UNPEELED
⚠️ Trigger Warning: This story may include references to physical and sexual violence, exploitation, suicide, psychological trauma, and gender-based revenge.
Reader discretion is advised.
Chapter One: Skin in the Game
The brisk wind off the Chicago River reeked of diesel fuel and raw meat. Delilah ‘Dilly’ Marris squinted through the sleet-streaked visor of her dented red courier helmet and let out a breath, tasting the cold air mixed with city grime before narrowly dodging a Lincoln town car that refused to yield. Fulton Market at rush hour was a bastard. Every delivery felt like an ultimatum.
Dilly scanned the barcode with a burner cell phone. She dropped a padded envelope through the drop slot at a boutique tech startup, some vegan app with a name like "Pluntr". Her fifth drop of the day. The screen read "$21.74."
Not bad, it could be better. She tucked the phone into the inside pocket of her dusty leather jacket and pedaled east, slicing through traffic like a hot wire through flesh. Dilly didn't ride just for the money. She rode to move, to avoid the stillness, the deep internal ache, the haunting voicemail she replayed every night from a dead sister whose laugh was as loud and exciting as Fourth of July fireworks.
Dilly's apartment, located above the old fish-and-chips shop, smelled of fryer oil and burned ghosts. She peeled off her jacket, dumped it in a pile with her satchel on the couch, and walked straight to the freezer. Inside, a red velvet bag. Inside that, a locked iPhone with a shiny rainbow case, her sister Joanie's. The battery was long dead; the contents entombed forever like a mausoleum. Dilly didn't need to open the phone. She just needed to hold it.
Joanie had overdosed three years ago, after a man leaked a sex video. That oh-so-private, intimate video went viral in their neighborhood. The police officers shrugged. Consenting adults weren’t a crime. The guy got a celebrity reality show. Joanie got a dirty casket with scratch marks on the inside and a plastic grave marker. Sometimes, the memory of Joanie's humiliation felt like a knot in Dilly's chest, her breath catching as if she, too, were struggling for air. As if her ribs had locked themselves in a brace of anger and grief, refusing to let go.
Dilly took a deep breath and placed the velvet bag on the kitchen counter, beside a bottle of Smirnoff vodka and a stack of faded newspaper clippings—blurred mugshots, headlines about indecent exposure, digital assault, and "boys being boys."
Then came the voicemail. Always the voicemail. She played it on loop, Joanie's voice low and rushed, like she knew time was almost up. Like she knew it would be her last message to the world.
"Dilly… if anything happens to me, don't let them bury me quiet. Don't let them win, okay? Peel them, girl. Peel every damn one."
Dilly slowly poured and downed two shots of vodka and opened the Tinder app on her burner phone. Not to flirt. To hunt.
His name was ‘Kyle’. His profile listed his interests: graphic designer, CrossFit, sapiosexual. She swiped her finger on the cell phone screen to the right and matched with him; not a surprise. Men like that would swipe to match nearly anyone. They had never met, never talked, until the video came. Unsolicited, grotesque, unforgettable; Kyle, pants-less, moaning, mashing his junk into a pile of unseasoned, lumpy instant potatoes. The caption read: ‘Dinner's served, bitch.’
She imagined the potatoes were cold and flavorless, and immediately blocked him on the app.
A week later, Dilly's address was posted online on a revenge message board, along with barely recognizable photos of her from years ago. Comments followed the post.
"Butterface courier wants it."
"She peels bananas all day anyway."
"Choke her with a USB cord."
That's when something clicked inside Dilly's mind. Broke. Shifted.
Dilly hadn't planned to kill him at first. She wasn't even sure she was capable of taking a life. Sure, the revenge fantasies had been there for years, like dark, pulsing vines coiled around her brain, but they always ended at the "what if." In fleeting moments of stillness, she imagined another path, one where she let the anger go, where she found solace in advocacy or in helping others avoid the fate that had befallen Joanie. That alternative flickered briefly, like a firefly in the dark, only to be silenced by Joanie's voice in her head. Never had it gone this far, not until Joanie.
Her sister had died with no closure. No apology. No justice. Just memes. Reddit threads dissecting her body, speculating if she was ‘asking for it.’ A girl reduced to oversharing and screenshotted 144-pixel images and upvotes. The shame killed her long before the pills did.
Dilly had watched her rot from the inside. One day, Joanie stopped breathing suddenly. The funeral was nearly empty. The fish shop stayed open the entire time. Life, apparently, moved on. Except Dilly's didn't.
It started with a burner profile. She lurked on revenge forums, screenshotting usernames and collecting handles and faces. Her first instinct was to confront them online. Public callouts, maybe an Instagram blast or two. But that felt... hollow.
Then she found Kyle. Something about him, the casual cruelty, the snickering privilege, the way he seemed amused by the damage he caused; it made him the perfect peel.
The alley behind his building was dim and grimy, but she'd memorized the camera's blind spots. Her courier routes now served double duty as reconnaissance. She tracked his habits. Knew when he smoked, when he ate, when he left the apartment door cracked for Uber Eats. All she had to do was dress like a courier, easy enough, and knock.
The night Kyle went missing, the city barely noticed. The news hardly mentioned him, just another boring white dude who wandered into the wrong dark alley at the wrong time and didn't wander out. But Dilly remembered every single little detail.
Kyle had answered the door, still watching the television screen behind him, more or less stoned, laughing, holding a vape in one hand and a half-eaten Pop-Tart in the other. He didn't recognize Dilly from the Tinder app. He thought she was just a courier. She was. Just not for a delivery.
Inside his apartment, it reeked of marijuana and Axe body spray. He barely looked up from his phone when he let her in. Probably assumed she was delivering more edibles. That arrogance is what got him on the table.
Duct tape. Heavy-duty zip ties. An old, wobbly kitchen table bought on Craigslist for $20. Dilly pulled a sharp object out of a glass of vodka and whispered to Kyle.
"This is for Joanie."
Then, with deliberate care, she pressed a vegetable peeler to Kyle’s flesh. The first strip landed with a wet thud on the plastic beneath, its clammy touch exhaling a soft, shivering gasp into the room. Dilly hummed an old folk song as she worked, Something absurd and innocent.
She'll be comin' round the mountain…
Chapter Two: Mashed
The first cut didn't bleed. Not immediately, anyway. It was a smooth, clean glide across the inner thigh, a surgeon-like stroke with a brand-new Victorinox vegetable peeler. Dilly had soaked the peeler in a fresh, glistening glass of vodka for exactly twelve minutes. The same every time. The room was lined with clear painter's plastic, like some do-it-yourself kill shelter, and the wooden table from Craigslist, oak, vintage, with legs wobbling slightly, was perfect for strapping down an arrogant, sobbing sack of meat.
The loud, terrified screaming didn't bother her. It sounded like something ancient, something primal, deserved. She worked through in layers, methodically, from the base up. The skin peeled in long, shivering red ribbons. Kyle mumbled something incoherent through duct tape. His eyes pleaded; she ignored them. His calves and thighs twitched, trying to kick, but the zip ties held.
"Now, now," Dilly cooed, brushing his cheek like an aunt scolding a messy toddler. "You wanted mashed potatoes so badly. Let's make it fresh."
The next few cuts bled badly. That's when the crying began.
"Why are you doing this?" he finally gasped, muffled through the tape, tears streaking down his cheeks, saliva dripping from his chin.
Dilly stopped and looked him in the eye. She thought about Joanie—on the bathroom floor, her cold wrist still wrapped in that stupid beaded bracelet from Six Flags.
Then she leaned in and whispered, "Because you started it."
She peeled his inner thighs. His stomach. His chest. Nothing vital at first, just skin. Just enough to feel, enough to last, enough to leave a scar. It was about the message after all. She hummed a tune and soon lost track of time and Kyle’s heartbeat.
When it was over, and she felt the job was satisfied, Kyle was carried down the stairs in a plastic sheet and left slumped over in a dark corner of his apartment complex, surrounded by bloodied shavings of flesh. She took one last look at him. Strapped in torn duct tape, red, and raw, mouth open in a silent scream. Then she placed the stitched burlap sack on his stomach.
PEELED BY REQUEST.
Dilly had cleaned the apartment enough to delay suspicion. She packed the disposable tools into a contractor bag and tossed them into a city bin on Ashland Street, where the waste management strike meant it'd take a week before anyone noticed.
Dilly then sealed something small and shriveled in an envelope. The postage cost was more than she'd guessed, but it was worth it. By morning, Kyle was reported missing by his mother. Of course, he was a ‘momma’s boy’.
A week later, Kyle's mother opened the mysterious package. Inside was a single object: a partially dried sliver of skin, sliced clean and curling like an apple peel, bearing a tattoo of a red heart and the word "Mother."
The Chicago Tribune quoted Kyle's mother saying, "He brought this on himself."
Back in her apartment, Dilly sat cross-legged in a stained t-shirt and striped underwear, the heat from the radiator hissing like a snake. She cut faces from tabloid magazines; grinning men in mugshots, judges who laughed over rape trials, cops with wandering hands, and glued them to burlap scraps. She stitched gently over their eyes. Justice, handmade.
Two days later, the city’s newspapers buzzed with theories. ‘Some gang initiation,’ they said. ‘Cartel warning.’ ‘Sex game gone wrong.’
The police held a press conference with Kyle’s mother. Dilly watched from the couch, eating hot dogs from the gas station down the street. The woman's mascara bled into her cheeks.
She clutched a tissue and said, "My son… he's not perfect. But... but maybe this was a lesson."
Dilly didn't smile. But she didn't cry either.
That night, she logged into her Discord. Not as Dilly. As @UnpeeledQueen. The "Unsolicited" channel was busy. Women sharing screenshots. Confessions. Rage. One girl had found a man running an AI nudity filter on public school yearbooks. Another had just been doxed for rejecting a guy she never spoke to on a dating app. Dilly typed only three words:
"One down. More?"
A new message pinged from @SisterStronger: "We see you, @UnpeeledQueen. Keep going. We're all here, ready to peel back the mask together."
That one line of encouragement, brief and powerful, was a reminder that behind every solitary act lay a vast tapestry of shared history and determination.
Within minutes, she had five usernames, three screenshots, and a folder full of receipts. She scrolled until one caught her eye: a smug podcaster named Chad.
He ran a show called "Chad Talk: Balls to the Wall Masculinity" out of Logan Square. His last episode title? "Girls Who Say No Are Just Shy."
"Mashed potatoes were just the appetizer," she muttered.
Dilly cracked her knuckles and went back to work, sanitizing another brand-new peeler. Her phone made a pinging sound as her next courier delivery came up in the queue. Dilly looked at the route. Logan Square. Near the park. The same area where the sleazebag podcaster recorded his show. Dilly tossed her hair back behind her shoulders and cracked her neck, ready to get down to business. Time to ride.
Chapter Three: Swipe Left
The air in Logan Square had that greasy late-summer heaviness; humid, faintly metallic, and always tinged with sirens. Dilly stood outside a juice bar, pretending to sip a green kale smoothie while watching Chad McMannis record his live podcast from the second-floor window above her. He wore a black muscle tee that showed off a cartoon steak knife tattoo on his left bicep. His cordless headset microphone bobbed as he ranted.
"Cancel culture's outta control, man. You can't even compliment a girl's rack without getting labeled a predator!"
The audience consisted of four men in flat-brim hats and a woman in a tight dress with glittery fake eyelashes. They all laughed, cheered, and clapped with exaggeration. Dilly bit down on her straw so hard it bent.
She first learned about Chad Talk through The Unsolicited Discord. A screen recording of Chad's TikTok had gone semi-viral: him rating Tinder profiles like trading cards and assigning "rapeability scores" based on zodiac signs. Joanie had been a Leo. Dilly added his name to her folder under "Victim #2 – Podcaster Creep."
She stalked him the next week, following him on her courier route like clockwork. Chad was a routine guy. Every Tuesday and Thursday: podcast from 4 a.m. to 6 a.m., protein shakes after, Tinder swipes while he walked home. His apartment building was one of those gentrified "vintage lofts" in Bucktown; exposed brick, Edison bulbs, overpriced rent.
He left his trash out on Tuesdays. That's how Dilly found the empty Cialis bottle and a box of latex gloves labeled "Size Small." She laughed for three whole minutes. She rode past his building at various times on fake delivery runs, mapping blind spots and rear exits. She even sat behind him at a dive bar once, close enough to hear him brag about his "body count."
"Girls love a confident guy," he told the bartender. "You neg them a little, call them mid, and boom, they're yours."
She wondered how confident he'd be naked and zip-tied to a kitchen table. The trick wasn't getting in. It was getting him to invite her. She used a fake profile; blurry old selfies, fake job title ‘Brand Strategist’, shared two of his TikTok posts with a "🔥🔥" comment. The rest was easy.
Chad: "You're in Chicago? Damn girl, you single?"
Dilly: "Single, bored, and pro-meat."
Chad: "Meat? Lmao say less. You wanna chill sometime?"
She suggested Thursday night. She'd bring drinks. He sent his address in under four minutes.
Chad answered the door barefoot, shirtless, his hair damp like he'd tried to seem casual. The apartment was predictably gross: empty energy drink cans, dirty laundry posing as furniture, a crooked-framed poster of Joe Rogan above the toilet. He handed her a Solo cup filled with "tequila and Red Bull."
Dilly pretended to sip. He flopped on the couch, spreading his legs like a man who believed in his own magnetism.
"So, what do you do again? Brand strategist, right?"
She smiled, "You could say that. I'm all about tone. Messaging."
He leaned in, with a cocky grin, "Well, message received."
It only took fifteen more minutes. One flirt. One feigned laugh. One "Oops, spilled my drink. Let me go grab a towel." Then the sound of duct tape, fast and deliberate. The tequila bottle to the back of the head helped a little.
When he awoke, dizzy and confused, Chad was gagged and strapped to a table Dilly had assembled earlier that day. She'd covered the floor in black plastic sheets, tuned the Bluetooth speaker to a loop of canned applause from his podcast, and sterilized her tool in tequila -his brand.
"Hi Chad," she said brightly, adjusting her peeler blade. "Today's topic is Consent. Say it with me."
She pulled the tape from his mouth.
"Please," he coughed and then wheezed. "This is insane. I'm not like them. I'm just playing a character, okay?"
Dilly tilted her head. "Funny. So was my sister. Online, I mean. Everyone said she was looking for attention. Playing a slut."
"No—wait—"
Slice.
The first strip came from just below the collarbone. Clean, precise. She worked like she was shucking corn.
"You know," she said calmly and conversationally, "I used to think I was broken. That I had to carry Joanie's pain forever."
Another long, smooth slice.
"But it's not a burden." Slice. "It's a blade." Dilly replaced the duct tape over Chad's mouth.
He screamed, muffled by the gag. The applause track clapped on, distorted and hollow.
She finished quickly. The cuts weren't deep at first, just enough to humiliate, to mark. Then came the burlap sack, stitched by hand, placed square on his twitching chest.
PEELED BY REQUEST.
Dilly gently removed the blade from the peeler and pulled it across the side of his throat. She left him bleeding out slowly. Someone would eventually find him, or what was left of him.
She rode her bike through Logan Square in the dark of the evening, headlights flickering past, the city wide open and oblivious.
Two days later, in her apartment, Dilly watched the local news. They ran a headline: Podcast Personality Murdered in Bizarre Attack. So far, there were no suspects. Police were baffled; some thought he may have done it himself. Online speculation blamed ‘female incels.’ Dilly rolled her eyes as she poured a shot of vodka, grabbed her laptop, and opened Discord in a web browser.
A new direct message blinked from someone named @LambChopper:
"We've got a guy. Promoter at Vice Club. Slips roofies. Has a hot tub. You in?"
Dilly cracked her knuckles and typed a reply.
"Send the address."
She pulled a shiny new peeler from the kitchen drawer.
Chapter Four: Peel Sessions
Dilly's fingers bled slightly as she stitched words into a burlap sack. She didn't notice until the thread darkened; tiny ruby beads soaking into the coarse burlap. She sucked the tip of her thumb, the coppery tang mixing with the smell of glue and scorched felt. The tiny banner sat softly in her lap.
NO SKIN LEFT TO FAKE IT.
The makeshift collage behind her was sprawling now; half nightmare, half shrine. One corner featured Joanie's obituary clipped from The Chicago Defender, taped beside a folded napkin that still held her sister's lipstick print. Below that: police reports, mugshots, grainy screenshots of unsolicited Snapchats. Above it all hung a banner made from stitched-together men's boxer briefs, spelling out in crude red embroidery:
THIS IS NOT A PHASE.
She'd been quiet since the podcaster. Not out of guilt. Out of reflection. Chad's screams had followed her—not as trauma, but as tempo. She heard them as percussion. Pacing. A reminder that every action landed. Every cut made ripples.
For the first time, Dilly wasn't sure if Joanie was still guiding her. It felt like it was herself now. Her own rhythm. Her own heated heartbeat. She sat on the floor of her kitchen with a half-burned marijuana joint and listened to Joanie's old voicemails again. Some were mundane. Grocery lists. Complaints about their grandma's fried fish grease getting into her hair. But one voice message haunted Dilly like a phantom limb.
"Dill, you remember that time we tried to make potato stamps? With the hearts? And we cut 'em all crooked so they looked like asses instead? God, I miss that. I miss you."
Dilly whispered to the dark, "I miss you too, Jo."
She exhaled smoke through her nose, eyes rimmed red and dry from pure exhaustion. The apartment walls felt tighter than usual. Even the air seemed to sit heavier on her chest. She flipped open her latest notebook—a slim Moleskine stained with ink and what might've been blood from a hangnail. Inside were sketches of weapon configurations, courier routes, and potential exit strategies. A full page was dedicated to a checklist.
VICE CLUB – TARGET #3
Name: Blake Hannigan
Occupation: Club Promoter
Known Alias: "Blake the Snake"
Allegations: 9 and counting (Anonymous, same pattern)
Weapon of Choice: Liquor + Benzoates, "roofies"
Instagram Bio: "Work hard. Party harder. Ask forgiveness, not permission."
Location: Roof patio, Thursday night DJ sets
She drew a box around "Ask forgiveness" and wrote underneath:
"Or ask the ER nurse to reattach your face."
The plan was still loose, but the feeling was solid. Vice Club was upscale. Cameras, bouncers, glass staircases, egos thick in the air like fog. She'd need to look the look. Not sexy, approachable. Party girl camouflage. She dumped her thrift bin onto the floor. Mesh tops. Denim corset. Something in faux snakeskin that made her laugh. Perfect.
Then came the gear: mini zip ties, breath mints soaked in sedative drops, black nitrile gloves. She filled the new Victorinox potato peeler blade slot with a nail buffer, careful not to dull the edge. It gleamed under the lamp like a shiny diamond-plated whisper.
Dilly stepped into the bathroom and stared at herself in the mirror. Long stringy black hair pushed back under a beanie. Nose ring. One eye just a little more closed than the other—Joanie used to call it her "permanent side-eye." Dilly peeled the beanie off. Looked at herself thoroughly.
"Who are you now?" she asked the glass.
No answer. Only the echo of peeling flesh and men who'd never think twice about the women they left behind. On the wall near her bed hung her latest art piece: a potato sack, cut open and painted with nail polish. Each strip bore a single name: Kyle, Chad, and soon, Blake.
Beneath each name, a stitched phrase:
UN-PEELED.
UN-MADE.
UN-FORGIVEN.
She touched the fabric. It felt warm, familiar, like muscle memory. The news hadn't tied the crimes together yet. But whispers were starting, online threads and TikTok speculation building a new urban legend: The Skinner of Chicago. A flicker of doubt, unexpected and unsettling, passed through her. Dilly paused, feeling an involuntary tremor ripple through her fingers, a whispered reminder of her own humanity beneath the myth she was becoming. For a moment, she wondered if this path she walked could ever be reversed, or if the legend would ultimately consume her true self.
As long as those men were afraid. As long as they paused before sending another snap, another dick pic, another threat to ruin a girl's life for rejecting them. Fear, after all, was a language men understood.
She climbed into bed without taking off her boots. Her peeler rested beside her pillow like a lover. She dreamt of her sister; not dead, not damaged; but standing barefoot in a field, peeling apples, and humming ‘She'll Be Comin' Round the Mountain’.
Joanie looked up. Smiled. She said faintly, "You always had the sharpest edge."
Chapter Five: Meat Market
Vice Club pulsed rhythmically like a gaping wound. Three floors of velvet-lined walls, neon-streaked glass, and testosterone. Bodies were jammed wall to wall under violet lights, dripping with sweat and the scent of cheap cologne. Dilly stood in line behind a bachelorette party dressed in pink and feathers, like shimmery flamingos. She adjusted the straps of her faux snakeskin corset, forcing a sly smile and a giggle when one of them complimented her glittered eyeshadow.
She hated this place. The mirrors. The poses. The scent of alcohol-based perfume and barely legal consent. But Blake Hannigan loved it. Full-time Promoter. Influencer. Part-time predator. He was in his element here - smiling with his teeth, eyes scanning every dance floor like a fisher with a shotgun watching a barrel full of fish.
She easily slipped past security like smoke, winding her way through the crowd, trailing her fingers along the walls to feel the vibration of the music. Tonight, Dilly wasn't just another girl in the crowd. She was bait. Inside, the bass from the DJ booth made her ribs and teeth buzz. Feeling was important. It grounded her.
She saw Blake at the bar—blonde, tan, tank-top tight across his chest, shouting over the beat of the music to a girl who looked maybe twenty-one, maybe not. The girl kept looking toward the door, as if she were waiting for a friend or hoping someone would catch her eye and save her. Blake kept nudging a fresh drink toward her.
Dilly moved in. She brushed past the girl like she didn't see her and "accidentally" spilled her own drink on Blake's shoe.
"Oh shit!" she shouted over the music. "Vodka crime scene!"
Blake looked down at his feet, annoyed, then up, up, up, finally scanning her face. Then he smiled. "Eh, this place needs mopping anyway."
Dilly smiled back, tilted her head. "Are you Blake?"
"Depends who's asking."
"Brand girl. From Insta." She winked. "You DM'd me about bottle service, remember?"
His smile widened. "Damn, I do have good taste."
He waved to a server and ordered two shots of Patrón and something pink and glittery no one asked for. Dilly let him keep talking while she feigned a laugh and pretended to scroll through her phone. She made sure he saw the locked screen background—a photo of her and Joanie, arms wrapped around each other at Navy Pier. Joanie's smile was wide, free, unedited.
After the third round of shots and pink drinks, Blake leaned in, "Rooftop's less noisy. C'mon."
Hook, line, sociopath. She followed him up the thin spiral staircase, heels clacking against the metal steps like a countdown. The rooftop patio was quieter—intimate lighting, a hot tub burbling in the corner, nobody else in sight.
"I run a private event up here on Fridays," Blake said, unlocking a side cabinet near the hot tub. "Bottle girls, influencers, no creeps. Real VIP energy."
Dilly smirked. "You really know how to make a girl feel safe."
He handed her a shot. She pocketed a dissolvable strip of sedative beneath her tongue; she made sure she pretended to drink. Blake downed his shot with zero hesitation.
"Wanna get in the tub?" he asked, peeling his shirt off like it owed him money.
She walked toward the hot tub, pretending to fumble with her heel. "Ugh—hang on. I think I stepped on glass. Is there a towel?"
He turned towards the cabinet. That's when she hit him. A quick jab to the throat with the edge of a broken bottle she'd picked up from the bar floor earlier. Dilly kissed him deeply, transferring the sedative strip to Blake's mouth. He gagged, stumbled, tried to scream, but the sedative hit like a wave. She didn’t even need the glass. Blake sank limply into the hot tub.
She had minutes. Zip ties. Gloves. Duct tape. Routine. This wasn't her first rooftop. Wasn't even her first promoter. She dragged Blake toward the corner where an old chaise lounge was half-hidden behind a planter of fake bamboo. Underneath it? A kitchen table. Foldable. Purchased, delivered, and installed yesterday under the alias "B. Skinner."
She hoisted him onto it, unzipped her satchel, and pulled out the peeler.
"This is for the girls who woke up wet and confused," she said softly, tracing the blade along his shoulder. "This is for the girls who were gaslit, blacked out, laughed at."
She peeled slowly. Small strips at first. Inner arm, under the jaw, collarbone—intimate spots. Places men used to mark women. Blake moaned, barely conscious, body twitching like a dying fish out of water as he violently inhaled in his final breath.
"Shhh," she whispered. "You don't have to remember this. That's the point, right?"
She placed the final strip of skin inside a shot glass and left it on his chest. Then came the stitched burlap sack.
PEELED BY REQUEST.
Dilly quickly vanished into the stairwell, her hoodie pulled up, heels tucked in her tote bag. By the time security wandered up to investigate the noise, she was already a few blocks away, on her bike, the calm wind rushing past her ears like faint applause.
Back home, her fingers trembled as she stitched a new banner. A new phrase this time
PEELING IS HEALING.
She didn't believe it. Not really. But it felt good to pretend.
Later that night, Blake Hannigan's Instagram account was deactivated. Rumors flew. Photos leaked. One video surfaced: ten seconds of Blake’s blood-soaked corpse in the corner of the rooftop, skin peeled in delicate ribbons, eyes wild with fear.
The internet did what it always did. They joked. They gossiped. They created memes. But Dilly didn't care. She knew someone out there—some girl, some survivor—was watching. And for once, she was laughing too.
Chapter Six: The Buried Sister
Joanie Marris was buried in a crooked row near the back of Cedar Rest Cemetery—just past the weeping angel statue that lost its head in a storm, and before they built the chain-link fence that rattled every time the wind blew from the west. No one ever came this far out unless they had to. Dilly came twice a year. Once on Joanie's birthday, once after a peel.
She knelt in front of the grave with a flask of peach schnapps and the velvet pouch from the freezer pressed to her chest. She didn't cry. Dilly didn't do tears anymore. Crying felt like putting a Band-Aid on a severed limb—cosmetic grief. She poured a little schnapps onto the grass.
The plastic headstone was simple.
JOANIE MARRIS, 1994–2019. Loved fiercely. Laughed freely. Gone too soon.
"Too soon," Dilly repeated under her breath, staring at the lettering. "That's what they always say when a girl dies inconveniently."
She reached into her jacket and pulled out a fresh burlap square. This one is stitched with black thread.
STILL PEELING
She tucked it under the base of the headstone like a relic. A confession. Maybe even a prayer. Around her, the cemetery was silent, save for a couple of crows doing reconnaissance from a power line.
"Three down," she whispered. "Kyle. Chad. Blake. All skinned, all sobbing. You'd be proud, Jo." She paused… "I think."
The truth was, Dilly didn't know anymore. Not if she was still doing it for Joanie. Not if she was still doing it right. She'd watched the news reports with growing detachment. The police were baffled. The media were desperate. The TikTok conspiracy theorists were calling her "Spudella the Skinstress."
At first, it was satisfying. Watching men squirm, whisper about the "peeler lady," fear the shadows. But lately, the kills had started to feel different. Not hollow, not wrong—just… hers. Less vengeance. More instinct. The rage was evolving into something quieter, deeper. Like sediment settling after a landslide. Like bones getting comfortable underground, no longer trapped by flesh.
She pulled Joanie's old iPhone from the velvet bag. Dead, still. Screen cracked. She pressed the home button anyway. Nothing.
"I miss your voice," she said, her own voice raw. "Even when you were annoying. Even when you called me 'Lil' Potato' and said I had raccoon energy."
A crow cawed. Dilly rolled her eyes.
"That's right. She was funnier than I."
She brushed dirt from the edge of the grave and sat back on her heels.
"I made one scream last night. Blake. The promoter. The one with the hot tub. He begged like a little boy. Said his mom was gonna sue me."
She laughed once, bitterly.
"But you know what? I don't even remember what color his eyes were. Isn't that weird? I remember the stitching on his belt. The freckle near his navel. But his eyes? Blank."
She blinked, looking up at the clouds.
"I think that scares me more than anything. That I'm starting to forget their faces."
A bee landed on the headstone and crawled lazily across the letters. Dilly watched it for a moment.
"You think I'm going too far?" she asked. "Or not far enough?"
She didn't expect an answer. Not from the dead. But she heard Joanie's voice anyway, as if it were stitched into the wind.
"Keep peeling, girl. They'll never feel it 'til you cut deep."
By the time she left the cemetery, the sun was beginning to dip behind the city skyline. Chicago looked golden and soft in the distance, like it hadn't just raised a killer. Dilly stood at the cemetery gate and checked her Discord notifications on her cell phone.
@Fangirl420 had posted a new lead:
A high school teacher turned streamer.
Name: Mr. Aaron Bliss.
Alias: MrBlissful.
Content: "Dating advice for teen boys."
Allegations: Five girls from the same town. Same school.
Defense: "Boys will be boys."
Dilly stared at the screen for a long time. She didn't hit ‘save’ or ‘reply’. Instead, she closed the app and slid her phone into her jacket. Then she walked back toward the train station, past rows of tombstones and shadows. Not quite ready to hunt again.
But getting there.
Chapter Seven: The Comment Section
Aaron Bliss had a face made for movie screens and a voice made for detention. In another life, he'd been a civics teacher—stern, smug, and one "how's your outfit appropriate?" away from a viral HR complaint. When a student filmed him lecturing on "slut math" (something about leggings and male GPA drop-offs), he didn't lose his job. He got a channel. Now, Mr. Blissful had 300,000 subscribers and a merch line.
His top seller was a t-shirt that read, "Facts > Feelings."
Dilly watched one of his livestreams in her apartment while sharpening her peeler blade against a nail file.
"Girls say they want respect," he was saying, "but they post ass selfies for likes. What they really want is chaos. Boys? We bring order."
In the live chat:
🔥🔥🔥
"She was asking for it."
"Bliss for president!"
"Peel these hoes, bro."
Dilly closed the laptop.
"No, sweetie," she muttered. "I do the peeling."
She learned everything she needed in two hours. His real name. His real job is full-time now. Where he lived: an Airbnb loft near Bucktown paid for by Patreon donors, and, because irony always delivered, he ran a side hustle teaching ‘Brand Accountability’ workshops for ex-influencers.
Dilly marked him as Victim #4 in her notebook and named the operation ‘Comments Disabled’.
She didn't need to lure Aaron. He invited the hunt. Every Thursday, he livestreamed from a co-working space downtown. His audience thought it was his "home studio." In reality, it was a glorified tech-bro WeWork office with kombucha taps and podcast booths. She booked the booth next to his under a burner alias: Nina Peelman.
When Dilly arrived, no one questioned the duffel bag slung over her shoulder or the old MacBook covered in fake girlboss stickers. She timed it to the second. She waited until she heard him start his introduction.
"What up, future kings!”
Then she knocked.
"Hey," she chirped, peeking in. "Wi-Fi in my booth's garbage. Mind if I borrow yours?"
Aaron, face glowing brightly under two ring lights, sized her up in half a blink. Pretty enough. Approachable. Not a threat.
He smiled. "Sure. As long as you promise not to cancel me."
Dilly tilted her head. "Why would I do that? I like order."
Ten minutes later, he was unconscious. It was the chamomile tea she handed him. One sugar. Laced with a fast-acting sleep tincture. The duffel bag? Already packed with zip ties, gloves, and one brand-new peeler engraved with #FACTS in tiny letters.
She carried him out the side exit, fire drill-style, and into the alley where she'd parked a fake ride-share van, stolen from an impound lot a week ago. When Aaron woke, he was duct taped to a plywood chair in a borrowed basement off Cermak Street. A spotlight glared in his face. The camera phone pointed right at him. His very own livestream now. No subscribers. No filters. No escape.
"Hello, Aaron," she said from behind the camera. "You've been selected for a brand audit."
He groaned. "Who are you?"
Dilly stepped into view wearing a dark hoodie stitched with the word UNSUBSCRIBE.
Aaron blinked, recognition creeping in. "You're her," he rasped. "That freak. The skin lady."
She grinned, "You've been watching."
"I—whatever you think I did—"
"You did. And then you monetized it."
She started with his outer thigh. Slow. Deliberate. As if she were explaining a concept to a child. Drops of blood trickled down the legs of the plywood chair.
"I counted five teenage girls," she said, dabbing blood with gauze. "All accused you of grooming. But you called it a smear campaign."
He whimpered.
"You blamed 'cancel culture.' You blamed them." Slice. "No more comments now, huh?"
She peeled enough to make a point, then she peeled more. Filmed sufficiently to be unmistakable. Then she ended the stream and uploaded the raw file to an anonymous Dropbox account. It went viral in 48 hours.
#PEELED trended online for three days. MrBlissful's accounts were scrubbed. Sponsors bailed. His fans split, some claiming crisis actors, others quietly deleting their followers. Dilly watched from a laundromat on Western Avenue, eating peanut M&Ms from her jacket pocket, eyes fixed on the tiny screen of her burner phone.
In the Discord channel, @Fangirl420 posted a screengrab from a podcast:
"Skinner of Chicago: Is She Real or Just Feminist Propaganda?"
Another user replied, "Does it matter? They're finally afraid."
Later that night, Dilly stitched another patch for Joanie's quilt.
THE COMMENTS DON'T COUNT IF YOU'RE BLEEDING.
She looked at it for a long time before adding a second line in a smaller red thread:
NEITHER DOES HE.
Chapter Eight: Unsolicited
The message hit her inbox at 3:16 a.m., timestamped like a biblical warning.
@Snuffette:
I found him.
The one who leaked Joanie. The original. The first.
His name's Carter Vale.
He now works for an AI startup.
He's giving a keynote at South Loop Tech Hub this Friday.
You want this one?
Dilly didn't blink. Didn't type back. She just stared at the screen until her fingers curled into fists, her fingernails piercing into her palms. The name hit like gravel in her mouth.
Carter Vale. The mashed potato man before the mashed potato man. Joanie had met him in his sophomore year of college. Art majors, mutual friends, and the same haunted dorms. He filmed her without consent during a night she barely remembered. Leaked the clip when she stopped responding to his messages. The fallout was instant. Joanie spiraled. The internet swarmed. He got clout. She got therapy she couldn't afford, judgment she didn't earn, and a death no one fully questioned.
Dilly sat in the dark, holding and staring at Joanie's phone like it would somehow let out a breath. This one wouldn't be peeled. This one would be undone.
She spent the next three days in a fog of prep and fury. Carter Vale had gone clean-cut since the leak. He rebranded himself as a ‘Digital Ethics Specialist’. His start-up focused on machine learning and "morality indexing." He gave TEDx talks in soft flannel shirts and wore loafers without socks. His keynote at the Tech Hub was called ‘The Human Cost of Unmoderated Platforms’.
The irony made her laugh so hard she choked on her own spit. Dilly cased the Tech Hub twice, posing as a courier and once as an event planner intern. She mapped out exits, blind corners, and most importantly, restrooms with vent access.
She didn't want to kill him like the others. No peeling. No blood. She wanted to unmake him. Publicly.
Thursday night, she posted a poll to The Unsolicited:
Operation VEIL—Final Vote:
⚠️ Exposure?
🩸 Peeling?
🔇 Silence?
The vote tilted hard toward Exposure.
Friday, 10:08 a.m. She entered the South Loop Tech Hub wearing fake credentials and carrying a box labeled AV Repair Kit. Inside: her real kit, burner phone, projector remote, backup drive with the file. Not the Joanie leak, never that. But something just as sharp.
A digital collage of all the usernames Carter ever used. All the screenshots. The video clip he bragged about leaking. His face, repeatedly, stitched into a grotesque slideshow. She'd compiled it through private archives, whistleblowers, and deleted metadata. The truth. Projected. Unfiltered.
11:17 a.m. Carter Vale walked onstage to a room of sixty lanyard-wearing tech hopefuls and four journalists. He opened with a joke about accountability. That's when the projector screen behind him flickered and changed.
The first image was of Joanie. Not naked. Not hurt. Smiling, eyes soft, holding a sketchpad and a coffee. Then came Carter's internet handle @TruthVale, plastered over screenshots of the chat logs. His bragging. The clip's upload timestamp. The anonymous messages confirming he'd filmed it.
One gasp. Then another. Carter froze. Turned to look behind him. A full-body shudder rippled through him.
"This—this is fake," he said. "Deepfakes are a thing—this is slander—call my lawyer!"
Then came the quote - "If she didn't want it seen, she shouldn't have looked so into it." —C. Vale, archived Direct Message, 2019.
Someone in the front row stood up and left. Two others followed. Carter called for security, but the AV tech, handpicked by Dilly two days earlier, just shrugged. Dilly didn't stay to watch the full fallout. She was already outside, back on her bike, gliding down Canal Street with the wind in her ears and Joanie's memory in her bones.
No blood this time. Just the truth. Just the soft, sick sound of a man being peeled without a blade.
Back home, she stitched a final patch for the quilt.
THE UNPEELED DESERVE TO BURN.
She pinned it next to Joanie's lipstick-marked napkin. Then she powered down every burner phone. Deleted the Discord. Wiped her drives. Took a deep breath.
Not done. But complete.
That night, a news alert pinged across Chicago:
CARTER VALE RESIGNS FROM ETHICS STARTUP AFTER SHOCKING VIDEO SURFACES. INVESTIGATION UNDERWAY.
Online, a hashtag emerged: #UNPEELED.
Women began openly sharing stories. A database opened. A map formed. Dilly didn't claim credit. She didn't need to. It wasn’t for her.
It was for the voiceless.
Chapter Nine: The Great Lakes Exit
They called it The Skin Quilt. No one knew who found it first, just that it had been nailed to a boarded-up window in Fulton Market sometime after midnight. Rough burlap patches. Bloodstained thread. Each square is a name, a phrase, a symbol.
PEELED BY REQUEST
NO SKIN LEFT TO FAKE IT
THE COMMENTS DON'T COUNT IF YOU'RE BLEEDING
THE UNPEELED DESERVE TO BURN
At the center, a stitched heart, lopsided, crooked—like a potato stamp. Below it, one name in faded lipstick print.
Joanie.
The police had pulled it down by morning. But not before someone snapped a photo. By noon, it was trending. By nightfall, it was legend.
Dilly watched from a diner in Waukegan, hood up over her dark hair, fingers sticky from syrup. The server called her "hon" and refilled her coffee three times without asking. The tiny TV above the grill played the local news.
"No official suspects in the so-called 'Skinner' case, though multiple sources believe the vigilante may have ties to an underground feminist network operating on encrypted servers…"
Dilly smiled faintly. Not a vigilante. Not a monster either. Just a woman who had enough.
She paid in cash. Left a stitched scrap on the table in place of a tip.
BE KIND OR BE PEELED.
Then she walked out into the dawn and unlocked her bike.
The city thinned as she headed north. Less skyline, more shoreline. The lake was a silent creature—vast, cold, patient. Dilly rode her bike until the pavement ended, and the gravel picked up, until she couldn't see buildings anymore. Just docks, reeds, and fog.
She didn't need a map. She'd been planning this exit since before the first kill. An abandoned boathouse waited at the edge of Lake Michigan, rotting like a pulled tooth. Inside, a duffel bag, a burner phone, and a notebook wrapped in velvet.
She flipped open the notebook one last time. Each victim had their own page. Each kill—a drawing, a headline, a blood type. But the final page held only a poem, written in ink and spite.
She peeled them not to kill,
But to reveal what skin concealed.
Now ghosts applaud from every scar,
And justice travels by bike, not car.
Dilly shut the notebook with a shudder. Tied it tightly with burlap cord and threw it into the deepest part of the lake.
No one ever saw Delilah ‘Dilly’ Marris again. Not officially. Though rumors remained. A woman matching her description was spotted on the ferry to Mackinac. Another report from a co-op farm in Michigan's Upper Peninsula. An anonymous blog post that claimed The Unsolicited was still active—just deeper, darker, and more careful. One Chicago detective retired early.
Another blogger wrote a memoir titled “She'll Be Comin' Round the Mountain: The Skinner Files," but changed all the names. The online theories multiplied. Was she real? Was she a movement? Was she the ghost of every girl the internet tried to erase?
Back in Chicago, people found stitched scraps in strange places. Locker rooms. Parking garages. Bathroom stalls. Always the same thread. Always the same message:
YOU'RE NOT CRAZY. HE IS.
And every so often, when the moon was low, and the wind rolled off the lake just right, you could hear it. The click of a bike chain. The hum of a girl singing…
"She'll be comin' 'round the mountain when she comes…"
END
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