be part of her and her to be part of me, and I
was so sure that I only wanted to taste her, to see her real face beneath the
skin, that I failed to recognise my own feelings. But at that point, I was too
far gone to stop, too intoxicated by what Kayla had done to me and my perverted
sexuality that all I wanted was to feel that way again in the most disturbing
ways.
Sometimes, I’d wear her clothes and put on her face over
mine, then I’d lie on the bed and slap myself repeatedly to relieve myself. It
worked only half of the time, but I kept doing it. Over and over. Screaming,
just like she did, then crying, begging myself to stop, saying “I’m sorry”, and
then suffocating myself with her bra. It still smelled like the sweat of her
soft breasts, which were now frozen solid in the freezer. I once cut up some of
it to taste it, but they were so leathery that I just threw them away.
There are times when I look at her dismembered body and feel
disgusted by myself, but other times I just use whatever I lay my hands on and
try to relieve myself with her. But her hands are so cold that it never works.
So, I stopped all that and just came to terms with the fact that I had to find
some new hands – softer and warmer to the touch. No one would ever give me the
sexual release Kayla gave me, I knew that, but I soon figured I just had to
chop the head off and pretend those warm, cut-off hands were hers.
And so, my killing spree began in November of that same year
I took this decision. Although I was still socially inadequate and it showed, I
had managed to land a decent job at a chocolate factory, and women were still
attracted to my pitiful personality, coupled with my above-average looks. There
were days when I had two or three women over to my apartment, always of the
same age as her, and took my time killing and dismembering them over the
week. I didn’t like to rush things and was a perfectionist, and every new face
and body required different tools and different care.
I liked especially the ones with some meat on them; that way,
I could reserve some for supper and make soap with the fat. Did you know humans
have yellow fat, by the way? I never knew until I chopped this middle-aged Somali
woman. She’d given birth to six children and had fat in the right places. I
must’ve used a great portion of her to make a whole course meal and several
batches of fat. Which reminds me of something: she was the one who eventually
helped me see my true potential and my innate talent for cooking and
craftsmanship.
Long story short, I joined the cast of MasterChef – one of
thousands and millions of home cooks, who were lucky enough to impress the
judges and begin a new phase in life. Over the course of eighteen weeks, I
became a fan favourite and earned the nickname “The Handsome Chef”, and when I
came in second, I opened my own restaurant downtown and got people queuing for
my dishes. My speciality? Sous vide turkey breast in vanilla and orange broth
to enhance the sweet taste and give it a tang, served with a roux-based sauce
made with a dash of cinnamon to double the effect of the vanilla without taking
too much away from it.
You know, at first, I really wanted to start anew and make
things the right way. But although I was making the bank, my urges were
hitting an all-time low. Receiving attention from all those females, smelling
their intoxicating sweat, seeing their soft and peaked breasts through their
deep V-neck shirts, was getting to me. But, miraculously, I was holding on very
well despite the temptation. Until a particular incident, that is.
As mentioned, I did not feel sexually attracted to anybody,
and so I wasn’t particularly good at picking up the kind of sexual signals and
tension people sent me. Not until it was too late. That was what happened on
the evening of a party I was invited to by a celebrity couple who’d enjoyed my dishes.
I was approached by many people, mind you, of all walks of life and sexes. But
I didn’t really pay attention to anyone, in fact; I was actually planning on
leaving the party early to keep myself in check, going as far as to avoid drinking
altogether since years back.
But then he came. A young fella, no older than
twenty. Good looking. He introduced himself as an up-and-coming actor and said that
he was a big fan of mine. We exchanged phone numbers, and then I left. I didn’t
realise just how big of a star this young man was, not until I looked up his
name and noticed that he was a rising star in one of the most-watched coming-of-age,
high school television series in recent years.
We kept in touch occasionally. I didn’t put any effort into
trying to contact him as he wasn’t female and he wasn’t exactly what I liked to
taste. Overall, not my type. But at some point, his messages overwhelmed me and
would come at the most random of times. Each message started the same way: “Hey,
I was wondering if you might be open to making some plans sometime soon?” or
some variant of this. I usually ignored those kinds of messages, and honestly,
I was slightly disturbed. That was a first for me – to feel disturbed by
someone other than myself. And it was this fascination that eventually
led me to accept his invites.
Of course, I knew what the guy wanted. I’d seen him give me
those stares, the ones I’d given Kayla before I kissed her that night. But it
wasn’t that I was sexually intrigued, only curious. The morbid kind of
curiosity. I had never killed a male before. It never occurred to me that I
could – or would. But lo and behold, as we made out in bed, I got that
strange arousal I got with Kayla, and I just knew I had to take this
opportunity.
He didn’t look much different from the others beneath the
skin, to be honest. My expectations fell short. But he made me realise
something about myself and those conflicting feelings of mine: it wasn’t the people
themselves who aroused me, it was the fact that I did something I had never
done before, something so perfectly disturbed, that it excited me.
I had to test this theory out, of course. So, I resumed my
killing spree and used the flesh in my recipes. With each new dish, the sexual
arousal was beyond anything I’d ever experienced, and when I received a two-star
Michelin review from an acclaimed critic, I reached climax for the first time.
Today, I work as a judge in the newest season of MasterChef.
Already past my sixties and my prime yet seeing those youthful faces look up to
me and praise my craft triggers something deeply inside me. Had I the time and
energy, especially the opportunity, I’d like to taste them and make a
new dish out of them. Just imagining it makes me excited. But for now, all I
can do is imagine and create the next best dish, imagining what each contestant
would taste like in my mind.
I still wear Kayla’s face regularly and dance in the darkest hours of the night. She’s become some sort of comfort to me over the years. Her bra still smells of sweat, so salty yet delicious, that I sometimes scrape some of the fabric to infuse her sweaty breasts into my dishes. Serving it to customers gives me a kick, and once in a while, I reach climax – to her scent – and relive those beautiful moments of our bodies intertwining, her face over mine, her cold corpse against my skin, and me inside her rotting insides.
