By the time I got home, it was one thirty in the morning. I was exhausted, I was soaking wet, and the sense of guilt and confusion that I had felt ever since running into Patrick and watching him transform before my eyes into a lifeless skin suit now sat heavily in my stomach.
The skin suit was heavy. As I lugged it out of my car, I was thankful to be off of the main road and back into my neighborhood. Nobody would be awake at this hour; nobody would see the suit folded up and tucked under my arm. With my free hand, I clumsily unlocked the front door and quietly closed it behind myself. I took off my shoes and carefully made my way upstairs to my bedroom.
When I got there, I closed the door. I usually slept with my door cracked open a bit, but I couldn't risk having Mom pass by on her way to the bathroom or down to the kitchen for a late-night snack. How the fuck would I explain this?
Sure that my door was closed tightly behind me, I held the suit out in front of me and let it unfurl to the ground. Patrick was a good six inches taller than me, so the legs of the suit crumpled down against the floor. The head, having no support of a neck, flopped loosely over his shoulders. The rest of him hung flat and lifeless from my outstretched arms, every one of his beautiful features deflated and strangely distorted.
I couldn't comprehend what I was holding. I simply held it there and ran my eyes over it top to bottom, over and over again. I held the empty fingers and they felt like a glove -- the kind of plastic glove that my mom uses when she does the dishes. I pulled at them, and they stretched just a little bit and then snapped right back into place. I wondered if everything was stretchy like that.
I looked at the clock. It was two o'clock. I had to be up the next morning to open at the restaurant. Why had I taken that shift? I realized how tired I was and how much I needed to rest and how much I just wanted to wake up tomorrow and find that this was all just some really fucked up dream.
Glancing over the suit one more time, I thought that I would need to find a place to hide it -- at least for now. I could deal with it more tomorrow after work. I hoped that Patrick wasn't scheduled to work tomorrow, because looking at the state he was in, he sure as hell wasn't going to be able to show up. I chuckled for some reason. I felt that it was wrong not to take this seriously -- but it just came out. I guess it was just the ridiculousness of it all. That, and I really was just so exhausted. What a long fucking night. How the fuck was I going to explain any of this? Or would I even have to explain anything? Maybe that suit would stretch enough for me to crawl inside and just show up at work as Patrick... show up to this weekend's parties as Patrick... show up at my boyfriend's house as Patrick...
Fuck, I was tired. Without much thought, I folded the suit up and stashed it on the top shelf of my closet. I covered it up with some old boxes, halfway closed the door, and stumbled over to my bed where I passed out within a matter of seconds.