On the front porch of my house, a plastic bag sits behind a brick column, out of view of the street. Thank you for coming! is written on the front of the bag, the words topped with a giant smiling face. The stupid, yellow grin digs into my soul, mocking me. Thank you for coming. Fuck. I can’t come anywhere these days. 

 

I snatch the bag off of the ground and bring it inside.

 

Dead flowers stand limply in vases on nearly every table; the kitchen stays empty. I place the bag on the counter and open it. Inside, a takeout styrofoam container conceals a zippered biohazard bag with a large piece of tan skin. Milky red liquid coats the sides, and to the unseasoned eye, it would be disturbing, but I’ve been adding human cells to my skincare products for a long time now. To me, it’s like any other concoction. I put on disposable gloves, then use an icing spatula to carefully remove the cells from the back of the skin. The material drops into the bowl like the juicy pulp from a lemon. 

 

I’ve got a system worked out with a maintenance worker at the local plastic surgery clinic. He brings me larger patches of skin from abdominoplasty and any other surgeries with large-scale skin removals, and I give him a percentage of the proceeds. It was originally my baby’s idea to use actual human skin cells in our products; I’m the one who made it happen, and that’s when the store took off—locally, anyway. It helps to be a small business; local laws don’t bother us. No official seems to care if we use “organic” materials.

 

“You remember the light sleeper? She came in today,” I shout as I work. My baby is always in the back room; I have to be loud. “The bitch screamed at me. She comes to our store, and I’m the bad guy?”

 

I don’t rehash the details about sneaking into the light sleeper’s apartment and watching her sleep, or the fact I was jacking off inches from her face when she woke up. My baby knows my needs better than anyone; she helped me learn that about myself. 

 

“I let it go,” I say. “Like I always do.”

 

My stomach growls, the only noise in an otherwise quiet house. I need to eat and decide to order a pizza later. I finish scraping the skin and transferring the cells to a mason jar. The mixture is pink with red drops and yellow clumps. I label the jar with today’s date, then store it in the fridge behind other jars already there. I grab a pink bottle from the fridge before I close the door. Then I take the rest of today’s skin and the refrigerated bottle of lotion to the bedroom. 

 

In the corner of the room, my baby sits on a stool, propped up with her back angled against the wall. I used to keep her in our bed, but she got too messy there, and it’s not like I could come with her anymore anyway. Plus, it’s easier to clean her when she’s sitting upright. 

 

“It was a long day,” I mutter. 

 

I imagine her nodding her head as I kneel down in front of her. I move her stained nightgown, resting the hem on her thighs. Coarse black hair from a fresh wig frames her cheeks, one side slightly longer than the other. I wrinkle my brow; I must have moved it the last time we tried to have fun. I fix the wig until it evenly caps her skull, then I sit back on my haunches and begin my ritual. Calmness washes over me. I squirt a small amount of the lotion mixture into my hand, and the pearly cream shimmers. My baby’s flat eye sockets stare down at me. At one point, I put brown glass eyes in them, but they kept falling out with the different adhesives, so I gave up and covered her skull with skin patches like the rest of her body. 

 

I work the mixture over her seams and folds until it completely dissolves into the patches. It doesn’t feel like her anymore—not really—and it hasn’t for years. But I keep to our routine anyway.

 

Even before what happened, massaging my baby like this didn’t excite me. It wasn’t until I saw her nostrils flaring in her sleep that I actually felt something.

 

My mind flickers over the first time I added ingredients to my baby’s tea.

 

She was asleep quickly that night; I had to carry her to our bed. I hadn’t planned on fucking her the first time, not until I could figure out the exact mixture to get her to sleep without knowing I had done anything to her. But when I laid her down and saw her naked, I couldn’t help myself. Her pussy was spread out, and her belly moved up and down in a hypnotic, soothing rhythm. She was helpless—so fucking helpless—and I knew what had to be done.

 

I glance down at my lap; my dick pokes a tent in my pants from the memory alone. 

 

My lips hitch into a smile, and a tingling sensation dances in my groin. I’m almost fully erect, and my baby’s legs are spread, inviting me in.

 

I should keep to our evening routine. Even if the blowjob attempts didn’t work last week, I should really add the skin patch to her knee, give her a reinforced joint for kneeling since I have the skin patch ready for sewing. It’s still wet too; it’ll dry out nicely like the others if I keep to my plan.

 

My dick is hard though, and I don’t want to waste it. 

 

“I was right, you know,” I murmur. “I’ll never be able to find a girl like you.”

I scoop my baby up and lie her down on the bed. This time, I put her face down. It’s not like I can fuck her pussy—not really—but with her legs pressed together, I can get close to fucking her. If I can pretend she’s actually sleeping, I may even be able to come. 

 

I press my cock between her thighs, then work my hands underneath our bodies so I can squeeze her thighs tighter together. I suck in through my nostrils, savoring the sweet perfume drifting from her shiny black wig, then I imagine her before she died.

 

My baby in our bed, her mouth open, drool running down the corner of her mouth.

 

Her legs spread while I lapped at her asshole, even though she hated it. 

 

Her sweet, sleepy moans. 

 

She’s helpless. So very fucking helpless. I can’t stop myself.

 

And I don’t have to. Not anymore. 

 

I jerk my hips forward, the leathery patches buffing against my shaft like sandpaper, and those images shift into ugliness. My baby’s face contorted. A suitcase next to her. A hammer in my hand as I had just finished hanging up an old picture of us at prom.

 

You can’t keep doing this to me, she said. We’re done, Gene. I am done.

 

What about the store? This house? I asked. Everything in my life is about you.

 

Move on, she said. I am. 

 

My mind whirled over a million thoughts, my fists clenching around the hammer I was holding, and the other braced against the wall. I was going to propose to her. I was going to put a baby inside of her. We’d been dating since high school, and we’d built a life together, and she wanted to throw it away because I liked fucking her while she slept? She used to be okay with it. She used to love me. 

 

How would I be able to recover? How would I ever be able to find a woman who could come close to her?

 

I wouldn’t. I knew that then, and I know that now. 

 

I’ll die without you! I shouted.

 

Then fucking die, she screamed.

 

I don’t know when the hammer hit her head. All I know is she tried to leave, and I made the right decision for us. Love makes people do horrible things. What I did to her was pure dedication to keeping us together; I’m not going to apologize for it. If the only way we can be a couple is like this—her skeleton covered in a quilt of other people’s discarded skin—then fine. I’d rather have her like this than not have her at all. 

 

I rest my weight on my elbows and lift my hips. My flaccid cock dangles like an empty bag of red wine. 

 

Steam pumps in my veins, my heart rate increasing. My stupid shaft is just a sad water balloon, and I want to rip it off of my body. No one tells you when you kill your girlfriend, you won’t be able to come again because the cunt of an ex-girlfriend will never sleep again. 

 

“You ungrateful bitch!” I shout. 

 

I shove my fists into the back of her body. The skin layers act like a punching bag. Venom crowds my system, and I bludgeon her with my punches until the wig falls to the ground and my knuckles accidentally hit the back of her skull. I didn’t bother adding skin there, so it’s fist on bone. “Fuck you, you fucking—”

 

A sharp ring echoes through the house. 

 

My spine stiffens. Though I vibrate with anger, I hold my breath.

 

The bedroom doorway is empty. 

 

My nostrils flare. Is someone inside my house?

 

The ringing starts again, and then I recognize the sound: a doorbell. I rarely get visitors. The maintenance worker at the surgery clinic leaves the materials on the front porch without us ever interacting.

 

So why is someone here? What do they want?

 

I push off of my baby, then zip my pants. Shards of bone and skin flakes are scattered across the comforter. It’s not like someone is searching for her. I’m lucky she didn’t have many people in her life; neither of us did, which is why we clung to each other. I also made sure her bills and payments went through me, so she’d never have to rely on another person again, and we worked at the store together. It made what happened afterward easier. No one has ever looked for her.

 

I’ll have to make sure my visitor doesn’t come to our bedroom, or they’ll question what happened. I close the door, then walk to the front of the house. I peer through the door’s peephole. 

 

On the front porch, a woman with black hair stands, switching her weight from side to side as she looks over her shoulder back to her car. A blazer frames her shoulders, and her hair is tucked into a low bun. Her skin is pale, and based on her hair color, she probably has brown eyes. She looks sensible and professional.

 

And she looks like my baby.