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The Borrowed Saint: A Horror in Five Skins
A boy stands in a bathroom and discovers his face can change.
Asa Greer is five years old when the mirror shows him something that should be the features of the boy next door, worn on his own skull. The borrowed face lasts three seconds. The cost is permanent. He will never smell his own skin again.
Over the next fifty years, Asa consumes more than a hundred faces. Each acquisition deposits a blueprint into his nervous system and extracts an irreversible sensory payment. He rises through political consulting into institutional power, constructing public personas for candidates and eventually designing the face that governance itself presents to the world. His most potent invention is the kindness persona, a performed goodness so convincing that audiences worship it on contact. The warmth their trust generates is narcotic. His body is allergic to it.
Asa Greer is five years old when the mirror shows him something that should be the features of the boy next door, worn on his own skull. The borrowed face lasts three seconds. The cost is permanent. He will never smell his own skin again.
Over the next fifty years, Asa consumes more than a hundred faces. Each acquisition deposits a blueprint into his nervous system and extracts an irreversible sensory payment. He rises through political consulting into institutional power, constructing public personas for candidates and eventually designing the face that governance itself presents to the world. His most potent invention is the kindness persona, a performed goodness so convincing that audiences worship it on contact. The warmth their trust generates is narcotic. His body is allergic to it.
164 pages, Kindle Edition
Published March 27, 2026
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
June 12, 2026
I received the book as a Goodreads giveaway.
Nice short read. Would recommend.
Nice short read. Would recommend.
Displaying 1 of 1 review