Tommy is at a party when he decides to take a break from the mass of people and head down to the beach for some quiet time. While there, he meets a girl named Lucy. They have a bit to drink, and smoke a little bit as well, while the sun dies on the horizon. Lucy seems to mumble to herself from time to time, but Tommy doesn't seem bothered by her quirky behavior. Once the darkness takes over the beach, they decide to go for a swim. Stripping off their clothes, they frolic in the waters. This moment of exposure is when Tommy first notices that Lucy's skin seems to flicker like the stars against the night sky. As it turns out, Tommy is in for a surprise when he realizes exactly what type of skin condition Lucy has...
This short story appealed to me in the unapologetic way that it portrays a very normal world with a single oddity that drives the action. Rather than attempt to explain why Lucy is the way that she is, David Nickle chooses to describe her without feeling the need to "make sense" of it all. I was also engaged by the perspective, as we are told the story through Tommy's eyes as he attempts to tell the story to an ex-lover. I enjoyed the ending, and the twist that accompanied it, but felt that it could have been fleshed out in a bit more detail. The motivations that drive Tommy to accept his ultimate fate were not clear, which is the only aspect of this tale that I would have liked to be different.
"Looker" can be found in the anthology The Best Horror of the Year: Volume Four, which was edited by Ellen Datlow.
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