Dead Skin - The beginning
Thunder rolled across the black sky as lightning split the towers of Castle Harkmort. Inside, a thousand mad inventions crackled and hissed, their coils and wires snaking across the stone floor like metal vines. At the heart of the chaos stood Professor Egregius Vyle, his hair a storm of white static, his goggles fogged with sweat and madness.
“Tonight!” he cackled. “Tonight I bring life from rot, and perfection from death! Arise, my creation! Arise… Dead Skin!”
The slab on the table jerked as a surge of lightning struck the copper rods. Smoke hissed. The stench of burnt pumpkin and ozone filled the air. Slowly — painfully — the figure on the slab began to move.
Two long, stick-thin arms lifted. Joints creaked like old doors. A head — a carved pumpkin head — tilted to one side. The grin, crudely carved and blackened at the edges, flickered with an orange light from within. Two triangular eyes opened, and the room glowed with their hollow fire.
Dead Skin took his first breath — a low wheeze that sounded like a sigh through dry leaves.
He tried to speak, but the words came out as a croak.
“Wha… what… am I?”
“You are my masterpiece!” shrieked the Professor, leaping back from the table. “Life from decay! A new dawn for science!”
Dead Skin blinked. His vision swam — shapes and shadows blurred. He felt weak, empty, like his bones were filled with air. His fingers trembled as he tried to sit up. His chest clicked when he breathed.
The Professor clapped his hands gleefully. “Oh, this is splendid! You see, my boy, I stitched you from the finest bits of mankind — a thief’s heart, a poet’s tongue, a scarecrow’s body, and the head of a particularly handsome Halloween lantern!”
Dead Skin stared at him, pumpkin grin flickering uncertainly.
“Handsome?” he rasped. “I look like soup.”
The Professor leaned close, inspecting him like a proud parent. “No, no, my dear child, you’re beautiful! Glorious! You’ll change the world!”
But something deep inside Dead Skin shifted — a low, hungry feeling. It wasn’t just hunger for food. It was something older. Something darker.
He could feel the lightning still burning in his veins, whispering to him.
Kill. Burn. Take control.
Dead Skin’s trembling stopped. His back straightened. His eyes burned brighter.
The weakness melted into rage.
“Change the world?” he growled, his voice rough but rising. “How about I end yours first?”
Before the Professor could back away, Dead Skin’s hand shot out — bony, black, and fast. He grabbed his creator by the throat.
“B-but… I made you!” the Professor gasped. “I gave you life!”
“And I’m giving it back,” Dead Skin hissed.
He squeezed. Sparks flew from his fingertips. The Professor’s goggles cracked, his eyes bulged — and then, with one final twitch, he went limp. Dead Skin dropped him like a sack of spoiled meat.
For a moment, the pumpkin-headed creature just stood there — staring down at the lifeless man who had made him.
Then he tilted his head and smiled wider.
“Guess I’m self-employed now.”
He spotted the chainsaw hanging on the wall — an old experiment, half mechanical, half demonic. He lifted it from its hook, ran his bony fingers along the blade, and grinned as it purred to life with a red glow.
“Now this feels right,” he said.
The castle lights flickered as Dead Skin stomped toward the doors, his thin silhouette framed by the flames of his burning birthplace. Lightning exploded outside, setting the sky alight as he descended the hill toward the distant lights of the village below.
Behind him, the castle collapsed in a thunderous roar.
Ahead of him, somewhere in the mist, a dog barked. A child laughed.
Dead Skin’s grin widened.
He revved the chainsaw, its roar echoing through the night like a madman’s lullaby.
“Time to carve… myself a legacy.”
The village of Doomville slept uneasily that night.
The air was damp, the moon fat and yellow like a rotten yolk. A storm had rolled away, leaving mist hanging in the crooked streets. Candles guttered in the windows of cottages, and somewhere, a drunken watchman whistled off-key.
Then, from the hill, came the sound —
RRRRRRRRR-REVVVVVVVVVV!
Every dog in Doomville began barking.
Every candle flickered.
Every sane man pulled the covers over his head and prayed it was thunder.
It wasn’t.
Dead Skin staggered into town like a scarecrow on stilts, his pumpkin head glowing faintly through the fog. The chainsaw swung from his side, still humming like an angry cat.
He stopped beside the village fountain and looked around.
Cobblestones. Shutters. Pumpkins on doorsteps.
“Nice décor,” he said to himself. “I feel seen.”
He crouched beside the fountain, dipping his bony fingers into the water. His reflection stared back — flickering orange grin, black hollow eyes, faint cracks running through his pumpkin face.
For the first time, he wondered what he actually was.
Was he alive? Dead? Some kind of fruity abomination?
He tilted his head, thinking.
Then shrugged. “Eh. I’ll figure it out later.”
He stood, stretching his long, wiry limbs, and set off toward the nearest noise — the thumping of
The Rusty Nail Tavern was the liveliest place in Doomville — a creaky old building where beer, bad decisions, and folk songs flowed freely. Tonight, the villagers were celebrating Harvest Night, their version of Halloween.
Inside, mugs clanged, fiddles screeched, and a man in a fake ghost costume was passed out on the bar.
Then the door creaked open.
Every head turned.
Dead Skin stepped in — dripping rainwater, pumpkin head flickering like a lantern, chainsaw purring in one hand.
A woman screamed. A man dropped his pint. Someone muttered, “That’s one hell of a costume.”
Dead Skin smiled — that wide, wicked grin that didn’t quite reach his eyes.
“Boo,” he said softly.
Half the bar fainted.
He tilted his head. “Tough crowd.”
Then, without warning, he revved the chainsaw — BRRRRRRMMM! — and the chandelier shook.
A brave (or very drunk) villager stood up. “Oi! You can’t bring that thing in here! This is a respectable establishment!”
Dead Skin blinked. “Really? You call that beer respectable?”
The villager didn’t get a chance to argue.
The chainsaw sang its deadly song, and the bar was instantly chaos — screams, shattering glass, people leaping out of windows.
Dead Skin stood alone among overturned tables, chuckling.
“Guess it’s last orders.”
Scene 3: The Reflection
After the panic faded, he sat at the bar, surrounded by the wreckage.
He poured himself a pint — or rather, spilled most of it through his neck hole.
He sighed.
“Still can’t drink. Figures.”
For a moment, something almost like sadness flickered across his carved face.
He looked at the chainsaw beside him, its blade glinting in the firelight.
“Guess it’s just you and me, baby,” he murmured. “The Professor made me weak — but the fire made me strong. The world made me ugly — so I’ll make it uglier.”
He raised his chainsaw in salute to the cracked mirror behind the bar, where his pumpkin grin smiled back at him.
Outside, in the graveyard beyond the tavern, something stirred.
The ground trembled. Bones rattled.
One by one, the skeletons of Doomville’s long-dead clawed their way up from their graves, drawn by the pulse of the unholy energy that still burned in Dead Skin’s veins.
They gathered in a circle, clattering and moaning.
When Dead Skin stepped out of the tavern, he froze.
A dozen empty skulls turned toward him.
He stared. They stared back.
Then one raised a bony hand and waved.
Dead Skin grinned wider.
“Finally,” he said. “People I can get along with.”
The skeletons rattled with excitement. He revved the chainsaw and pointed toward the church tower.
“Let’s wake the rest of the town.”
They marched together through the fog — a pumpkin-headed demon and his bony battalion, silhouetted against the rising moon.
From that night on, Doomville would whisper of the monster that came from lightning and madness — the one who laughed like a storm and carved his way into legend.
And Dead Skin himself, walking proudly at the head of his new army, thought just one thing:
Being alive might be awful… but being undead? That’s where the fun begins.