Meat Suit
Estevan Vega
All I could see was a bright light. The scales on my eyes folded back. The vicious and challenging metal beast attacked me and left me sprawled ten feet from where I was walking, wounded and with my flesh stating to peel. I wanted so badly to lick my wounds, but I remained still. My brain felt like ooze. Something was sticking out of my forehead, a shard of some kind; glass. At least that is what your species call it. Choking, suddenly I was choking on mucus and the small rodent I had devoured earlier at daybreak. I could still feel the little critter gnawing at my insides, longing for escape. Perhaps I should have chewed it before swallowing.
The night was still and quiet; none of the things I liked about Earth. The clouds were up in that big black rooftop and those burning lights above looked down at me with scorn. You weak, pathetic worm, I can hear them say. It was quiet, so quiet, until that wretched animal devoured through my meat suit. The noise it made left a pulsating ring inside my eardrum. First, I heard those rotating wheels rip against the ground and that large motorized animal immediately followed through, chewing pieces of my suit. The legs I was wearing twitched, as I grabbed hold of the rest of me in sporadic attempts to put my outsides back inside.
I couldn’t see anything anymore, except some pieces of me stuck on the animal’s metallic teeth. Its teeth were bent inward, smoke streaming out of its mouth in slow and desperate fumes. I mumbled curses in my own tongue, and when I tried to move I realized these replacement suits hurt more than I thought. This had never happened to me before. I never needed a new one. But looking into the animal’s bright glass eyes, listening to the roar of its heart, fear swept through me. I suddenly found strength to crawl, a pathetic maneuver for my species. The Grazers never bow, let alone crawl. Simply breathing the same air as this beast turned my guts upside down. Once more I cursed, white blood sliding off my teeth.
Then something stepped out of the beast, a man. I did not know what to do. I ceased all movement, forced myself to stop breathing entirely, as though I had passed, and waited patiently for the human.
***
“Do you think he’s okay?” Charlie Newman asked his wife, Julie, before dimming his high beams.
“How should I know? Maybe if you weren’t such a klutz, you would’ve been able to move those big feet of yours to the brake, then I could’ve gotten a better panoramic view. But no, instead, you had to smash right through the thing. I mean, my God, I think his entrails are splattered across the windshield; I can’t see a thing.” She started breathing heavily, as she did whenever aggravated. “I’m about to have a baby, and my husband’s going to prison for manslaughter.”
He looked at her, wincing slightly. “Manslaughter? I can’t go to prison; they do things to guys like me.” He neglected to inform his brain how lame he just sounded, how unheroic he must’ve looked in front of Julie.
Charlie shrugged with his skinny shoulders, nothing but fear gleaming off his skinny face. The term ‘skin and bones’ was invented specifically for Charlie Newman.
“I think you’ve watched one too many episodes of Oz, dear.”
His wife’s lack of present sympathy or at the very least, empathy, made him wish he was instantly dead. But his wife was due any minute now and he could only imagine…actually, since childhood videos of viewing his own birth, he was never much preoccupied with the notion of what it would be like to give birth. He forgave her for her bitter, matrimonial annotations.
“Honey, I want to see if he’s all right; I think it’s a he. Hopefully it isn’t, taking into account the whole manslaughter notion.” Charlie’s voice shook with unease.
Julie’s eyes bulged out almost so much that she looked like some deranged lunatic, with that certain soft face by which every woman was intrinsically blessed, and said, “If you don’t get your butt out of this car and see what you just got us into, I’m gonna drive to the hospital myself and have this baby.”
“All right, Julie, I’m going. Wish me luck?” he asked in semi-sarcasm.
Inside, Julie was mumbling a thousand Hail Mary’s, every couple of seconds rubbing her belly. She took a deep breath, and closed her eyes; the baby started kicking again, and she winced.
Charlie remained slightly hunched over the body. He studied it; it was a man. The coat the guy was wearing was completely torn. The man was naked, his skin peeling. Something else held his eyes for a long moment. He saw brown hair matted with a gooey white substance that trailed a path back to the hood of his Expedition. The FORD emblem was covered in it. Charlie kicked the body; it didn’t move. He tried once more; same result. As he scratched the back of his head wildly, frantic and nervous as anyone about to watch his wife pass a six pound human being through her loins, Charlie chuckled at the irony. “Found on road dead. I’ll be a son of a gun.”
He wanted to get back into the SUV and run away. “Mister, please get up. You don’t understand, my wife is about to go into labor and I can’t just leave you here. Please, get up.” He realized this was more of a prayer than a request to a corpse.
Charlie stood rigid and felt his heart boom loud inside his skinny chest. Time ticked. He had two choices: leave the body or call the police. The second option had little appeal.
“I can’t believe this is my luck,” Charlie said, bending down, his Dockers now stained at the knees with mud from the pavement. He began shoving the body off road. He muttered a number of prayers, hoping that no one would find out about this, let alone some drunken hick passing by too curious for his own good. Somehow he couldn’t help but be possessed by certain unnerving and paralyzing convictions. What are you thinking? You’re going to hell in a hand basket, you know that don’t you? he heard his old priest from middle school whispering in his ear. That’s murder, you know, son, his mom bantered.
“SHUT up!” he screamed, forgetting about the body for a second, while he straightened his back rigidly and took a breather.
Less than a second passed before Julie stuck her head, full of vibrant red curls, out the window and hit a vocal range so high Charlie thought the windshield might break. “Who are you yelling at? And what in God’s name did we, I mean, you, hit? And when are we gonna get this baby out of me?”
Charlie wiped the flood of sweat off both ridges of his nose and replied, “No one; I don’t know; and I’m not sure.” The answers really didn’t do much to satisfy her; it seemed only to implement further frustration from his dearly beloved.
He waited for her to put her head back inside the window, roll it up slowly, and throw those curly reds back. He liked to look at her, at any other time than this, of course. The way her hair fell, how she was most pleasant when little or nothing came out of her mouth, the way she…Oh, my God, Charlie, hurry up and get rid of this thing, before something worse happens.
With both feet equally distant from each other, Charlie drew nearer to the big meat sack oozing on the pavement. After making numerous faces due to the nausea-inducing stench that poured out whatever holes (and at this point, there were many) the body had, Charlie tried plugging his nose, while, in moments, the stench polluted the wet, and already stagnant air. The air was just one of the beautiful bonuses of living in the country. He’d grown up in Hartford, but after the divorce, he’d moved with his Mom to a more kid-friendly environment, a little town that was simply asking for a story about Sasquatch or Bigfoot to be published in the town’s RiverEast. Portland wasn’t the kind of sticks and woods that Moodus or Colchester were so known for, but it had its elements of a deep, inbreeding-esque, woodsy place that most normal, metropolitan, Starbucks-drinking folks found less than quaint. But to Charlie, it was home. Connecticut was the place he’d always wanted to leave, but never had the guts or the will power. He’d always joked that the only way out of this rural and leafy part of New England would be in a body bag. And even that fell through when Julie took it upon herself to buy matching burial plots in Middletown, of all friggin’ places. There really weren’t any choices left to make for Charlie Newman. No, it seemed fate had bigger plans. Nobler plans. And those plans included the following: he was destined to wander the world (or sections of Connecticut) with no endeavors to follow, no dreams that were only moments away from being squashed, and no way out.
Unless, of course, it was through the way he’d always joked about.
***
What was he waiting for? Humans are so obnoxiously slow about things. I’ve heard so many stories about your kind. The wonders you’ve achieved. How your people try and study the bright lights above, searching for answers and reasons for your very existence. My father told the Grazers that humankind was looking for intelligent life outside their atmosphere, that they sought the very thing we’ve always known. It really is insipid to believe you’re the only one after all.
For years you’ve been looking for us, when all the time we’ve had our eyes on you. It is not yet clear my father’s intentions for your planet, but what little I do know is this: humankind was doomed from the start. I remember my mother telling me stories of how earth began in a little garden, with only two people. They were given one order, one simple order, and they couldn’t follow that. Any Grazer who knowingly disobeys an order is put to death. But in this world, things are much more peculiar. Sure, you think you have all the answers, believe you know the way, but the only path mortals know how to take is the path to oblivion.
We’ve been watching you, studying you. For many human life cycles I’ve enjoyed seeing you fall, watching you pollute your world with war and virus and disease. For ages, man has looked up and begged the question, “Are we alone?” Grazers have always been here. We watched Earth be created, saw man fall countless times. We’ve observed your every move and watched you wage war with your brothers. The world I’ve watched kill itself lifecycle after lifecycle. Earth has no king, no god, no warriors left, no walls that cannot be breached, no mortal that cannot be worn, and no lie that hasn’t been told. The world I’ve watched all my lifecycle was always begging for an end.
***
“You are one of the ugliest bastards I’ve ever seen, Mister.” Once Charlie had gotten the body off the road, he bent down to get a look at his face. Little flesh remained, white goo oozing out of his pores and down his cheek, bubbling warts popping like zits. His brown hair was matted with forest brush and that sticky white stuff. Being the inquisitive type, Charlie dabbed his fingers in it, then had the audacity to stick his nose into the white stuff; it smelt like blood, but soon he felt it burning—burning away his fingertips. It felt like fire, no, hotter. Frantic, he wiped the white goo from the tips with his coat. As he glanced down at his coat, he noticed the hole the white goo had burned through.
And then the body twitched.
“Mister, you okay? Are you still alive?”
As he looked closer, Charlie noticed the man’s face was coming off, sliding off, like it was a mask of some kind. He wanted to hurl, but he hadn’t eaten anything all day so all that came out was phlegm and saliva. And then it was like those horrifying Discovery Channel Specials when the doctors are operating on some bastard’s brain, cutting it or whatever those over-paid specialists do, and you don’t want to look away but can’t help but fix your eyes on it. Charlie was the at-home viewer and he was watching the invisible doctor peel off this guy’s skin until he saw something that stopped his heart immediately.
“Oh, my God,” Charlie said. “What on Earth are you?” he mumbled, walking backward on his hands.
The body moved again, and now it was breathing, a Darth Vader kind of breathing that made Charlie’s neck hair prick up like a porcupine ready to stick a needle in anyone that pissed it off, only Charlie was more focused on his fear at this moment.
The Grazer crawled toward Charlie, with every move shedding or tearing a piece of his body off, limb, skin, bone, all of it. The meat suit no longer fit him.
Charlie watched as the Grazer crept toward him, with real skinny arms, a narrow, snake-like head and thin, cropped legs that bent every which way. Its flesh tone glittered with a pale glow and hints of human color throughout its seemingly meek frame. “Human…human,” the Grazer mouthed, its voice muffled but nonetheless terrifying. As it spoke, its jaw cracked and rotated from side to side, its slimy spit dripping off the rims of its oversized trap. Seconds later, Charlie discovered the thing also had four sets of teeth.
After mumbling another “Oh, my God,” Charlie ran for his car. His heart stopped racing suddenly, however. Much to his surprise, he saw some red and blues flashing off in the distance. He could still hear the sound of that creature breathing, huffing; the crunch of his six-fingered palms moving across the woodsy brush. His body shaking, his mind on edge, Charlie prayed the policeman would stop. Waving his hands like some hitchhiker, Charlie screamed, “STOP!”
The sound of screeching tires woke Julie instantly, and upset the child inside her. She knew it was any minute now. Trying to rest did nothing to calm her.
“Please, Officer, you gotta help me. My wife is very pregnant. If she doesn’t get to a hospital soon—”
“Now hold your horses, Mister. And take a deep breath.” The officer stepped out of the cruiser and blinded Charlie with light. He was nonchalantly checking for an intoxication level. Charlie held off on the comments he was dying to make, and instead pleaded, “Help me.”
Officer Hinkle seemed to ignore everything Charlie had just said, and bent down. “What is this?” he asked, pointing to the white goo.
“I hit someone, some…thing, Officer.”
Instantly, Hinkle’s brows folded down. “Now what exactly do you mean, by that?” He pulled out a little notepad.
“I was driving my wife to the hospital, and this thing came out in front of me. I thought he was a man…he wasn’t moving, breathing…then he tried to—”
Hinkle wrote a few things down, and then narrowed his wide eyes in on skinny Charlie Newman. “So you were speeding?”
“Are you deaf? Weren’t you listening to anything I just said? You cops are all the same.”
“Excuse me, sir?” Hinkle said, ruffling his short, Hitler-like mustache.
“Let me try and spell it out for you. I was driving my wife to the hospital and something—I have no idea what—popped up in front of my car, and I hit it.”
“You gotta watch out for them deer around these roads, they’re a real pain in the neck, ain’t they?”
“Officer Hinkle, I am more than familiar with deer; I’ve lived here most of my life. Now my wife is in there (he pointed to the Expedition) ready to have a baby, there is some God-forsaken thing in those woods and you’re here lecturing me about speeding. I don’t have time for this.”
Charlie felt a sharp pain in his chest, as Hinkle nudged him stiffly with his flashlight. “Now hold on. Let me get this straight. You hit something?”
“Now we’re finally getting somewhere. Yeah.” Charlie constantly looked over his shoulder, worrying when that thing would come out.
“I don’t see it.”
“For the love of God, that’s because it’s in there.”
Hinkle chewed his gum unnaturally, like someone who’s never chewed gum before; it was strange. Then he flashed the light in Charlie’s eyes again. “You have anything to drink this evening, sir?”
“No, for God’s sake.”
“How’d he get in the woods, then?”
Charlie let a moment pass. He didn’t want to answer, afraid of what would happen if he did. “I dragged him in there.”
“You were gonna leave him, weren’t you? You twisted…”
WHACK! Charlie reached for his jaw, blood trimming the corners of his lips. The pain shot through his entire face, and he fell to his knees.
Julie stepped out of the car. “What the hell are you doing to my husband?”
“Ma’am, get back in the car; I’m taking care of the situation. For your own safety—”
“First of all, I find ‘ma’am’ offensive. I’m not my mother. And secondly, that’ll be the day when some hick cop is gonna bash my husband upside his face like that and get away with it, whether I’m pregnant or not, you hear?” Tension heightened the sound of her voice.
“Honey, sweet pea, get back in the car, please,” Charlie said, verging on water works. There was something in his voice she never heard before, so for the first time since he said ‘I do’ and she said ‘I guess,’ she listened, but not before mumbling: “only because Charlie said so.”
“Officer Hinkle, there’s been some mistake.”
“I’ll say. You were gonna leave a helpless man behind, for the raccoons to pick at until there was nothing left. You sick fool.”
A noise echoed out of the woods, crisp and clear. “I told you, I told you there was something in there.”
“I never said you were lying, Mister. But leaving somebody behind like that is damn near inhuman. And I’d say that’s the last thing you want to be at a time like this, ain’t that right, Mister?”
“You have no idea,” Charlie said, his voice long-winded and slurred.
“You know…” Officer Hinkle began, reaching for his gun slowly, as he lightly walked toward the woods, the moonlight stretching its shadow far into the brush and
groups of oaks and cedars, “we’ve been looking for a guy these past couple days. Folks that seen him say he wears people’s skin to mask his real identity.” The sound of Hinkle’s feet crunched against the twigs and dry October leaves. “You wouldn’t happen to know anything about that, now would you?”
“I don’t watch the news; I get too depressed.”
“I don’t remember asking if you’d liked CNN, just if you’ve heard any of that nonsense about a skin-wearing psychopath. You know, some people say he ain’t even human.”
Suddenly, it wasn’t what Hinkle was saying that dropped a block of lead in Charlie’s gut, but that same Darth Vader type breathing. He began running toward his vehicle once again, desperate, terrified.
BANG! Charlie reached for his leg and screamed; the feeling that one of the bones in there was completely shattered made his heart pump even faster, sweat dripping down his face like raindrops. He called his wife’s name three times, but she hadn’t come. “JULIE!” he screamed again, but she remained silent in the car. Fear swelled through him, as Officer Hinkle stepped nearer to the driver’s side window, Charlie crawling as fast as he could to get to Hinkle’s ankle with the ever brave attempt at gnawing it off.
“Oh look, the pretty lady’s fallen asleep. Hope she wakes up.” He then realized Charlie’s teeth had cut through the meat in his leg. “Get off me, you worthless sap.” With a kick, Hinkle sent him sliding.
At length, Charlie began screaming uncontrollably. His mouth was burning: tongue, teeth, throat. Everything felt like it was on fire and he couldn’t put it out.
Officer Hinkle walked over to him, his gum smacking around his mouth, a weak smirk stapled to his lips. “Looks like you broke the skin, Mister. How’s the blood taste?” He knelt down beside Charlie’s broken jaw. “Kinda spicy, huh?”
“It’s impossible. This can’t be happening. No…no…no.” Charlie’s voice trailed off in the darkness.
Hinkle glanced over his shoulder at the creature walking out of the woods. In the moonlight, Charlie got a clear view, beyond words. Hinkle looked down; his eyelids flipped inside out, and looked like scales.
“I had a little fun with him, sir. That leg’ll be better in no time, and I wouldn’t worry too much about the jaw.”
The creature breathed in that same horrifying breath, and said, “I hope he fits.”
Hinkle turned to his right, resting his hand on the slimy shoulder of the Grazer beside him and said, “He will. You’re gonna like the way you look, sir, I guarantee it.”
“Well-done.”
Charlie tried to crawl, but it was meaningless. The harder he resisted, the harder he was being pulled.
“Don’t hurt my wife! Don’t you hurt her!” Charlie screamed.
“I wouldn’t worry about her, my friend.” Officer Hinkle shot a hole through the left-side tire of the Expedition and cringed as it popped. Then he walked around the other side, and carried Julie carefully into his police cruiser, laying her down gently in the back seat. “She’s in good hands.”
Charlie watched the scales on Hinkle’s eyelids return to normal as the police cruiser sped off in the distance.
“What are you going to do to me?” Charlie screamed.
The Grazer wrapped his skinny, slimy fingers around Charlie’s neck and without warning, unscrewed his head. Slowly, methodically, he sucked out the entrails and remnants within the skull. He did the same with each limb and body part. When he had finished distinguishing part from part, the Grazer folded the tissue onto his own arm and sealed it tightly with his saliva. The other arm followed, as did the hands. They were trickiest of all, as usual. Grazers had six fingers, whereas humans only had five, which made it slightly more complicated for his fingers to bend and mold to fit into the case allotted. Next came the torso: a tight fit, size twenty-nine was slightly thinner than preferred, but the Grazer managed to squeeze into it. The legs fit rather well, once he was able to remove the bullet hole, that is. Lastly, the Grazer fastened on the human head, and licked his fingertips, before sliding them across the throat area to seal it nicely. The clothes, though tattered, fit rather snug and he always liked it when meat suits were nice and snug.
“Just like new,” he smirked, as he limped down the moonlit road, the smell of earth trees and damp air flooding his nostrils.
He pulled out the wallet from his back pocket, retrieved the license. He stared at the picture for a moment, and then grinned.
“Oh, I’m going to like being you, Charlie Newman. I’m going to like being you very much.”

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