Skin Stealers

What are they

Not much is truly known about these creatures only its features, ways it feeds, and ways to know if you are interacting with one. Where it came from and how many there truly are is a mystery. The skin stealer has black obsidian skin when in its first phase in the cocoon, a very small black ball about the size of a small pill that hides itself inside the food of unsuspecting prey. Prey for this creature would be any bipedal animal like but not limited to humans.

Biology

Once consumed by an animal it attaches itself to the innerlining of its new hosts stomach and waits for enough nutrients to be fed to them to be able to move to the next phase subjects in this phase feel stomach aches, the feeling of being hungry while full, and a itch in their throat.

Once it’s nutrient needs are meet it begins the larva stage growing into a drill like shape with legs that have mouths on the end of them with a total of 4. It begins to drill though the stomach and once fully through repairing the hole made by it sharp pains happen to the host as the creatures finds the closest vein and drills inside using the “mouth legs” to seal the wound.

It then travels up stream consuming the red blood cells and using them to grow in length it continues this until reaching the heart planting itself there. It then starts consuming all the red blood cells as the heart beats, now growing until it’s in its second to last phase the vein phase this phase is officially reached once the skin stealer has filled all veins and has taken over the brain at this point the person has died and only the skin stealer remains able to still talk like them and even gaining their memories.

But the body knows of its death and slowly begins to rot the skin stealer can repair the human body for a short time. In one case it lived in the skin for 7 months only being able to by eating other living creatures of the same species. It will continue to eat and repair until it has nothing to eat then it will enter the final stage, the caterpillar phase.

Behavior

Finally making a full circle it runs not for food as it knows it is to far gone rotting, losing limbs, and making no sound from its mouth. It will run until it finds a form of food a farm corn, tomatoes, even cows as it knows from the people it has controlled that they are a food source it will begin to condense its self back into the first phase but with a drill at one end drilling into the food and waiting for someone to eat them.

Survival Guide

The way to know if someone you know or love is being controlled by a skin stealer it’s simple, first inspect their veins black lines fill their body instead of red or blue ones it’s most likely one of them, when they speak is it in not full sentences like “hello friend I miss (your name) please come close” as of now they haven’t fully learned language as a whole and can only make out sentences like that, and finally for you if you are eating any food make sure to check for the black dot for if not you just might be the next skin stealer.