The Hawthorn Suit

Awakened by my own roar, I blearily blinked away the greasy sweat in my lashes, borne of my nocturnal travels; then warily took stock of my surroundings, already knowing what the scene would hold. I was back in the same barn as all the other times.

My stomach dropped.

Cautiously unfurled, my hands retold the same story I couldn’t quite read, written in darkened blood through the lines of my palms. I sighed and clenched my fists, knowing full well the mysterious tale would not be silenced. Not yet. At least, not from me. Taking stock of copper mouth, I guardedly explored cracked lips and sticky teeth, tongue tasting what I feared it would. I’d feasted again. The ghosts of evil words bounced and echoed around a memory spoken by another me.

I heaved myself up from the boards of the floor, and stood; muscles aching and straining against the restrictive nature of what I had feared I was clad in. I’d known before I had even focused on my environment. I also knew there would be the best part of a full-length mirror a few feet away, which in turn was next to a workbench. I wondered if the viscera on that bench had stopped steaming yet.

Movements hindered, I shuffled with rising dread to face my demons in my reflection, allowing no more than my peripheral vision to pick up the scarlet splashed tools and work surface strewn with remains. The smell of death, of shit and guts filled my guilty nostrils. With a deep breath, I took in my sins in front of me.

What I saw in the dirty mirror, what was actually me; was just the tortured eyes, and shocked, gaping mouth. The rest of me I could barely allow my sight to stay in one place long enough to comprehend. But I had to. I drank it in like poison. My penance.

I wore a full body suit, from head to toe in a variety of flesh tones; bar a few raw and red-edged slashes, it was sewn together with thick black thread and had, for the most part, been wiped free of the blood the flesh had once contained. Eye and mouth holes left clumsily agape, skin allowed to form a sleeve so that my hands could function; it was a shocking sight to behold. Swallowing down bile, I focused on the horrific details. Four quarters of the suit could be identified, not equal in size; therefore more human material had been used where the unwilling donor had been smaller. Where a torso would suffice for an area here, elsewhere a child would need more flaying to match the same coverage. It made for a grisly patchwork.

A tattoo at a bizarre angle here, a woman’s nipple there; an undeveloped genital on one sleeve; an eye socket with clumsy early teenage make up still applied halfway down a thigh. I ate it up with my sickened stare, because I had to. Then, on trembling limbs, I walked toward the mirror a couple more steps to fully take in the four photos stapled to my chest; formed of the corpses of others.

In turn, I digested the four images. Polaroids of a healthy and wholesome looking family, albeit in terror-filled turmoil. Dad – graying temples, forties. Mum – well preserved late thirties. Daughter – teenage and pretty; and Son, no more than ten and clad in cartoon pyjamas. All pictures depicted them screaming and crying, frozen in time by the harsh flash of the camera held by me, somewhere out there.

I read the names I’d sadistically written on each one, leaving the message for my sane self to deal with when I came to. I read them aloud. Richard. Emily. Holly. Charlie. And scrawled underneath the four images that I knew had been their last moments immortalized forever, the name ‘Hawthorns’ in black Sharpie, awkward over the family’s flesh butted up against each other’s and sewn, harshly, into my suit of repulsion.

I drank it in. I bit down on it all and swallowed the information. I knew the drill. I compartmentalized it with the rest and set about cleaning up the residue, now whistling the boy band song Holly Hawthorn had been playing when I absorbed her soul as her family watched, pleading for the monster to stop.