The Loosening Skin

by Aliya Whiteley

  ‘That’s not when you loved me. It wasn’t when you saw me for the first time, it wasn’t in Paris, it wasn’t in some moment you’ve played a thousand times over in your head. It wasn’t like that.’

  ‘Then how was it?’ He puts his hands on my face, and the skin crackles, like dead leaves against my cheeks. ‘Tell me how it was.’

  I can’t.

  I can’t play this game any more.

  I have no words for it, for this act of recreation. He will make my memories part of his emotional landscape, but they will never be real to him. So I will keep this final part for me alone. I will not dilute it for anyone.

  I don’t speak. I watch him cry, and I hold it safe, inside. I remember it, just for myself.

  The warehouse.

  2008. Inside.

  As soon as she opened the unlocked door she knew she wasn’t alone.

  The air was alive, filled with soft sounds, from a distance: the hum of machinery, and a high whirring she couldn’t place.

  Rose took a few steps into the partitioned area, stacked cardboard boxes creating a right-angled wall. She caught the occasional voice coming from behind them: women talking, laughing.

  She knew she should leave.

  The boxes were sealed shut. She took a few quick snaps of them with her phone anyway, and then a couple of close- ups of the stamped marks on the sides that bore an address in London. The contents weren’t listed.

  Should she rip a hole in one? She took out her penknife – Petra’s penknife, in fact, on loan to her – and considered it. But any damage would give away that somebody had been here, and Petra always said:

  Don’t draw attention to yourself.

  If only one of the boxes was open, but the wall was absolute. She felt impotent in the shadow of it.

  Petra would say:

  Think like an investigator.

  She weighed up her options. Damage a box, take a photo. Try to make it look like – what? Rats? Or find the machines making that hum, and photograph them instead.

  Rose scanned the makeshift walls. There was a gap, a slim line between two of the boxes in the third row up. She put her eye to it.

  The women were talking as they worked. There were maybe thirty of them, operating sewing machines, sitting at tables that had been organised to make three sides of a square. They chatted as their fingers moved independently, accurately, stitching fine white triangles of material into long sheets of patchwork. Light fell in strips from high windows, up above.

  Nobody else was visible. Against the far wall of the warehouse was a row of single beds, with crumpled, colourful sleeping bags upon them in different designs: stripes, circles, trucks, trains, butterflies. Another wall of boxes had been built nearby. Rose guessed there were basiccooking and washing facilities behind them. Something told her, in the way the women worked, that this was what they considered to be their home.

  Somebody had to be bringing the material, collecting the products, and supplying them with food. But they weren’t here at the moment. These women were relaxed, being themselves in their own company. Rose listened carefully. She didn’t recognise the language.

  She took some photos through the gap, but the focus wouldn’t align in the right place. They all looked blurred to her, unclear.

  Time to go said Petra’s voice, inside her head.

  The women were young. Not children, but youthful. As she watched, one of them sat back from her sewing machine and stretched out her arms. Rose noted the curve of her body, and how her belly stood proud from the chair. She was pregnant.

  Once her eyes saw it, they recognised it wherever they fell; so many of the women were pregnant. Maybe all of them.

  The material they sewed was in such small, delicate pieces. It was skinwork, she thought. Why else hide it away? It had to be skinwork. Rose took her knife and stabbed into one of the boxes, working it into the cardboard until she could reach inside. Her fingers made contact with a soft, giving stretch of sheet. She rubbed it, and felt nothing.

  The stitched skin was empty of emotion. There were no memories, no echoes. Instead there was calm. It was good to touch discarded skin and feel nothing upon it; it bore a purity that could have come only from a life that had yet to be touched by love.

  It was newborn.

  Rose pulled her hand free.

  The women – she wanted to tell them, to make them leave, come away. But the door hadn’t been locked. And the women were laughing. They had to know what they were sewing, and they were laughing. Touching that fresh clean skin every day, feeling no fear, no worry, no love.

  Petra’s voice.

  She needed it.

  It was gone. There was only her own voice, from a place within that she had not known about, telling her to walk away from the women, from the warehouse.

  The dual carriageway was in sight, the cars driving past, people on their early morning commutes, so close, and not one of them seeing the warehouse and what was within.

  She walked across the scrubland, towards the road. The sun was higher in the sky, burning her wherever it touched. Her skin was alive with it, it wouldn’t stay, it couldn’t. She took off her black clothes and threw them down, and felt the skin already beginning to peel, to split, but it was not like it had ever been before. She was damaged all the way down, the warehouse had seeped through her; she was soft and pulpy underneath. It was impossible to walk on, the skin was sliding away and she had to be free of it. She fell.

  › • ‹

  Hands were upon her, squeezing.

  Rose looked at the hands on her own skin, and found she was whole, and new. It shocked her so much that she couldn’t speak. She had expected to die.

  ‘I’ve got you,’ Petra said. ‘Can you walk?’ The squeezing became tugging. ‘Get up for me. Get dressed.’

  The clothes, collected, rasped against the new skin. She cried as Petra tugged them into place. She never wanted to wear those clothes again.

  Then Petra gathered up the old skin and flicked her silver lighter, touching the flame to it. It burned very quickly, down to a fine ash. The smell of smoke was so strong; Rose realised it couldn’t be from the skin alone. She turned her head, following the scent. Black smoke. The warehouse. But where were the women?

  They made it back to the car and Petra drove. After a time Rose placed their direction; they were going to Wiltshire.

  ‘I can’t do this any more,’ she said.

  ‘I know,’ said Petra.

  2013. Snips.

  Anna Mallory snips away with scissors, starting at my toes. I feel the blade inch up the outside of my knee to my thigh first on one leg, then the other. The skin sticks and has to be peeled back carefully in long strips. Finally that old skin is in pieces.

  I concentrate on the sensitive new skin being exposed to the air, already beginning to harden. My stomach, my arms, my shoulders are all released. My face.

  ‘There,’ she says.

  Max hovers. ‘Did it work?’

  ‘It looks good. No damage to the new layer.’

  ‘Right. Great. You can go then.’

  She opens her mouth, as if to argue, and then departs, taking Taylor with her, leaving the door ajar.

  I won’t forget her, or what’s she’s done here. I won’t forget either of them.

  As if he can read my thoughts, Max says, ‘It worked. Imagine how many people these treatments can help.’

  I don’t reply.

  He goes to the wardrobe and chooses one of the dresses that hangs next to his remaining skins. It’s yellow. He brings it out and shows it to me.

  ‘You wore it in Paris,’ he says, but it doesn’t look familiar.

  ‘Untie me, then.’

  Once the restraints are off, I try to stand but my legs are too weak. Max helps me lower the dress over my head.

  ‘I shouldn’t put anything harsh on your skin for a while,’ he says. ‘I want so much to hold you, but I’m afraid it will hurt.’

  His tenderness reaches me.
‘It’s okay. Just be gentle.’

  So he sits beside me on the bed and hugs me, and it does hurt. Old emotions on new skin, love and disgust and hatred and all of it together: it’s too much for one person to feel. But I want him to have this moment, to remember, to embellish it in his endlessly replaying memory after I go.

  ‘There.’ I push him away. ‘That’s long enough. Will you do something for me, Max?’

  ‘Anything.’

  ‘Stop taking pills. Any pills. Shed that skin. You’ve been in it too long. It’s changed you.’

  ‘But we love each other again.’

  I miss the Max who would never have done a thing like this with a ferocity that cements my decision. ‘I won’t take any more pills. I won’t stay.’

  ‘You don’t want to stay cured? After all you’ve told me?’

  ‘You don’t know what a cure is,’ I say. ‘You don’t even know what the real illness is, here.’

  He clenches his fists, and says, ‘I could make you stay.’

  But I know this scene, this melodrama of ours, is played out, and he knows it too. ‘Don’t make it any worse than it needs to be.’

  ‘No.’ He sighs. ‘Well, it was worth a shot.’

  And, with that, he gets up from the bed and turns on all his charm to become a movie star with a hint of Little Boy Lost underneath. ‘It was madness, I guess, but it came from a good place. Do you believe that? And it will help millions of sufferers. I just need your word—’

  ‘I won’t tell anyone.’

  ‘You’re very kind. You know, I think you’re right. You’re not the girl I fell in love with. My Rosie would have had my balls for a stunt like this.’

  Am I the forgiving sort, then, this time around? Can I finally forgive the very worst things? I should have him locked up. I want him locked up. But I’m out of interest in what should or shouldn’t happen. ‘Stop taking the pills, Max. We’re done. I don’t want to see you again.’

  ‘It’s probably for the best,’ he agrees.

  ‘I’m going now.’

  ‘I’ll get Taylor to call you a cab.’ He shrugs. ‘I’ve been here so long and I find myself calling it a cab. I guess I’m still American, deep down.’

  So we go upstairs, and Taylor calls me a cab or a taxi or whatever we want to name it now, while all the time I feel my new skin hardening under the touch of that light summer dress.

  ‘Where do you want to be dropped?’ she asks, her tone all business. But she can’t look at me. Her hands are shaking. I wonder why she did it. Why she helped him hurt me.

  ‘The train station.’

  ‘No, Max will foot the bill. Take the taxi all the way.’

  ‘What day is it?’

  ‘It’s Sunday.’

  ‘Wiltshire, then.’

  She nods, and we’re done.

  2013. Museum piece.

  ‘It’s on the local news,’ Petra says, and hands me her phone. There it is: the smoking pile of wreckage that was Mallory Peace Industries in Chichester. Three dead. The story beneath details the breakout of the blaze. Cause unknown.

  ‘Pretty,’ I say. I feel no blame. I was somewhere else entirely.

  A headline catches my eye, and I click on the link.

  Black Overdose Stuns Film Community

  I check through the article. There are no updates. He’s still in intensive care after taking all those pills that caused a massive skin shed, at least three layers gone in twenty-four hours. He isn’t expected to live long.

  I wondered if he might do something like that, one day. I could almost say he always had it in him.

  And yet I miss my Max. I miss him so much; the treatment brought what I loved about him back to me. The Max who is now lying in intensive care, I’m not interested in. He deserves to die.

  I hand back the phone. ‘Thanks,’ I say. ‘For your help.’ Paddington is business as usual. We stand under the row of boards and I find the next one to Bristol Temple Meads. Platform eight, ten minutes to go.

  ‘I’ve cleared it with Phin,’ she says. ‘He’ll deal directly with Taylor. When he finds her.’

  Phineas Spice – the man who diagnosed me in his spare time, and whom I would never want to get on the wrong side of. I would pity Taylor if I didn’t hate her so much. I can’t understand how she could help him. I don’t think I’ll ever understand it. It’s a question that will follow me.

  ‘It was so good to see you,’ I say, and it’s not a lie. Maybe Aunt Alice is right; maybe friendship, above all things, can be kept, when it’s not based on something else. Envy, could we call it? My desire to be her, stronger than my desire to know her, is gone.

  ‘Did you enjoy the museum, this morning?’

  I shrugged. ‘Actually, the Stuck Six were less impressive than I thought they would be. Those skins felt more like a novelty act than something deep and meaningful. I think perhaps love is overrated.’

  ‘You turning into a cynic?’

  ‘Maybe. Yeah. Yep, I’m a cynic now.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Really.’

  ‘So what’s a cynic going to do in Bristol?’

  ‘Don’t laugh.’

  ‘I won’t.’

  ‘I’m going to take a course in interior design,’ I tell her.

  ‘Or you could come back and work with me?’ Her mouth quirks. ‘No, I know, I know, go on then, get on the train.’

  ‘You’re so much stronger than me. But that’s okay.’

  She looks older, for a moment, as she thinks about it. ‘No,’ she says. ‘Not stronger. Just happier to burn it all down. I make the worst things burn so that I feel better. I’ve only ever been trying to teach you that trick, because we’re the same in so many ways. Don’t you get it? That’s why I gave you a job, and kept you close. We saw the high life, the dream, and left it behind for reality. We’re the same.’

  ‘We’re not,’ I tell her, and we hug. My skin is still a little tender, but I think I can live with it.

  Part Three

  Introduced by Mikhael Stuck

  Ladies and gentlemen, thanks for that warm welcome, and thanks to the Film Institute for asking me to introduce this screening of the first and last film by the visionary director Max Black: Sticking Point.

  Max was one of a kind.

  He was best known as an actor, and in that he excelled. But since his death nine years ago it has been my goal to make his talent as a director better known to the world, based on the footage he shot whilst attempting to tell the story of my life, and the lives of five others. We became known through the media as the Stuck Six, and everybody thought they knew everything there was to know about us.

  But there was so much more.

  When people are deeply in love we say they become like one person, one soul, united. I don’t think that’s true. We retain our individuality, and our right to our own interpretation of the love we share. Max was deeply interested in that idea. Not the notion of getting to the truth at the heart of the Stuck Six, but of realising there was no one truth about us. He bought the rights to Howard’s autobiography, but that wasn’t what he was filming. He talked to all of us, and he became my friend when I realised he was trying to construct something complex. Something both moving, and fair to my life.

  I found a like mind in Max Black.

  When I first met him I was surprised at how different he was from his media persona. I thought he would use his charm on me to get what he wanted, but instead he did something that people rarely do. He listened to me. He wanted to understand what having that love, and losing it, had done to me and to my family. We began to talk regularly in preparation for his film, and often the conversation focused on how different the world would be without moulting. He pictured a time when love cannot be bought or sold, lost or gained in a skin.

  I wonder what he would have made of the huge changes we have all faced in the last few years as that world has become a reality. I think he would have been overjoyed. I only wish he had waited to see it.
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br />   New studies show that over seventy per cent of the UK’s population now take a daily supplement of Suscutin, delaying the moulting process indefinitely. We now have the choice whether to moult or to remain in the skin that loves. We can leave love behind when we’re ready.

  This means that now, in the year 2022, Max’s only work as a director is already outdated. He’s not alone in this. Every piece of art made before 2020 is a historical record. To watch, read, or listen to anything made before that date can feel like the equivalent of watching a public information film about the horrors of smallpox. These problems no longer apply to us, do they?

  I’ve asked myself many times, particularly once Suscutin came along, why I’ve spent so much time working to get Sticking Point finished, and to the attention of the general public. Even once I had enlisted the support and belief of our director, Sofie, and the backing of our distributor, Silverfish, I wondered what I was attempting to do. Why does this one film matter so much when there are so many other films, finished films, on the subject of love already? Surely this is the time for new artists and new visions?

  I was surprised, when I looked deep inside myself, to realise that the answer wasn’t based purely on my personal connection to Max. It sprang from my belief that when someone’s way of living becomes history, it doesn’t automatically become irrelevant.

  Love is still love. It’s going to take us all a while to figure that out, maybe. But whether we feel it alone, or with a special person, or in a group, it is the same emotion. Whether it lasts for one skin or one minute, or forever. In its essence, in its time of existence, it is the same, and it unites us all.

  I can’t think of a film that explores that concept better than Sticking Point, and I never knew a person who understood that better than Max Black. Thank you for watching. I hope you enjoy the film.

  › • ‹

  After the screening there are drinks to be drunk, congratulations to be borne, photos to be taken with Sofie and the suits. We all smile and wrap our arms around each other’s backs. We stare straight ahead as if we share a vision, one way, travelling. Fuck it, fuck them all and their demands and compromises. It’s not the film I wanted but I’m done with it, and with them all. I’ve done my best by Max, and now maybe I can sleep.