Skin Deep

There’s a quote I once read, buried in some forgotten philosophy book: “To peel away the layers of the world is to expose what hides beneath, and what hides beneath is not meant to be seen.” At the time, it seemed like one of those lines people throw around when they want to sound profound, but they don’t really know what it means. The kind of thing you hear at a party from someone who’s had one too many drinks and thinks they’re the next Nietzsche. I’d rolled my eyes at it then, thought it was all too abstract to have any real meaning. But now… now I can’t stop thinking about it.

The words gnaw at me. They crawl under my skin, wrap themselves around my thoughts like ivy on a crumbling wall. What does it mean to peel away the layers of the world? What are these layers, and why aren’t we supposed to see what’s beneath them? Is it because it’s horrifying? Or is it because, deep down, we know that whatever lies underneath isn’t something we’ll be able to face?

I used to believe we were all just human. That’s what we are, isn’t it? Flesh, blood, bone, and mind? We’re creatures of patterns and habits, some of us more predictable than others, but at our core, we’re the same. We’re built from the same blueprint, running on the same biological code. There’s a comfort in that—knowing that we’re not so different from one another. It makes the world feel manageable. If you can put humanity into a neat little box, tie a ribbon around it, it’s easier to convince yourself that life makes sense. That you make sense.

But what if I’m wrong? What if there’s more to us than we want to admit? And what if the parts we try to bury, the parts we don’t want to think about, are the very things that define us? What if, beneath the flesh and bone, we’re not human at all?

That’s the part that keeps me up at night. That’s the part I can’t stop thinking about. We wear our humanity like a mask, but masks can be peeled away, can’t they? And once you’ve stripped away the mask, you can’t ever put it back on. You can’t unsee what’s underneath.

There’s something fragile about being human. We build our lives on layers—layers of routines, relationships, memories, beliefs. Layers of skin, one on top of the other, protecting what’s underneath. But those layers… they’re thin. They tear so easily. And once they start to peel, you can’t stop the process. You can’t go backward. You can only watch as the layers fall away, one by one, until all that’s left is the raw, unfiltered truth. The question is, can you survive seeing it? Can you survive being it?

We like to think we’re strong, don’t we? That we can handle anything the world throws at us. We carry on with our lives, pretending we’re invincible. But when the layers start to come off, when you feel them slipping away, you realize how little you actually understand yourself. You realize that maybe you were never invincible at all. Maybe you were just… holding yourself together. Just barely.

That quote—I didn’t even remember where I’d read it until recently. It had been gathering dust in the back of my mind, waiting for the right moment to resurface. Waiting for the moment it would make sense. Now, I can’t stop thinking about it because I feel like I’m living it. I feel like my layers are starting to come undone, like I’m peeling away piece by piece, and I don’t know what’s going to be left when it’s all gone.

You ever think about what’s inside you? Not the organs, not the bones, but the you underneath all of it. The part of you no one else can see, the part you keep hidden even from yourself. What happens if you take away everything else? If you strip yourself down to the core, what do you find? Is it still you? Or is it something else entirely?

I used to think that we were simple. That if you stripped away the layers, you’d find something pure, something honest. But now I’m not so sure. Maybe we’re not meant to see what’s underneath. Maybe there’s a reason we build these layers, why we cling to them so desperately. Because once they’re gone, there’s no going back. Once you’ve seen what’s underneath, you can’t ever forget it.

And if what’s underneath isn’t human… what does that make me? What does that make you?

I used to think my work was simple. Clinical. People came to me with problems they could point to, problems with names and explanations. Rashes, burns, scars—things I could diagnose, treat, and file away into a neatly labeled box. Dermatology wasn’t glamorous, but it was comforting. Skin is straightforward, predictable even. It protects us, holds us together, and when something goes wrong, it usually makes sense. A reaction to a new detergent. A sunburn left to fester. A harmless mole gone rogue.

But every so often, something would come along to shake that sense of order. An unusual case, a symptom that didn’t fit the textbook. Those moments kept me sharp, reminded me that medicine isn’t always black and white. Still, even the strangest cases had answers—at least, that’s what I believed. There’s always a pattern, I told myself. Always a cause, a diagnosis waiting to be uncovered.

That was before Clara. Before everything I thought I understood about my field, about my life, came undone.

It was a regular Tuesday when she walked into my office. Well, normal would be a stretch. The morning had been unusually quiet—no emergencies, no last-minute calls, just the kind of eerie stillness that puts you on edge without knowing why. By the time noon rolled around, I’d already cleaned my desk twice and flipped through a medical journal I’d been meaning to read for months. I remember thinking it felt like the calm before a storm, though I couldn’t have guessed how right I was.

She came in without an appointment, which normally would’ve annoyed me, but something about her stopped me in my tracks. The woman who entered was too pale, her eyes too sunken, her face too tired. She moved like she hadn’t slept in days, her shoulders hunched as though the weight of her body was too much to carry. Her clothes hung loosely, as if she’d shrunk inside them, and her hair was brittle, fraying at the edges like it might snap if touched.

Her name was Clara Thornfield, and I remember thinking she looked like someone who had been sick for far too long. Not just physically, but in a way that seeped into her very presence. Like the kind of sickness you carry in your soul.

She sat down across from me, clutching her arms as though she were trying to hold herself together. When she started speaking, her voice was soft, cracked at the edges, like a record left too long in the sun. She explained her symptoms in halting sentences, each word dragging like it cost her too much effort to say.

Her skin, she said, had started peeling away. Slowly, at first—small flakes on her arms and legs, like a bad case of dry skin. She’d tried moisturizing, drinking more water, but nothing helped. Then the peeling grew worse. The patches of missing skin spread, the flakes giving way to larger, more grotesque sheets that came off in her hands. She showed me her left arm as she spoke, and I felt my breath catch in my throat.

The flesh beneath the peeling skin wasn’t red or inflamed, as you’d expect. It was smooth, unnaturally so, the raw muscle gleaming like polished stone. It didn’t bleed, didn’t weep, didn’t react at all. It wasn’t even human.

I tried to keep my face neutral, professional, but my mind was already racing. I’d seen burns that left muscle exposed, infections that ate away at skin, even rare disorders that caused the epidermis to separate in layers. But this… this was something else entirely. Something I couldn’t name.

Clara looked at me with eyes that seemed too large for her face, her pupils dilated and unfocused. “It doesn’t hurt.”, she said, her voice trembling. “That’s the worst part. It should hurt, shouldn’t it? But I don’t feel anything. Not even when I pull it off.”

Her words sent a shiver down my spine. Skin is alive, filled with nerves and blood vessels. It’s not supposed to come off without a fight. And yet, Clara seemed untouched by pain, her expression disturbingly calm as she spoke. I asked her how long it had been happening, trying to keep my voice steady, and she told me it had started about two weeks ago. Since then, it had only gotten worse.

“I think…” She paused, her hands shaking as they gripped the edge of the chair. “I think it’s spreading.”

I glanced down at her hands, at the way she was gripping the armrests so tightly her knuckles had gone white. That’s when I noticed the small flecks of skin on her fingers, the way they crumbled like ash at the slightest movement.

“Spreading where?”, I asked, though I wasn’t sure I wanted to know the answer.

Clara lifted her other arm and pushed up the sleeve of her sweater, revealing more patches of smooth, gleaming muscle. The sight of it made my stomach turn, but it wasn’t just the appearance that unsettled me. It was the way the exposed flesh seemed almost… reflective, as though it were catching the light in ways it shouldn’t.

“Everywhere.”, she whispered. Her voice cracked on the word, and for the first time, I saw tears welling in her sunken eyes. “I don’t know what’s happening to me. I don’t even feel like myself anymore.”

She looked at me then, her gaze searching, desperate. “Do you think it’s in my head, Doctor?”, she asked. “Do you think I’m losing my mind?”

I wanted to reassure her, to tell her everything was going to be fine, but the words wouldn’t come. All I could do was stare at her arm, at the glistening, inhuman surface where her skin should have been. My mind raced, trying to piece together something, anything that could explain this. But the more I stared, the more I realized that there was no medical explanation that could justify what I was seeing. No textbook or research study that would give me an answer.

I snapped my gaze up to Clara’s face, and I saw the same desperation in her eyes. They were wide, searching, pleading. She was looking to me, a doctor she didn’t know, to fix something that had no answer. No cure. I swallowed hard, trying to pull myself together, to put aside the creeping terror that was gnawing at the edges of my rational mind.

I shook my head slightly, though it felt like the motion didn’t belong to me. “There’s nothing I can think of that could cause this.”, I said, my voice sounding strange in my own ears. It wasn’t like me to be so uncertain, so… lost. I looked down again, scanning the area around the exposed muscle. It didn’t look like a burn or an infection, and it wasn’t the kind of condition I’d ever seen before. The deeper I looked, the more I felt the creeping sensation that something was horribly, terribly wrong.

Clara’s lips trembled as she shifted in her seat, the weight of my words sinking in. For a moment, she didn’t speak. She just looked at me, her eyes wide with that mix of fear and hope that I’d be able to give her an answer. Something that made sense.

In the quiet that followed, she whispered—her voice so soft, it almost sounded like a plea.

“I know you can fix it.”, she said. Her eyes locked onto mine with an intensity that felt like it was burning through me. “You have to fix it. Please.”

The room was silent for what felt like an eternity. Her words echoed in my ears, bouncing around my head in a dissonant symphony of fear and confusion. “You have to fix it.”, she repeated, her eyes glistening, her hands trembling in her lap.

I nodded slowly, even though I knew I couldn’t make any promises. I couldn’t fix her. I couldn’t even begin to understand what was happening to her. But there was something in the way she looked at me, something in the raw, unspoken desperation in her gaze, that made me want to believe that I could. That made me want to reach out and take the burden from her, even if I didn’t have the tools to carry it.

Over the next few days, I couldn’t get Clara out of my mind. I replayed our encounter over and over, searching for any detail I might have missed, any sign that could have pointed to the cause of her condition. 

She didn’t come back immediately for follow-up appointments, and I began to wonder if maybe I had misjudged the severity of her symptoms. Maybe it wasn’t as bad as it had seemed in that moment. Perhaps it was a rare case, some obscure condition I’d never encountered before, and I’d overreacted in my panic. I tried to shake the unease in my stomach, telling myself that it was probably nothing.

But then, I started noticing something strange about my own skin.

At first, it was a small patch on my wrist. Just a little bit of flakiness, nothing alarming. I brushed it off, thinking it was stress—maybe a dry patch from the constant hand sanitizer and hospital air. But the next day, it spread. Along my arm, down my neck, across my back. And the itching… it was unbearable. I couldn’t stop scratching at it, even though I knew I shouldn’t. The skin around my neck began to feel tight, like something was pulling at it from the inside, and I realized, in horror, that it was starting to peel—just like Clara’s had.

I stood in front of the bathroom mirror one morning, my hands trembling as I touched the raw, exposed skin on my neck. It was shiny, almost translucent, like a layer of my flesh had been replaced with something foreign. Something unnatural. My heart raced as I tried to wash it away, to scrub it off with soap, but it wouldn’t stop. It only grew worse. The patches spread faster now, creeping along the contours of my face, down my arms, across my torso. Every movement, every shift in my body, made it worse, like it was alive.

At first, I thought maybe I was imagining it, some sort of psychosomatic response to the stress of Clara’s visit. But as the days went on, the peeling became undeniable. The raw, exposed flesh beneath felt so tender, as if I had been burned by a fire, and every layer that came away left something new behind—something wrong. It was as if I was shedding my own skin, one layer at a time.

I couldn’t bring myself to tell anyone. What could I even say? How would they react if I told them? I could barely accept it myself. The idea of explaining it to someone else—someone who might think I was losing my mind—terrified me. It felt too unreal, too bizarre to share. I wasn’t sure what was happening, let alone how to put it into words. How could I explain that something was happening to me that I couldn’t even understand? I was scared of what people might think, and even more scared of what they might do.

I kept it hidden, pulling my sleeves down over my arms, wearing high collars and scarves to cover my neck. Every time I looked in the mirror, I saw a different face staring back at me. One that looked more alien by the day. I couldn’t explain it. I didn’t even want to think about it.

Then, one day, as I was working late in the office, a knock on the door pulled me out of my thoughts. I opened it to find one of the nurses standing there, her face ashen, her eyes wide with shock.

“There’s something on the news.”, she said, her voice trembling. “They’re reporting about a woman—she was found in a derelict area of the city. They’re saying she was… crazy, screaming, tearing at her own skin.”

I felt the blood drain from my face as she spoke. Clara. The news was vague—just a few fragments of details—but it was enough to send a cold shiver up my spine. She hadn’t come back for any of her appointments, and now… The reports spoke of a derelict area in the city where she had been found, raving and screaming like a madwoman. She was tearing at her own skin, scratching at her face as if she couldn’t stand the sight of herself anymore. Her screams were so loud that they could be heard from blocks away.

I watched the nurse as she fumbled for her phone, trying to find more details to confirm what she had heard. But the most disturbing part came in fragments, between her words. By the time anyone had gotten involved, Clara had already been contained. The medical staff at the facility had taken control, but not before the damage had been done. She had been subdued, locked away.

The words echoed in my head like a haunting refrain, sending a wave of unease through my chest. What did that even mean? What had happened to her? The thought of Clara, somewhere out there, locked away like a rabid animal, her skin peeling away in sheets, desperate to escape from something that I couldn’t understand… it was too much.

I tried to focus on the medical records I’d been reviewing, but the words blurred together. I kept seeing Clara’s face, her desperate eyes locked onto mine, pleading for me to fix it. To save her. But I couldn’t. I had no answers. I still had no idea what was happening to me.

I couldn’t ignore it anymore. The pain. The peeling. The feeling that whatever was happening to Clara had followed me. That it had found its way into my body, into my skin.

When I arrived at the facility, my heart was pounding in my chest, a cold sweat trickling down my back. I had told the staff that I was there for an inspection, a follow-up on Clara’s case, but deep down I knew the truth. I wasn’t just there to check on her progress. I was there because I needed answers. I was peeling away too, my skin shedding and revealing something underneath—something I couldn’t name.

The facility was sterile, too clean, too quiet. I kept my head down, my collar turned up high to cover the skin at my neck, though I was sure it was only a matter of time before someone noticed. They had no idea what was going on with me, and I wasn’t ready to admit it—not yet. So I told myself, as I walked through the hallways, that I was there as a professional. A doctor trying to piece together the puzzle of Clara’s condition. That’s all. I focused on my breathing, trying to calm myself before I reached the room where she was being kept.

When the door opened and I was led inside, the sight of Clara took my breath away. She didn’t look anything like the woman who had sat across from me in my office just days before. Her eyes were wild, wide with fear and confusion, and her skin—if you could still call it skin—was a grotesque patchwork of red, raw, and gaping holes. Where her flesh had once been, there were now exposed muscles, twisted and deformed. It was as if her body had been subjected to a force that bent the laws of biology itself. I felt a wave of nausea rise in my throat.

Clara’s body twitched and jerked involuntarily, her limbs moving in erratic, unnatural ways. She hissed when she saw me, the sound more animal than human, like a wounded creature caught in a trap. Her eyes locked onto mine, but they were vacant, consumed by something that I couldn’t understand. A cold shiver ran down my spine, and I stepped back instinctively, my hands trembling as I clenched them at my sides.

“Clara?”, I whispered, my voice tight in my throat. “Clara, it’s me. It’s Dr. Grayson. Can you hear me?”

She stared at me, her pupils dilated, her breath coming in quick, shallow gasps. Then, without warning, she let out a high-pitched screech. It was a sound that pierced my skull, raw and primal. I took another step back, my heart pounding in my chest. She wasn’t Clara anymore. She had lost herself completely. Her mind, if it had ever been there, was gone. The woman who had sat in my office, fragile and desperate, was now a hollow shell, a thing driven by instincts I couldn’t fathom.

I tried to approach her slowly, my hands outstretched in a gesture of calm, but she recoiled, her body jerking violently. Her lips curled back into a snarl, revealing sharp, animalistic teeth. “Please…”, I began, my voice cracking. “Clara, please, let me help you.”

But she didn’t listen. She couldn’t. She lunged at me, her body moving with inhuman speed. I barely managed to step back in time, my breath caught in my throat. She wasn’t just a sick woman anymore. She had become something else—something feral, driven by a need I couldn’t comprehend. Her arms flailed wildly, and I realized with a sickening twist in my stomach that she was trying to claw at me, at my skin.

Before I could react, the guards rushed into the room, and the chaos exploded. Clara tore at the air in front of her, her fingers curled into claws, her screams echoing off the walls. One of the doctors tried to restrain her, but it was no use. She was too strong, too fast. She knocked him to the ground with a savage swipe, her nails digging into his throat as she tried to rip him apart. The sounds of the struggle were bone-chilling, a mix of flesh tearing and breathless grunts.

I stood frozen, my body stiff with shock, unable to tear my eyes away from the scene unfolding before me. It was like watching an animal in its death throes, a creature so consumed by madness that it could no longer recognize the line between human and beast. I wanted to help, to do something, but the terror that had gripped me was paralyzing.

The guards finally managed to pull Clara off the doctor, but it was clear they weren’t prepared for this. They held her down with all their strength, but her movements were erratic, like she was fighting against something far worse than the restraints. It was only a matter of time before they realized what had to be done.

The sound of gunshots rang out, sharp and final. I didn’t even flinch. The first shot echoed through the room, followed by a second, then a third. Each one hit its mark, and Clara collapsed onto the floor with a sickening thud, her body still twitching for a moment before it stilled.

I stared at her, my mind blank. I had watched her die. I had witnessed the destruction of someone I had tried so hard to help. The woman I had spoken to, the one who had begged me for help, was gone. I was left alone in the room with nothing but the sound of my own heartbeat pounding in my ears.

“Is she…?”, I started, my voice trembling, but I couldn’t finish the question. I didn’t need to. The guards’ faces told me everything I needed to know. Clara was dead. And whatever had done this to her, whatever had stripped her of her humanity and turned her into this… thing… it was still out there. Somewhere. Possibly even inside of me at the very moment.

I looked down at my hands, my palms slick with sweat. I could feel the cold, itching sensation in my skin again. They had killed her. And I couldn’t escape the nagging fear that I was next.

The door slammed shut behind me as I was led out of the room, but I couldn’t shake the image of Clara’s twisted, lifeless body from my mind. I had come here for answers, but all I had found was more questions. And a terror that I couldn’t outrun.

I was supposed to feel relief. The danger was over. Clara had been a ticking time bomb, her body and mind unraveled beyond recognition, but she was gone now. The thing that had taken her was no longer a threat. The guards had done what was necessary. They had ended it.

But instead of relief, all I felt was… emptiness. That was the only word I could use to describe the gnawing, hollow feeling that had taken root in my chest. Her face—twisted in a silent scream, frozen in time—was burned into my mind. The way her body had betrayed her, the way she had gone mad, losing herself to something dark and terrifying… I couldn’t escape it. It kept me awake at night. I could still hear the screech she had made, still see her eyes wide with terror and confusion.

I had tried to tell myself that it was over. That Clara had been an anomaly, a rare case, a tragic event that had nothing to do with me. This… this couldn’t happen to me. It couldn’t.

But deep down, I knew I was lying to myself. The more I told myself that, the more the truth gnawed at the edges of my consciousness.

I woke up this morning and my skin—my own skin—felt wrong. I couldn’t place it at first. It was subtle, almost imperceptible, like a quiet whisper in the back of my mind. But the moment I stepped out of bed, it hit me with full force. It felt tight. Raw. Like something was tugging at it from the inside, pulling it away from my bones, from my muscles, from me. I couldn’t explain it, but it was there, undeniable and real.

At first, I thought I was just imagining things. Stress. Anxiety. But as the day went on, the sensation only worsened. It wasn’t just in my skin anymore. It was in my fingers. In my hands. In my legs.

I wanted to scream, but the sound was stuck in my throat. I couldn’t let it out. It was irrational. I had to be rational. I wasn’t Clara. I couldn’t be.

But my fingertips—raw, pink, and tender—were starting to peel. Small flakes of skin had begun to fall away, like dry paint chipping off a canvas. I thought I was going crazy. I thought it was just in my head. But the more I tried to ignore it, the more my skin began to betray me, just like it had betrayed Clara.

I could feel the panic rising, twisting in my chest, but I couldn’t do anything. I had no answers. I had no one to turn to. I was trapped in my own body, unable to stop the inevitable.

My hands are shaking now as I write this, but I can’t stop. I can’t stop because I know what’s happening. I know, deep down, that I’m becoming her. Becoming something else. Something that used to be human. Something that will lose itself to whatever has taken hold of me.

I don’t know what happens next. Will I claw at my own skin, like Clara had? Will I lose my mind too? Will I scream, and will anyone hear me before it’s too late?

I don’t know if I’ll make it through the next day, or the day after that. I don’t know if there will be a moment where I’ll realize that I’m no longer who I was.

And I don’t know what happens after that. After I stop being me. After I stop being human.

I don’t know what it is, but I’m afraid that soon, it will be in full control. That I’ll become like Clara—like that thing that was her. I can feel it, crawling beneath my skin, scraping against my ribs, pressing against my insides.

This thing… this force, it’s tearing me apart, but it’s not the pain that scares me anymore. It’s the feeling that I’m no longer me. I’m becoming something else. Something that isn’t human, something that’s just waiting to emerge. And when it does, it won’t be just me. It will be them. It will be Clara, and it will be me, and it will be everyone who has ever been touched by this… this disease.

I’m not just peeling away the layers of the world anymore. I’m peeling away myself. And what’s beneath isn’t just something I can’t recognize. It’s something that shouldn’t exist. Something that was never meant to be seen.

It’s here now. It’s me.