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writtentodeath · 1 year

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Here’s a fun short story I wrote for my sister- tws for skin and descriptions of peeling it (no blood or gore, just like, extreme exfoliation)

putting it under a cut bc it’s ~long (like 1700 words)

Please Stop Peeling the Skin Off Your Feet

Every day I come home from work and find peeled skin in the kitchen.

The kitchen.

Now, I told Barney that if he really had to, he could peel his skin, but only in the bathroom where it can be thrown away. I don’t want to deny him his coping mechanisms, see, I’m not about that type of thing. I’m not.

But no, he couldn’t stop there.

A freshly peeled pile of skin sitting on the counter.

Barney must be some kind of olympic athlete to be able to contort into whatever shape necessary to get his foot onto the counter. I don’t even wanna think about the alternative- that after peeling the skin off his foot, he then scooped it all up and put it on the counter in a little artistic pyramid.

I don’t like Barney very much.

He lives in his room. I don’t see him very often, I just hear the sound of crime procedurals coming from his room.

Barney’s an interesting guy.

“Hey, Barney?” I knocked on his door. “Hey, I don’t mean to bother you, but I noticed what looks like a pile of skin on the counter- I’m pretty sure it isn’t mine, so is it yours?”

“What- Huh?” Something fell over in Barney’s room. A second later, he opened the door. He had a piece of sandpaper in his hand. Dust sparkled in a sunbeam illuminating the small room.

“I don’t mean to bother you,” I began. “I just got home. Remember how we talked about not, uh, leaving your skin in the kitchen?”

“Oh yeah!” Barney said. He held up a square inch of translucent tan. “Look at what I just got off the boys!”

“Please don’t call them that.”

“They’re real flaky today.”

“I gathered. Or you did. On the counter. In a pyramid.”

Barney grinned. “Nice touch, right? I’m trying to build up valuable skills.”

A nagging sensation started in the back of my mind, specifically about the dust glittering in the sunlight.

“I don’t mean to be harsh, but don’t you think it’s a little unsanitary?”

He shrugged. “I mean. We use our hands to eat things. Skin doesn’t seem to bother you when you’re using it to pick up food.”

I wasn’t sure what to say to that, so I said, “okay, good point!” and left.

The skin was still on the counter.

Was it bigger than when I first saw it?

No. Not unless Barney had managed to sneak out and add to it during their discussion, and I’d had my eye on him the whole time.

“It’s your mind playing tricks,” I said to myself, and got out a little handheld broom and dustpan. I love my handheld broom and dustpan. Big brooms are great for the floor, but when you’ve got something small that you need to deal with, the handheld broom and dustpan is the way to go.

Mine is blue.

The pyramid collapsed onto the dustpan when I moved it off the counter, and then I deposited it in the trash. I also swept the rest of the counter, clearing off several meal’s worth of grime.

When I first moved in with Barney, I would bleach the counters after finding his little droppings. I still do, but it’s a different kind of cleaning now. It’s like painting a wall versus doing the dishes. You expect to paint a wall once every few years. The dishes have to get done all the time.

I have to sweep up little pyramids of foot skin peelings all the time.

My friends tell me I’m being judgmental. Am I overreacting? Barney does have a point, it’s just skin, and we all have skin. Some burn victims probably don’t have skin.

I just don’t know what to do anymore.

I came home from work to find yet another little pile waiting for me. In fact, it wasn’t just one pile. There was a whole trail of them (they were small) leading from the front door, one about every 8 feet, to the kitchen and then to Barney’s room.

Ever seen a breadcrumb trail made of tiny skin pyramids? I thought not. Live a little.

I knocked on his door again. “Hey, Barney?”

A minute later, he opened the door. A light brown bottle was in his hands. Some kind of honey scrub, most likely, maybe even mine. My honey scrub.

“Sorry, is that my scrub?”

He looked at it in surprise. “This? Nah, man. I don’t think so. I keep it in here.” He gestured to the dusty room behind him.

I shouldn’t have asked him. It was a stupid question. “Sorry for asking,” I said, and beat a hasty retreat back to the kitchen. “It’s cool!” he called after me, “We’re all dust in the end!”

Barney unnerves me sometimes.

Maybe I’m being too harsh. Yes, the guy shaves skin particles off his feet and makes little sculptures with them. I saw a skin rubber duck in the shower the other day. Nearly threw up. But that’s not all there is to him! I mean, we all have our vices. I, for instance, don’t like seeing skin rubber ducks when I’m trying to wash myself. It feels too intimate.

But Barney is pretty understanding when I like to keep things clean. He even sorts out the silverware the way I like. We all have to make sacrifices for each other.

I asked him, one day, why he does that. “Do what?” he said, the very picture of innocence. I almost believed him, except he was sculpting what looked like a playset out of skin.

“Y’know,” I said. “The thing. Y’know. Shaving your feet. Peeling off the skin. Is it like a nervous tic? You just like the feeling? What’s up with it?”

He chuckled. “Oh, that. Don’t worry about it.”

“Well- no, I’m not worried, just-”

“Sometimes we want to feel the world around us,” Barney said, looking straight at me, his newest sculpture abandoned for the moment.

“Oh- oh,” I said. I didn’t expect him to respond, much less with any seriousness. “Like, you can feel better through your feet without all that skin?”

Barney shook his head violently. “No, no, no, that’s not it.” Without warning, he suddenly reached into his shirt and pulled out a scroll. “Ancient scripts. From dust we came, to dust we shall return.” he shook open the scroll and a thick cloud of dust blew into the air. “We are one with the earth- our bodies are just creators of what we came from, constantly making more dust. It’s our destiny.”

This was the most Barney had ever spoken, so I said, “Wow! That’s really cool! Is that a bible verse?” He fixed me with a stare like it was the first time he actually looked at me. “The Dust is older than your Scriptures.”

I didn’t really sign up for that, so I said, “Good gracious! That’s pretty old!”

Now, I know what you’re going to say. I would say it too, if I was as predictably cruel as the average person. It’s not my fault that I will occasionally say things like jeepers or golly gee or blimey or good gracious, it really isn’t. My excuse is that my grandparents still curse like the old people they are, and I revert to my roots when I’m a little nervous.

Barney makes me a little nervous. So I didn’t ask him about it again. I think it was a good decision.

He made a Leaning Tower of Pisa the other day. Honestly, the sculptures are starting to grow on me. I still sweep up any pyramids I find, but he left the Leaning Tower on the kitchen table the other day and I haven’t moved it. I put up a little paper towel barrier. It was cool.

Barney really annoyed me today. I went out to eat yesterday and didn’t eat everything, so I put my leftover indian in the fridge to save for later. He ate it! He didn’t even ask!! I’m very mad at him right now. I told him he needed to grow up and stop leaving his skin everywhere, because even if he didn’t see a difference between it and dust I sure did, and it was gross. I may have been too harsh. But if it gets the job done, who’s gonna criticize me?

I feel bad, though. He isn’t a bad dude.

“Hey, Barney?” I called, knocking on his door. “Hey man, I’m sorry about earlier. I didn’t mean to snap, that was unfair of me.” The door swung open. Barney stepped back. “It’s cool,” he said, shrugging his shoulders. He seemed entirely unbothered. “Come on in.”

I didn’t really want to, but I did anyway. A peace offering, if you will.

The room was thick with dust, though there wasn’t that much clutter about the room. I could appreciate that.

The scroll was open on his bed, and for a moment, the way it caught the sun made it look like it was glowing. Obviously, it wasn’t actually glowing.

“Here,” Barney said, pushing the dusty, yellowed scroll in front of me. “Read.”

So I read. And then all I felt was dust.

Dust coated every surface of my body. I couldn’t see it, I couldn’t feel it, but it was there. Maybe I was the dust. Maybe the dust was me.

Was there anything under the surface?

Did it matter if there was?

“If the whole world is dust,” Barney said, giving me a knowing look. He held out a sandpaper brick.

As if in a trance, I got to work churning dust into the sunbeams.

I swept it all up, of course. My trusty blue handheld broom and dustpan is always by my side. The feeling was nice, and though at first I just felt sandy, now I feel fresher. Cleaner. I like feeling clean.

Barney feels clean when he feels connected. I guess I get that. I’ve told him that I’m not going to continue shaving my calluses except maybe after I shower, so he can stop trying to get me to see his perspective.

I didn’t have to clean up any skin pyramids today. You know, I really think we’ve found a balance.

Barney is a pretty cool guy. I think I like him a lot. Sure, you have to get past the skin thing, but how bad is that, really?

Not bad at all. Not bad at all.

#my writing #writing #writers on tumblr #thanks to my sister who said write a story about a guy whose roomate won't stop peeling the skin off his feet #ur a real one #idk why but applying Normal Behavior to abnormal situations is just the funniest thing to me #this story is also known as Im trying to write stuff and by god was it easy and fun to write this

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