The Human Condition

uninterrupted personal service from him.

    Still coughing (and occasionally retching and vomiting) he began to build a barrier around one corner of the gym with various pieces of apparatus he found lying around. The bodies, although still very animated, were also clumsy and their coordination was desperately poor. It didn't take very much to keep them restrained. Using benches, vaulting horses, trampolines, crash mats, weight training equipment and anything else he could find he built a division around the far left corner of the room, leaving the rest of the gym clear.

    Who first?

    He'd had a late start and getting the gym ready had taken longer than expected. The sun was already beginning to set as he stood breathless and looked across the room at his motley collection of corpses. Which one of these fuckers has caused me most pain? Which one hurt me most? Which one showed the most complete disregard for me and for everything I ever stood for or believed in or wanted? It was a close call between two of them. It was either Dad or Dawn. Just because he preferred the idea of messing with Dawn's body (it made him feel slightly excited in an uneasy, perverted kind of way) he chose her. He reached out over the barrier he'd built, grabbed hold of his ex-girlfriend's corpse and threw it back onto the other side.

    `Okay, Dawn?' he asked, surprising himself with the sound of his own voice. Dawn's dead body lumbered towards him, twisted arms outstretched. For a moment he was close to panicking and he almost lost his nerve. What did he do? Did he hit it or push it over or...? He took a deep breath and instead of looking at the unsteady bulk of rotting flesh which staggered towards him, he instead remembered her as she used to be. More specifically, he remembered what it was she'd done to him. Even more specifically, he remembered what it was she hadn't let him do to her. Bitch.

    Christ, just look at the state of her, he thought as his dead ex-girlfriend slipped in a puddle of blood or vomit or something equally unpleasant. Over the course of the last twenty-four hours the floor of the gym had become covered with various noxious spillages, both from the corpses and from Skin himself. The corpse dropped heavily to its knees in front of him and then managed to pick itself up again and continue moving towards him. She was an appalling sight but, knowing her strange tastes, she might have approved of the look. Her eyes were hollow and sunken, her skin green-hued and ruptured and pockmarked in places. She had a deep cut on her bare right shoulder and, in the low light, Skin was sure he could see squirming movement in and around the lesion. Was it just blood or decay glistening, or was it something more foul? Maggots, flies or larvae feeding off her dead flesh perhaps? Whatever it was, the thought of it was disgusting, too much even for the twisted mind of Skin to handle. The sight of her standing there, naked and practically falling to pieces as he watched her, was too intense. He pushed her back over the barrier and grabbed another body from the other side of the divide.

    Mr Read! Bloody hell, it was Mr Read, the head of the music department at the school. He'd forgotten that he'd managed to get Read's body. He hadn't set out to find this particular teacher but he was glad that he'd got him. He'd been one of the last corpses he'd collected yesterday. He'd found three bodies at the end of the corridor and this was the one he'd taken. The others were just kids. Now this bastard deserved to suffer. He was the one who made kids sing on their own in front of the class and play endless bloody glockenspiel solos in his lessons.

    Skin hadn't liked Read, but there was no real emotional attachment to this teacher. He felt sure he could damage this body without giving it a moment's thought. Maybe the strength of his hate for Dawn, his dad and certain other ex-teachers somehow made it difficult for him to do justice to their bodies. He needed to practice. He needed to start with someone who had been fairly neutral and then build himself up to the bastards who really deserved to incur his wrath. The body of Mr Read seemed ideal.

    What could he do to him? He glanced around the gloomy gym and his eyes settled on a pile of weight-training equipment in the corner of the room. As the body dragged itself after him pathetically he took hold of a short bar (the kind he'd seen used before for single arm exercises) and stripped the weights off it.