Not all skin is the same.
MOTORSKIN CHAPTER SAMPLE
Skin decomposes fast, so it’s imperative to get it off as soon as possible for preservation.
There are two methods for preserving: dry and wet. The former requires flaying on the reverse side to remove connective tissue. After you scrape off the skin, it’s stretched and pinned out to dry as various compounds help with texture. With wet preservation, you extract the skin the same way, the only difference is that you submerge the skin in glycerin or formalin alcohol.
This isn’t the first time someone’s preserved skin out of admiration of body ink. Doctors, collectors, enthusiasts are only some crazy enough to snag colorful postmortem aesthetics we leave behind. Taxidermy is an old practice going way back to the Egyptians in 2200 BC. This was normal and far from perceived as creepy. Look at it in today’s culture. Millions get their pets stuffed and displayed and no one bats an eye. Visitors might sit on the opposite side of the room, but it doesn’t make your stomach drop. We’re used to it.
But the art itself? Totally different story.
Not all skin is the same. Lifestyle matters. For example, alcoholics have a sweeter scent. I’ll get a whiff of iron like a metal aroma mixed with a hint of berry, almost like Chloroform. A lighter but candied scent. Like a combination of raspberry and steel rust from the spiked levels of blood sugar. Most of these bodies have liver failure, which usually means jaundice across the face and neck. These are tossed in the trash because the piss yellow color is too warm of tint for handbag material.
Some people freeze their bodies. You might see a bunch of corpses draped over meat hooks like gutted hogs hanging face down in a butcher shop. Remove the skin within twenty-four hours of death. Then you’re pretty much peeling wallpaper. Easy to do; not easy to do well. You get that stress of trying your best not to ruin your hard work. Hours of painstaking effort, yet one little rip, one little fuck up unravels all the patience you thought you had. But once it’s all stripped, parred, and preserved, it’s smooth sailing.
