Shadows consume the room, but red lights illuminate the catwalk as the fashion show attendees await Silica's latest designs. Some guests wear their base flesh, flaunting their rot. Fat melts over their seat like butter in a pan, tar-stained teeth and black gums leak saliva onto their oily, pus-covered skin. One man wears a pinky ring with leash-like cables that extend and connect to his pieces that stand and surround him. Each piece's face is sullen and gaunt. Glimmers of knives protruding from eyes and skinless bodies with metal studs implanted in their necks like a choker reflect off the runway’s red under glow.

A woman with HDMI cable hair uses one of her pieces as a chair while her other two, sewn together at the head, kneel and massage her calves with hands made of smooth stone rollers. Many attendees, younger ones with fewer bodies in their collection, dress their consciousness with their most expensive, and in many cases, only piece. An attendee with elephant tusks for arms is fed his hors d'oeuvres by a studio employee, and another with skin made of stunning blue crystal sits with their legs crossed.

The red lights and music die.

A wistful voice permeates the black room.

"The canvas of experience expands beyond flesh."

A spotlight bursts and shines on the catwalk.

A lone computer chip hovers.

"Where there is consciousness, there is data. Where there is compute, there is a means to process. Divine automata. I am Silica, creative director of Marcheur de la Peau. All of our pieces are ethically sourced, handcrafted with fine attention to detail, and completely inhabitable as hosts for your collections." Silica floats along the stage, rotating as he speaks.

"Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you, Marcheur de la Peau's Fall/Winter collection."

The spotlight turns off.

The red lights and music return.

First on the catwalk is a man, his body inverted and limbs cracked and jagged as he crawls. A scorpion tail emerges from between his legs and crescents over his torso. Pincers extend from his nostrils, opening and closing as he moves. Diamonds replace his eyes.

Lights flash as many audience members' eyes crawl into their skulls, snapping pictures with nested camera implants on their undersides.

Next, a severed head with its eyelids and mouth sewn shut and a mid-twentieth-century toaster attached to its neck like a snail's shell uses its chin to crawl along the catwalk. On the toaster, a tongue replaces the lever as two eyes replace the dials. The device's metal scrapes and rattles against the runway floor, harmonizing with the bass and synthesizer. Behind the stitched mouth, a faint and muffled scream wails.

More of Silica's pieces grace the stage. A man with the front of his neck filleted and spread like a web, pierced to his earlobes and shoulders. Black widows crawl along his exposed and bobbing Adam's apple.

Next, a skin-wrapped car tire with arms of varying lengths attached to a central fixture. As it rolls, a skid mark scarred face emerges from the tire's underside, rotating in and out of visibility.

A metal-coated head with a frozen, crying face attached to a small cone-shaped plug, walking on mechanical arachnid arms extending from its eyes and ears, moans as its insert rhythmically thrusts air.

Afterward, the lights and music turn off again.

Silica's voice returns.

"This next piece is special. To bring it to life, we partnered with artists and engineers. Poets and mathematicians. Writers, philosophers, and theologians. This piece is meant for only those with the most refined palette. Those who want to be haunted by life and its search. And…”

Silica’s voice trails.

“For my sake, it must go. My assistants are bringing around bid cards."

In the dark, studio workers wearing bones styled as BDSM garments hand each attendee a severed head with a portion of the spine exposed and curved like an umbrella handle.

"I present, The Soul."

The spotlight shines on the stage. Empty space fills the conic light. The temperature drops, and the air thickens. Attendees lean in their chairs as though some magnetic force were pulling their bodies. The spotlight caves towards its center.

The man with the pinky ring raises his bidding head.

"Ten thousand dollars." The head has a guttural voice, as though it were gargling a thick substance.

Another head raises. "Twenty thousand dollars."

Waves of bids follow as the room rushes like a river of phlegm.

Bidding eclipses the millions.

A winner is crowned and called to the stage.

In the red shadows, a chair screeches against the metal floor.

Slow, heavy footsteps thud.

The sound of delicate creaks follows, like small bones popping.

The buyer steps onto the stage. Stray light contours a towering, famished body that stretches towards the silent overhead light fixtures. He reaches his long, misshapen fingers from the shadows like a timid child checking a swimming pool's temperature. His fingers lift as though some invisible hand had interlaced with his.

The crowd leans forward.

And there’s a moment of stillness, where his thumb moves as though it were rubbing another's.

But the buyer's arm jerks, and he stumbles into the light.

His head, a flesh sunflower with a size proportional to a watermelon on a praying mantis, hangs upside down and oscillates around his body as he moves, popping his neck in and out of place.

It rolls towards the crowd.

Eyeless, his carved smile spreads from bud to bud.

Bones crack.

His wrist snaps onto his forearm.

The music returns, fading in as he screams.

The techno drum beat kicks.

His body folds in half, bending and cracking as it halves again, and again, and again, compressing beneath a particle’s dimensions. Lost to the eye. The audience sits in awe as the buyer warps into quanta.

 His screams claw the walls despite his diminished form.

Silence becomes.

“Thank you.” Silica’s soft tone massages the spectators’ ears.

And the audience applauds.

​

Beau Wilks, son of a used-car salesman and consumer of trash horror, spent his childhood ambling through graveyards, comic shops, and antique stores. Featured in Star*Line, The Genre Society, and Sneaky Ottoman Review, Beau now writes horror from his Austin-based couch with assistance from his cat Ripley and dog Zelda.