It was a mild summer’s night. Erica and James were sprawled across a picnic blanket in a park. James was droning on about the statistics from the latest quarterly revenue reports of his company, while Erica idly gazed at the young teens playing frisbee in the distance.
James suddenly broke from his train of thought, “Are you listening to me?”
Erica snapped her attention back to him. “Huh? Oh yeah, sorry...honey.” She brought her eyes back to James, staring at his mouth, and smiled. She moved in closer to James’ face until her lips were touching his. His lips felt oddly cold and stiff.
Erica caressed James’ face and ran her fingers playfully through his straight brown hair. “Ow!” Erica suddenly felt a sharp prick and quickly withdrew her hand. She looked down and a single bead of blood had blossomed at the surface of her finger. “You’re bleeding. I am so sorry!” James frantically fumbled in the picnic basket for a napkin. “H-here, take this.” He handed Erica the napkin, adding, “Again, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to hurt you. I guess I must have left a hair clip there and forgotten about it.” Erica just smiled and reassured James that everything was okay-- which it wasn’t. What kind of guy has stray clips in his hair?
James’ blatant lie bothered Erica for the next couple days. She clearly remembered a solid object (that was definitely not a hair clip) pricking her finger. Every time she brought up the incident, James would reassure her that it was nothing, making Erica even more suspicious. Finally, Erica couldn’t contain her curiosity anymore. One night, while James was sleeping,she reached over and gingerly parted his hair to reveal a tiny zipper. Erica stifled a gasp, trying not to wake James. She hesitantly tugged at the zipper, which traveled down James’ entire body. His skin seemed to peel right off like a wrapper. As Erica kept unzipping, out came Robert. Robert had a head of curly flaming-red hair with a matching scraggly beard of the same color. Freckles dotted his face sparingly as if they were afraid of one another. His eyes were a muddy brown, in contrast to Robert’s clear blue ones.
Erica carefully folded James’ skin up and placed it into the corner of a closet, just in case she ever wanted him back.
Erica was ambivalent about Robert. He was undeniably almost the complete opposite of James. He wasn’t afraid to touch her and he was really, really good at kissing. But Robert would come home every day with the smell of cheap whiskey on his breath and curse about some “dumbass” he met on the subway on the way from work, or at least what he called work. Robert made a living basically throwing paint on a canvas and marketing it to rich dilettantes as a new form of “modern art.” Occasionally, if he had two more shots of tequila, he would beat Erica. But Erica still tolerated him and the beatings. At least her life was more interesting. Her mother called daily and pleaded with her to leave Robert, but Erica just shrugged the endless begging off. She always reasoned that her life could be worse. She could be one of those desperate housewives going through a mid-life identity crisis.
One morning, Erica was brushing her hair, thinking about her relationship with Robert and whether or not she made a mistake bringing him out. However, James seemed like a distant memory now and she couldn’t quite remember why she even liked him in the first place. As she was contemplating, her hair brush suddenly got caught on something in her hair. Erica sighed, “Great, another tangled mess. This is going to hurt.” However, as she parted her hair to find the knot, Erica instead felt a small bump. She stared into the mirror and saw a tiny silver zipper perched at the top of her head.