Skin Tapestry

The blind woman had hands rough and stone-hewn. They worked the loom, keeping it free of tangles and knots, her feet pressing the pedal in her own, natural rhythm. Her hands were calloused and bloodstained, but deft. Her face was perpetually turned to the paneless window, neither smile or grimace meeting the horizon. Day in and day out, she loomed, never pausing to eat or sleep, or rest.

As far back as Andrew could remember she was there, quietly looming away his own flesh. His skin peeled away from his musculature, always to her loom. The boy's memory did not go back so far that he could remember the details of his kidnapping, or even to a time that he could recall ever wearing clothes. He had always been in pain, naked and in the company of the Blind Loomer.

The tower had a single table, with a solitary lamp along its wall. The blind woman sat at the window while the tapestry continued its own construction behind her. Every year, it seemed the ceiling of the room stretched a little higher in order to accomodate the size of the giant mural. Andrew could make out no details of construction except, by some hidden magic, the tapestry needed no worker to continue; by a mind of its own, it threaded the ever-growing fabric into its own wall of substance.

Andrew's bed consisted of a blood-stained sheet, an old shoe that he used as a pillow, and a horse-blanket. Once a day, a slit at the foot of the door would reveal an outer wall; there, a hand would push in a jar of water and a green, earth-smelling pill. In the beginning - or what Andrew recalled as the beginning - he tried to communicate his emotion to the hand. He yelled at it, spit upon it, and once, without thinking, he stomped his entire weight upon it. Then, and only then, did the owner of the hand make any noise and with a terrible roar came these words from behind the door:

"You will pay for that, Skin-Reaper! Mark my words, you will pay!" Boots could be heard tramping down the stairs, echoing off the stone and mortar walls, echoing long after the man was out of the tower and across the muck-ridden water of the moat.

For the next three days, the slit at the foot of the wall did not open and, to Andrew's amazement, the skin that was being ripped from his body did not regrow as quickly as before. The pain began to nab at his mind. He found that he dared not walk around, lest a vibration sing up his spine and shake his insides. At noon of the second day, he noticed that he could push two fingers between his muscles and into his abdomonal cavity. By the dawn of the third day, he could plainly feel the bone of 4 ribs, make out the muscles and sinew of his side and, should he push hard enough, feel the expansion and compression of his lungs.

The pain was unbearable. He had no tears to cry, only blood to bleed. A sloppy, sticky puddle began to accumulate beneath him, eventually soaking the entire floor of the tower. When he got up to move, more skin would come loose, prying itself free of him, crackling and creaking like old paint.

During this time, the blind woman continued looming. Andrew's skin, the stuff that had caused a war only 2 decades before, continued from the boy's body to the loom in a never-ending thread. Where it pulled away from his frame, the blood would gleam bright red. As his skin entered the loom, the blind woman would turn it into thread and, as it worked its way out of the looming wheel, it fell into an ever-shrinking coil. It traveled next from coil to tapestry, each line of flesh finding its place in the grand mural.

By the time the slit opened at the foot of the door, Andrew could barely breathe. He ran a high fever; sweat beaded his brow and the skin being torn away from his back could now be heard inside his ears. His heart, finding trouble keeping up with the amount of blood loss, was resounding throughout his body, each beat pushing more blood onto the stone floor where it grew dry, sticky and iron-smelling.

For only the second time in his life, Andrew saw the door of his prison open. Through blurry eyes, he caught the soles of four black, polished boots stomping toward him. One man retched at the scent while the other kicked Andrew in his exposed ribs.

"I told you that you would pay for that one," the punting officer said.
"Indeed," Andrew said through grit teeth.

Turning him over, the officers forced the earthen pill in his mouth and down his throat. Next, they dumped a pail of water onto the floor, little good it did.

"Tomorrow," the retching officer said, "we'll get some hay up here to soak up the blood. In no time at all, you'll be good as new." Andrew fell into a dreamless sleep as the officers turned on their heels, leaving the way they came. The lonely tower door clanged behind them. The last thing Andrew heard were the keys turning the tumblers in the lock.

The next day, he awoke to the grunting of the retching officer clamoring up the stairs. Turning his key in the lock, the officer pushed open the door just long enough to toss in a bail of hay and wipe his brow.

"You can feel free to soak up that blood, boy," he said and clanged the door shut. Andrew, for all the pain he had endured over the last three days, was now good as new - or as good as he could be - the skin coming off his frame easily and without pain.

Over the course of the next year, Andrew came to a few stark realizations. First, he would never escape and, whatever end the tapestry was being created for, it would surely result in his death. Secondly, the only help he could ever hope for could only come from himself - the Blind Loomer, as much as he thought of her as a fellow prisoner -- could just as easily be a table lamp or another stone in the wall for all the notice she took of him.

That afternoon, while the Blind Loomer continued to turn his flesh into skin, the boy rushed against the loom, hoping to deal a crushing blow to the wheel and, by his own strength, destroy his destroyer. As hard and repeatedly as he tried to turn the device to cinders, it continued to turn and spin, threading his very body into cordage. Furiously, he paced the floor, his heels sticking to the long-dried blood. He could come up with no solution save one.

In his mind, he settled the matter once and for all.

The next day , the slit at the foot of the door slid open and both water and earthen-pill made their way onto his floor. Andrew bit into the pill, only consuming half of it but drinking all of the water. The rest of the day, his skin tore a little easier, a little more painfully, but still he continued on.

He did this for the next fortnight so that, by the 15th day, Andrew had amassed eight whole pills. Carefully now, he took each one, naming them all the names of the friends he wished he would have had as a child. After the seventh whole pill, he felt like he could tackle the world. His skin sizzled and cracked; his head felt two times too large; his heart pounded in his ears, not like when it could not keep up with his blood loss, but this time in exhilaration. He took the eighth pill and named it Andrew, just like him.

Then, breathing heavily in anticipation, he took up the remaining cordage in his hand, went to the windowsill, and jumped. As he raced to the ground below, he whooped and hollered, flying and feeling free. The descent was longer than he anticipated as he quickly ran out of roped skin and his own flesh unraveled against his musculature. Ever faster, the skin ripped from his legs, now his back and abdomen, now his arms, never slowing his fall. As his grotesque frame slammed into the earth below, Andrew realized that he was now but a flying, breathing skeleton.

And then he was no more.