Suitable Skin
by Asenath Grey
Part 1 appears in this issue.
conclusion
Frustrated, I vented my spleen to Cassandra. That, normally, would not be an unwise act. Cassandra had ever been my confidante and had never revealed a secret. But I had forgotten how sneaky Cecilia could be. That day, I did not care. I complained loudly of Camilla’s treatment of me, of her encouragement of the girl, of the girl’s silly, transparent motives.
Cecilia, as it turned out, overheard my rantings. Meddling as she ever was, she went straight to Morris with the tale. What had she sought from telling her? Perhaps another way of currying favour from Camilla. If so, she was sorely mistaken.
After my talk with Cassandra, I made my way to the parlour and tried to relax. It was not to be; soon after I heard a terrible argument from upstairs. Morris was screaming and yelling at someone. With a heavy sigh, I stood up. Something in me could sense it; the reason for the fear I’d felt in her presence was about to reveal itself.
In her room, Morris and Camilla were arguing. I wasted no time and barged in. “What is going on?” I said sternly. “Can’t you be quiet at least?” I had just about enough of her antics.
Morris’ face glistened with tears and the flush of anger, while Camilla looked utterly bewildered. “Don’t tell me what to do!” Morris shouted at me, enraged. “Don’t even look at me! I thought you were decent people here!”
“I have no idea what you mean.”
“Your daughter told me! The little jade bragged about it!” Morris fairly spat the words at me. She glanced at Camilla. “You’re all perverts, and I’ll go to the police with this, see if I don’t!”
So Cecilia had said... something. I looked at her sharply, itching to punish my foolish sister, but that could wait. We had miscalculated here; we had made some grave mistake, an offense. And it was imperative that we rectify it immediately. “Whatever she told you,” I said, “was a lie.”
“He said it was the truth, just minutes ago!” Morris pointed at Camilla. “I thought it was a sick joke, but he admitted that he plans to...to...” She gave an anguished cry. “That you’ve all got it planned to... God, I can’t say it! You and him and her!” She pointed at each of us, her hand trembling. “How could you? They’re your own children! This is indecent to even joke about!”
Camilla looked bewildered at me. Evidently, we had missed a crucial taboo of the local morality: parents are not meant to breed with their children, nor siblings together. That was new to us. The creatures of our home had no cause against such couplings. I wondered if the human species objected so vehemently because their own such unions would be unfruitful or unproductive in other ways.
But that didn’t matter at that moment. What mattered was calming Morris. “Please,” I said. “You were right the first time. It was just a joke. A harmless little joke!” I approached her, giving her the best attempt at a smile I could muster. An embrace would placate her, from what I knew of the psychology of the locals.
She stabbed my shoulder with a fork.
I yelled and flinched back. The pain was an unpleasant shock in an already unpleasant physical existence. I yanked the fork out of my flesh and stared at her. I wanted nothing more than to hurt her in that moment, shake off my skin and let her see who I really was.
She whimpered and ran away from the room. Camilla ran after her, shouting apologies. A few minutes later she came back, looking pale. “She’s gone,” she said. She sat on the bed, running a hand through her hair.
Wordlessly, I marched to Cecilia’s room and got in. My stupid sister was standing by the door, looking nervous. “What. Did. You. Say,” I demanded.
“Nothing!”
I walked up to her and grabbed her by the hair, pulling it by the roots. “You have already caused trouble for us, and we have no idea what the reaction will be. Do not lie to me anymore.”
“I just...” Tears leaked from her eyes. “I only teased her about it, I said she should marry Camilla soon or else you’d get her first! Or I would! That’s all I said, I promise! I didn’t call Camilla ‘Camilla,’ either! Just as you asked! I called her by her animal name!”
With her careless words, she had destroyed us. I didn’t know what would happen to us soon, but there was only one punishment for Cecilia that would satisfy me. I felt within me such an incandescent rage that the revulsion for what I was about to do dimmed into a tiny, insignificant thing.
I grabbed her face with both fingers and dug my thumbs into her eyes. The gelid texture of her eyeballs almost made me heave, but I mashed them well into her skull. She screeched and thrashed against me, but I held her head in a grip made strong by righteous anger, my jaw set tightly. “I’ve had enough of your stupidity and pettiness,” I said to her. “Let this be a lesson to you.” That would hurt and inconvenience her for quite some time and perhaps make her think twice about being a meddler in the future.
But that left the problem of Morris. Camilla, by that time, had heard the screams and came to investigate. She found me standing over Cecilia who lay on the floor, crying out and clutching at her eyes. “You could have waited for a more convenient time,” she admonished me, glaring. “Or let me attend to her discipline. I never crippled her before.”
“Shut up,” I said but without rancor; I had exhausted my anger on Cecilia. “This is also your fault. What shall we do now?”
“Perhaps we could all try different hosts,” Camilla suggested. “She will need one, certainly.” She indicated Cecilia with her foot.
“Not just yet for her. Let her hurt a little more, it’ll do her good.” I thought for a moment. Changing bodies was a difficult process. It took several minutes without interruption, and recuperating from the shock could take days, if not weeks. I did not wish to do it, if it was not necessary. “I’m not convinced we must. We have set ourselves up well here. And who is to say the girl will cause more trouble?” After punishing Cecilia, I felt calmer, a trifle more optimistic about our situation.
Camilla looked at me with uncertainty. As much of a leader as she usually was, in this unique crisis she had lost all nerve. I will take charge from now on, I thought. For all we knew, Camilla may not even be trying to get us back home, which was the main concern. There, we wouldn’t have to worry about changing bodies or any of that other nonsense. She claimed she was petitioning for her own pardon, but how effectively was she going about it, if she was doing it at all? “Very well,” she said at last. “Let us wait and see, at least.”
* * *
It was quiet for a few days; my sisters and I went back to our normal routine, Camilla chastened by the experience, Cassandra quiet as always. Cecilia was infinitely more tolerable with her eyes squished out of her skull. She required Cassandra’s help to walk about, and now and then she kept mewling about needing a new body, but her newfound obedience was a relief to us all.
But once more, we had miscalculated. Morris must have kept quiet initially, perhaps because of her lingering affection for Camilla. Perhaps even from shame. But in the end, she spilled our secret.
It was a cloudy morning when our fragile peace was shattered again. Someone banged loudly on the door. When Cassandra opened it, the whole lot of them barged in, shouting for “the man of the house.” That was Camilla, by my estimation, but we all went to see for ourselves what the fuss was about, even Cecilia, guided by Cassandra.
Morris was leading the charge and, accompanying her, was another female and some males I did not recognise. The locals often carried weapons on them, mostly for hunting, but I’d heard tales of them hurting each other with such tools. Thankfully, none of them were carrying any such in their hands.
Camilla faced them with such icy scorn that I admired her. “Can I help you?”
A female that was not Morris stepped forth. “My daughter has come to me with something she overheard here. I do not wish to repeat it, but I want to know why you’d fill her ears with such nonsense! I trusted you to take care of her while she was staying here!”
“She misunderstood my meaning,” Camilla said simply. The males susurrated lowly amongst themselves, a skittering that made me shudder. Pests.
“I did not!” Morris cried out. “Mum, his sister told me” — she pointed at Cecilia and gasped — “what have you done to her face, why is she bandaged? Mum, he must have hurt her for saying these things to me!”
Once more, Cecilia was managing to spoil our plans; this time she hadn’t needed to open her mouth at all. I glared at her, even though she could not see me.
The female approached Camilla. “What have you done to her? If you have touched my child at all, if you have corrupted her—”
“I never touched her,” Camilla retorted coldly. “But I could see she wanted me to put my thing into her!”
Morris launched herself at her and struck her in the face with all her might, but her strength was puny compared to Camilla’s. My sister gave Morris a punch that brought her down, and the other female gasped in horror. The males set upon Camilla with a vengeance. I realised at that moment that all was lost; Our credibility had irrevocably been destroyed amongst these creatures, and the only solution was to pick new bodies, as we should have done before. Foolishly, I had tried to avoid it, but it was now necessary.
I shed my body more reapidly than a snake sheds its skin, and I dove into Morris.
I always hated the process; it was unpleasant enough with the creatures of our world, but humans were infinitely more difficult with it. Settling inside one was like trying to wear a garment that was wet and reeking and slimy, that clung to all the wrong places and tried to squirm away as one tried to fit in.
Morris’ consciousness was there, screaming at what was happening; I devoured her with glee; finally I had my revenge for her unbearable behaviour. Inch by inch, I spread through her mind, hollowing it out; obliterating everything that was Morris, opening windows and scrubbing walls to get her bad smell out.
Vaguely, I felt the usual sensations while the process was happening. The body twitched and shook, the mouth foaming with saliva. But I was focused on getting the garment to obey me, as it should.
Then I felt another presence, a familiar one. Camilla was there too, trying to take over the body herself. The sensation of my sister in the same body as myself was so disgusting I almost leapt out. “We were exiled because you committed this very crime,” I told her, “and now you commit it again? Have you no sense of shame?”
“I need a new host,” she replied, “and I have the rights of the chthonic consciousness. I choose first. You will leave and go elsewhere!”
“And you’d be content with my leavings?” For that alone I would have been justified in devouring her, for all she was my sister. She was willing to occupy a body previously inhabited by one of us; she had abandoned decency. But, in the end, the ties of family won. I inhaled everything around me and made myself expand within the hallways of the mind. She had no place to go, and I merely threw her out. But I would refuse to see her again.
* * *
When I took full control of the Morris body again, I was lying in a bed, inside an unfamiliar bedroom. I sat up gingerly, because every bit of the body was aching terribly. Nausea almost made me vomit, but I managed to hold it in.
The female that had been guarding Morris before was now on the bedside. “Oh, my dear heart,” she said. “Thank God. You fainted back there, and we carried you back home!” She embraced me, and I managed to swallow my revulsion and embraced her back.
She told me later that the man who had “corrupted” me was still unconscious at the local care institution, and so was his mother. His sister and their old servant had been left to their own devices.
So Camilla had managed to find another body after all. Not even she would be as depraved as to return to the one she had abandoned. I had no idea where she was, but at that point, I cared little. My concern shifted at that moment. I had to take up the reins of our family. Divided as it was, it should be brought back together once more. Camilla was superfluous. I would wait to get better, and I would find my other sisters again.
And then I would communicate with home once more. We had been punished enough for Camilla’s crimes. They could let us back into the fold, or they could watch as I wreaked havoc from within Morris. Home would not tolerate that. A petty queendom here would capture their attention.
Copyright © 2023 by Asenath Grey
