She Sheds Her Skin, by Raven Jakubowski
Read it here in about 15 minutes.
Thinking about why I love it…
This is an unusual love-horror story, about an incompatible couple who’ve been desperately trying to make it work, now finally facing up to the fact that their love is, and always has been, doomed.
I love the matter-of-fact tone used to describe the strange situation the narrator finds himself in, evident from the very first sentence: ‘Cora has left her skin lying out again.’
I love the way the narrator can’t bring himself to give words to the most horrendous details of Cora’s behaviour, but instead hints at it, e.g. he describes the smell in the basement as ‘that smell I can’t get rid of completely no matter what kind of cleaner I try’, or, when Cora has removed the skin from the intruder, which has resulted in the intruder lying dead, in bloody pieces, he simply says ‘When it’s finished’.
I love the way Cora longs for the past, longs to be something else, and focuses on becoming a tree, something that seems to both horrify, and attract her, equally. I finished this story hoping for the best for this couple, as they go their separate ways.
Mina Ma 