Behind the Skin

Chapter 3 Strange Happenings

“Dan, the television’s out again”, is the first thing Bratis hears as he comes downstairs ready to leave for school. Ren is standing at the bottom of the stairs as if in wait. He notices that Ren is ready too, which comes as a surprise because Bratis gets up earlier than required so he doesn’t have to walk with his step-brother. A sudden irritation flares in his chest at the younger’s sneakiness.

“I thought I told you not to call me Dan”, he all but growls, pushing past the boy and giving him a good shove with his shoulder.

Ren sighs, disappointed but not surprised at the older’s behavior.

“Mom just told me to let you know”

Bratis doesn’t acknowledge that with a reply. He leaves the house pissed with a rather joyous ren following close behind. He walks faster than his normal gait but Ren catches up even with his shorter legs. He doesn’t try to strike up a conversation, which is a big relief. He keeps an eye out for anyone watching but people keep going about their own business, not sparing the duo a glance. Ren takes care not match step with Bratis. He follows two steps behind and Bratis thinks it’s uncanny how he walks so silently. He could’ve sneaked up on him and Bratis doubts he would ever notice. Another thing he adds on the abhorrence list. Because no matter how considerate this pathetic excuse of a little brother, Bratis just doesn’t want him to be here.

He pulls up his headphones and walks faster still.

The day is like any other.

He follows the monotonous routine, but a pair of giggly girls disturb him during lunch.

“Hiya, Brat!”, says the plump one, trying to get his attention.

Brat pauses in the middle of scooping up a spoonful of rice. Looks at her through his bangs, sending a dangerous glare when he finds a camera shoved in his face. The other girl, the one with the glasses sits down beside him without permission and Bratis is sure the spoon in his hand would’ve snapped in half had it not been made of stainless steel.

“So”, says the first one, plopping down on the dried grass in front of him. “Where did you go after lunch the other day?”

“Not your business”, he replies curtly. The weather is humid and he already had a pissy morning and both the girls need to leave right now before he does something he regrets.

He shoves a mouthful of stale cafeteria rice into his mouth.

“Oh, come now Maggie, you can’t just interrogate him like that”, the glasses one scolds. “Hey”, she says pointedly to Bratis, “I don’t know if you know our names, but I’m Sara and-”, she’s still invading his space.

“I don’t care”, Bratis cuts her off coldly. He gets up sharply and leaves the scene with deliberate steps. The girls don’t follow and he decides to complete the rest of school.

And Bratislikes to keep to himself but he does notice the change today. The whispers going around the school don’t seem to be aimed at him like they usually are. The teachers seem to be on edge and a staff meeting is called. He catches talk of some accident from the students sitting adjacent to him but doesn’t bother enough to ask. School extends for an hour longer than usual, though no official announcement has been made as to why. Bratis was not as excited as other kids regarding this new matter. It would probably be another ban on some completely useless factory produced good that mankind should never have invented in the first place.

When the bell rings at the end of school he makes sure to lose Ren in the crowd of students, not having the patience to deal with him a second time.

It is close to sunset and Bratis takes a detour again. When he gets far enough from the school, he breaks into a light jog. Getting farther the jog turns into a run and soon enough he is racing along the empty streets in an abandoned part of the city. He keeps running, feeling the weight of the day seeping out of his bones as he ran. The clouds had cleared a bit today and the sun was peeking from behind the white tufts in the sky.

There are not a lot of good things left in the world, but Bratis can admit that watching the rare scene of a sunset puts his mind at ease.

Satisfied after his run, he makes his way to the marketplace. He weaves through streets and crumbling lanes to get to the local hardware store that doubles as a repair shop for all sorts of gadgets. The faded signage above the door reads Lenny’s and a bell jingles when he pushes it open. The inside of the store is a clustered dusty mess with all kinds of old computers, calculators, mobile phones and accompanying electronic accessories thrown together in one cathodic mess. Along with the dead lightbulbs in the shelves and spare automobile parts, Bratis isn’t sure what the store is for exactly. But it isn’t much of a surprise, either way. What with the climate and the manhattan earthquake five years ago, people started doing whatever they could to get by.

There is no one behind the counter and Bratis leans sideways to see if there’s anyone through the small door in the back of the shop. He hears some shuffling and decides to wait. There is an LED screen displaying the news channel on one wall and as he looks around, his eyes fall on the small stack of floppy disks set neatly on the counter. He frowns, bewildered at their existence, then turns to look pointedly at the little bell above the door.

“It gives a vintage feel”

Bratis whips back around at the voice. A very ancient looking white bearded man with a hunchback appeared behind the counter. His face is weary and wrinkled all the way to Glasgow but his eyes are sharp. Bratis merely raises a brow.

“I see you were admiring my bell”, the old man continues shuffling to a stool blocked out of view by the counter. “Please”, he gestures to a plastic chair, “have a seat”

Bratis starts forward, but remains standing.

“I need a television fixed”

“Alright”, the old man remarks patiently. He looks at Bratis for a moment longer then shifts his attention to an open drawer, rummaging through the tools kept there. “But won’t you take a seat?”

“No”, says Bratis, irritation flaring up again.

The man doesn’t seem bothered. “Suit yourself”, he says then shifts around to pull out another drawer and removes from it a writing pad and a pen. He slides both over towards his customer. “I’ll need your full name, address and social security number”

Bratis picks them up and scribbles quickly on the attached form. By the time he’s done, there’s another customer that the shopkeeper is engaged in conversation with. Bratis puts the pen and clipboard back on the counter waiting, glances at the shop TV. The news channel is replaying the morning news and Bratis was just about to look away in disinterest when he sees the blood. He watches the screen from the corner of his eyes, intrigued by the reporter’s panicked face. He expects a new mass homicide case. Wouldn’t be surprising. With the lack of water and rapidly depleting natural resources, plundering and slaughter were the new it professions. The town they lived in was just as bad, but it was worse in the lesser developed regions that took the brunt of every single thing that went wrong with the world.

The reporter is relaying a chain of events that took place in different regions over the country but are uncannily similar. She keeps talking about how a serial killer might be on the loose and only when pictures of the deaths start popping up does Bratis turn to face the screen fully.

The first thing he notices is the skin. Grey and blotched in a way that it looked as if it had been sucked dry. The body is lying in a pool of blood. The details are hard to make out because the images had been blurred to save people from the shock. The face is the part that has been blurred the most. The inhuman scars all over are visibly clear.

Bratis looks, and thinks of it as a rather creative way to kill someone. There is a part of the chest that has been blurred too, but it looks more and more as if someone tried to dig a crater in the poor man’s chest. The hit count includes victims of no particular age or gender. Working and non-working people. In one photo there were two: a woman and her preteen son. His gaze travels back to their blurred faces. He tries to imagine their features.

Imagines them with golden hair and blue eyes.