Mr. Copperfield was surrounded by Sound and Fury when he was interrupted by a zoom call.

“Emma! What brings you to office hours?” It was his brightest student's little sister, who surreptitiously shadowed his online lectures.

“I know you're technically Liz' teacher, but I wanted to ask you… what's the answer? To everything. I…” Emma faltered. “Need to know.”

“I’m flattered you think I’d know.”

“You’ve read so many books, sir. All the greatest minds writing collectively on the human experience over centuries! You’re telling me no combination has ever hit on it?”

“Probably because there’s no singular answer. You have to find one that works for you and live your best by it.”

“What’s your answer, then? Something that’s still applicable in the face of… whatever life throws at you. Like, I don’t know, a pandemic for instance? I mean, my parents are musicians, both out of a job. My best friend is—” Emma’s voice cracked, “in hospital, and he’s young so he’ll probably recover, but… I want to believe there’s still room for people like us. Even if we can’t do anything. That there’s a reason for all of this pain and loss. That there’s… an answer…”

“There’s always room for you, Emma. Just because you can’t save the world, doesn’t mean you don’t deserve it. It’s beautiful and horrible and it’s all yours… if you want. You just have to be strong…”

* * *

After the call, Copperfield let out a long, wheezing cough. At 52, his survival chances with COVID weren’t the worst, but he was a smoker in college and his lungs were failing him. As he relaxed in his armchair and opened his book, he only knew one thing for sure: if he was going to go down, he’d go down with Faulkner.

You looked human, once. Handsome, in your younger days, with a red heart pumping blood so clean and crisp and thin you hardly felt it. But now it struggles, oozing thick and black like molasses under your once-skin. It was witchcraft that did this. It must’ve been. Bit by bit, the scars began to taint the little pieces of you, so slowly that at first you dismissed them as coincidence, unable to make the connection. But as your skin began to boil, and the corners of you began to gradually rot… you slowly noticed a correlation. No sooner had you hurt someone, your fingertips withered like sun-dried apricots. You tortured another, and your blood turned thick and black inside your veins. Every wound on any of them…translated into another boil, another scar on you. Witchcraft. Voodoo. Someone must have cast a spell to make you a living, breathing Dorian Grey, with no picture to hide it. And every day it’s worse. Bloodshot eyes sinking deeper into bruised, purple sockets, the scars atop your skin rising horribly like yeast for all the world to see.

And the solution is laughably obvious— just stop the hurting, all the killing… and you’ll be plagued with no more deformities. Perhaps there was once a time you could have turned back… But the dormant-self that went with it, one that perhaps would have found such actions despicable in the first place, has not stirred in years. Stop? It’s out of the question.

Instead you find yourself hiding it, under longer and thicker sweaters and jeans.

You begin wearing gloves, wide-brimmed hats, large sunglasses, scarves in the middle of the summer so they stay hidden behind concealing clothes and cellar doors. You’ve always done such a good job at disguising yourself over the years, even before this slow and sickly transformation of the flesh. Back when you were handsome and young and red-blooded, your smile was so brilliant and lovely that no one ever found themselves looking down at your hands to see the lingering stains within the crevices of your palm, or the crusted iron that you didn’t quite manage to file out from under your nails. That's the real secret to getting away with serial killing in this day and age. Not a perfect plan, flawless execution, or complete obliteration of any incriminating effert... No. While it's impossible to comit a perfect crime, none of that matters so long as you have a smile so dazzling that no one will even look for any of the signs.

Yes, people are stupid— and very shallow. Easily bought, never even once suspecting. Why, they’d follow a pretty smile anywhere—and indeed often did on a whim. Why not? Stepping inside for a cup of tea or refreshments didn’t seem like such a big deal after that. Perhaps, from a random bout of neighborly generosity, you had bought a present for them, or perhaps you had something (renovations downstairs, was it?) you’d like to show them if they’d only step in for a minute. Tourists, lost, did they say? Well, you had a map inside. If they’d just come on inside, inside…

But you don’t smile anymore. Your charming smile that many once followed straight into your house and down into your cellar like the irresistible magnetism of the pied-piper’s music is gone. Over the last few months, your yellowing teeth have begun rotting from the inside out. Lips, thin, cracked and ridden with sores and boils, can now only stretch over them to create some ghastly leer. So nowadays, people tend to occasionally go missing in the dark. Men who grew in the habit of taking long, solitary walks at night, or the wretched drunks that accidentally wandered too far away from their debauched flock within the haze of a ruinous stupor, or marauding youth on the way to or making a hasty escape from egging some rival’s house, and—if business is slow— a stray dog or two. Brute force has never been your strong suit, but you’ve no choice but to evolve alongside yourself. No more smiles or siren’s songs.

But people are so very shallow, and appearances are the first and often last thing they ever observe and take to heart. They may not have truly seen you before, but once the small flaws started to creep their way upwards and outwards onto your skin…it’s as clear as day. It would make no difference whether or not they were a testament to your actions. Regardless, you know exactly what conclusions they’d draw. So wide-brimmed hats, gloves, scarves, sweaters do the trick for now.

The challenge grows daily. Keep it hidden, concealed underneath lengthening fabric now that some damned malevolent curse has somehow made it break the surface of your skin. Even now, they vocalize their concern for your wellbeing of late. At first, their voices were tinged with curiosity, but lately, suspicion. They can’t seem to tell you’re deteriorating from the outside in—even from the small uncovered portion of your face and your lips and your once-skin and the lack of your once-smile? No, not yet. All they see is an eccentric man, hiding under heavy winter clothes when summer’s heat is in full swing. You try not to care. Better that then the alternative. And better that, then to stop altogether. But no matter what happens, they can’t ever know, see what you see when you look in the mirror. Work of the devil, you are. They’d all turn against you in a heartbeat. They’d have themselves a necktie party, or burn you at the stake…

No one ever found the bodies—you made absolutely sure of that. But since the curse, that no longer stops them from coming back to you as hideous creatures in the shadows, in the corners of your eyes, or pressed up against the inside of your skull. They haunt your life. A crowd of them will follow your excessively clothed figure, damp with heavy perspiration, when you dare risk walking outside. At home, they line the walls of every room, lurk in hallways, or wait in closets, along with the myriad of disassembled body parts you find in cupboards and pantries and drawers until you dimly remember what horror feels like. Even in your sleep, they’ve managed to seep through into your dreams to turn the tables on you at long last. Sometimes, they whisper to you, seething words in ugly shapes. At others, you hear their shouts and screams, while another disgusting deformity appears on your skin to match what you’ve done. And your coal heart beats faster and louder as it pumps ink-black blood and weakly-recalled electric fear all through your once-body, a ruinous shadow of itself, and you can’t help but feel a burning indignation at such a transformation even though you know it is no less than you deserve.

What have they done to you? They populate your world like some hideous cancer, so many of them, so many… you’d forgotten there had been so many. But now, they’ve all rushed back to remind you, swarming your every waking moment with bodies as disgusting and broken as yours. And you scream, “Monster! Monster!” but not to them. For you were human once— no more.