Leon was a lonely orphan with no friends, and he loved to look at flesh.
After leaving school at sixteen with an appreciation of classical sculpture and no interest in a real career, he took a job as a receptionist in a naturist resort so he could watch the bending and twisting of skin during volleyball, the bunching of muscles as ping-pong was played, the diamond patterns of fat on the buttocks of sunbathers.
But really he wanted to put aside his binoculars and leave his receptionists hut behind: he wanted to touch. He saw no reason why he shouldnt, but the naturists complained when he sneaked up behind them, his hands splayed and ready to grab, and the job was taken away.
He signed up for benefits and got a flat in a city. Then there was only one answer to his need for flesh.
Clay.
He bought pounds of it, and took it back to the living room of his tiny flat.
Smooth between the fingers, it seemed to make itself into the shape of a woman, and it was easy to form the breasts to his palms and then pinch the nipples into being. His years of devotion to flesh flowed through his hands and into his creation, and when he was finished, she was quite, quite perfect.
Galatea, he whispered against her cold lips.
That night, for the first and last time, he prayed. And in the morning, he opened his eyes and saw her in the corner of his bedroom. She had walked there. She was watching him.
Galatea, he breathed. He got out of bed. He touched her arm.
Shes warm if this be magic, let it be an art lawful as eating
He kissed her. She kissed him back, but she would not open her lips. He examined her nostrils, and between her legs: there were no holes in her. She was solid. Somehow alive, but solid to him.
But she was flesh, and he loved her. He told her to exercise, then stroked her as she stretched, and touched the twists in her torso. He slapped her buttocks and watched the ripples. He licked his finger and ran it from her pert nose to her perfect navel.
For one week, it was enough.
But one week and one day passed, and he discovered he wanted more. He wanted to penetrate.
He told her to lie on his bed. Then he took a pair of scissors, and tried to cut apart her lips. The blades slipped into her flesh, but when he pulled them out, the gash he had made closed without a seam.
So he took a skewer, and held it over the flame of his two-ring gas hob until it was white hot. Then he told her to open her legs, and he thrust the skewer between them, up into her, so that the tip of the skewer must have reached to that perfect navel. He left it there to cool.
But when he came back, hours later, he found there was nothing to pull free. The skewer had vanished. Her flesh had simply sucked it in and closed around it.
So he took his garden shears and snipped off one finger at a time, looking for a hole, or just one air bubble, anything to show that she could be hollowed out.
Nothing.
Then he snipped off her toes.
Nothing.
Then he took his largest kitchen knife and sliced her, thinly, from her toe stumps upwards, through her knees, thighs, hips, ribs and shoulders. And finally, a miniscule amount of flesh at a time, he cut through her face until he reached the very top of her head.
Nothing.
Galatea, he said, but on the bed there was only a scattering of wafer-thin pink shreds, like feathers of a flamingo who had flown away.