Your eyes fall downward, fixating onto your hands. They're fidgety, awfully fidgety. You watch as you pick at the skin surrounding your nailbed. You can't seem to stop yourself, it's frustrating. With a hum, you force yourself to avert your gaze from your fingers and to look up at the people surrounding you.

Huh?

Immediately, you notice zippers crawling up and down every person's form. ...

I'd stopped in the middle of the sidewalk, my breath hitching as I took notice of everyone around me. The fact that so many people were out at this time of night was unsettling enough, but this sparked a feeling of nauseating anxiety you'd normally only feel in a nightmare.

At first I saw it with the man that was walking in front of me. Then the woman walking past me. Even the big dog who's leash...

there are three of them. they all have long black scruffy hair. the one in the middle walks up to me, and says;

"Hello. will you take this?" she says, holding out a singular zipper, the ones you see onto a bag or something.

"...OK." was my response.

she ploped it in a sack.

"Take it out of the sack."

so I reached my hand in and couldn't reach it, so I put my head in to see.

"Gotcha."

"Wha-"

A burn...

Paper skin on plastic bones

Keep it together

Don’t let them know

Smile and show

Your tinfoil teeth

Walk my way

On play dough feet

Gruesome sights

You zipped up freaks

Holding back

What’s underneath

I despise your horrid frame

But I know I look just the same...

I ran through the forest, the wolves at my heels. They nipped at me, but i kept running. What i had seen was worse than death. The wolves began to fall back, as if what i was heading to was something they wanted to avoid.

I sighed in relief and examined my ankles. They were bruised and bloody, but it was not like i could do anything about it. I looked up at the trees, and to my luck, there was a...

I walk with a stride only I can walk

A piece of me still missing somewhere

But I’ve sown zippers to the cuts I’ve made on my arms

I’m a man of my word

At least I’d like to think I am

I hold on to the little hope I have

Clutching to it like a child

Maybe that’s just what I am

A child

Neglected by the mother that now pretends

Parents aren’t perfect but every child wishes they were

I zip up my ble...

I wake up somewhere I don’t recognize. I don’t remember anything from last night and the feeling of groggy and dizziness is overwhelming.

I sit up in bed to try to stand and stumble but still was able to manage to stay upward even when my legs felt like jelly. The smell of homemade pancakes wafted up the unfamiliar stairs. I dash down them to see who’s cooking. Nobody’s there but there’s steam st...

I woke up on a seemingly normal day and got myself ready to go to school. I could hear my mom from downstairs yelling at me to hurry up. It was the second day of school and I had been late to the first day. My mom did not want a repetition of yesterday.

“Emma! Hurry up, you know you have to walk and I have to go to work!” My mom yelled.

Since I’ve been late already, my mom chooses to wait for m...

I followed my daily routine, coffee cup in hand, heading to my boring office job. My mind sat blank as always on my walk through the city. Until my eyes were drawn to a lady walking in front of me. She wore a long red dress that exposed her lean back, but it was not the dress that had caught my eye. Strewn across her backside was a zipper embedded into her flesh. I rubbed my eyes as if something c...

Sheena's life had always been a quiet one, punctuated by the soft clicking of her keyboard and the gentle hum of her refrigerator. The outside world was a distant concept, something she observed only through the windows of her tiny apartment. Partially because she was an introvert with severe anxiety, but mostly due to the fact that she was — for lack of a better term — a total hermit.

But, unfor...