The Boy with Words for Skin

Chapter 3: Growl

One of the many weird things about 407 West Marshall Street was how everything looked like it belonged in a museum but still looked new. The wooden floors and door knobs gleamed in the dim light. There were no cracks in walls or grime in corners. The pale yellow paint on the outside of the house looked fresh. Everything looked frozen in time. The toy room was a perfect example of that.

There was a big square room up on the second floor that had tons of toys stacked against the walls or dumped into toy chests. Porcelain dolls, a wood table and chairs, metal trains and tracks, wooden building blocks, all the toys were that kind of stuff. No plastic, nothing electronic or modern.

The three bedrooms on the second floor were across the toy room from the stairs. My room was the door on the right. There were two other doors. The upstairs bathroom and storage room were on the next wall. I didn't even look in that direction when I left my room, though. I kept my eyes on the stairs and rushed across the toy room. There was a door at the top of the stairs, but no one had been inside. The door was locked and The Boy with Skeleton Keys for Fingers refused to even try to unlock it—which felt like a waste of his fingers, if you asked me.

The bottom three stairs curved into the wide front hallway that stretched from the front door all the way to the kitchen in the back of the house. I could've headed toward the kitchen and then gone down the back hallway to get to the bathroom, but instead I took the side hallway by the front door. It looped past the two bedrooms on the main floor. That way, I didn't have to go past the parlor or kitchen, the places where everyone usually hung out.

The main floor bathroom was in the corner where the back and side hallways met. I was lucky. The door was open, so I slipped inside and closed the door behind me. I hung a hand towel over the handle so it hung down and covered the keyhole. If I didn't do that, it always felt like someone was peeking in.

The sink and counter were on the left, the toilet and bathtub on the right. Against the far wall were two tall wicker laundry hampers with lids. I put my clean clothes on top of one and then undressed and showered. When I pulled back the shower curtain, I saw myself in the huge mirror that hung over the sink.

I didn't have a single hair on me, not even eyebrows. My entire body was covered in these long lines of black words that looked like they'd been written by hand. The lines wrapped around my arms and legs and chest in wavy, tight lines, splitting apart and spiraling around each of my fingers and toes. On my head, the lines shot in several directions at once, kind of like fireworks. These lines swirled around each other, never overlapping, and worked their way around my eyes and mouth and ears.

The words made me look tough, like a rebel covered with tattoos. I didn't look like the kid you could punch whenever you wanted because he was too scared to hit back. I didn't look like the kid whose bike you could steal and then ride around town because you know he'd be too worried what else you'd do if he told on you and got you in trouble. I liked looking tough. Even if looking tough didn't actually make me tough.

It didn't take long after the Transformation for me to realize that the words on my skin were my thoughts. Most of it was just stupid stuff, like what I ate for breakfast or something pointless I thought about when I was bored, but there were a lot of things I didn't want anyone else to read, too.

The only thing I could think to do was cover up as much of my skin as possible. Pants and hoodies everyday. It was funny that the words made me look tough but made me feel anything but tough. I was literally hiding from everyone, even when I was standing right in front of them.

I turned away from my reflection and dried off. Once I had my clean clothes and hoodie on, I threw my dirty clothes into a hamper. A bunch of hooks stood on one wall, and I hung my towel up. The Girl whose Arm was a Sewing Kit had embroidered everyone's name on two towels. It took her a couple of months, but we didn't get our towels mixed up anymore.