mr16's shoebox: cargoboy, the bodyshock smuggler PART ONE

don't read this. it's not right.

he scraped at it again. it definietely wasn't normal skin tissue. where the hardness of his skull felt smooth with a soft layer of spongy skin spread tautly across it on the rest of his scalp, this area of his head - this pencil wide dimple in his skull - felt different. more like the texture he imagined an old potato to have if it had been left to dry out in the sun for a very long time. spongy yet dry.

he poked at it with a pencil. no pain. he dug at it for a bit and was sure it felt like it was scraping away like chalk. obviously this was not skin - or at least if it was it was dead and could be safely removed. after a few minutes of digging had broken the surface of this strange foreign matter he brushed his hair and was rewarded by a shower of grey dust sprinkling from his head. his finger tips quickly found the rim of tiny hole, the edges sharp and hard, but no blood.

how far can this go? he wondered as the tip of the pencil failed to reach into his skull any further, held back by the widening circumference of the nib. a straightened paperclip allowed further work and before long it was necessary for him to lean forward and tap the side of his head vigourously to empty the welled up shavings.

after a little more probing he was certain that he had far exceeded the depth of where his skull should end and his brain begin. how thick should his skull be? was this dangerous? still no blood. not even the merest suggestion of squishiness. just the same constant sensation of scraping away through something the texture of sandstone.

fear prevented him from continuing past 2 inches. this was certainly not right - he didn't want to reach the point where he needed to tell someone. hopefully nothing would happen to the hole. perhaps he had stopped before this had gone too far? after all, he had lived this long without ever having discovered this property of his skull. he could just fill in the hole and ignore it. but what with? he didn't want to have to keep cleaning it out every once in a while - that might weaken the surrounding tissue and break the surface - he didn't know how thick that surface might be.

what could he fill the hole with? metal was out because he may need to go an a plane some time and he would set the metal detectors off. wood would eventually decay or splinter. it would have to be plastic. plastic was durable and clean. he just needed to make it fit snugly. might it be possible to melt down a couple of disposable spoons and pour in the liquid plastic? it might hurt but going by his painless exploration so far he considered it was most likely safe.

2 hours later, by the careful positioning of his reflective sunglasses in front of the staff toilet mirrors, he was able to view his handywork. only a little white button of rough plastic was visible when he parted his hair. it stood perhaps a milimetre proud of his skin, but nothing a little filing wouldn't take care of. noone would notice something like that. as long as he didn't bang his head and jar it loose. or allow a girl to brush her fingers through his hair. the thought of being discovered made him feel slightly sick.

a vision came to him of standing in the middle of the office surrounded by staring colleagues, an incongruous white antenna protruding from his head. expressions of nauseated confusion blurring around him as he turned, trying to find a way out of the crowd.

what if one day the bottom of this cranial cavity cracked and a torrent of blood spurted out from his head? the pressure could be building even now, until the day when the plastic bung was finally spat from his skull like a bullet with no warning.without a doubt it would happen at work if it was ever going to happen. it would have to be at the point where some pretty girl was sitting nearby - the perfect time for him to spontaneously die in the most embarrassing way imaginable. there would be a loud pop as the little white cork shot across the room, followed by a jet of red hosing his pc screen like a whale's blow hole. if he was lucky he might have time to glimpse the horror and disgust on the pretty girl's face as his eyes rolled back and he collapsed, in a pile of broken chair pieces.

but it wouldn't do to keep thinking about this. he made up his mind; no more thoughts about what might happen. have to just forget there's a hole.

that evening, after tea, he found it much easier to forget about the hole in his head when he discovered something new about his skin. for a long time he had been trying to decide whether the mole on his chest had a spot on it that could be removed - or whether it was just a mole. a few minutes of prodding with a fork revealed nothing so he tried tweezers. the little mole made a very faint noise like a muffled wet crack that he felt more than heard. slowly, the head of the mole came away and from his skin he drew a long string of semi translucent thread, tapering away from the mole head. like the thread of a crude garment it left behind it a hollow furrow of depressed skin - a ridge of shallow where the thread left its previous home collapsed behind it.

there was no question of putting the thread back. once exposed to the air who knew what germs it would have contracted? besides it looked disgusting and he was quite sure something so ugly had no place in his body. he dangled it from his fingers, wetly. in the bin, he decided.

he explored the ridge of bereft skin the string had left behind. the furrow was a few milimetres wide and about 6 inches long. what the hell was that thing? why had it been inside him? he pressed the sides of the furrow together, hoping to crush the structure of the skin back into something malleable and smooth. but the line remained.

on closer examination tiny dimples were visible in his skin - pores surely? but all this recent discovery made him wonder. taking a needle he gave them a poke. he found it was possible to squeeze the needle through the pore and slide it to one side beneath the skin, and with no pain, quite some way.

fearful of losing the needle when it happily sank in to its end, he retracted it, nd instead, inserted the end of a long piece of wire.

why am i doing this, he thought, but quickly lost the thought as curiosity consumed him.

the wire slid along comfortably for as long as he cared to push it, finding no obstruction and always remaining visible on the surface.

how long could i leave something in there? how much could i put in there? how could i use this to my advantage? how strange, he thought. but he knew he had only tacked on that last word as an artificial addition, the last vestige of interest in what a normal person might have said in these circumstances.