Skinners -- A Love Story

By CW Riker

In CW Riker's Skinners – A Love Story, an ancient race of body thieves has infiltrated the set of a gothic TV series produced in Atlanta in order to make powerful connections. Remy Redfield, struggling actor and son of a screen legend, stumbles onto the secret. He's the only one who can navigate a world filled with giant egos and star rivalries to stop these creatures from enslaving humanity. There's only one problem. Remy likes their plan. With diverse characters and elements of adventure, history, and horror, this urban fantasy novel will grab hold of fans of Harry Potter or American Gods and never let go.

• Language: English
• Publisher: CW Riker
• Release date: May 20, 2023
• ISBN: 9798215723975

CW Riker

I am a veteran journalist with thirty years in local and network television news, including five years at CNNI. As such, I know how to meet deadlines and accept constructive criticism. I have used my reporting experience to research my material, while drawing from my China travel journals. I have published two novels. In Zebulon Angell and the Shadow Army, the reader joins an everyman on a global quest for a sex candy worth a fortune, but it could spell death inside the tomb of China’s first emperor. Meanwhile, Come the Eventide finds dolphins fighting to save the world. This eco sci-fi novel offers aquatic adventure, time travel twists, and a glimmer of hope as humanity faces its greatest threat. I offer stories with which to thrill, threaten your sense of security, and make you think, always with a ray of hope.

Book preview

"Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

Great men are almost always bad men..."

– Lord Acton

When the people shall have no more to eat, they will eat the rich!

–Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Never underestimate the power of human stupidity.

– Robert A. Heinlein

Show Runner

Magic is the most valuable commodity, real or otherwise. Only fools give it away for nothing.

My name is Avar Pelfkin and I am here to sell you magic. I hire writers, actors, and other creatives to conjure it up on the screen, and fire them when they fail, which is often. Most importantly, I make money selling delicious flavors of social sorcery: celebrity, glory, Truth with a capital T, wispy promises of eternity, and of course love. I sell them all.

So, I can tell you without fear of contradiction that there is no such thing as magic. Real is real; all else is want and wish. We are born without magic, and a distracted world provides each of us a death as inane as it is solitary. Ashes, but no pixie dust.

That said, our story is as real as you wish it to be.

My writers think they’re Fitzgerald, Chayefsky, Mankiewicz or, you know, good. They drop sesquipedalian slop on my desk, and I have to turn it into something an audience will pay for. I won’t bore you with their draft of Chapter One, it’s a pretentious weather report filled with darkening skies and the threat of a great storm. Clouds symbolize hubris. Trees represent the burgeoning spirit of man. There are cows all over the place for some reason – maybe the burdens of living in society. Who knows? Total crap! I burned it and wrote a decent script. The flaming zeppelin is mine, as is the face-melting scene in the hotel. The good stuff.

Understand: these characters believe they’re people, and perception is reality when you’re swimming in the deeps. Their lives lumber along. Magic is a desperate attempt to change the parts they don’t like, whether it’s old age, loss, or the consequences of their own actions. People dabble in religion or drugs or turn to science for a quick cheat. Life writes their story, and the ending will be written the way it will.

I never interfere, except when I do.

Storytellers capture all this, but not without help. They find ways to call their muses. Milton and Hemingway favored the early hours for writing, Ernest so he could spend the rest of his day drinking, fishing, and chasing skirt. Maya Angelou, another morning person, kept a sherry, a deck of cards, and a Bible close by. Dan Brown hung himself upside down, inverting his brain to cure writer’s block. Victor Hugo penned Quasimodo whilst quasi-naked, ordering his valet to confiscate his clothes so he couldn’t leave home. Allowing himself a shawl on cold days, Vic birthed Hunchback in only four months.

Sure, they got the job done, but all scribblers seem to forget, or wish they could forget, that writing is a business and a pretty easy job at that. A few hours spent each day plucking words out of the ether, that’s all. It beats shoveling manure, although considering some of what I get – No, I’ve made my point.

The rules of writing for an audience are simple: Tell a story. Tell the audience what you’re going to tell them; tell them; then tell them what you just told them. Bring your characters to life then let them tell you their story. Don’t get fancy. You ain’t no Billy Quillpen Shakespeare. Don’t introduce impossible solutions in Act Three. Or do then go back to Act One and hang a lantern on your deus ex machina. Big themes and profound messages should be accidental; sex and violence should be gratuitous and plentiful. Take your audience somewhere, get em lost, put em in danger, then rescue em. Send people home emotionally spent. Ignore the critics. Never apologize. Done. Oh, wait. One more: do not use the word indubitably. Not even once.

So, I’ll be your narrator. In your head, use Morgan Freeman’s voice, or Charlton Heston’s, or make me Oprah if you like. I don’t care. And don’t bother me with your emotional needs. I deal in wants and wishes, not dreary must haves. I see all, tell all, and care not at all when people get hurt, burned, mutilated, or eaten.

My purpose is to get this story told and sold.

Chapter 1 – A Certain Place and Happenstance

Malvern Wight wanted something different, a break from the finely crafted $200M Hollywood image that hung around his neck, setting razor wire boundaries on his every word and action. Cross the line and the guards (the audience) would shoot to kill. He’d been doing the acting thing for years now, to the bitter exclusion of all else, certainly alienating himself from family and friends who had given up hope of ever again seeing his face without paying for the privilege. He wished he could call one or two of the special ones. It didn’t work that way. Be who you are in Hollywood and the real you will be busing tables or eating bugs on an island for piddly ratings. Malvern Wight (never again to be called Wesley Cuthbert Millbridge) was the virile leading man, master seducer of starlets, five-four or shorter, please. This allowed his six-one presence to dominate his leading ladies and thereby inflame she-viewer fantasies. The algorithms of stardom had everything figured to the nth degree. Except for what Malvern wanted.

Filming in Atlanta had its perks. Aside from the loose working regulations owing to the Southern tradition of crushing unions and Georgia’s deep tax breaks that California could not or would not match, stars could get out and have fun without being hounded by rabid paparazzi. To be sure, photogs appeared from nowhere at the damnedest times, but they did not form packs outside every late-night bar the way they did in Beverly Hills, Burbank, or Los Angeles, where they bred like the feral curs they were.

In Atlanta, actors could spend an afternoon on the magnolia-line hills of Bobby Jones Golf Course, then drive unmolested past billboards pimping their latest movie or series on their way to Fat Matt’s Rib Shack on Piedmont Avenue. There, a greasy bag of cholesterol and joy could be grabbed and taken back to the Omni or the W Atlanta, or maybe the Marriott Marquis, whose vaulting atrium with its curved riblike balconies makes one imagine he’s been swallowed by a whale. Peckish celebs might slip anonymously into the Vortex, either on Peachtree Street midtown or the one in Little Five Points, stepping through the giant skull entrance whose groovy swirling eyes beckons patrons to try the tastiest, sloppiest burgers in any dimension. And if a weary thespian like Malvern craved distraction after a long day of delivering the same lines through thirty takes, he could ask his driver to drop him off outside the century-old building on Piedmont, the one with the old-style radio tower on its roof, beaming out the hotel’s name in garish red neon. The Hotel Clermont was five stories of tacky luxury. More importantly, it was home to the Clermont Lounge, the place where tedium, propriety, and pronouns went to die.

Crew members who called the city home described the Clermont Lounge to Malvern between copious smirks and snickers. The vintage marquis overhead warmly read: Everyone Welcome. Malvern planned to put that slogan to the test.

The company had sent his bags ahead, and he looked forward to checking out his room. The brochure made the place out to be a real gem hidden inside the grungy red brick exterior – tastefully decorated rooms, an AstroTurf-carpeted rooftop restaurant, fun amenities. Fine and well. What Malvern really needed was a trip to the hotel’s infamous co-tenant, Atlanta’s oldest and most colorful gentlemen’s club. It did not disappoint.

You can renovate a building, as they had done to the Clermont Hotel, but the smell of alcohol, desperation, and hormones were worked into the bricks as was the thrill of stepping from the familiar into the whatever-this-was... festooned with PBR stickers and photos dating back to the joint’s groovy Jungle Club days. Laughter crashed in waves under the tropical lighting, broken by the occasional Bitch, please! The juke box, solely operated by the strippers, delivered Bluegrass loud enough to rattle teeth and eardrums as Malvern stepped in from the humid evening. It felt deliciously wrong to be here.

A dancer swung her Pabst-and-grits-figure around the stage, itself encircled by a bar clad in duct tape. The woman gave everything to the music, finishing her set by crushing a beer can between her mammalian accoutrements before returning them to their black lacy confines. Fans cheered in either boozy lust or envy, depending. Some patrons were openly fabulous, others more subtle, many securely straight enough to ride the vibe. Indeed, the crowd split equally between those who came to see and those who hungered to be seen. It was all in good fun. This was a cultural and moral Switzerland. No judgements. No cameras.

Malvern made it to the bar in time to brush up against the star of the room as she made her way out onto the floor. Virgin? she chided him while straightening her bra strap.

Not for long, Malvern shot back with a little boy grin. He let his look work its magic on her. The arched eyebrows were his, while he wore his hair swept back and sported the soul patch and closely cropped mutton chops for his current role.

Wooo! Give this man a drink, Mackie! the lightly dressed woman ordered the bartender, who quickly went to work pouring a generous portion over ice, twisting a lemon peel over the top and handing the glass to Malvern.

He drew an appreciative sip, eyes blooming wide. I love Tanqueray. Brilliant. How did you know?

He figured someone like you would like that, she answered.

As his senses caught up with him, Malvern took a good look at his new bar buddy. She was a charming Black woman in a blinding platinum Bettie Page cut. She had clearly outlasted the parade of dancers whose faces changed while their birthdays never broke thirty. Her warm, unjaded smile hinted at the secret of her longevity in such a transient profession.

Well, I thank you. May I return the favor?

I’m good, ___? The woman raised one perfectly plucked and penciled brow.

What? Oh, right. I’m Malv – Wes, to my friends.

"Well, Wes to my friends, welcome to Atlanta, baby. Who am I?" This she directed to the immediate crowd.

They knew the drill and obligingly shouted back, Nyxi! with great gusto.

She continued, Nyxi Noir, Goddess of the Night. And these mongrels are my friends, although outside this bar no one knows anyone or anything. Right?

Right! the others shouted, with a few adding, Fuck, yeah!

We’re glad you and your buddies are shooting a series in our little town.

Oh, you –

The second you walked in. It’s not like I can buy a box of tampons without seeing your face on the cover of the tabloids. Don’t worry, sweetie. No one here squeals. You’re safe as can be.

Thank goodness for that. He waited until the moment stretched and the smile began to slip from her mouth. "Although, I was hoping not to be quite so safe as it were."

You’re not talking about little old Nyxi, are you? Her voice went up through the titter ranges into a chirp.

Oh. Well, that would of course be wonderous and memorable, an evening inscribed in heaven’s crystalline vault for eternity, but I was actually looking for something...

Well, I’m no pimp, MalWes, sweetie. She was playing with him. He was nervous and she knew it and she liked it. Oddly enough, he liked how this was going. I do happen to know how to read a room, however. There’s a man over in the far corner, well-dressed, good looking. Not one of our regulars. Anyway, he’s had his eye on you since you walked in.

Nyxi smiled and nodded. Malvern smiled and hesitated, then hazarded a glance at the far corner she had indicated.

He was there. Five-nine, dark-haired, a sub-Saharan god in rose-tinted glasses and pricey casual (and tight in the right places) summer clothes. His lips curled up on one side, pinning a mischievous grin to his otherwise saturnine features. Malvern muttered a thank you to Nyxi and began walking, just as a fiddle and bass quartet took the stage and lit into a rambling alt-folk number.

The man removed his eyewear with a perfectly manicured hand adorned with an antique gold ring set with a succulent red berry of a stone. He locked his eyes, blue as an iceberg’s heart, onto Malvern’s mud brown pair. A euphoric dew beaded his skin. Nothing mattered except the twin azure pools drawing him closer. It was a duel to see which of them had the greater appetite, and this magnificent man was winning. Malvern’s heart indulged in giddy schoolboy nonsense. He wanted to get lost in those eyes forever.

It was everything movies and TV were not. The breathlessness of falling into Malvern’s room upstairs, the non-sequitur conversation about stars and time and a hunger for sensation in the yawning absence of meaning... laughter and touch. Bumping into the nicely restored mid-century furniture. Falling together then drawing apart only to sink back into the other’s gravity well. Kissing. Oh, the kissing. Finally! That way. There. Yes, right there! That feeling.

The clothes flew and tumbled in a laundramatic orgy of colors until the two men were skin-to-skin (pasty white vs. ebony) on the narrow granny-style bed, in an embrace Malvern prayed would never end. He reveled in the other’s warmth and earthy musk.

Dwayne, I – Despite enjoying greater stature, Malvern felt small, childlike in this stranger’s powerful grip.

Don’t worry. Now is when all worries end, Dwayne said. Dwayne would have to do. In the crowded bar below, Malvern had only half-heard the man’s last name. He might have dismissed it, but he thirsted to know more about this man.

I’ve never felt this way before, he chanced. His tongue went dry in his mouth, making his words clumsy.

Dwayne laughed out loud. You sound like one of your movies! His humor and words tore through Malvern.

You know who I – yes, of course you do.

It doesn’t matter. That is a famous face to be sold to fools. Tonight, we sell ourselves to something much bigger, far more permanent than silly flickering lights.

Yes, oh yes! Malvern did not kiss the other man but closed his eyes and waited to be kissed. Their lips met softly. He felt the other draw him ever tighter, making his flesh bristle and thrill.

The sensation began to pulse, where their skin pressed hotly together and throughout Malvern’s body. He had never been more aroused, but it was more than that. His hair stood up. The muscles of his legs spasmed. And there was a warm penetration. Not the one he expected. Not like anything he had ever felt. It entered him first in his abdomen, then at several points along his chest. Each point grew warm and then all at once seared into him as if he’d fallen on red hot daggers. And they moved, flexed. He could feel the rude trespassers probing inside the organs and tissue where he could never dig them out. They found the cells and then drilled deeper, always deeper. One wriggled and furled itself around his spinal cord. In an instant, a wormhole in space created a corridor linking bloody Arcturus to the base of his skull.

Stop! What’s happening? Oh Dwayne, it hurts. Malvern pleaded even as he hoped the pain would continue. How was this possible? Terror waltzed with delight. Was that his true nature? He’d never suspected.

Ssshhh, the voice of Dwayne said, coming from lips that were nothing like what Malvern recognized from the last few hours. "This is what you need. It’s what we both need. The old way. Let it happen. Ssshhh."

Malvern’s mind wandered over the sands of some distant wasteland. The clock solemnly stared back with a red 8:14. He wanted to cry from a sensory glut that tallied as joy, but no tears came. His eyes burned and he found that he could not blink. It was difficult to focus on the glowing digits, but they appeared to say it was now 11:01, somehow. He felt different. Different in a bad way. Diminished. Insubstantial. And yet somehow content to be this way.

No one witnessed the red numbers pronounce midnight.

The stranger had left.

Malvern Wight was gone.

Chapter 2 – Caught In The Moonglow

Father scolded him no end about purchasing an automobile of lower value even than one of Mr. Ford’s flivvers, but Randolph loved his new candy apple red Willys Overland Whippet because it projected his sympathies for the working man, and most importantly, the padded bench offered little room for Rosemary to escape, so on they motored over the night roads, and the devil take Father. Randolph cranked down his window, then with a grin reached across Rosemary’s pert bosom to lower hers, allowing the brisk ocean air to wash in. He found the brine mist exhilarating, but not nearly so as the prospect of a nocturnal ocean dip with this siren in a short wavy cut. Here along the Narragansett shore, they would don swimming costumes if people were present, but if no spectators disturbed them, why, they would improvise.

You are a rogue, Randolph Wilbur Broodwyk. A mad rogue elephant, she tittered.

I’m not nearly so rotund, he retorted, fiddling unnecessarily with the choke and throttle to impress her.

A lion then. A big stinky male who exists only to service the females of the pride.

Bully imagery that!

Were I not fortified with spirits, I should be alarmed, fearful even. Rosemary chuckled and snorted her comments in the gamine fashion he favored. With her bobbed raven hair shining like a new penny and delicious olive complexion, she had it all over the usual bluenose girls he met in Newport’s wealth-besotted circles.

Tonight, he planned to show her how scandalously he could behave. I hereby vow to fortify you in perpetuity, or at least for as long as the bourbon holds out, Randolph joked, holding out his hand and flipping his fingers in a come-hither fashion.

She obliged him by slipping the contoured silver flask free from the garter on her shapely leg, first taking a nip and then passing it to the driver. You have bourbon and barney-mugging on the brain, she said with a girlish squeal.   

The Whippet’s spoked wheels crunched over the shell-soil mix of the parking area. Indeed, it looked as though they could claim ownership of this stretch of rocks, sand, and surf for whatever debauchery he could convince Rosemary to undertake. The plan formed clearly in his mind. With bracing water and moonlight coating her pale small breasts, hoisting his manhood to full mast, he would reach into his beach bag and pull forth the ring. Here, he had indulged far more than the paltry six hundred dollars he’d spend on the automobile to find her the perfect stone and setting. Once word got out, the newspapers would scream in faux flabbergaster: Playboy Proposes in the Nude!

You have a strange look in your eye, darling. Are you planning to take advantage of me?

I promise you, my dearest, nothing that happens tonight will bring you the slightest distress. In fact, what I have planned is as old as time, but it will be ours forever.

Randolph reached up and turned the silver release inward, opening the driver’s side door. He hurried around the engine and helped Rosemary make her exit, sneaking a look at her leg as she stepped off the running board. The pair climbed over the rolling dunes, pausing over a broken lobster trap that had drifted ashore and now boiled with activity. Luna skittered in and out of cloud cover, doling meager light for them to observe. Whatever was caught inside was being unmade by meticulous claws and mouthparts. What wonders nature holds! What surprises! she said. Off in the rustling sea oats, a solitary dog sang a lament to the night. The lovers carefully made their way to the sand and lay out a large blanket. Rosemary began to disrobe.

If you wish, I could turn my back, Randolph said with a rakish insincerity.

Only if you don’t like the way I look unclad. That would be a sad start to eternity, darling. Even as she teased his ears with provocative words, she treated his eyes to the removal of her midnight blue la garçonne and pink silk chamise in two swift (practiced?) motions. All that remained were a pair of gartered black stockings framing a matching, wickedly unkempt hedge.

Randolph unbuttoned his shirt with one hand while twist-sharpening the waxed tips of his recently grown moustaches with the other. You are a vision, he said softly.

Oh, dear! she trilled.

What is it, moonflower?

We seem to have company.

Rosemary was looking past him, up the beach. Randolph turned to see a dark figure approaching them, vaguely illuminated by the moon and by the intermittent beam of Musselbed Shoals Light.

Bugger it! Hundreds of miles of shoreline and see where this damn drunk picks to–

Rosemary, hastily wrapping her dress around her shoulders in cape-like fashion, interrupted him, He doesn’t look zozzled.

Of course, he does. He’s lumbering like a sailor who’s swallowed a month’s pay.

They could hear its breathing now, low and raspy, a rhythmical chuffing that mimicked the ocean’s breakers. Its head lolled forward, sending down long dense locks that obscured its face. The figure increased its stride, breaking into to an almost loping gait. The limbs articulated in contradictory movement. It walked upright like a man, but its mien suggested something lower. This was a predator.

Let’s go, Randy. Forget the blanket and bag. Let’s just –

Randolph hesitated, thinking about the ring in the bag. He still had his pants on, though his shirttails hung out, loosely catching the sea breeze. He glanced around over the silvered sands. The very thing! He trudged over to a piece of gray driftwood and took it in hand. By this point, the intruder was perhaps five yards away. Randolph tried to sound threatening. Listen, my man, whoever you are, you can turn yourself right around. He positioned himself in front of Rosemary, holding the burled club out as menacingly as possible. You leave now, do you understand? Turn back. Go swim to Europe. I care a snap or less. Less than a snap, do you hear me? Leave us alone!

The intruder stopped. Now mere feet from Randolph Wilbur Broodwyk, son of a shipping mogul and champion of oppressed laborers, the night visitor raised its face into the beam of the distant lighthouse. Its complex visage belonged to no man. Rosemary screamed loud enough to split the darkness. The ghoul lunged at Randolph, clutching at his throat with long hooked fingers, as he vainly beat at it with the weathered driftwood. The shock of the sudden attack and the loss of airflow to his lungs caused Randolph’s knees to buckle. He was at the mercy of this maniac.

Rosemary, who disdained the concept of a weaker sex, stumbled on the cool sands but managed to grab the club from Randolph and swing it at the phantasm with both arms. She landed three solid blows on the gruesome thing’s back before the driftwood snapped cleanly over its head. With a fresh break, Rosemary changed to an overhand grip suitable for stabbing. She raised her arms, intending to plunge this beach splinter into one of the overlarge eyes of their loathsome –

In a moment that would live in Randolph’s memory for the rest of his life, the lunatic swung one unclean hand, extended