Under the Skin

Under The Skin
By Milton Fernandes


Dad is a funny host.
He used to work on this talk show on TV, interviewing famous or important people and always making his audience laugh from time to time. I didn’t find him funny. Mom always told me I should laugh when dad told a joke or made a funny remark, but I just couldn’t do it. He was not even humorous. . .
I didn’t actually like his work. The places he went, the people he met… all that fake world that he had to bear and deal with to sustain me, my sister and mom were actually some of the few things that made him become unaware of the changes I was going through.
If only he had paid attention…

It all started one night, when I woke up from a nightmare. I dreamt that I was my cat, Chuck Norris, and that I had run away from my house, onto the middle of a busy road, just to get ran over by a speeding car. I remember waking up screaming.
That was not the scary thing though. Just two hours after waking from that dream I heard my older sister crying, saying Chuck Norris was dead. I ran to the street just to find a big, horrid red stain scratched on the grey pavement of the street. A few meters away from the bloodbath laid the lifeless, broken body of Chuck Norris, his entrails spraying out of his open belly.
I should have cried. If not crying, I should have screamed. If not the previous two, the least I should have felt was a little crush of disgust and sadness. But I felt nothing.
I thought I had felt nothing…

The weeks passed, and life returned to its everyday normality. But things kept changing in me.
I started to become obsessed with Father, and at the same time, extremely angry with him. On one side, I was starting to get interested in men; something my mom found quite natural for my age, being a “pre-adolescent” girl. But Mom was unaware of things to. For my ‘interest’ in men was not in the sexual sense… it was something beyond that. The control that Father had over us girls around the house; his cool over all the matters, always as if he was sure of everything he did. Still, he was always busy, and that was what was making me angry.
Then it happened.
One day, I was finishing an essay about the Spanish Inquisition, I rested my eyes over my bare arm, and noticed something moving underneath my skin. Seconds after I spotted it, it stopped. It was as if small balls were moving slowly under the skin, and then sunk onto the flesh, as not to be seen. I didn’t get scared. Just curious…
I went downstairs, onto the leaving room, where Father was getting ready for another stupid program. I told him what I found and he simply dismissed the case as being ‘a trick of my mind’:
“You’re too tired; maybe you’re just seeing things… Why don’t you go rest a little?”
With that said, he simply gave a quick kiss in the head, and fled onto the snowy night.
That night, I woke up several times, feeling as if something was travelling inside my body. Sometimes I would feel violent shivers in the leg, tickling on the chest, and strange amounts of pressure being applied on my belly. And then… a voice talked to me.
Again I didn’t get scared. It was as if I was expecting all that. The voice talked to me in a language I had never heard. Nevertheless, I understood what it said. It said his name was Jericho, and that he had found its way onto my body one night, after falling from the ‘black stained void’. He told me he meant no harm, and that in fact he could help me. When I asked what it was that he could help me with, he stood silent and answered something that the meaning I did not understood. But I didn’t bother asking again. I felt that, somehow, I was in good hands.

The weeks kept passing. My fascination for Dad kept rising and rising. One day I saw him hugging Mom and kissing her. I felt something very similar to envy, but not for mom. I slowly felt as if I wanted his attention, but not the kind of attention he gave to a woman. I was so confused…
My sister kept telling me it was all part of the puberty phase. What else could I do aside believe her?
Jericho never talked again, but his presence remained on my body. And it grew, with each passing day. On one particular evening, I was helping my sister with dinner by preparing the food. When I was chopping the vegetables, I cut myself on the hand. Jericho must have been doing something there, because no blood came out (and it was a deep wound). Instead, a dark liquid came out, slowly. It was thick. It somehow reminded me of honey. I shouted for my sister to look at it, but right before she laid her eyes on it, the liquid rushed back onto the wound, disappearing from sight. Right after this strange event, blood squirted violently.

Every single day I would try to talk to Dad. I was having these very intense urges in talking to him. I wanted him to notice me! I mean… I was his daughter! Why would he go to all the hard work of creating a spawn, just to ‘distance-feed’ it, neglecting all the emotional contact that was necessary in such a relation? It was ridiculous!
These things crept in my mind, taunting me. In school, I hardly listened to my teachers or my friends. My Father wouldn’t leave my mind. I adored him in such a way that… I couldn’t explain! But still… he was so… weak as a father!
That’s when Jericho came in again. He promised me a solution for Father . . . and I listened.

Friday night, father gave me another kiss and went for his car. But on that day, the engine didn’t start. It seems someone had messed with the engine. He was stuck there, with me. After making some calls with his agents and assistants, he threw himself on the couch, shouting all sorts of bad words with frustration.
When he was settled down and calmer, I came inside the room. I hid the kitchen knife under my sleeve, as not to reveal my intentions too quickly.
I stood still in front of him. After a long silence, he looked at me and asked what the matter was. I replied “Nothing . . . just, watching you rest . . .”
“Is everything all right dear?”
First I smiled. Then I answered: “Everything will be, Dad… for the best…”
And then I revealed the knife. He simply watched, horrified, when I quickly passed the sharp blade trough my neck. I must have had a very good precision. The cut was perfect. The pain was not that terrible. Big streams of blood flew out of the wound, and I slowly sank onto the carpet. Dad rushed to help me, and as soon as he got hold of my body, a loud, distorted voice came from the wound I had inflicted on my own neck:
“MINE!”
From my wound, a gigantic stream of black liquid exploded onto my father's face. The liquid seemed to be alive. From the moment it touched my father’s skin it started to move freely around Dad’s body. More black fluid rushed from inside of me, and Dad was drowning slowly in it; his screams disappearing inside a fluid black cocoon. I don’t remember anything else besides falling loosely on the ground -- fainting.

And now… here I am. With the aid of Jericho, I cured Father. He is still the same man: strong, determined, handsome… Only this time, we worked on correcting his mistakes.
I admit it was strange, controlling the body of a full grown man. But Jericho helped me since the very beginning. He was a very good teacher. He knew so much about humans. Strange…
My former body disappeared. I think it’s somewhere inside dad . . . under his skin, with Jericho. Well, I guess I can say it’s somewhere under my skin, since now I am Father. Mom reported to the police about her missing child. But I could not tell I was dad now. Jericho wouldn’t let me even if I wanted to.
We still have a lot of work to do inside Dad… When Jericho warned me of the costs implied in his plan, I was fearful. But after a week or so... it all proved itself to be quite simple and easy…
Besides, Dad is such a funny host…