HOW TO BOIL A HEART

How To Skin Perfectly

  He was not impatient to choose the candidate with the perfect skin. As a good observer and taster, he knew how appearance and taste often diverge: golden and tender meat can be appealing on the outside, but how can you know if the inside is not rotten or thorny? The same with people, specially the ones that everyone else wants to be. And as one of those cases, Xavier also knew that placing admiration in magnets of envy can be a bad business; however, there was nothing more satisfying than unmasking those conceited imbeciles who made him hate every miserable step he took. Seeing their egos fall to the ground, their halos incorporating the Punishment of Atlas and squeezing them beneath the gifts that once elevated them...  Yes, there is nothing more delicious than seeing that those intelligent, handsome, idolized fuckers are nothing but muddy bones cut by the same foolish desperation worshiped for the greater good of building a legacy, unshakable success, necessary ascension or smiles on the faces of the ones holding the whip.

   Because we need to dethrone the other to be King.

   And school is a perfect training ground for that.

   Xavier and his mother didn't say goodbye when she dropped him off at school. Or she did, but he was too busy with the grunts of his demons to hear. Page 32 of biology into art... not now, he wanted a new epidermis prison to take part.

   He slammed the passenger door shut. His eyes traveled over the front gates of the school and the students gathered on the staircase and the balustrades above. Beige uniforms, impertinent smiles, brains on leashes being dragged by horses of vice. And don't even get him started on the taste of those brains.

  He crossed the gates of hell, without leaving the hope of a good inspiration behind. He walked through the front yard and climbed the stairs like a usurper. The hallways were full of students (actually rats) carrying different types of mousetraps: cellphones, sweethearts' hands, books on physics or interstellar chemistry. All those skins were fake, partially or entirely. Well, at worst, he would become Dr. Frankenstein and sew a blanket with the best parts he had skinned from each one. The courage of one, the self-esteem of another, any intelligence good enough to get academic matters in order...

  "Xavier! Hey, man. I've been waving at you for ages," Dan said, leaning against the wall next to the mural.

   Dan was the people-pleaser who had been talking to Xavier since elementary school, even for no reason at all because the desire for friendship wasn't reciprocal. Well, at first it was, but then Xavier began to sink into his world of paintbrushes and revolts until he started inevitable arguments with every friend he could find; in the end, he decided he was better off alone.

   Sometimes he thought about wearing Dan's skin. He would be an easy target, but also a failure. Due to his neediness, his skin was synthetic like the others: sewn with a new skein every night and torn like cheap clothing when he didn't make it to the stage of socializing. And besides, if he wanted the skin of a coward in an identity crisis, he already had his own.

   "Hey, what is it?" He stopped in front of Dan, but with his eyes wandering around the perimeter.

  Dan cleared his throat and put his hands in his pockets. "I wrote some notes for tomorrow's test, if you..."

  "Why would I want your notes?" Xavier's eyes were filled with fire.

  Dan scratched his arm like a nervous tic. For a moment, the words escaped his tongue. "No... I'm not saying you need it. I... I'm offering it to everyone, seriously..."

  Xavier paid attention to the first words, but lost track of the story when his eyes wandered again. And like love at first sight, they lay down on the flier bearing "Art On Canvas Contest" in colorful generic letters.

  The story between him and that underrated contest was like a Shakespearean drama mixed with some teen fan fiction: superficially deep. It was more than an extracurricular activity, it was an obligation in the name of the efforts of a downhill adolescence. He hadn't made it into last year's competition—it had nearly put him in a self-induced coma—and he wasn't confident enough in his art to enter the ones before that. But now, now that he had ingested everything he required and killed himself with paper knives, he was going to participate in this contest and prove that he could still be worthy of something.

  "Are you going to participate?" Dan wanted to know as he saw Xavier enamored with the flier, and also because he wanted to change the subject.

  "Yeah, maybe. I don't know," he said, as if he wasn't going to show the pictures of his creations to the teacher right after the first period.

  Dan smiled broadly. "I'm sure you'll do great. Do you already know what you're going to do? What will the central theme be? Oh, you're definitely going to do great. I couldn't enter even if I wanted to. You know, I tried painting on canvas once..."

  Xavier fell into daydreams again. He stared at Dan's excited face, debating internally how someone could be so pathetic, until his attention was recaptured when his cheerleader said the last thing he wanted to hear.

  "I saw that Annalie is also going to participate."

  It was just a snippet thrown into the air, but it went straight to Xavier's ears and into his clenched fists. "Annalie is going to participate? Again?"

  Annalie, at least in his humble opinion, was a horrible, spoiled, cursed snake because she had mercilessly stopped him from participating in the contest last year. The teacher chose her over him to represent the school, even though her work was cliché and empty.

  "Of course she's going," Xavier murmured, his voice bitterer than his mother's coffee. "I have to go to class."

  As he turned and walked away, he could still hear Dan waving and hiding the disappointment in his voice as he wished him a good class.

  Xavier didn't answer.

  Apparently he never answered.

His mind was still on Annalie and how he wouldn't let her steal his chance again. She didn't deserve this, she would never feel so deeply as he did. She would never vomit her guts out and call them muses. And how could she? Her brain was vain and superficial, while Xavier's was modern baroque. It had all the blessings of the Renaissance mixed with symbolism extracted from the opium of his tears and sweat. But even so, Annalie took the award, because modern art is not about the canvas anymore.

  In conclusion, if he could skin anyone, he would skin Annalie. He would skin that bitch and use it as a designer coat. Because people are skinned by eyes, envy, ambition, and insecurity.

  But most of all, he wanted to squeeze her brain and serve it to everyone, just to prove that even distilled water tastes better.