Skin on My Skin Read Online Free Page B

be running out of any time soon. They are everywhere and, if the weather hasn’t gotten to them through broken windows and busted down doors, they are usually in pretty good shape. The weather is getting to everything, though. It’s amazing what happens to a city when people quit taking care of it. Plasma televisions though… they’re pretty tough. Heavy, but tough.  
    I remember the big television we had in our house, the one I wanted to watch Space Force Alpha on the day my dad offed my mother. They quit producing shows then. There were no more rushes to save the universe from evil aliens, no more laser fights. I guess the show’s actors had better things to do. I have every episode that was made of it now, but I can’t watch them. Every time I see them fire a laser I see my father putting a bullet in my mother’s head as her skin bubbled from the Preacher’s Plague.  
    I know he had to do in order to save me. I know that as sure as I know the sun is going to rise in the east. She’d gone crazy, just like most everyone else at the time. Who could blame them? The Preacher released his plague on men, supposedly to keep the evil homosexuals from touching each other.   It made men allergic to each other to the point that, if they stayed near each other long enough, it would kill them. The evil bastard’s plan worked, for a while. Mankind adjusted and went on. Men no longer worked together, but men and women could coexist. But after the Preacher’s Plague jumped genders, rendering any human contact into a deadly explosive mess, anyone with any sense would have also gone crazy. The human race was done, finished. A pregnant woman would die from the internal contact with her child. A mother holding her frightened son’s arm would kill him. People were deathly allergic to other people. Everyone, back then, knew life was about to get very, very lonely. Mom had gone off the deep end, sure, but I don’t know that my dad had to kill her. I was also pretty sure that, those years later, he didn’t have to try to do the same to me.  
    I shrugged it off. I’ve spent years by myself never saying a word. You don’t survive this long after it all went to shit without figuring out the whole lonely issue. I can’t actually imagine touching a woman. Well, I can. Seriously. I spend quite a bit of time thinking about it. I think most young men did. But it’s just a dream. Because there is a cure for horny people and, after the apocalypse. There’s lots and lots of porn available. Lot’s is an understatement, in this sense. Sometimes I’m surprised at the sheer amount of it out there under beds, on old computers… in the back of closets. I can visualize what it’s like to touch someone, but I can’t really feel it. The last time a woman touched me, I just nearly died. Then she got a bullet through the head for the effort. Even if I could be with a woman, I probably wouldn’t be able to get my mother’s bloody face out of my mind.  
    Thanks dad. Fuck you, merry Christmas. All that.  
    Still, there’s that itch that’s always gnawing at the back of my mind. The human body isn’t wired to be alone forever, isn’t set up to spend eternity not touching another human being. Though I’ve never actually been with a woman, I know I need to be. There’s something in my core that screams for it. I’m sure it has something to do with continuing the human race, and what not, but I don’t feel it that way. I need to feel a woman’s touch and all I have is porn.  
    But I have a lot of porn. More than I’ll ever actually watch. But you don’t actually watch porn, do you? You just fast forward to the good spots. I’ll spend an hour looking for something that takes five seconds to get off too. Porn, sweet porn.  
    No porn for me today, though. There was a light. Something was happening over there. I’m going to go find out what it is. It’s not like I have anything better to do.  
    I finish breakfast and put on dad’s