Julia refuses to tell anyhone that the mask won’t come off. She acts like she’s wearing it for fun, as a style choice, but the truth is that it is stuck. She’s tried everything she can think of to safely get it off, but it won’t budge.

At work, everyone thinks she’s making too big a deal out of.

“If you didn’t always bring it up, nobody would say anything,” says Alice, who works in the cubicle across from her.

Julia can’t help mentioning it. She can feel it on her skin all the time. It has started to get itchy. She’s been putting on more and more perfume so that her coworkers don’t notice the stench.

“Could you cool it with the Channel?”

She’s can’t. She knows the smell of dead skin would be more embarassing than excessive perfume.

The mask was part of the costume she wore to the office Halloween party. Everyone complimented it, so she wore it the next day as a lark. By the end of the day, it was stuck.

Lately, Julia’s been looking at scapels and wondering if she should just cut off the mask and remove it in strips. She thinks that if she is careful, she can do it without hurting her face.

She told Alice the truth about the mask and asked her what she thought about this.

“Just leave it on,” said Alice, “the risk is too great. I mean, we all wear a mask, don’t we?”

It wasn’t enough for Julia. She went to the women’s bathroom and, carefully, slowly, peeled the entire mask off of her face. She returned to Alice’s cubicle and said, “that’s better.”

Alice threw up.

Paramedics too Julia away, though she couldn’t understand what the fuss was about.