He inspected for the hundredth time what he could make out of his chest and arms. He couldn’t stop – it’s not every day that the body you’ve grown up with, grown wearyingly used to seeing every day in the mirror or whenever you look down, is suddenly entirely different and novel. Past his hands – which were solid red gloves of skin, trailing past his wrists in flames – most of his skin seemed tan coloured, except where the same doomy scarlet marked him in its twisted abstractions and patterns, if patterns there were. Burn victim? He wondered. Pigmentation . . . port-wine birth marks? Somehow
...more
