May I Skin You?

          Once upon a time, in the highest reaches of heaven, there lived a group of formless, shapeless spirits. All the day they spent roaming the vast lands of nature, flying through forests and mountains, and experiencing freedom bestowed to no other being on Earth. They never had to worry about food nor pain, war nor disease, grief nor regret, as they bore no burden of a body. They also worshipped a god called Human, the mighty god who created their people, and vouchsafed them all their blessing and endowment.
          Essentially, it was a paradise. Anyone would have thought that their life must be perfectly happy and blissful. But this was not the case. They took all those attributes for granted while they were busy worrying about things that may appear petty or illogical for outsiders. For example, their latest primary concern was that they wanted a solid physical body.
          "Oh God," they often pleaded, "Why on earth did you make us so structureless like the disembodied wind? Oh, how we wish to have a body to live inside like the carefree critters below! Why are you, my God, to be so mean as to deprive us the gift to touch and feel?"
          Of course, those prayers were never realized, and as those indignant spirits stared at His statue every day, staring at His torso and limbs He had never promised them, they grew more and more bitter and displeased toward their once-revered God. Such a selfish, heartless villain, how dare He not satisfy our wishes!
          As time went on, the yearning for a body gradually became a competitive trend. People became frenzied about achieving a tangible body, and all sorts of trinkets that were supposed to make your "physique more palpable" sprouted like bamboo shoots after a rain. But those were no match for an industry that successfully exploited this intense involution--- skin-making.
          It was a day like any other, only that a new shop seemed to have opened by the street corner. Inside it hung an array of empty skins, made exactly in the figure of the god they most envy for. And among it, an artful-looking shopkeeper sat cross-legged wearing his own product, blending like a mannequin into the background around him.
          Within the morning, flocks of people jammed the storefront airtight. Crowds were vying against each other to get a glimpse of this miraculous invention. The stockage were literally instantaneously depleted, and by afternoon, one could meet passersby dressed in the skin of Human walking down the street, emulating clumsy footsteps but with proud puffing chests.
          It was a dream come true. No one cared if this might be a blasphemy. People stripped the store empty while casting money away to the mysterious shopkeeper. Every morning, the coats of skin seemed to automatically replenish, and along with the shopkeeper's earnest advertising, soon enough, everybody in heaven was commuting and interacting with Human forms.
          But tragedy was destined to occur.
          It was the night of the new moon. Everybody was sleeping and relishing his or her new body, and that was when the clouds that supported heaven finally gave in from the great weight of all the extra bodies appearing in the sky. Their paradise had collapsed, along with all its inhabitants, bringing them crashing down to the forest below. By the time the stunned outcasts finally were able to perceive their surroundings, they discovered they were lying at the bottom of a damp undergrowth. The wilderness was far different from the condescending view they enjoyed when soaring up above. Threats were lurking everywhere. They finally realized that nothing was ever granted. They had lost their haven of protection and innocence.
          Desperately, they wanted to rip apart their prison of a body and fly back to their homeland, but the suture at the back of the skin had sealed, and there was no way free. It was then that they seemed to just realize how suffocating and constricted the body was. They were trapped in their self-imposed encasements, for the rest of eternity.
          Suddenly, beams of light shot from the sky, and hovering in the center of the blinding canopy was the almighty god, transformed from the shopkeeper that everybody was acquainted with, but never cared to familiarize.
"Oh God! Please emancipate us from the captivity of this wretched body!" His subjects finally realized the truth and pleaded for mercy.
A smirk coiled into existence on His visage, "It was you who have begged me to grant your people the gift of a body in the first place. Now that I fulfilled your wish, you are prepared to undo it so quickly? One needs to bear his or her own consequences, insatiable mortals. You have chosen the body, and now you need to carry on with it on yourselves." With that, He left, never to return again.
          It was the first time mankind has ever felt contrition.
          Eventually, they managed to build a civilization. Their children decided to call themselves humans, after the god Human whom their ancestors stole and befouled the body from. Generation after generation, they tell the story of humanity's downfall to their sons and daughters, to make sure they remember the poignant lesson God had taught humans to always be gratified and never wallow in pointless anxieties ever again.
          Until they eventually forgot about it anyways. Men have found more meaningful things to distress about.