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Movement inside startled the teen and he ducked so that he could just see the top corner of the bathroom door across the room. Someone was standing near the foot of the bed. Seth rose again slowly until he could see Mr. K's face. His teacher pulled open the plastic encasing a new shirt. He was talking... to himself or to someone, Seth wasn't sure. Nothing else moved in the room.

Mr. K was absorbed in his shirt, so Seth lifted his head a bit higher until he could see the full length of his naked body. The incandescent light cast a golden hue across Mr. K's skin, deflating Seth's earlier idea of plastic body parts. The muscles of his teacher's legs flowed in clean cascades from his waist to his ankles under flesh, not vinyl. His chest tightened when he held the shirt farther out to examine it, and his eyes caught a moist gold glint from the light. Every part of Mr. K was part of Mr. K and not something fabricated. Even his cock, hanging like a swollen fruit, was clearly no prosthetic, but it looked as long and slightly curved as what Seth had seen on the DVD, which did nothing to settle the question in his mind.

It was strange to see Mr. K in the middle of his bedroom fussing over something mundane. His fingers crept along the fabric of the shirt, teasing out the pins that held the sleeves captive. His lips

spoke, and through the insulated glass Seth could make out the low tones in the teacher's voice, "why do they hide so many in here?" No one answered, but Seth found himself wondering too. In that moment of common musing, Seth saw Mr. K as just another guy with the same thoughts, despite the puzzle that still nagged at him.

While his teacher spead the shirt on the bed, the door to the bedroom drifted open. Someone else was there.

Mr. K had his back to the door, and didn't hear it open.

It happened so fast that Seth couldn't have warned him even if he had been thinking straight.

Something slipped into the room, but it wasn't a person. It looked like a person turned inside out -- like sneaking muscles and tendons and veins. It crept across the carpet with hideous grace. Its lidless eyes goggled at Mr. K with blue irises that glittered like dark ice. Its long phallus grew stiff, wagging with each step. Seth couldn't gasp, or scream, or even breathe. His brain shut down all signals to his body, intent on trying to figure out the glistening thing stalking his teacher.

Mr. K still spoke, his lips forming a smirk as he talked. The thing raised its red arms; one circled the teacher's waist, the other grasped his forehead, pulling him into its ruddy embrace. Its lipless mouth gaped full of gleaming white teeth, and Seth heard its low moan like a woman in ecstacy. It ran its thumb under Mr. K's armpit and down his side leaving a red smear.

Only it wasn't a smear but a gash in his flesh that opened like a slow grin. The thing slit another long line behind Mr. K's ear and down his neck. The teacher's eyes opened like a frightened child, and then rolled back into his head so far that none of the brown showed. He opened his mouth and Seth heard the sick tenor of his scream through the glass. The thing stuck its fingers deep into the wounds, grasping the skin from both sides and tore. It peeled Mr. K's skin away like someone would peel a wet sock off his foot.

Seth's body quivered, something inside him still had sense enough to scream at him, "Run!" It sounded far away, like someone outside beating on the door to his brain, but it kept screeching in his head until he lifted a foot and stepped back from the window. He took another step and tumbled backwards into something that clawed at his jacket and tore at his jeans.

Certain that another one of those skinless things was after his flesh, he flailed out, ripping his hands in the needles of the holly bush he had crashed into. The pain jolted him and he scrambled for the woods. He ran straight to the church bwefore he had the sense to duck into the shadow of the fellowship hall where he forced himself to crouch and watch to see if anything followed.

He counted each breath. It took him to sixty before he stopped heaving. He kept counting to 200 before he crept around the back of the chruch looking for shadows that would take him all the way back to his truck.

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The next morning Seth trudged through the hallway, jostled by the morning crowd. His shoes felt like they were full of cement. He hadn't slept.

The bell rang, and the crush of bodies carried him along until the current ebbed and he was left to slouch toward European History. He didn't want to come to school, to walk into class where eveyone else wondered why Mr. K was out, and he knew and couldn't tell because no one would believe him. He didn't want to come to school but he couldn't come up with anything to tell his mom.

He pressed his face against the cool wood of the door before finally turning the knob and pushing it open. He froze halfway through.

Mr. K stood there at the front of the class, his fingers spidering across the open textbook. He leveled his fawn colored gaze over his shoulder at Seth when he heard the door open.

"Seth," he closed the book, "you had me worried. Did you have a rough night?" Mr. K grinned at him, his skin fresh and tight like a newly pressed suit.

A hot trickle streamed down Seth's leg.

"Are you OK?"

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Seth didn't stop running until he got to his truck.

He blasted over the curb and out onto the street heading straight out of town. In his head he replayed the scene and saw Mr. K's eyes rolling back, heard his low moan -- not in pain, but in pleasure as his blue-eyed partner peeled away his skin suit and tossed it into the laundry pile.