UNDER THE SKIN
UNDER THE SKIN
UNDER THE SKIN
UNDER THE SKIN

 Yuqi Hou

When I woke up, I didn’t know where I was in life. This is one of my favorite feelings… before I open my eyes. Disoriented, unsure of who I am. Life is full of possibilities. I could be anywhere in the world, at any age, with any set of events leading up to this moment.

Then, when I open my eyes and look around, objects in my surroundings start to match to memory. I’m in bed, I’m at my cabin. There’s a tree outside, with orange, dying leaves. One of its branches is hovering over me, blocking out most of the sun that would normally stream through the skylight.

It reminds me that it’s the end of summer in Montana, and I think, damn it, that was a nice feeling. I force myself to get up, because anytime I consume a new person, I need to move around, to discover where the emotions will surface within my body.

I found the woman last night deep in the lake center, body facedown and slumped over a salt cactus. It was too dark to see, but I couldn’t risk pulling her up to shore either. So, I explored her face with my hands, ran my fingers against her arms and down her legs. There was no way for me to know how or when she died, but everything seemed intact. I ate like a shark.

What sustains me is not the flesh, but the emotions which are stored in the body. A lifetime of feelings can linger in your chest, residual stress stays in the gut, and love will infuse every part of your limbs. The loving bodies keep me full the longest.

As I exit the cabin door, a tickle starts at the back of my throat as movement draws feelings out. I make it to my car before the flooding begins—another feeling I enjoy. My cheeks flush. My ears turn red. I get what looks like a rash on my chest. Inside I feel warm. The most recent emotions come first. Fear. Anger. I have gotten used to negative emotions. What some people describe as a bitter aftertaste, I experience first. This anger has been festering for a long time. Increasing in intensity in reverse order to how she must have experienced it while living. I lean into anger because there is so little that bothers me. Anger tells me where my values are. It helps me draw boundaries.

Scratches at my window. I sit up. It’s just overgrown branches the wind has pushed against my car. A strong breeze from the lake. A ding. My manager texts me, asking if I can work the evening shift today. It’s Saturday, but I have no plans for the evening. I work as a barista at a coffee shop by Lake Lure. It fills my time and makes enough money to cover gas. I get lonely too, and it’s nice to meet people at work. I learn all these unique names, see how people fill their time, waiting in line. I always wanted to be a center dot for people to convene at.

There’s something very invisible about being older. In my 20s I spent more time consuming men’s bodies because they approached me more often. Now no one approaches me. I can spend weeks not brushing my teeth because I have no plans to leave the cabin outside of work. I am 30 now, but I want to be younger. At least when I was 18, I had a sense of desire about my life.

It’s scary how everything fades. Even the feeling of falling in love. I had a boyfriend once leave me because he said we were too different. He couldn’t go out to dinner with me because I’d never order anything. “I do eat,” I always had to tell him, “Behind your back.” I was completely, painfully obsessed, and then after a few months, I forgot that I ever was in love. Aging reminds me how everything we do is pointless, leading to death. When I eat people, I feel their motivation to do a good job at work, to read a book for fun, to have any ephemeral experience. Though even when I eat a sad person, it is nice to feel like there is someone else who can just lay with me for a while.

The coffee shop is just south of Lake Lure, walkable from the docks. A set of parents chat while their kids suck on lollipops. A candy wrapper drifts to the floor that I’ll need to sweep up later.

“Hey.” I snap back to the present. A man waiting at the counter, brown hair, a little wavy, parted on the right. Nose like a roman statue. Nostrils slightly flared. My stomach tenses. The joy at my temples rushes down and back, as hostility surges forward. The muscles around my ears tighten. This morning’s anger floods back. This man meant something to the woman I found last night face down in the water. But I have no access to people’s memories when I eat them.

“Small Americano, please,” he says.

“Your name?” I ask.

“Tripp, two ‘p’s,” he says. “You’re Mianna, with two ‘n’s,” he asks, leaning to look at my nametag more closely. He might be late 30s, crows feet around his eyes, a horn shape starting to form where his hair is receding at the part. There is something familiar about him. My stomach growls. The gut is a second brain. I keep staring at him, until he takes out his card and waves it over the card scanner.

“I have a french press on my boat, but sometimes it’s just nice to have someone make it for me,” he says, “Even if it takes longer.”

“Sorry,” I mutter. I press the buttons to complete his order. My hands reach for my hair. Hearing the crack as the weak ends split soothes me. An intrusive image of strangling this man that I have just met blinds me for a second. Injustice. Instinctively, I assume something happened between this man and the woman. How do you casually say, I found a woman in the lake. Do you know her?

Tripp again. “Don’t worry about it. If you’re around tonight, you should come by to see the boat. I’m just sailing around here today.” The coffee shop is so close to the lake that we have brochures with the Lake Lure map. He pulls out one of the brochures, circles Falls View Cove and writes down his number next to it. I could kill for that kind of confidence.

For the rest of my shift, I make mistakes on customer orders until my manager sends me to clean up a birthday party in the empty upstairs area. When I go to get rid of a cluster of deflating balloons tied to the stair banister, I start stepping on the balloons. They pop loudly. The sound startles the little toddlers leaving the shop, who turn around with their big eyes to stare at me. My manager dismisses me when she sees the pieces of balloon rubber scattered on the floor. It’s gone from one piece to many, not a flat deflated circle like I expected.



The sun had set by the time my shift ended. I drove over to the cove Tripp circled, hoping that he wouldn’t be there. Hoping that there would be enough people around to make it too risky for me to act on anything that I felt. Even at my hungriest, I wasn’t stupid. But it’s the end of summer. The lake houses aren’t hosting barbecues anymore. And he spots me first.

“Hey, you’re the girl who rang me up today. Mianna right?” He’s smiling, pleased that I came after all. “This is my boat,” he extends his arm towards a sailboat docked to the wooden gangway with Knotty Girl written on the side in blue cursive. “Come on, I’ll take you for a ride,” he says, waving me towards him.

The boat lurches, taking off too fast. There are a lot of boating accidents in this lake, I tell him. Do you know anyone who has died here? He shakes his head, gripping the steering wheel, before moving a leg forward in a casual lunge. I grip the back of his seat. I ignore the woman’s pain that tastes hot in my mouth.

“That’s such a dark question to ask. No, I don’t know anyone,” he says. I don’t know if he is lying, but he seems unphased. I ask about where he is coming from—answer: a town four hours away, and why he is here: to sail. Alone? He evades. He tells me stories of sailing across the ocean, of regattas and drinking limoncello in Sicily. Whenever I’m around someone, I get so much just from listening. One might feel resentment being used as an audience member but I learn so much. I wonder if people who resent being listeners lack curiosity about other people. He laughs at what I say, assuming I was being sarcastic. People tell me that I have a monotone voice. Sometimes, it works in my favor.

The boat speed picks up, and it’s moving faster and faster towards the middle of the lake. He should slow down, because the waves around midnight are choppy. But he doesn’t. I am about to warn him when we hit a wave at the wrong angle.

I hit the side of the boat.

He is thrown overboard.

I am torn between waiting for him to resurface and hoping he’ll drown. A few minutes pass. I expect an arm or a head to push out of the water, but nothing. No other choice. I dive underwater and swim toward where Tripp disappeared, opening my eyes to find him. He is caught under boat sails, pushing uselessly against them, a rope across his chest weighing him down further. I want to help him, but another part of me, a stronger part, wants to hurt him.

I try to reason with the emotions inside me. Why now? Why not get to know him better, then decide what to do? You have no idea what happened in the moments before the woman’s death, if it was accidental, intentional, if it related to this man at all. I reach out, meaning to untangle him from the sails as he thrashes, kicking out. His foot catches me in the chest. The kick releases more anger from within, loosened by movement. Rage froths high. I give in. No more thoughts, just feeling.

I pull him down towards the lake floor. He struggles, but I have always been a strong swimmer. After he goes limp, I consume him, until he is nothing but bone. When I am done, I swim back to shore. The sun is starting to rise by the time I get home. I don’t know if I did the right thing, but the anger fades, replaced by guilt. What if I was wrong? All I have to go on is a rage that I can’t explain. Tomorrow, I’ll feel his last moments, followed by all the emotions of his life.

I’ll wake up disoriented, unsure of who I am—my favorite feeling in the world.

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