His head was a thing of horror. The skin looked like it belonged to a dead creature; all patchy and stippled with patches of purple and red.

In the centre, beneath the crown of his perfectly bald head, were the livid red lines of the swastika that had been carved into his skin more than two decades before by the countrymen he betrayed.

Jean Favre.

Le Tanneur.

I don’t know if he heard me breathing. But he stopped moving. Stopped stirring the pot. Then he reached out a pale white hand and picked up the light.

The shadows changed. I turned to my right and saw how he had decorated the wall. At first I thought it was a tapestry; a motley assemblage of different threads and colours, swirled together into an abstract wall hanging the length of the room.

It was only as I peered closer that I made out the details. Saw, with cold terror that the hanging was made up of skin, stitched to skin, stitched to skin.

I couldn’t move. Just stood there, staring at this collage of flesh; this confusion of different leathers, and tried to keep myself from sinking to the floor as the sheer horror of what I was seeing flooded my senses. This was not just animal skin. I could make out great patches that were unmistakably human; unfolded features, flattened out as if their owners had melted into vile puddles of membrane and tissue, then stitched to the flanks of cows and calves, pigs and deer, birds and fish and foals.

There was movement to my left and then a sudden swift blur. I was on my knees before I felt the pain. Then there was wetness on my face and filth in my hair as I collapsed forward onto the damp floor. I tried to stand but my legs wouldn’t work. Far away, I heard the smash as the glass bottle hit stone. The light in the room had changed. Through the flashing colours I could see a round, flat stone, the diameter of a cart’s wheel. Laid out on the smooth surface was a corpse. The entire torso had been stripped of meat. Beside it was an older body; grey and green and putrid. The top of its head was missing.

I looked up and into the face of Mr Parker. Without his wig, and with the battle scars carved into his bare chest, he looked like a child’s drawing of a monster.

He raised the paddle a second time. There was no emotion on his face as he brought it down once more.

My final thought, before everything went black, was a kind of sad, scared acceptance. I had what I wanted. I had revelation and truth: reward for my perseverance and stubbornness.

And now I had the consequences.

FELICITY

Transcript 0011, recorded November 1, 2010