Flurry of Faces

Ashley Campbell ‘26

This piece began out of simply sketching one face. Then two. Then three. And before I knew it, I had filled the paper with several charcoal expressions. Ultimately, this work was a rediscovery of my passion for art as I found myself completely enveloped in the process of making this sketch.

Unfleshed

Her head turned over her shoulder. Unnatural. The way she rested her neck against the red

tendons covering her collarbone stretched every string-like muscle tight, and it must have hurt

her. Her. I decided this must be a her; she looked much more slender than diagrams I had seen in

biology class, which, I realized at that moment, had all been men. She blinked, and although

there was no flesh over her eyes to close, I was sure the way her green eyes looked down for a

split second and returned to stare up at mine must’ve been a blink. Her face looked like raw

steak, deep red on her cheeks and forehead, then stitched with white at every rise and fall of the

head’s shape. The rest of her body was more woven together with red and white, almost marbled.

The whole body—hunkered down, front facing the closet’s backside, legs folded in, crouching an

inch off the ground, right arm grabbing the left, torso twisted for the head to face me and the

fluorescent bathroom light I stood in—was wet. But there was no blood.

She was simply unfleshed.

Charlotte Lebedeker ‘25

Recently, I've been trying to get into writing more horror. I'm working on a short story featuring an undead creature that has been "unfleshed" down to her muscular system. This short piece is the introductory description of said creature.