My Skin Is Not My Own

My skin is not my own.

It moves and crawls over the flesh, a slick black surface trying to spread over my entire body, to slowly absorb me in a frighteningly familiar hug. Presently it covers most of my torso, my left arm, and partially my neck, reaching a little higher on one side. The skin ripples and shifts, and I sometimes imagine it has a mind of its own. Being human, I am horrified by the prospect of the skin reaching my face and covering my mouth and nose, though I am sure it would conveniently leave an opening for the eyes; being a human male, I am even more horrified by the prospect of it progressing downward, over my lower belly.

I do not know how it came to me, the dark skin. Trying to remember only increases the ungodly itch, and I think it grows faster while I'm focused on Styx-fishing. I do remember one thing, though: there's a remedy of sorts. A treatment, a complex procedure conducted by ... experts ... can halt the progress, and even reverse it to an extent. I do not know what exactly it consists of, although I have submitted myself to it a number of times. When the skin reaches this stage, when it threatens to envelop me whole, when the terrible itch becomes too much to bear, I go to a place, and there I undergo the treatment. The details I cannot recall. I do know that it works, though. It buys me time, and being a mortal human, time is what I need.

I should leave soon.

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Not being up-to-date with recent developments in town, I dig up a contact of mine, and call on a minor favor. She spills the chant on a door and a key. I pay for the drinks, take a sedan chair to the door, make sure no one is around and extend my senses, performing a cursory analysis. Though not precisely what I was looking for, or what I was told, the destination should suffice. I break open the key, inhale, and step through...

... onto the grinding slopes of an infernal mount. I slide down a bit, manage to hold my position with some difficulty, and look around. The good thing about Khalas is it's easy to get your bearings - up is up, and down is down. I need to go down, toward the imaginary planar border. As I begin to carefully descend, I notice movement to my right: slow, bear-sized, slime-covered fur... Vaporighu. I should have smelled them before I saw them. I don't have time for this. Before the creatures can rise to the air, I throw myself down the slope recklessly, at the same time trying to imagine the colorless desert, the sense of hopelessness, the static-colored skies ...

... and then I am there. I'm sliding down a small dune, not a mountain side. It's been a while but the grays welcome me as they do any visitor. Though not as susceptible to their passionless calling, I need to move on. Unable to shift through the borders again so soon, I am forced to improvise. I draw symbols of power in the sand, humming an old tune that I knew a long time ago, in another world. The diagram done, I sit and wait, smoking and trying to keep myself from scratching. Scratching does not help. The skin gives in, the nails leave shallow marks, but the itch remains. It's like the sensation just moves deeper when I scratch, not losing in intensity or irritability. Soon enough, my steed arrives. We bargain briefly, but it's a formality: I know the names of her ancestors, and she cannot deny me service. I climb onto her bare back awkwardly, and we are away. The nightmare gallops across the gloom for hours, gathering speed and direction for the jump, feeling the astral conduits... and then it makes the move, without warning me. There is no more motion ...

... as we are down-coded into acceptable patterns and projected into the Silver Void, traveling without moving. There is no time either, and after a certain amount of this no-time, my steed hits the appropriate conduit and we exist again, but not back on the Waste. Instead, I ride beneath red skies and many moons ...

... in the firm grip of the prison plane. I am close. Soon, the blessed peeling of skin. I need it badly, though I still do not know what it entails. I dismount, and release my servant. How or if she will find her way out of Tartarus, I neither know nor care. Nearby, a trio of petitioners is feeding on what may be the corpse of a fourth and his dog. They are clever enough not to bother someone who just came in on a cauchemar, but they do stare at the black skin crawling up my cheek. I suppress the urge to chastise them for their temerity, and instead I just steal their boat. I push the wretched thing, little more than a raft really, through the swamps. When I notice something rising slowly through the muck, I speak words of warding and illusion to hide and secure my passage. Soon enough, I recognize the path. It is guarded by a pair of sphinx statues, horned and four-breasted. I am very close.

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The skin is getting more restless by the minute. The glistening surface ripples continuously, and the slow heaving feels as if my body is breathing through the thing. From the dock, I walk toward the low stone building. The walls are not manned, but I know that unseen eyes are watching. My hood is down, and I am recognized. The double set of spiked doors does not close on me as I enter.

Through the garden, do not bother to look. Seen it all before. The old hungry pines, the vulgar arrangement of poisonous flowers, the pool with the hooks. Quickly. Dropped the lamp, never mind, just move. Inside. Almost there... Wait. Focus. Regain control. I'm close now, and I will not enter the building as an addle-cove vodare-head, crying for help. I will remain myself. I will do what I came here for... what ever that may be. My hands are still shaking, but other than that, I am in full control again. I enter the waiting room.

The doors are sandalwood, the chairs are leather, and the ceiling is a blue Prime sky. None of my fellow patients is healthy in both body and mind. Half of them are mortal children. The other half is a Sigilian mix - fiends and fiendlings, bariaur, various planetouched, even a single modron. Some, like me, have physical conditions: too few or too many limbs, diseased eyes, miscellaneous deformities, organs carried in bags, gilded prosthetics. Others have different problems; my psychiatric training had been scarce, but even so I can easily categorize a few of the disorders just by looking, whether anxiety, psychosis, schizophrenia, or just plain barminess. Through the crowd a number of attendants move, lepers dressed in expensive-looking flowing robes that hide their feet. They mumble soothing words to waiting patients in a language that I do not understand, assuming these sounds do form a language. I half-heartedly speak a minor incantation to let me understand the babble ... And that is when I see him.

"Lem'Haes! Welcome! How fares the plane-walking business? "

The kocrachon ... no, not just a kocrachon, I remember now... Doctor Vaeristid is walking in wearing a white lab coat of some sort, with a special extension for his proboscis. A pair of spectacles rests well below his eyes. He's taking off his gloves and absent-mindedly scrawling signatures onto documents offered by aides when he sees me waiting.

"Nurse!" He screeches at one of the lepers "Why was this man not brought in immediately? Don't you know about his condition?" While the nurse is mumbling an explanation, Dr. Vaeristid takes my hand and leads my down a corridor, knowingly signaling that I'll receive treatment without waiting my turn. I have the irrational urge to sobbingly thank him, even though as my memories return I begin to slowly question the prudence of submitting myself to a baatezu torturer exiled for malpractice. Everything is happening too fast for me to handle, and the itch is there, and the doctor is making confusing small talk, and I haven't had a smoke in hours...

So they bring me to the chair. As I look at the convenient straps, fiendishly clever screws, rusty blades, broken needles, and drain canals, my memories return, and a basic, animal fear takes over, but the staff is ready. The leprous hands are holding me tight. I am powerless, my arcane spirit as well as my physical shell. I have no choice but to submit to the procedure ... again. The question comes into my mind ... again. How many times? And as the answer comes, I think of ...

"Don't tell me - you feel just like a Duncan Idaho, right? You say that almost every time, Lem, and you still haven't told me what that story is all about. Oh well, once we clear some time on our respective schedules ... now let's get to work, shall we?"

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I am locked in. Secured. Animal in cage. Bright lights. Rapid breaths. Fear, pulse, sweat. Memories of old pain, expectations of new pain. Belts tightened. Chains rattled. The buzz of machines charging.

The doctor and his assistants prep me for the procedure, while memories keep pouring in. Talons fly, and I am opened here, and then here, and a red line is drawn there... Professionally, efficiently, but lovingly handled. The pain, the all-consuming rending of nerves is not their primary objective, but they do draw satisfaction from it.

As they have done many times before, they ponderously remove layers of my foreign skin, paying close attention to the knots that tend to form in the black tissue. They replace it with human skin, possibly vat-grown, but probably not. Sheets of black taken from my body are quickly spread over frames to dry, and a preservative ointment is applied. As I still writhe in agony, the skin is rolled into neat little tubes and carefully stowed away. The care with which the removed skin is handled should tell me something, but the pain is indescribable. It drowns conscious thought, despite my years of training. I am unable to reason, only to remember, and laugh silently at my predicament.

As they have done many times before, they use my nerves as tools, operating on my psyche. The pain conditions the mind, making it dance this way and that. Blades of metal project blades of sensation which in turn inscribe data directly into my spinal cord. The pain makes me remember what they want me to and forget the rest. It writes of a need for purification and the path to the one place where purification can be found. It overwrites knowledge of itself, of the price for purification, and of the repetition. I am being conditioned. Again.

As I have never done before, I listen, since the linguistic incantation cast earlier lets me understand some of the strange, mumbling sounds that the lepers make as they work. They comment on the quality of the harvest. They speak of the price this batch will bring. They share experiences on the best techniques to store this particular brand. And eventually, conclusions force their way into my tortured mind.

I am being harvested. Again. My torment is someone's commodity. A vague memory of the original treatment, of the ... attachment? It comes, flutters, and then it is gone.

Pale, cold rage rises against the red, burning pain. The two clash, then reach equilibrium, and out of their balance comes determination. I am not helpless. I cannot keep these memories, since their techniques are far beyond my capability to resist. However, I can help myself remember later. And then I will act.

I know now that the good doctor and his reapers must leave three main knots in my flesh, three tumors from which the black tissue will grow anew, graft itself to my skin, and spread again. Each time I leave, my clean new skin has these three blemishes used to reset the process, to extend my usefulness. But this time, they will serve another purpose.

I push back the pain and focus to mentally shape the newly culled black markings into specific patterns. They are miniscule now, unreadable ... but when the skin begins to grow again, they will form recurring sigils, ideograms in an old Prime language rarely seen on the planes. When I read them, they will trigger a chain of associations, they will prod my memory until I finally remember. I must. I will.

On my left palm, I will read "Pain".

On my belly, I will read "Harvest".

Over my heart, I will read "Vengeance".

Next time, they will reap the whirlwind.