The Zipper: a short story.
Looking back, it seems impossible to recall the body I lived in before that summer when I was twenty-two, when my skin was wrought with a wrongness I couldn’t yet name.
The air hung heavy that year, everything swollen with heat: curtains sticking to damp skin, groceries rotting faster than I could eat them. I slept poorly, sweating through sheets, scratching at the itch that had appeared between my shoulder blades.
The days spilled into one another, each more forgettable than the last - until the zipper appeared.
By that time, I had already rubbed my back raw with uncut fingernails for weeks with no relief. I tried everything, resorting to dragging forks along my spine until their handles bent, but still the itching remained.
I was at work when I felt it for the first time, my nails snagging on something metallic midscratch. I froze before rushing myself to the bathroom where, beneath the fluorescents, I saw it clearly: silver teeth pressed into raw flesh, running an unforgiving zig-zag down my spine.
I fingered the pull. It was cold and obscene in its familiarity, like it had always been there. I stared at my reflection and imagined someone else discovering this new abnormality.
I left work early. Pressed against strangers on the subway, I couldn’t stop picturing someone spotting the zipper and being curious enough to tug it down. Would they dare?
At night, sweating and scratching in the half-dark, I thought of the boy at the bodega across the street. He always double-bagged my groceries, his hands smelling faintly of oranges and bleach. His eyes caught on my mouth when he handed me my receipts, as if waiting for me to say something I never did.
I imagined his hands on the pull, steady and deliberate, sliding the zipper open as if he were undressing me. My back would part for him, flesh peeling, innards spilling out.
I pictured him studying what lived inside. His fingers tracing the slick seam, testing its wet edges. His mouth pressing hot to the organs hidden beneath my skin.
The thought left me trembling. My nails worried the zipper until my hand shook. When I pressed the pull down a fraction, a sigh rose out. I gasped, my whole body arching toward the mirror, waiting to see something rupture or spill, but only a starved reflection stared back.
I shuddered as I ground my crotch against my palm, coming with a ragged cry as the zipper shook beneath my other hand. The relief was too short, already swallowed by a deeper ache. I wanted more. I wanted the zipper all the way down.
After that, I couldn’t stop. Each day, I called out of work, feigning hospitalization and each night I drew the zipper lower. I revealed more of myself: shoulder blades, spine, tailbone. My skin sagged around me, an ill-fitting costume with my newness demanding release. The process was slower than I expected, not one clean tearing but dozens of small rips, fibers peeling apart like wet paper.
I tried to will the bodega boy to come. I dared him to unzip me. I needed him to bear witness to what I was becoming.
Mail piled at my front door and flies licked up dried food from crusted plates. My phone buzzed with calls from work and texts from my mom reverberated in the open space. Friends reached out through Instagram, making the room glow blue, until the battery drained, and I was finally alone.
When at last I finished ripping myself clean out, it was as though I was reborn through my own back. My chest rose in unfamiliar curves, and my cock hung malleable as candle wax. Blood and sweat streaked my newly delivered form.
The husk of me lay crumpled on the floor, grotesque in its stillness, a parody of my old life. Its mouth sagged open, the eyes already clouding. I kicked it into the corner, but it only folded further in on itself.
The day after I finished shedding, the husk vanished. I passed hours in front of the mirror, waiting to see if I, too, would disappear.
I never did. My body held, though it shook with every breath. The new skin felt thinner than paper, every draft of air a blade. I covered myself in blankets, then tore them off; I couldn’t yet find a temperature where I belonged.
I thought of the bodega boy’s careful hands. I wanted to hand him this new body and ask him to keep it from unraveling again.
Eventually, I returned to work. No one asked about the missed days, or the new sharpness to my jaw, or the way my shirt hung loose against my frame. They only nodded, as if I had always been this way.
On my lunch break, I crossed to the bodega. The boy was there, bagging groceries with the same reliable hands. When he glanced up at me, his eyes wandered down to my mouth, then flicked away. I thought I saw it in his face - a wave of recognition, or maybe revulsion. Something that told me he knew I wasn’t the same. We said nothing.
I clutched the bag to my chest as I walked home, the plastic crisp against my skin. I whispered his name once, under my breath, just to see how it felt in this new mouth.
In the mirror, my body trembled but held. I smiled at my reflection and it smiled back.