No one with any sense of curiosity could have ignored the three journals in the old chest, which Tim came across whilst helping to clear out his aunt's house. So why did Aunt Mickey want him to destroy them?

Warning: Whilst there are no graphic descriptions of violence, this story tells of incidents of incredible cruelty which occurred in a historical setting, and some readers may find uncomfortable the overall premise of the story. Don’t read it if you are of a sensitive nature.

"But Aunt," I protested. "These are historic documents. You can't throw them away."

"Bollocks!" she replied, never one to mince words. "For the most part, they're the ramblings of a boring old fart, pontificating about how much better we British are than the African natives amongst whom he lived."

"For the most part?" I queried. "What about the rest?"

"Bollocks," she repeated. "I didn't mean to say there was an acceptable part. No, if it's not boring, then it's plain, bloody evil."

I eyed the three, leather-bound journals inside the wooden chest, which my aunt had told me to throw into the skip which stood outside in the driveway. We were clearing my Aunt Mickey's house in preparation for her to move into an old people's home. I envisaged that the old people's home would never be the same again.

"If you're intending to throw them away, do you mind if I take them, instead?" I asked. "I'd like to read through them. You say they were your great-grandfather's journals when he went to Africa as a missionary?"

"Tim, the answer is yes to both questions," Aunt Mickey replied. "Yes, they were written by my great-grandfather when he was in Africa, and yes, I mind if you take them. I want them destroyed."

"But Aunt," I protested. "You've raised my curiosity now. You can't leave me pondering what it's all about. You'd never have put up with that when you were working." Mickey had been a war photographer for one of the major daily newspapers. You've almost certainly seen some of her work over the last half century, as she travelled the world, photographing man's atrocities to man.

She stared at me for a second, and then relented. "All right. I guess it's time to stop house clearance, anyway, and crack open a bottle of wine. I'll do a compromise. I'll tell you what's inside the journals and then you don't have to read them, OK?"

"Here's the compromise," I said. "I'll pour the wine and you can tell me the story. Then I'll decide whether that has satisfied my curiosity. How's that?"

She grinned, rather sheepishly. "I guess when I was working, I'd have been satisfied with nothing less," she said.

So I got a bottle of red wine from her wine rack, poured two glasses and then settled down in one of the easy chairs in her lounge, whilst she stood guard next to the chest, just to make certain I didn't try to snatch the books and read them for myself

"The first two journals," she said, pulling them out of the chest and standing them up alongside it, "are exactly what I indicated. My great-grandfather, Ebenezer Craddock, was born in 1830. He married Emily, and fathered eight children. When being a father became too much responsibility, he decided to become a missionary, go to Africa and teach the natives that it was evil to run around with no clothes on. The two journals give the minutia of life as a missionary with a tribe called the Mikatta - how he occasionally managed to use his medical box to save the life of the odd child - more by luck than judgement; and how he would preach at them that his God was so much better than their own. Boring, boring, boring."

"And the third journal?" I prompted.

Mickey sipped her wine for a few seconds before taking the third journal out of the chest and standing it alongside the others. "In the third journal," she said, "Ebenezer showed that when it came to evil, he could play in trumps. OK, he was faced with death, but I've photographed the bodies of men who have faced death with courage, taking secrets to their grave even after horrific torture. But he decided that if you can't beat them, you join them."

"What happened?"

"The Mikatta village was attacked and overcome by a tribe of ferocious warriors called Ju-Jito. He and the villagers were bound together and forced to march back to the Ju-Jito village, carrying with them all their worldly possessions. However, when they arrived, the chief was told that the witch-doctor had died suddenly whilst they'd been away, and the chief's daughter was seriously ill. Ebenezer immediately saw his chance and said he could cure the girl - which, by some fluke, he did - and the chief appointed him as the new witch-doctor. The third journal describes the horrific way that the Ju-Jito treated the Mikatta - and Ebenezer joined in with relish. After they'd finally eaten them all, they went on to attack and capture more tribesmen from the surrounding area and do the same to them."

"They ate them!" I gulped. "That's horrible."

Mickey shook her head sadly. "I can assure you, that is understatement in the extreme. For example, first of all they took the beautiful daughter of the Mikatta chief - she was about eighteen - bound her hand and foot, and sacrificed her to the Snake-God."

"Snake-God?"

"It was a giant python, which they kept in a pit. Everyone had to watch as it constricted the girl to death and then swallowed her whole."

"Yuk!"

"She was the lucky one - it was a relatively speedy death. The Ju-Jitos then feasted on a meal of boiled meatballs, which they believed increased their virility. They didn't use any anaesthetic when they cut those off."

"Ugh!" I curled up a little at the very thought, as would most men.

"After their meal, they proceeded to rape the women - over and over. Meanwhile, they popped one of the guys live into a pot of water, brought it to the boil and turned him into a stew, which everyone was forced to eat - they needed to fatten them up, you see, because eventually, every one of them went into the pot, was boiled alive, and then eaten."

I shook my head in disgust. "Did he ever get back to England?"

"Never," Aunt said. "After the church in England found out about him being taken prisoner, they pressurised the local government into sending in troops to capture the Ju-Jito and free him. In fact, he was shot as one of the Ju-Jito during the attack, and it was only afterwards they realised who he was. His journals were brought home, and when his wife read them, she fell ill and never recovered. My grandmother was the only remaining child at home by that time. She hid the books and kept them secret. She passed them on to me after I'd become a war photographer, figuring I could cope with the horrors inside."

She turned to me, looked me in the eye and said, "Now do you see why I don't want anyone to read these journals. They are plain evil. They need to be destroyed."

I nodded. "You're right, Aunt. They are evil. I don't want to read about such stuff. Shall we go and feed the bonfire?"

She came out with me - I think still nervous I might be going to trick her and keep the third journal - but I have no stomach for such horror stories. We broke the backs on the journals, tore out the pages and fed every one of them to the bonfire.

"Ebenezer Craddock, rot in hell," Mickey said. It was the first time I had ever heard her curse anyone.

***

We went back inside the house, recharged our glasses with wine, and took our first sips before I nodded towards the chest in which the journals had been stored. "Can I keep the chest?"

She shrugged, unconcerned. "No room for it in my new place."

I went over, picked it up and looked at it. "There's still something here," I said, reaching inside to pull out what looked like black, folded parchment which had been resting beneath the books.

Mickey quickly grabbed it from me, I think in case it had more evil text written on it, but it wasn't parchment at all. She unfolded it once; then again; and kept unfolding until it reached down to the floor."

"It's someone's skin!" I gasped in horror.

Mickey nodded. "You're right," she said. "I've seen human skin before in some of the more primitive war zones, but never has it been so well preserved." She held it up for me to see. "It's completely intact. Do you see?"

"Aunt. It's horrible," I said. "Put it down."

"I don't see why," she said. "The girl was at least dead when it was removed."

"How do you know it was a girl?" I asked, "and how do you know she was dead before she was skinned? It sounded like those savages would stop at nothing."

"You only have to look at it to see it was a girl," she said, waving the genital area towards me. "I think this skin belonged to the chief's daughter who was eaten by the snake,"

I wrinkled my nose and said, "I thought snakes digest everything they swallow." All the same, now I could think about the skin objectively, it had lost much of its horror.

"They do, normally," Aunt said. "It's rather a shame we've burnt the journals because I recall something about the Ju-Jito coating the woman's skin with sap from one of the trees which, Ebenezer claimed, prevented it from being digested by the snake. I thought it was just pure invention, but it's difficult to see how this skin could have been removed from a body without tearing it just a little." She held it up again. "See, it's completely intact."

I stared at the black skin from head to toe. It did, indeed, look completely intact. "So the rest of her body was dissolved by the snake's digestive juices, but the skin was not." I had a sudden thought. "Do snakes excrete?" I asked. I'd never thought about it before.

"There's a kind of liquid shit," Mickey said, "but considering what goes in the one end, there's usually little to come out the other. It must have felt bloody constipated when it shit this out."

I touched the skin for the first time since I'd realised what it was. It felt like - skin. I was rather saddened about the girl who had once occupied it, but even if she hadn't been captured by the Ju-Jito, she'd have been long since dead. "Why did they preserve the skin?" I asked.

Mickey shook her head and said, "I think it was regarded as another way of humiliating their captives," she said. "As I say, I thought it was pure imagination when I read it in the journal, but apparently they forced the chief of the Mikatta to wear the skin of his daughter, so he appeared just like her. Then, they raped him many times over - presumably, it was anal rape. Afterwards, they sacrificed him to the Snake-God, and of course, eventually the girl's skin reappeared out of the back passage."

"Total fantasy!" I said.

"So I thought until we found this skin."

I stared at it. "So you're suggesting this skin has been through the snake twice?"

Mickey shrugged. "That's the story, but I don't see how they could have forced someone to wear it without splitting it open." She gave me a grin. "Shall we give it a try?"

"What?" I said. "You're crazy. You'd never get it on without tearing it to pieces."

"Who mentioned me putting it on?" she asked, a twinkle in her eye. "It was a man who was supposed to wear it."

"But the story must be rubbish," I said, confused by my own reactions - I should have rejected it out of hand.

"I'm not so certain, now," she said. She turned it upside down and fumbled between the legs. "See, when I stick my fingers up her arse and pull it apart, the skin is quite elastic."

It was true; whatever the sap had done to make it indigestable to the snake had also strengthened it and made it elastic. Mickey had stretched open the arsehole until it was more than wide enough to insert my head.

"You're crazy," I said.

"I'll get the camera," she said.

"No! Not the camera," I said.

"Then you'll do it as long as I don't photograph you?"

One part of me said the whole thing was rubbish - it wouldn't work; another part said the idea of looking like a woman should be abhorrent to me; whilst the third part said I really, really wanted to give it a go. I knew I was hooked. "OK," I said. "But absolutely no sneaky photographs. Agreed?"

"Damn," she said. "You know me too well. OK, absolutely no photographs."

So I slipped off my tee-shirt and Mickey again stretched the anus wide open so I could slide my arms and head inside. Once it was over my shoulders, she let it go and it was incredibly uncomfortable as it tightened around my chest.

"Let's see if we can get your head through the neck," she said. "Can you breathe all right?"

"Just about," I said, "but I won't be able to whilst you're pulling the neck over my face. You'll need to do it quite quickly."

Neither of us thought that this was an antiquity that we ought to be placing with a museum, rather than almost ripping it apart in our determination to get me into it.

"I think it might be better," she said, "if you slide your hands into the neck opening from the inside and force it apart. You can then pull it down over your head, protecting your breathing as you go. I'll position it from the outside so that your eyes and mouth line up with the apertures."

It worked. I managed to get my head through the neck opening and into place inside the skin's head. With Mickey twisting, stretching and pulling, we managed to manoeuvre it until my head fitted snugly inside. A bit more wriggling and I could push an arm down each of the arms in the skin, and Mickey helped to get my fingers into the gloves at the end.

"Not bad," she said. "Come and look in the mirror." She pulled me to my feet and led me into the hallway to peer into the full-length mirror.

I gasped. Beneath my arm pits, the skin was all jumbled around my torso, but the face was perfect. The skin had stretched my face a little here and there, pulling it into the shape of a rather pretty girl. My hands and arms were perfect except for the nails.

"Clearly the sap didn't work on the nails," Mickey said. "But I can get you some false ones easily enough. The rest is fantastic. Don't you agree?"

"Fantastic..." I agreed, and then stopped speaking as my voice came out quite differently from normal.

"It's probably because of the pressure around your throat," Mickey said. "See! It even makes you sound like a girl. Shall we get on with the next bit?"

"I'm not certain that's a good idea," I said, suddenly aware it would mean removing the rest of my clothes. It wasn't just that I was rather shy of doing so in front of my aunt, but having looked at my reflection in the mirror, for some reason I had a raging hard-on that was simply crying out for attention.

"Don't be stupid," she said, determinedly taking me by the hand and dragging me back to the lounge. "We're not stopping now." She pushed me into a chair and then was pulling off shoes and socks with a speed that revealed she was well used to doing that for men.

"Lift your bum," she said, having unfastened my trousers even more rapidly.

"No but Aunt..." I said, realising she was in for a shock when my rock-hard prick sprang out at her.

"Oh, for heaven's sake," she said, giving my trousers a hard yank which brought them and my underpants down to my knees.

"Sorry, Aunt," I said, feeling my prick leap out towards her.

"No need to be sorry," she said. "That's a very respectably-sized prick you have there. Nothing to be ashamed of."

"No, but..."

My words were cut short as she took my cock in her hand and gave it a few trial flicks of her wrist.

"Not the first time I've had to do this in the line of duty," she said, conversationally, as I started to grunt, and she squeezed my cock even harder.

"But Aunt..."

"We don't want that cock spoiling the line of your lovely new body, do we?" she said.

Hell! She knew how to wank a man. My cock was glistening, and going a deeper shade of purple than I'd ever seen it before, and she squeezed harder and harder, and shafted faster and faster.

"I think we're pretty well there," she said, pulling a tissue out of a box on the table.

I certainly was. I squirted great gobs of semen into the tissue whilst she continued to milk me until I was dry.

"Excellent," she said, "now, stand up and let's pull this skin down your body."

"But how am I going to get my legs inside it?" I asked.

"Not certain at the moment," she said, "but it certainly looks as though what Ebenezer wrote in the journal was true, so the Ju-Jito managed it somehow. I guess they must have knocked the guy out before trying it - they'd never do it to someone who was resisting. We'll simply pull everything down and then play it by ear."

So between us, we pulled the skin as far down my body as we could, and got to the point where it came down to my groin.

"Doesn't seem to want to come down any further," Mickey said, pulling for all her worth. "Let's try another approach. Sit down on the floor."

You have to understand that whilst my head, arms and shoulders were properly installed inside the skin, my torso was still effectively entering the skin through the arsehole, with the empty legs and feet of the skin hanging lifelessly down in front of me. Mickey's plan was that we should pull the rim of the arsehole back up my body until it was around my armpits again, then I would pull my knees up to my chest and she would stretch the arsehole wide open, pull it over my knees, and then back down my body.

It worked!

Once she'd got it down over my bum with my knees inside, I was able to push my legs into the legs of the skin and force them down, until my toes reached right into the toes of the skin.

"There!" I cried, standing upright, and then wishing I hadn't as it seemed to pull everything tight. God knows what it did to my testicles, but they seemed to go somewhere inside my body they'd never been before.

"Hell! You look fantastic!" Mickey said.

"Do I?" I had to rush back to the hallway and look in the mirror. She was right. My normal flabby tummy had been pulled in and my rather floppy man tits had been shaped into firm breasts with small, black nipples. "Hell! That is fantastic!" I said.

"How does it feel?" she asked.

I considered. "Now I've got used to it, it's quite comfortable," I said.

"I meant," Mickey said, "how does it feel being a pretty, black woman?"

"Oh!" I paused a little. "I guess it feels OK."

"Come on then," Mickey said. "Let's go upstairs and find you some clothes."

***

In a strange way, I've always envied women. I don't just mean lusted after them as most blokes do. No, it was more that they seemed to have so much more fun in everything they do. At the office, it was almost compulsory for men to dress in sombre suits, whilst the girls came in colourful skirts and tops, and pretty dresses - even their trouser suits had far more flair than a man's suit.

I'd been brought up to treat life seriously - get qualifications, get a good job, get promotion, and find a nice woman to marry and settle down with. Of course I hadn't been successful in a lot of that, so inwardly I regarded myself as a failure against the expectations my parents had drilled into me. Whereas women appeared to have far more fun with everything they did, and were successful with it!

So when Mickey suggested we go upstairs and try on some clothes, I made only a token objection which she easily overruled. Within minutes, she was pulling open the black plastic bags she'd prepared for the charity shop, and which contained many of her clothes from her past.

At the end of every assignment, she'd come back with a large bonus and time off in which to spend it. She would go out and buy a new wardrobe, intending to eventually ditch some of her older clothes. But then another crisis would suddenly develop and within a few hours, she'd be off, halfway around the world. Consequently, she had hundreds of clothes from her past of every type and style.

"White underwear with black skin," she said. "I always think it looks so sexy. Don't you?"

I nodded. I couldn't disagree with that.

"And I think a pretty dress to start off with, don't you?"

Another token objection was called for. "I thought perhaps trousers..."

"Don't be silly, Tiffany," she said. "You'd look far prettier in a dress."

"It's Timothy, Aunt," I pointed out, trying to hold onto some part of reality.

"Your parents would have called you Tiffany if you'd been a girl," she said, "and I can hardly keep calling you Tim. I think your new name goes well with your appearance. Now, which of these two dresses do you prefer?"

I pointed to one, and Aunt said, "You always were too conservative. We'll try the other one. It's far sexier."

Within ten minutes, I was wearing a white, lacy bra with matching panties and suspender belt, holding up white stockings. Over the top, I had on a white dress with pretty red flower motifs, with matching high-heeled red shoes. She'd even found a black, curly wig, which she'd used on one of her assignments to pass unnoticed.

"You won't make them too long, will you?" I rather nervously asked, as Mickey glued on some nails she had found amongst her things.

"I think your idea of too long will be different from mine," she answered with a grin. "I'll make them just right for the girl you are."

"I'm not even certain I can walk in these high-heels," I said.

"You'll manage all right with a little practice," she said. "At least, you've accepted the idea of going out."

"Going out!" I was aghast. "I never said anything about going out."

"We agreed this afternoon that I'd take you to a pub for a meal and a drink as a thank you for helping me to clear out this place. Since you were worried about walking in your heels, I naturally presumed you were still happy about the idea. It's hardly as though I'm one of those women who can rustle you up a meal here."

"You're crazy, Aunt!" I yelled. "There's no way I can go out looking like this."

"Your reason being..."

"I'm a bloke wearing a dress. That's why not."

"You don't look it. You look like a sexy, black girl in a pretty dress. What's wrong with that? In fact, even if I was to tell people you were a bloke, no one would believe me. It's not even as though I had the photographs to prove it."

"Thank God for small mercies," I said.

"Look, Timothy - and I'm calling you by your old name for the last time until you change out of this skin. You know how it is when you go to the shops and you try on something which really suits you, and you feel it was made for you?"

I nodded, although it wasn't that frequent an event.

"That's exactly how you've looked ever since you put on that skin. You look natural in it. As though you, and that poor black girl are one and the same. Do you follow?"

I turned away from her, unwilling to say the words, but she let the silence lengthen between us until I was forced to speak. "You're right, Aunt. I do feel natural in this girl's black skin as though it was meant to be. Does that sound perverted?"

Mickey shook her head. "There's nothing wrong in being who you really are," she said. "For this evening, you are Tiffany Mikatta. Agreed?"

I gave her a big, black smile.

***

"Aunt," I said to her next morning, "I think I should take the skin off in order to have a shower. Only I can't do it on my own."

"You are going to put it back on again, afterwards?" she asked, looking rather concerned. "Only you looked so happy last night at the pub - especially when that guy asked you for a date. I don't know why you didn't say yes."

Fortunately, my black skin didn't reveal the blush I could feel burning my face. "Don't be stupid, Aunt. I didn't say yes because I'm really a bloke beneath this skin."

"Yes, but who are you inside?" she asked.

"Look, never mind that," I said, trying not to ponder the question. "Help me get off this skin. It was difficult enough getting into it, but it seems to be clinging to my skin, so I can't pull my own feet up inside the legs."

"Let's try stretching your arsehole out, first," she suggested. "If you bring your legs up to your chest again, then we can stretch it over your hips and bum."

"I've already tried," I said, sitting on the floor and rolling back as she suggested with my arms clasped around my knees, "but I can't see what I'm doing down there so I couldn't find the edge of the skin to get my fingernail underneath it.

"Ouch!" I added as Mickey's fingernail slipped inside my back passage.

"Sorry," she said, "but I can see the problem you had in finding the edge of the skin. I know, perhaps if I slip a finger inside your pussy hole, I can work it around from the inside."

"Ooh!" I said, as I felt Mickey's fingers exploring.

"That's strange," she said.

"What is?"

"Well, when they spread the sap over the girl, they must have actually inserted it inside her vagina, because it seems the whole of her vaginal passage is intact."

I didn't say a word.

"Tiffany?"

"I know that already, Aunt," I said.

"Naughty little girl," she said. "You've been playing with yourself. You know, you actually have a tight little cunt, here. Was it good?"

"Sort of," I said, not wishing to admit I'd had a crashing orgasm simply by fingering the clitoris on the black girl's skin.

"Good," she said. "Well, I'm having no success at getting at it through your pussy; let's go back to your arsehole. Perhaps if I slip two fingers up, and then try to get my nails beneath the skin as I pull them out?"

"OUCH!!!" I yelled.

***

"I really don't like being taken for a fool," Dr Bellingham said quite severely to Mickey. "This is obviously some kind of prank for your newspaper."

"No, I swear, it's not," Mickey protested. "This really is my nephew Timothy Steward, and he really did put on a skin that we found preserved in that old chest, and now he can't get it off."

"Knowing you as I do," Dr Bellingham said, "if that was true, you would have photographs of him putting on the so-called skin. Would you like to show them to me?"

"Well, I didn't take any," she admitted.

"Precisely," Dr Bellingham said. "Well, I can confirm that to the very best of my knowledge, I have examined a healthy, young, black woman. Now if you'll excuse me, I have real patients to examine."

***

"Sorry," Mickey said to me after he'd gone.

"I don't think I am," I said. "But I guess I'm going to need some help from you."

"Yippee," Mickey yelped. "I have my own, adopted daughter at last. Wot larks, we shall have, you and I; wot larks."