The Skinnery

The Skinnery
By Stephen Clark

A skinny, pale man walked into the dark corner store from the pouring rain. A loud crash of thunder exploded through the air of the small town and a bright bolt of lightning illuminated the sky above him. The man opened the door, setting off the bell that sounded whenever a customer entered the store. Shaking off the rain from his hair he took off his coat and hung it up on the coat hanger standing upright next to the door. He approached the desk where a thin, petite looking elderly man stood smiling.
“May I help you?” The man’s mouth widened and a series of large, sparkling white teeth showed them selves.
“Yes. I’d like to sign up for a month of tanning please.”
“Very good. That will be twenty dollars.”
The man reached inside his pants pocket and handed the elderly man behind the counter a twenty dollar bill.
“Yes sir, very good sir. Right this way.”
The old man behind the counter walked around, exposing his frail body which was hidden beneath a black suit and tie as well as black dress pants. “Fancy outfit for the owner of a tanning salon,” Peter thought.
Both men disappeared around the corner where all the tanning beds lay in a row, separated by thin partitions. Peter Monroe sat in one of the chairs in the main lobby, waiting for the elderly man to return so he could collect the fee for the paper. Peter worked for a local newspaper, delivering and collecting money for people that subscribed to The Galloping Gazette of Winnipeg Falls, Wyoming. He first became suspicious of The Skinnery’s shady operations when he came in to collect his fee for the paper from the elderly man when he saw a young man who was said to be tanning only for five minutes and as Peter waited for a good fifteen while the owner got him his money, he didn’t see him return from the tanning room. Ever since then he had seen and heard the strangest things; a bright flash of light around the corner followed by an unmistakable yelp or cry. The town-famous tanning salon that had the lowest prices and best beds around had a strange secret to hide and he had yet to uncover it. Much of what he saw there could not be explained by any logic and instead what he received when he asked any of the staff that worked there were excuses. They attributed the odd occurrences to faulty equipment or squeamish first time customers that had never been in a bed before. But Peter Monroe didn’t buy any of their excuses, not for a moment.
He sat there in the uncomfortable plastic black chair in the waiting room, skimming through an old issue of Newsweek. He kept glancing up from the magazine to the blue curtain that separated the waiting room from where the tanning beds were. After a few more minutes of waiting Peter saw the man that had came in to tan come through the curtain. His skin had turned from a ghostly pasty white to a deep toasty skin tone in just a few minutes. The man smiled, looked around and tripped over the rug at the counter, then smiled again and proceeded to walk out into the rain without his umbrella or coat. Peter’s imagination began to take this odd occurrence and mold it into some conspiratorial thought, but before it had time to do so he saw the elderly man return from behind the curtain.
Peter stood up from his seat in the waiting room and the elderly man handed the money for the paper to Peter and quickly turned around and ran back to where the beds were to attend to another strange noise and flash of bright light. Peter squinted his eyes in suspicion and left the tanning salon, weary and once again frustrated by his lack of discovery. He was finally fed up with the Skinnery’s alluring scent of mystery and decided that, after he was done collecting money from all of the people on his route, he would ride his bike over to his place of work, the Galloping Gazette headquarters. He had always wanted to be a real-life reporter and that was his golden opportunity to write a story that would crack his sleepy little town right down the middle and give him the chance of a lifetime.
He walked into the tall glass building, shaking the rain water from his short, neatly combed brown hair; he took off his glasses and rubbed them with his shirt so he could see better. He put them back on and looked up to see Nancy at the front desk, a friendly girl a little older than Peter whom he had always chatted with while coming to collect his pay check at the end of each month. She was a dark haired, pale girl that always wore homely-looking knitted sweaters which Peter always guessed were made by her grandmother or something. Although she was older and Peter didn’t know her that well, he did have somewhat of a crush on her.
“Hey Nancy, what’s up?” Peter walked up to the long green counter, resting his elbows against it.
“Hey Pete, nothing much, just another long day at the double G.”
“Hey Nancy, I was wondering if you could do me a huge favor.”
“Uh oh, what conspiracy do you need to investigate now, Sherlock?”
“Very funny. But there’s something going on at that tanning place across town.”
“You mean the Skinnery?” She looked at him with furrowed eyebrows.
“Yeah that’s the place. There is something really weird going on over there.”
“And what makes you think that Sherlock?”
“Ok first, stop calling me Sherlock. And second, what isn’t wrong over there?”
“So what do you need then, Pete?”
“I need access to the records in the back. That’s all.”
“Oh, ok. You mean the confidential ones?”
“Yeah yeah I know.”
“You know I’m not supposed to do that, Pete.”
“I know, but it’s only stupid newspapers. There’s nothing confidential about them.”
“Fine, but if this costs me my job you’ll be the one who gets skinned.”
Peter smiled triumphantly and walked around the counter into the back room where there were stacks and stacks of disorganized papers scattered all across the floor and in boxes piled up to the ceiling. He sighed and looked back at Nancy before venturing off into a lost world of black and white.
“You’ve got five minutes” Nancy yelled back to Peter from behind the counter.
“Thanks Nance”
“Have fun.” She smiled and turned back around to her post at the desk.
He looked around the room for some idea of where to begin his search. He started by looking at the papers that were organized by date, starting with the most recent ones. As he sorted through the piles and piles of old and discarded papers, he spotted one that stood out among the rest. Printed in large black text on the front page of the paper were the words “A Little More Artificial Sun in Winnipeg Falls”. The article detailed the literally over-night arrival of The Skinnery and the booming success that followed. After sifting through a few more, he found another article in a paper a few years before the last. The article’s title read “Killer Korean Tanning Beds Exported from Country”.
This particular article caught Peter’s eye. He read carefully, fingering through each page that told of how the Koreans had exported from their country tanning beds used for torturing and killing Prisoners of War. They melted the flesh off anyone who was put in and were found out by spies from America. The beds became too risky to keep with American officials inspecting their facilities so they had to get rid of them. The article said that the beds were supposedly shipped somewhere in the U.S to an unknown buyer. Ever since the U.S had been trying to hunt them down and find them before they caused untold carnage to more innocent people. But the uncovering of one more convincing piece of information made Peter twinge with fear. Near the bottom of the stack of musty old papers was an issue that had the front page story titled “Strange Explosion near Farm Remains a Mystery”. The issue was dated only a few days before the speedy arrival of the Skinnery. He began to read to aloud to himself.
“Reports of a giant illuminating glow in the sky, then a loud crash near some farm land on the outskirts of Winnipeg Falls were investigated earlier this week by police. Apparently, no one was wounded, but much of the farmer’s crops were damaged by the giant impact of what many are calling a comet or meteor, yet no object was ever found at the site of the crash. Most in the scientific community agree that the impact was most likely created by a large foreign object, most likely a meteor, from somewhere in space and, due to the heat and pressure of the collision it exploded into the ground causing fragments to be embedded deep within the soil. A farmer who claimed to have witnessed the incident himself insisted otherwise to police officials, claiming that it was something supernatural. No further investigation was carried out.”
Peter folded up the paper with the article in it and put it in his back pocket. He looked around the room for a moment and walked out. He saw Nancy still standing behind the desk, finishing up with some paperwork.
“So, did you find out who really killed Kennedy in those old archives back there?”
“No, but I did find some very interesting information regarding a mysterious meteor crash and some killer tanning beds shipped here from Korea.”
“Huh?” Nancy looked at him as if he had finally lost it.
“Never mind. I have somewhere I need to be.”
“Yeah, like where?”
“I’m going to see this farmer that claims to have seen something “supernatural” the day that the Skinnery opened.”
“You’re one in a million, Pete.” Nancy smiled and rolled her eyes at Peter as she watched him walk out the door.
Peter got on his bike and pedaled down the long dirt road the led up to the residence of the old farmer Mr. Pritchet. He stopped pedaling and let the bike idle towards the house and got off, leaning it against the shabby old country mailbox that stood there in front of the house, planted in the muddy soil. He strode up the ranch-style house, windows cracked, the paint chipping off in large chunks, and to Peter’s terror-filled surprise a large drooling pit bull chained to one of the wooden pillars on the porch.
“Who’s there?” A tall frail man wearing boots, a large straw hat and a pair of dirty overalls opened the screen door, letting out a screech.
“Oh, hello Mr. Pritchet. My name is Peter.”
“What ya want?” The old farmer squinted his eyes at him, trying to analyze the purpose of this stranger’s visit.
“I’m sorry for the intrusion sir, but I was wondering if I could ask you some questions. About the incident which occurred near your property a while back.”
“I already told the papers everything; they didn’t wanna hear any of it.”
“Well, I do, if you would be willing to tell me that is.”
After a moment of long hard looks and an apparent hesitation to let down his guard, the old farmer opened the door and motioned for Peter to come inside.
Peter walked cautiously into the house, looking at the pit bull which was foaming at the mouth, bearing its teeth in territorial awareness.
“What you wanna know? The old man took a seat in his old tattered recliner, taking a sip from his glass of lemonade.
Peter took a seat on the long brown couch facing the chair the old man sat in. “Well, what is it exactly that you think you saw that night?”
“I don’t think I saw nothin’. I know what I saw. It was aliens.”
“Aliens?” Peter raised an eyebrow, half confused, the other half desperately curious.
“Yep. I saw their ship crash, down by the creek half a mile back from where I keep the cattle fenced in. Gave em’ a hell of a scare. Most of my crops were blown to hell too. Damn city didn’t do shit.”
“That doesn’t make sense. No ship was every found there.”
“I know what I seen! They must a done somethin’ with it. Probably hidin’ that and their other stuff in that damn shack of theirs down the road a ways.”
“What shack? What stuff are you talking about?”
“That damn tanning place.”
“The Skinnery?” Peter’s eyes widened with inquisition and terror.
“Yeah that’s the place. Saw em’ loadin’ in a bunch a coffins or somethin’.”
“Coffins?”
“Yeah, big long rectangle-like boxes.”
“The beds,” Peter muttered to himself.
“Huh?” The farmer grunted.
“Oh, nothing. Thanks for your time, Mr. Pritchet.” As Peter stood up, still dazed from the intake of information the old farmer had unloaded on him, he saw the farmer get up as well, walking over to him, leaning closer.
“I seen things in that place. All sorts of things. At night I always see bright lights shinin’ from that place. Sometimes screams too. Scares the hell out a me, boy. You ought a be scared too. Don’t go pokin’ your head where it don’t belong.”
For a moment Peter just stared at the old man, his eyes still bulging, filled with suspense and a strange feeling of fear. “Thank you” he managed to get out, then opened the door and left, pedaling back home on his bike.
That night he slept soundly in his bed, drifting off into a land of twisted imagination and terrifying thoughts. He saw himself entering through the front door of the Skinnery; his eyes glazed over, wide and dilated as if he were in some hypnotic trance. He stumbled inside, unable to control his will, walking further into the building that had built up so much suspicion in his mind over the past couple months. He saw the old man come out from the back room and stood there smiling at him.
Looking around the perimeter of the room, he noticed that there were other people in the room with him, sitting calmly in chairs lined up against the wall. He took a second glance at them and realized something that made his gut wrench and his stomach turn with horror; none of them had any skin. Their insides were exposed, only they had no organs in them. It was a line of bloody, bony patrons that no longer had any use for a tanning bed. Peter’s eyes formed a frightened expression, as if he were somehow regaining consciousness and had control of his actions once again.
“You will never escape, Peter.” The old man stared straight into his eyes, burning a hole right through Peter’s skull with a frightening grimace on his face.
Peter stood there completely frozen. The control he had over his body became lucid once again and he moved his arms around, raising them to adjust his glasses at what he knew couldn’t be real. He looked at the old man for a moment, noticing something strange. Small holes of green light poked through the material of the man’s clothing. They shown through bright and sharp, bouncing off the ceiling and reflecting on the walls. At first Peter didn’t know what to make of it, but then he realized. Obviously the old man wasn’t a human being, that was clear. He looked like some sort of sun creature. Slowly he saw the old man’s skin come off, slowly peeling away like a zipper coming down on a Halloween costume. Before him he saw the most horrific, terrifying thing he had ever seen in his life. A man-shaped inferno of glowing bright fire filled the room, swaying back and forth, opening its mouth to reveal the huge, razor-sharp set of teeth it bore at Peter. Peter raised his head to the transformed sun creature as it loomed over him and its gaping mouth grew wider, prepared to inhale him.
He shot up in his bed, disoriented and soaked with sweat under the comforter that covered his body. His mind raced with questions and panicked thoughts of what to do. The thought that entered his mind next seemed completely ridiculous, but at a second glance it began to seem more rational, even intelligent to his journalistic mind. He gathered himself and changed into a pair of jeans and a sweatshirt as he fumbled into his tennis shoes and darted out the door as fast as he could. His legs ached and his skin turned a ghost pale as he pedaled on, piercing his way through the warm night’s air.
Turning on to Kensington street, part of the dream he had awoken from only minutes before walking out the front door of his house came shooting back into his brain, hitting him like a freight train’s crashing moan slams its way through a thick, fog-layered night. He saw in his mind the skinless bodies lined up in chairs in the waiting room of the Skinnery, glowing light filling the room, the old man transforming into an unimaginably hideous creature unlike anything he had seen in his worst nightmares.
He suddenly lost control of his grip on the handlebars and the bike he was on tumbled over the steep hill of grass and dirt on the side of the road and he flew off, his body spinning uncontrollably down the hill. After he had finally stopped rolling on the muddy earth and his head lay flat on the ground, he picked himself up with a low groan, wiping blood and dirt from his face and arms. He looked up to the sky and noticed where was. He stared for a moment at the no longer illuminated neon sign that stood high above the building next to it. It was the Skinnery.
As if under some sort of voodoo spell, he walked forward towards the building, staring at its darkened insides. He walked up to the front door that had a cheap cardboard sign hanging in the window that said “Closed” in large bold red letters. He raised his arm to the door, grasped the cold silver handle as tight as his body would allow, and tugged on it, and to his surprise, it opened as easily as it had ever opened for him when he had gone in during his rounds for the newspaper. He walked inside, trying to make out different shapes in the dark room he had visited to many times before. It looked even creepier at night than in the day, making his eyes dart with fear at the noise in the corner of the room.
He saw a light in the back where the tanning beds were. The light flickered, glowing brighter with every pulse of light that shot from the room. Peter slowly stepped towards the room, gaining a better view with every footstep, fearful of what he was going to see next. He stopped when he saw what was producing the blindingly bright flash of light. Looming over one of the tanning beds, removing a large, folded up blanket of human flesh from a compartment in the bottom of one of the tanning beds was a tall, bulbousy creature, a green ray of light surrounding its entire body. The creature proceeded to lift up the blanket of skin in front of itself, gave a disgusting smile that gave Peter a chill through out his body, and draped it over its large, slimy body, stretching and moving it around until it took the shape of a familiar-looking young man. It was the man he had seen come in to tan the last time he had been there collecting his fee for the newspaper, the one that had acted so strangely after coming back from the tanning beds.
Being careful not to make any noise that might alert the creature of his presence, he shifted his weight to the right behind a large tanning bed. Scanning the side of the bed Peter saw many labels stuck to it, but one in particular stood out among the rest. The label read “Made in Korea”. Peter’s mind flashed back to the newspaper article he had read at the town’s newspaper headquarters about the killer tanning beds shipped from Korea. He looked up again to where the creature was standing and saw that it was standing over a large silver sink which was covered in blood. Peter’s eyes grew wide with fear as he saw what filled the sink to its brim; a collection of neatly preserved human organs, ranging from human hearts to pancreases to kidneys. The monster lifted a handful of them into his arms and carried them a few feet across the room to a large, furnace-like machine that stood at least 9 feet tall. The creature heaved them into opening at the base of the machine and closed the door, then pressed a black button on the front of it and the entire room filled with a green glow as the machine transferred the assortment of human organs into each tanning bed, increasing the power and potency of them with each bloody piece of the human anatomy.
Unable to speak or move an inch from the spot where he sat on the ground, crouched in the darkness, hoping to everything that he would not be discovered, Peter watched as the room fell dark once again and the green light flickered out slowly and man walked out of the room. Peter waited at least ten minutes before deciding to come out of his hiding place behind one of the beds and he began to explore what the room had to offer. Behind where the tanning beds lied in a row, he saw a small door, however it had no door handle or anything to open it with; only one lone keyhole right in the middle of it. Peter looked over to the right of the door and saw a long wooden work bench with papers and other assorted office supplies scatter over it. Among the objects on the desk was a small gold key. Peter lifted it up and immediately stuck in to the key hole in the door, turned it, held his breath for a moment, then listened as the mechanics of the lock accepted the key.
Peter walked in, his eyes darting from corner to corner of the pitch black room. He felt along the walls for some sort of switch to turn the light on, and finally his finger grazed the edge of one. He flicked the switch and the room lit up with a florescent glow that buzzed in Peter’s ears. Along all the edges of the room was another wooden work bench; it too was scattered with papers and other assorted objects. Peter’s hands violently ran over the piles of scattered papers, desperately trying to find another clue to piece together the dark mystery that had became clearer with every terrifying discovery. He finally stopped ruffling through the papers when he saw one that was attached to a clipboard. It read “The Master Plan”. Peter scanned the contents of the paper, trying to steady his eyes enough to comprehend what he was reading. He began to read the first part of the paper.
The humans do not suspect a thing. We have been successful in setting up a stable establishment for them under the disguise of a skin treatment facility. They have fallen for every one of our brilliant plans, coming back again and again to darken their skin and satisfy their vain and petty ways of youth and beauty. No one has noticed the occasional disappearance of one of their fellow humans. On this planet, no one cares about anyone but themselves. They know nothing. It will not be long until we have collected enough human organs to power our machines and we can branch our evil plot of destruction and overthrow this planet and enslave the earthlings. Within the next week we will have sufficient strength to build another skin treatment facility and harvest enough organs to power our spaceships so we can take over the earth. Once our weapons are powered and ready, there is no stopping us. Mwahahahaha…
-The Sun Creatures

Peter dropped the paper, gasping in horror as he stepped back a few feet from the work bench. He collected himself long enough to remember what he had brought with his from his home, amazingly enough in the state he was in when had awakened from the dream he brought something to document his night with. From his back pocket he pulled a small reporter’s notepad and a pen. He jotted down some things that were in the note and other discoveries he had made there. Suddenly, he heard the door at the end of the room begin to open. His heart jumped up in his chest and he felt a jolt of panic run through his body. He quickly darted to the corner of the room and hid beneath part of the work bench where a blanket laid on top of it, covering the front, enough to conceal him.
The man-creature walked in, inspecting the perimeter of the room. Peter’s body was quaking in fear, shaking like a leaf. He blanket shook along with him, and he suspected nothing less than the discovery of himself then a terrible and gruesome death, but instead heard the man move something on the workbench then shut the lights off and left. Walking home, Peter tried to process in his mind what had just happened to him. Before his eyes he had unmistakably seen the gruesome transformation of space creature to human and the using of human parts to power some deadly device used to accomplish world-domination. It all seemed to sci-fi and fictitious to him, but another unmistakable piece of reality smashed its way into his world as he realized what he had forgotten. He reached his hand around to the back pocket of his jeans and felt only the firmness of his butt as he realized that he had left his pen and notepad back in the Skinner. It was too risky to go back, but he had to get it. He decided to wait till morning when he could not only go back, but also with another person for protection, and maybe to stop a deadly force that threatened the world as he knew it.
First thing in the morning after Peter woke up he headed over to the Galloping Gazette Headquarters, pedaling as fast as he could on his bike down the street that led to the tall glass building. He walked in, a nervous expression visible in his eyes to anyone who happened to glance at him. Nancy stood behind the desk sorting some files into manila folders.
“Nancy! I have to talk to you!” Peter ran over to the counter as Nancy began walking into the back room but stopped when she saw what Peter looked like. He hadn’t bothered to change out of the clothes he had worn the day before, his hair was a wreck, something so rare for Peter that it merited a surprised look from Nancy, and he wasn’t even wearing his glasses which he religiously took with him wherever he went.
“God Peter, what happened to you?”
“That’s what I have to talk to you about!” Peter waved his arms in the air like a ground-control guy waving flashlights at an airplane for an emergency landing.
“What, what is it Pete?”
“It’s the Skinnery,” Peter said, racing against himself to catch his breath from the furious pedaling it took to get him over there as soon as possible.
“Oh god, not that again. When are you going to give up on your wacky conspiracy theories? Hey, weren’t you supposed to delivery the paper this morning?”
“I didn’t do it. I—”
“What? You didn’t do it?? But you’ve never missed a day in your life.”
“Listen Nancy,” Peter’s eyes became fixated on Nancy as he continued on with his tale of what had happened the night before, “there’s aliens in the Skinnery. I mean, they run the place! It’s a giant conspiracy to overthrow the earth and enslave its people!”
“Ok Pete, I think you’ve been hanging around the ink and printing room too much, the fumes are going to your head.”
“I’m serious, Nance. I was there last night, and I saw it, everything. But I left my pen and pad of paper there. It had everything on it, there plan to take over the world and how they’re going to do it!”
“You broke in? Are you nuts??”
“No, I mean not exactly. The door was just open.”
Nancy looked back at Peter for a moment with a look that half resembled someone whose family member had gone insane and half the expression of someone who was seriously considering what was being said. “Come with me Nancy, tonight. We can go back in and get my pen and paper and stop the Skinnery from taking over!”
“No way, Pete. You may have lost your mind but you’re not dragging me down with you.”
Peter’s expression fell from an adrenaline-filled rush to a sagging bag of disappointment. His shoulders sunk and he leaned his elbows against the desk, ready to enforce his secondary plan. “You know Nance, it would be a real shame if someone here at the office found out that you let a lowly newspaper boy into the back room where all of the confidential files are. You might even lose your job.” Peter tried to hold back his smug smile but to little avail.
“Oh you wouldn’t dare. You’d be in trouble too, anyway!”
“True, but I’m only sixteen, I don’t really need this job. You do.” Such deviousness was usually very uncharacteristic of Peter, but he was desperate and he needed someone else to help him uncover the horrific secret that the Skinnery had held for so long. Finally Nancy submitted to Peter’s seemingly ludicrous request, and both of them waited until nightfall to go back to the Skinnery and execute Peter’s plan.
Nancy kept her hands tucked deep in the pockets of her light spring jacket as she huffed and puffed deep breaths of grumpy resignation. Peter on the other hand walked along the cement pavement that led up to the Skinnery with long, anxious strides.
“What are we going to do once we’re there, Peter?”
“You’ll see. I have a plan.”
“Oh, you have a plan, do you? I just assumed this was all a crazy scheme to get me up in the middle of the night and break into a tanning salon. But if you have a plan, that’s completely different.” Nancy rolled her eyes and kept walking alongside Peter, trying not to have a conscious grip on what she had agreed to do.
“I think I know how to defeat it Nance,” Peter motioned to the backpack that hung loosely on his shoulders.
“Defeat who? What do you have in there?”
“The sun creature.”
Nancy gave Peter another look of disgust and turned away. He had pushed her nerves and her patience the breaking point, but they were too far now for Peter to give up or tell her that she could leave if she wanted. Peter saw the top of the darkened neon sign of the Skinnery over the horizon of the sloped sidewalk that led up to it.
“Here’s how it works, Nance, at least as far as I can tell. This thing that runs the Skinnery, it steals peoples skins with the tanning beds and wears their flesh to make its self look like a person. Ever notice how there’s a different person working there just about every week?”
“So?” Nancy shrugged. “Maybe people just don’t like working there. I mean, once I had a job—”
“That’s it,” Peter interrupted Nancy, extended a hand pointing to the sign in front of them. They both walked up to the building which was completely dark on the inside, no signs of life, human life anyway. Nancy stood in front of the storefront, fidgeting from side to side next to Peter.
“Are you sure we should do this, Pete?”
“We have to, Nancy. We can’t let them take over.”
Peter slowly lifted up his arm to the door handle, gripping it with his left hand, feeling the cold metal handle slide in his sweaty palm. He pulled gently on it at first, then tugged it open. Nancy jumped back a ways and Peter quickly turned back to her with a finger over his lips, signaling her into silence.
“This way,” Peter whispered to Nancy as they entered in through the lobby cautiously. Peter looked around the lobby and saw nothing unusual, just the rows of empty chairs and outdated magazines that had always populated the store. He looked behind the counter at the curtain hanging there, calling him into a world of mystery and danger. Peter turned back to Nancy and signaled her to follow him, but carefully. They both entered through the curtain, trying not to make a single false step that might alert anyone or anything that was there of their presence.
“There!” Peter pointed at the small pad of paper and pen on the workbench across the room.
“Be careful, Peter.” Nancy’s eyes were clearly filled with worry but most of all fear.
Peter slowly approached the workbench, his eyes focused on the pad of paper and pen only a few feet from him. He looked down at it, grabbed the pad and pen, then bolted across the room back to Nancy.
“Here Nancy, look at this!” Peter flipped through the pages of the pad trying to find where he had written down what he had found, but saw only blank pages. He noticed that a couple pages had been torn out in the middle of the pad, where he had written his observations. “It’s not here! They must have torn it out!”
“Come on Peter, let’s get out of here! You have you’re stuff!”
“No! We still have to get the proof.”
“Pete!”
“Shh!” Peter looked around the room when he heard a noise that when he it came back to his memory made his stomach churn. “Get down!” Peter yelled as softly as he could to Nancy as he shoved the pad of paper in his back pocket and dragged her down under the workbench with him. Peter forced himself to keep his eyes open and look as he saw one of the creatures walk into the room in the form of the man who Peter had seen the creature transform into the night before. Peter knew what would be next, so he put a hand over Nancy’s mouth. She resisted until she saw what Peter had already seen. The creature stripped from his clothes and began peeling his flesh off, starting at the back and draping it down to its legs, then kicking it off completely from his body to reveal a brightly glowing bulky mass of green light.
They both watched as the sun creature walked over to one of the tanning beds that were advertised as a “High-Powered Deep Tanner”. It crouched down on its glowing green haunches and slid open a compartment in the bottom of the bed. Inside the compartment was a blanket of dark, tanned flesh. The sun creature lifted it up in front of him and slip into it as easily as Peter had slid under his covers in bed at night. Nancy wanted to scream but instead bit one of Peter’s fingers that were held up to her mouth and that made Peter take on a pained expression, but still did not make a sound. He looked at her with an angry expression and she furrowed her eyebrows apologetically. Peter turned his attention back to the room but saw nothing, the monster was gone.
Peter crouched down at first, carefully examining his surroundings, then stood up entirely when he was convinced they were alone. Nancy came out from under the desk with cobwebs in her hair and a look of utter desperation on her face. Peter could tell she was terrified out of her mind, but they couldn’t leave yet, not until he found what he needed to write his article and convince the town of the Skinnery’s sinister plans. He searched the length of the workbench, tearing through piles of paper work to find what he needed to incriminate the Skinnery. Finally, he recognized one of the sheets of paper as the one he had discovered before. He snatched it up off the desk, rolled it up and shoved it his backpack.
“Now can we go??” Nancy pleaded with Peter as tears began to form in her eyes. “I’m scared!”
Peter ignored her plea and walked over to the furnace-like machine that contained the organs of all the Skinnery’s customers. He knew it was the source of the Skinnery’s power and began to approach it with hesitation. He looked it over for a couple of minutes as if judging the technical workings of it, and finally let the backpack around his shoulders slide off his arms and to the ground. He unzipped the backpack and opened it, taking out a small container of what Nancy guessed was sun-tanning lotion.
“What the heck are you going to do with that??”
“Nancy! It’s their weakness, it must be! It’s the only thing that can keep you from burning in a tanning bed, so it must be the one element that can stop them!”
“Peter, that doesn’t even make sense!”
“Shut up! Listen!” Peter heard a sound come from the end of the room where there was the door that led to the other back room behind the one they were in. Peter ignored it for the time being and lifted the bottle up to the opening of the machine and began squirting in the clear gooey substance. After the bottle was empty, he stared at it for a moment. It didn’t seem like anything had changed, but Peter didn’t know what else to do. Finally he turned around to Nancy, but she wasn’t there. Peter’s mind filled with panic and he began to look around the room trying to find her, searching under the workbench and out in the lobby. Peter lifted his head from the ground and saw the door at the end of the room that led to the other back room was cracked open a little. He began walking towards the door, staring at it as if it had the ability to lash out at him. He put his hand up to the door and pushed it open, revealing Nancy who was lying on a large orange tanning bed in the middle of the room, her arms and legs strapped to the sides.
“Welcome, Peter.” Peter jumped back when he saw the creature, disguised as a human.
“You!” Peter looked at the creature’s eyes which were spewing out light.
“Admittedly these human flesh disguises do have their faults” The creature moved over to where Nancy was strapped down to the bed. “She is all I need to complete my plan to begin a franchise of the Skinnery in cities all over this country and take over the earth with our organ-powered ships!”
“You’ll never get away with this! Never!”
“Oh it’s too late for that, Peter. As soon as I hit this switch, Nancy will be drained of her organs and she will have died to serve a greater cause. Say goodbye to her, Peter!” The monster bent down to press the “Begin organ draining and skinning” button when a sudden rumbling noise from the back made all three of them completely freeze.
The noise grew louder and the door to the room burst open and the machine that Peter had poured the lotion in exploded, spraying various human organs around the rooms. Peter took advantage of the monster’s distracted state to take a hammer laying on one of the workbenches and slammed it into the monster, knocking it unconscious. Peter ran over to Nancy and undid the straps on her arms and legs, freeing her from the bed. She let out a cry of relief and fell into Peter’s arms. He wrapped his arms around her and he gave her a tight squeeze, then released. He took the creature, straining every muscle in his body trying to heave him onto the tanning bed. Finally he was completely on, laying flat on the plastic surface. Peter turned the tanning bed on and watched it glow and shake with awesome supernatural power.
Nancy and Peter fell back as the machine rattled and roared, emitting a blinding green light from its insides where the monster lay, luminous body melting into the lower compartment of the tanning bed. The bed shook furiously and the top of it flew open and the creature’s green slime spewed out across the room.
“Oh my god,” Nancy gasped at the bed as it neatly folded the formerly illuminated creature, now just a series of slimy flaps of green flesh. Cleaning off with her hand some of the green goo that had been sprayed on her face, she leaned forward and kissed Peter on the lips. Peter’s eyes opened in amazement as their kiss lasted a few more seconds, then they both released. They both smiled a strange, crooked smile and looked away from each other with slight embarrassment.
“We did it.” Peter declared without any emotion in his voice as he stared blankly at the bed, wiping a length of bloody human veins from his arm that was spewed out from the machine that Peter poured the lotion into.
“Let’s go home Peter. Please.”
“Sure, Nance. We’ll go home.” Peter walked towards the work bench on the side of the room and swiped some papers and put them in his backpack, then walked back over to the tanning bed where the monster lay, folded and powerless.
“What are you doing now, Pete? For god’s sake, we defeated him!”
“Just collecting some evidence. The papers are gonna love this.” Peter pulled open the compartment at the bottom of the bed and removed the green flesh, feeling it slide between his fingers, he lifted it up and put it into his backpack. “One thing doesn’t make sense though. Why was there only 1 of them?”
“What do you mean?” Nancy glared at Peter from across the room.
“These documents here detailed such a complex and intricate plan for world domination, always referring to “we”, but there was only 1 of these things? It doesn’t make sense.”
“Pete, let’s just leave. You have you’re evidence, now let’s just go.”
“Fine.” Peter looked down at the slimy, organ-covered ground for a moment and let out a deep sigh.
The two of them walked out of the building, struggling to support their bodies and minds that weighed heavy from the events that had occurred that night. Peter had finally gotten what he wanted, a story to write about in the Galloping Gazette, and the action and excitement that came with it. Just as Peter began to readjust the backpack resting heavy on his shoulders, he looked over at Nancy, and noticed that through a small tear in her shirt, a green light shown through.

To be continued…