I found a zipper on the back of my neck.
I found it by accident. I was putting my hair up; something I did almost every day. My hand brushed against something at the bottom of my hairline. It could have been a large skin tag. I finished tying my hair up and grabbed my phone, so I could see the thing better.
When I saw it, I wasn’t sure what it was. It was too big for a skin tag, but not the shape of a tick or something foreign. I realized as I stared at it that it was the top of a zipper. It was darker than my skin tone. It was more like a rosy gray. I nervously reached behind me to touch it. It was smooth, as if made of metal. But it wasn’t metal. It was skin. Just not my skin.
I was able to flip the zipper top up and down. It didn’t hurt but I expected it to. How long had it been there? I didn’t notice it before. A rational person would have called a doctor. Called someone, at least. But I was compelled to open it.
I pulled the zipper down just a little bit. It still didn’t hurt. As I pulled, zipper teeth emerged. No blood came out, but my skin began to peel apart. I knew I should stop. My fingers trembled as I pulled a bit more. The skin easily separated. The top was two inches below my hairline when I heard my husband wake up.
I ran to the door and slammed it shut. I locked it, my breath coming quick. I didn’t want him to see what I was doing. I knew, on some visceral but invisible level, that it was wrong. The zipper scared me. What was underneath the zipper scared me more.
I heard him lumbering towards the bathroom. He turned the knob. “Lia, let me in. I have to pee.”
“I’m in here,” I called, my voice shaking and off.
“Can I just pee real quick?” He was barely awake.
“No. Go downstairs.”
He paused. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine!” I didn’t mean to yell, but there it was. The silence that followed was heavy with hurt. He waited for a moment, maybe hoping for an apology or some sort of explanation. I gave him neither. Eventually his footsteps sounded down the hall.
I felt relief and fear in equal measures.
After a few breaths I returned to the mirror, my phone in my hand. When I was able to see the zipper again a thick black liquid had begun dripping from the opening. It was too dark to be blood. I touched it. It was warm. The substance was sticky, stretching between my fingers. I brought my hand to my face, examining it closer. In the blood were small specs of gold and light. There were little cosmos within the ooze.
Max pounded on the door. “Why aren’t you answering me?”
My eyes left my hand and went to the door. How long had I been standing there?
“Stop ignoring me.”
“I’m not,” I whispered.
“What are you doing in there?
“Nothing,” I whispered.
I heard his body slump against the door. He was crying again. “How long are you going to punish me?”
I wasn’t punishing him. This wasn’t about him. Why does he always think everything is about him?
I was at the mirror again, pulling the zipper further down. The black liquid was mostly contained within the zipper, but droplets made their way down my back. Something large was pushing against my spine. I could see it, like a fetus’s fist against a mother’s stomach. It pressed outward, making my neck and back look bumpy. There was something in there. Something that needed to come out.
I pulled the zipper until it was down to my shoulders. I began to hear gurgling coming from the opening. For a moment I thought spiders were pouring from the teeth but I blinked and they were gone. I had never felt so scared and yet…so compelled. Obsessed. My hand shook so much I couldn’t hold the zipper to pull it.
A slick hand shot out of the opening, covered in the black substance. I screamed. The hand flicked off the substance, almost nonchalantly, and grasped the zipper.
Max’s voice penetrated the scene, “What is going on? Are you hurt?”
I fell to my knees as the foreign hand pulled the zipper further. It was at my shoulder blades, then the middle of my back, and then the lower back. My skin was peeled forward like a cocoon. The hand withdrew inside me. After a few moments, a leg revealed itself, stretching out of my body like a dancer. Then another leg. Bent backward, feet now on the floor, a figure completely emerged. It straightened itself. Long hair stuck to its body.
I crawled away from it, terrified. My skin was still open and gushing the black substance onto the floor. I could still see cosmos in the ichor.
The figure turned towards me. It was a woman, naked, bathed in black. She bent forward and smiled at me. “One more thing,” she said in a voice I recognized.
She reached over me, shoving her hand into the opening on my back. For the first time I felt pain. Her hand inside me felt like a hot knife. I tried to hold in my screams but didn’t succeed. She rooted around for what felt like a lifetime. Finally, when I felt close to passing out, she removed her hand. In it was an ax. The ax was too large to have fit inside me. She slung it over her shoulder, still smiling.
I heard my own breath. Panting. I also heard the faint voice of Max, from outside the door. He was begging, crying. He was knocking, pounding. The figure noticed too, her face turning towards the door.
“Don’t,” I whispered. I knew what she wanted to do.
I knew, because it was what I wanted.
She set the ax down and turned to the mirror, putting her hair up. She wiped the substance off her face. Without looking at me she said, “Wait here. I’ll take care of it.”
I gathered my knees to my chest, sobbing into them. She grabbed the ax. Unceremoniously she unlocked the door and opened it.
Max’s voice was small as he said, “Lia?”
She closed the door behind her.