I'm looking for a short story I read a long time ago (maybe 12 or 15 years). In the story, the main character (a man, I think) gets some disease that has him shed his skin periodically, like a snake. Hair might also be shed and re-grown, I recall fingernails definitely shed a layer. It may be he got it from being bitten by a snake (strange but perhaps story-logical).

There is a scene where he's running around trying to pull off loose skin and hide the sheddings so he looks normal to meet his love interest, and also I think when she finally knows, she chooses to become infected like him. I think there might be heath benefits, some kind of regeneration, not sure. The sheddings become used for artistic/craftsy purposes, and later there is a scene where he's accused of murder, because some leathercraft of his was made from human skin, he demands a DNA test to prove it is his own shed-skin.

And closer to the end, he makes a living using a limited scope variation of the disease but hiding it as a normal beauty treatment - an injection to make the face shed (into a clay mask, so they don't notice), which rejuvenates the skin, then sneaking the shed-skin to his wife, who makes novelty masks for the same client without their knowing why it's so lifelike. This ending was what I recalled so strongly (well, and the DNA test).

I haven't had a lot of luck finding it. I was convinced it was in the same anthology as another work (Spyder Robinson's "Melancholy Elephants", if it helps, perhaps it actually is paired with something similar), however I recently found my copy of the anthology with that story, and this one isn't there. It is not in any anthologies I own, and I've been through all of them in the last year. I checked the library I was visiting then, on my visit over the holidays, but didn't find anything that jarred my memory. I would like to read this again, I hope someone can help me. Thank you.

I'm looking for a short story I read a long time ago (maybe 12 or 15 years). In the story, the main character (a man, I think) gets some disease that has him shed his skin periodically, like a snake. Hair might also be shed and re-grown, I recall fingernails definitely shed a layer. It may be he got it from being bitten by a snake (strange but perhaps story-logical).

There is a scene where he's running around trying to pull off loose skin and hide the sheddings so he looks normal to meet his love interest, and also, I think when she finally knows, she chooses to become infected like him. I think there might be health benefits, some kind of regeneration, not sure. The sheddings become used for artistic/crafting purposes, and later there is a scene where he's accused of murder, because some leathercraft of his was made from human skin; he demands a DNA test to prove it is his own shed skin.

And closer to the end, he makes a living using a limited scope variation of the disease but hiding it as a normal beauty treatment - an injection to make the face shed (into a clay mask, so they don't notice), which rejuvenates the skin, then sneaking the shed-skin to his wife, who makes novelty masks for the same client without their knowing why it's so lifelike.

This ending was what I recalled so strongly (well, and the DNA test).

I haven't had a lot of luck finding it. I was convinced it was in the same anthology as another work (Spyder Robinson's "Melancholy Elephants", if it helps; perhaps it actually is paired with something similar), however I recently found my copy of the anthology with that story, and this one isn't there. It is not in any anthologies I own, and I've been through all of them in the last year. I checked the library I was visiting then, on my visit over the holidays, but didn't find anything that jarred my memory. I would like to read this again, I hope someone can help me. Thank you.

I'm looking for a short story I read a long time ago (maybe 12 or 15 years). In the story, the main character (a man, I think) gets some disease that has him shed his skin periodically, like a snake. Hair might also be shed and re-grown, I recall fingernails definitely shed a layer. It may be he got it from being bitten by a snake (strange but perhaps story-logical).

There is a scene where he's running around trying to pull off loose skin and hide the sheddings so he looks normal to meet his love interest, and also I think when she finally knows, she chooses to become infected like him. I think there might be heath benefits, some kind of regeneration, not sure. The sheddings become used for artistic/craftsy purposes, and later there is a scene where he's accused of murder, because some leathercraft of his was made from human skin, he demands a dna test to prove it is his own shed-skin.

And closer to the end, he makes a living using a limited scope variation of the disease but hiding it as a normal beauty treatment - an injection to make the face shed (into a clay mask, so they don't notice), which rejuvenates the skin, then sneaking the shed-skin to his wife, who makes novelty masks for the same client without their knowing why it's so lifelike. This ending was what I recalled so strongly (well, and the DNA test).

I haven't had a lot of luck finding it. I was convinced it was in the same anthology as another work (Spyder Robinson's "Melancholy Elephants", if it helps, perhaps it actually is paired with something similar), however I recently found my copy of the anthology with that story, and this one isn't there. It is not in any anthologies I own, and I've been through all of them in the last year. I checked the library I was visiting then, on my visit over the holidays, but didn't find anything that jarred my memory. I would like to read this again, I hope someone can help me. Thank you.

I'm looking for a short story I read a long time ago (maybe 12 or 15 years). In the story, the main character (a man, I think) gets some disease that has him shed his skin periodically, like a snake. Hair might also be shed and re-grown, I recall fingernails definitely shed a layer. It may be he got it from being bitten by a snake (strange but perhaps story-logical).

There is a scene where he's running around trying to pull off loose skin and hide the sheddings so he looks normal to meet his love interest, and also I think when she finally knows, she chooses to become infected like him. I think there might be heath benefits, some kind of regeneration, not sure. The sheddings become used for artistic/craftsy purposes, and later there is a scene where he's accused of murder, because some leathercraft of his was made from human skin, he demands a DNA test to prove it is his own shed-skin.

And closer to the end, he makes a living using a limited scope variation of the disease but hiding it as a normal beauty treatment - an injection to make the face shed (into a clay mask, so they don't notice), which rejuvenates the skin, then sneaking the shed-skin to his wife, who makes novelty masks for the same client without their knowing why it's so lifelike. This ending was what I recalled so strongly (well, and the DNA test).

I haven't had a lot of luck finding it. I was convinced it was in the same anthology as another work (Spyder Robinson's "Melancholy Elephants", if it helps, perhaps it actually is paired with something similar), however I recently found my copy of the anthology with that story, and this one isn't there. It is not in any anthologies I own, and I've been through all of them in the last year. I checked the library I was visiting then, on my visit over the holidays, but didn't find anything that jarred my memory. I would like to read this again, I hope someone can help me. Thank you.