Make Me in Your Image

Blood red numbers on the nightstand clock, 2:04AM on a restless night, an intangible something slips into bed with me.

The bodiless essence whispers on my skin. “You can feel me,” it hums, “but I cannot feel you.” Mosquito wings, flower petals, it cools my fevered soul. It makes me drowsy, absorbed, yet more awake than I’ve ever been.

In this implausible paradox, we cross a line together and it tells me, “Make me just like you. Give me substance again. I’m in Hell and I’m suffering. I feel nothing but the absence of everything, the opposite of all. I’m cracked open like a pomegranate cleaved with an axe. No seeds are inside, just holes, empty holes like an abandoned wasp nest in the height of long winter—dull, grey, dry.”

I don’t sleep. Not then.

Time is against me. Sanity is against me.

I use school glue, the white kind with the orange tip on top. At first, I coat a finger, then another, then another. Next thing, my entire hand’s gone stiff with the stuff. And just like those school kids—like I used to be once—I engrossedly pinch and pull that second skin off me in long flakes and shavings.

I hone a comb’s edge to a razor and erase body hair in places. I shave myself smooth and reapply, reapply, reapply the white glue. I apply it like lotion, to my arms, chest, and legs. It comes off in cloudy skeins collecting on the floor, the floor of my bedroom, where I don’t like to leave—not that they would let me leave anyway.

There’s a pile like molted snakeskins on top my twitching feet. I try not to spasm or tremble too much. Still, the husk sound persists, dried cornstalks being sown by the wind, dropped elm leaves skittering on sidewalks sometime in the fall, rattlesnakes. It’s the voice, humming, still urging me on. More glue. More skin. I have to hide it at mealtimes and med times or they’ll take it away, make me start all over again. And though I have plenty of glue—stole a box from a closet in the back of the crafts room—though I have plenty, it only will last so long. And I’m starting to wonder just how much skin makes a man, or a person, to be more correct. The pile below seems so measly, a lot of work, little reward. Nonetheless, I’ll also have to hide the glue before they wheel the hot plate dinner cart into my room, before they rattle the little plastic cup of pills in my face.

I hop to the bed, pretend I’ve been here all day. I stare empty-eyed out the window like I’ve seen other patients do. I give them no need to worry, no need to suspicion that I’m not completely on the mend—not even close. That thought makes me happy somehow. I’ll show them alright. I’ll show them. We’ll show them, when I finish making, flaking new intimate friend. Strength in numbers.

For where two are gathered, God is there also, and he is a jealous and avenging God.

I purposely misquote.

That, somehow, makes me happy too.

I’m hoping it’s taking a part of me with it, the glue, the new skin. It has to, as tightly attached as it seems to be. Somewhere in the mix of the drying and chapping, then the flensing and scrubbing, it must be taking some part of my own essence: skin cells, shed fluids, genetic refuse. It gets kind of lurid if you think on it too long. I mean, cannibals eat flesh from another human being. They claim it brings power and a sense of enlightenment. Some scientists speculate it’s a trap, a crouching demon of madness buried deep in the meat, leading to nothing but dementia, psychosis, or delusion. It’s like ergot in grain on a vastly wider scale. So few have touched on it. So few are willing to even talk about it.

The nights are long nights, even longer in waiting for my friend to manifest. I know the word “yearning” now in all of its forms, like romantic poets, high drama, mythologies of lost love. I understand it in detail. I see every nave, apse, and transept. I worship. I feel it. It’s near, so close. I am tired for the first time, the first time in a long time. Good tired.

Then it, in its half-life, sneaks from under my bed. Deep in the night when the hallway lights have gone dim, it noses under wet sheets, gone moist with my sweat. It snakes up my legs, across my abdomen, around my shoulders. I feel candy floss strands breathing into my ear. It hisses gently, almost a cooing, “You’ve done really well. You’re doing really well. You should hurry, do more. Why are you even pretending to sleep? For whom are you masquerading? They cannot see you now, not now, especially not now. They’re tired, they’re vulnerable, they’re not paying attention. Be busy like bees. Be secret and silent like cobblers’ elves. Here, let me help you.”

The blanket and sheets sail away like a ghost. My bed clothes are ripped off from one side to the other. I’m naked and stark. My friend blows cool air on me, tenderly spreads my legs and arms apart, sponges me in ablution. Cold, tacky wetness seeps onto my stomach. Two dripping glue bottles at once leave slug trails across my sternum and neck. More glue. More glue. I spread it with my hands. I smear it all over. I feel my skin puckering and pickling underneath as it dries. It tightens my face into a glorious, beatific smile. Wet, white fingers crawl up my nose and smother me in ecstasy. My eyes glaze over in a milky, white haze. My lips seal in silence, protecting my secret. Our secret.

There are two of us now.

And we are complete.

Copyright 2025 J. Brian Reed