Dialing Zipperhead – Lan Frode

January 13, 2026

I finished nailing the new cat skin to the wall—tortoise, chamomile, Russian blue, Persian, black.
        I stepped back with nails dangling from my teeth, a silence of dust in the window light, the fresh musk of ocher flesh.
        Many gaps remained around the room. Many cold, smooth places. Empty places.
        Lost in my head, a telephone rang somewhere downstairs. It had been a while since the last call. I decided to go down and pick up. I was feeling accomplished.
        “Do you have a minute?” the voice on the phone asked.
        “Sure, why not.”
        “Ok, good. It’s time to check in. We’ve pre-approved your appointment. It’s at 1600 this afternoon. You can make it, right?”
        “I think so. Is it important?”
        “Naturally, yes. Don’t hesitate to stop by.”
        The receiver went blank. Outside the crooked window, a petulant sky rippled.
        I stumbled into the kitchen and observed the self-illuminating shelves—rows and rows of docile bottles containing translucent capsules containing nothing.
        I closed my eyes and picked one. Shook it twice into my palm. The capsule quivered in the creases of my skin. I missed my mouth when I went to pop it.
        The capsule rolled into the crook beneath the counter. As I pressed my cheek to the floor, I could see tiny particles dancing, mating.
        I ate the capsule and put on my sweater and pants. I put on my squeaky boots. I paused at the door to the outside—but only for a moment, before I gently pushed it open.
        Outside was quiet. The suburbs were filled with phosphorescent gas. Pink clouds appeared, vanished, then reappeared.
        A single van drove by on my walk. It made a slight hum. The pavement rolled on and on.
        I heard a bird chirping near some rocks. As I got closer, I could hear the thinness of the sound. I got on my knees and examined the rocks carefully. There were tiny little dots emitting the sound. The same chirp. Chirp.
        I massaged my hands over the dots again and again, feeling the gaps and dips.
        Because of this, I was late to my check-in at the clinic, but no one seemed to mind.
        A very black woman, darker than the abyss, stared at me from behind the counter and nodded when I sat down.
        There were a few others waiting around—a man with a head twice the size of his body; a child with yellowing fingers and a painted smile; two women tittering and gossiping behind a large magazine with the word SPIT printed on its cover.
        I passed the time by counting the squares in the ceiling. There were sixty-eight in total. The room was incorrectly designed.
        Eventually, the glass door slid open and my name was called.
        “Bob Reeva, please enter.”
        When I sat in the chair, the doctor said, “Bob, how are you feeling today?”
        “I don’t know.”
        “Ok, I’m going to unzip your head now.”
        He reached around back there, between the slits in my greasy hair, and found the zipper. When it came down, I could feel the air swelling up inside me—and then an evacuation through all holes::::
        When I was a dog it was very frustrating being on all fours and low to the ground. I felt trapped in the dark house, with the moonlight slipping through the shades, crossed jail bars through the mattressless slats I hid under.
        Then one day I remembered I wasn’t a dog. It happened suddenly when the boy was near me. I felt an enormous urge pulling me toward him.
        My legs broke and my body swelled up and the horror on the boy’s face turned to mush as he was sucked into the fullness of my growing mass. Everything around me began to break down and compress into the center of my heaving, undulating source. Something had begun.
        Years passed as I grew in size, mulching every atomic particle that swirled near the center. Civilization was being deconstructed and consumed. I felt a bliss unlike any other. I even remember you there with your long dark hair, and that last blank stare before you were swallowed up.
        I traveled the cosmos, stars erupting, supernovas funneling into the new heart of the universe. I began to wonder when it would end. I realized the darkness would never be fully contained. So I furrowed the brows of the many phantasmic lives flashing before my eye, and returned to an animal form—a seal on the beach being pecked at by many beaks::::
        The doctor exhaled as he zipped up my head and began tapping away on his keyboard. The whole procedure felt instantaneous, but the clock told otherwise.
        “You’ll need a few days to recover,” he said. “I’m writing you an order for Xylophonic El. You can pick it up today at your nearest corner store.”
        I nodded.
        On my way out, I noticed the sky was green. Every car in the parking lot was pink for some reason.
        On my walk home, a girl was sitting on the chain-link fence, her legs askance.
        “What are you looking at?” she said.
        Her hair was everywhere but very short, and her lips were curved in a slit near her throat.
        “I’m not looking anywhere, actually. I’m just walking home, sorry, I haven’t opened my mouth and it feels dry and sticky—what if I just start over and ignore you.”
        She did not change her stone face. I suddenly relaxed and kept walking. But I felt her neck pivot as I tripped along.
        Back home, I became dizzy and nauseous, so I lay down in the center of the main room and imagined myself as a horizontal being.
        The ceiling had not changed much recently. The crack may have gained a centimeter since last time; I couldn’t really tell.
        Eventually, I saw through the ceiling. Up there somebody was calling me. They’d been keeping at it for a while now. But I only have the one phone.
        I must have dozed off, because when I stopped staring, night mode had come on, and everything was orange and fuzzy.
        I snuck out in the night to look for cats. I knew down the back street and around the corner is where some new strays might end up.
        I settled between some garbage containers. I became a container. My chest was still, and the inside of my eyelids looked like fingernails beneath a microscope.
        After a while a fat greywhite emerged from somewhere, slinking at first, then plopped himself neatly on the pavement.
        My eyes slowly opened, revealing the quivering orbs. My lips were dry, and my chest started up. I was prepared to strike—when suddenly I gagged. A net around my throat.
        The fat greywhite galloped into the night as my head hit the edge of a container, and I went to sleep::::
        Sitting in the second story, I witnessed the crash from a window. It began simply enough, with a level-three fender bender. But soon after that, a truck came barreling through, unable to stop, crushing the cars into each other.
        More vehicles kept coming, twisting their metal frames together. Drivers were screaming, some even laughing. Many of them disappeared forever beneath the mass.
        A semi-truck annihilated a couple’s faces who had just lost the top of their sedan. Limbs were rolling around, and a few people were running on fire or mid-electrocution. I was amazed at the detail of the blood patterns.
        I turned to you, and you said, “I don’t want to drive home. Let’s take a plane.”
        When we parked on the tarmac, you were grinning through your hair, and you skipped up the steps two at a time before the doors sealed you away::::
        When I awoke, I was tied to a chair with wires, and noticed I was in my room with the cats.
        I felt the zipping up behind me—the tightness that always comes afterward. The girl from before was pacing around my room.
        She was examining each cat skin carefully, getting close enough to move the furs with her breath.
        “What are you doing?” I said.
        She ignored me and continued her examinations. The wires were tied tightly, creasing my skin, but I felt very comfortable.
        She stopped and went stiff at the sight of a slick calico I had obtained some months back. I saw her skin go paler than before, and after a long pause, her head snapped around. Her eyes, porcelain beams.
        “I knew it was you,” she said.
        She came close and grabbed my chin. I managed a grin. She thrust my head back.
        “Jesus, how many are in here?”
        “I still have a few gaps left.” I pointed around the room with my chin.
        “Does the company know about your extracurricular activities?”
        I could hear the phone ringing away downstairs. She eyed the door nervously.
        “Why don’t you tell them yourself,” I said.
        We went downstairs together. She had the leash on me.
        I picked up the receiver. “Hello.”
        “Yes, it’s me, doctor. It took you a while to get to the phone. What’s going on?”
        “Oh, nothing,” her breath was stale on my neck. “I’ve just been hanging around the house.”
        “We’ve had reports of unusual activity in your ambient zone. Anything we should know about?”
        I stalled for a bit, swallowing. She nudged me in the rib.
        “No, nothing unusual. I think I’ve been asleep.”
        “Hm. Well, we’ve recorded all of the appropriate data. I’ll have lookers take a look at it later, but probably just another glitch. Don’t bother worrying about it. Try to get some rest, and maybe take two greens and one purple instead tonight. Goodbye.”
        The receiver went dead.
        “Fuck,” she said. “They logged it.”
        “It’s okay,” I said. “They don’t really notice me much.”
        She started pacing, and doing this thing—breathing.
        I sat on a kitchen stool, twirling around, my leash cleaning the floor.
        She snapped her fingers. “I’ve got it. I’ll let you skin me.”
        “What?”
        “I’ll let you skin me. Add me to the wall.”
        I gave this a thought.
        After nodding in agreement, we went to the second upstairs room. I didn’t have to ask her to lie down on the tarp. My one tool wasn’t very sharp, but it always got the job done.
        “Are you sure about this?” I asked.
        “Yeah. I have nothing better to do.”
        Typical zipperless answer.
        I started at her small dirty feet. The flesh was rubbery and gummy. She was staring at me with those eyes again, not moving her face or making a sound.
        There was no blood, just soft white flesh parting from bone. Her chest opened like a moth. She finally smiled when I got up to her neck.
        “That’s enough,” she said.
        She sat up and turned around so that I could derobe the flesh in one suit piece.
        I held it up to the shred of light—and then there was a knock at the front door.
        I dropped the saw and went downstairs.
        The man at the door was wearing a gas mask and dressed in a long black robe, obscuring both hands and feet.
        I nodded, and he glided past into the living room. He twisted his head around a bit before he turned and spoke in a pained wave of modulation.
        “Resident, you know why I’ve been sent.”
        “Yeah.”
        “Good.”
        He twisted his head some more. “Now conducting investigation of anomalous readings.” And he began gliding around the house.
        So they intended a search from the start. I knew I was screwed, but I failed to care.
        I found him upstairs in the room. He was taking data off of the cat skins and stopped for a longer period at the woman’s skin that was neatly arranged to fill the gap.
        She had displayed herself as a specimen in an insectarium.
        From the long holes in his sleeves, a small hand came out, holding a device that scanned.
        “This is irregular… this is noticeable.”
        He turned his head around at me, but I just shrugged.
        “I can go into the office anytime,” I said.
        “No.” He was quick. The green scanlines were sucked back up into his wrist. “No, you don’t need to go anywhere. You will stay here.”
        He somehow was becoming taller.
        I knew I had to get on my knees. It was just what my kind did. He was behind me, unzipping—with a bit of:::
        Blood washed over everything. Our eyes were ironized in feverish ecstasy. The lands worn out, the veils all torn.
        And I walked forever forward, until that edge we agreed upon. Of course, you sat upon the debris. I sat next to you and saw the smile I had imagined many times past.
        Many burning stars and only that smile. Your eyes were covered by black hair, always growing. It was only a moment, always brief.
        You walked into the ocean that turned to ice. You walked until you were a dot inside my bulging eye.
        Now I will sit and wait, for my turn, for m;:;:::;/.[p.’;
        She had hid well—Veronica Welt—and she was riding the man in black from behind with my dull cat saw.
        His small hand came clean off in my zipper head. The muffled, artifacted scream—and his blood fountained down my beige tunic back, back down into the rotten floorboards, already blackened.
        I slumped forward with a new mass up top. The zipper was partially open, letting in air, with wrist arteries for teeth.
        She was using her legs now to crush the robed man’s ribs and insides. He choked inside of his mask and rolled over.
        She kept kicking him.
        A skinless angel.
        In the morning, I could hear the humming of mortar beasts above the abode—ready to demolish. A tugging and shitting from my bulbous cerb. The dead hand farted out. My head re-zipped. Some dignity.
        “There,” she said. “Now you can get over it.”
        I was sprawled out. So was she.
        The targeting lasers crisscrossed through the pane.
        Somewhere down the alleyway, the explosion lit a feline eye:::
        In fire we return, despite the dreams we spurn, in heat we realize the meaning of our eyes. I chanted nothing words as we gave up the cause. I was sent abroad, zipped up and well applaused.
        Each morning with your prayers, I seek the devil’s stare. Each breath for which we pay, the toll becomes too great.
        I looked up from my notebook, inside of a crate. Between the slats, through an endless dial tone::::