209 - The Coathanger

Artifact: The Coathanger

Power: Significant.

Description: A no-frills wire coat hanger with a red, felt tag glued to the hook at the top. On a little plastic label the tag reads “Property of H. Holmes” (although the plastic’s manufacture is far too late to have belonged to the famed serial killer).

Effect: Stick the coathanger into the back of your shirt while you’re still wearing it (you need to be fully clothed). Securing the hook with something (tying it to a doorhandle or getting someone else to hang on to it both do the trick) give it a hard, continuous pull. So long as you don’t hesitate or stop (seriously, don’t) before the effect is complete the artifact will activate.

It rips all your skin off. This is about as painful as it sounds while it’s happening but it doesn’t require nearly as much force as it should, thankfully afterwards you can’t feel a thing. It is still incredibly dangerous: you’ll get horrible infections unless you’re in a sterile environment and you’ll lose the ability to regulate your body’s temperature and fluids. Your tactile senses are gone and you won’t bleed to death since the removal is somehow bloodless. You’ll still die, quickly, though this can be delayed for a while by specialised medical attention. It takes all of your clothes off with it.

So long as you’re alive, you or someone else can climb into your skin through the mouth and wear it like a suit. It’s utterly convincing, even if they’re of a completely different height or build. It doesn’t do anything about the voice though and observant people will be able to spot if you have different coloured eyes. It also provides 10 additional points of wound threshold for someone else which are lost first for external injuries, if they are depleted your skin is ruined.

Until you put it back on yourself the clothing is fused to the skin as though it were part it, there’s no changing outfits (someone could theoretically layer up if they really wanted to). If you die while someone else is wearing the skin the effect ends instantly and it becomes immediately apparent to everyone watching that they’ve been talking to a Buffalo Bill wannabe.