The Treble

Come with me as I clumsily navigate British colloquialisms and culture…

 

The Treble

The haircutting kit she saw on the bathroom counter before the crowd showed up to watch the game should have been Alicia’s first sign that some questions needed to be asked. But the purpose of such a thing, especially given how velvety short her boyfriend Grant had worn his hair since the began dating in college six years ago, never entered her mind. Instead, she had been focused on looking as casually cute as possible in her Manchester City kit. She coordinated her makeup to complement the light blue jersey, which conveniently complemented her ice blue eyes, and than gathered her wealth of blonde hair into a perfectly messy bun, freeing a few carefully chosen strands to caress her shoulders and neck and soften her sharp features as they fell. 

She couldn’t remember the last time she had a bad hair day, and that wasn’t by accident. Her hair was her hobby; her escape at the end of bad days at work or from boredom on the weekends. She wasn’t sure what she’d do without it, and was grateful Grant was willing to put up with her excesses now and then.

Though she didn’t have a huge following on Instagram by any means, she felt like she had a pretty decent following, with her fans split among fellow City devotees and those who admired the healthy, silky tresses that could tickle the upper curve of her ass when left hanging free. A natural dark blonde near the roots, a combination of sunlight and a modest bit of chemical help created a subtle balayage into golden blonde by the time it reached her shoulders. She loved how the darker under layers would peek through now and then, creating a gorgeous vibrancy among her highlights, but today was not for her hair. It was for her team.

And so, as the crowd in her and Grant’s apartment grew, and as the game grew more tense in its closing minutes, she paid no mind to Grant setting a bar stool in the middle of the dining area next to the living room where about twenty of their close friends watched with their hearts in their throats. She didn’t notice some of them snapping pictures of her nervously chewing on her forefingers as she held her folded hands to her mouth.

But when the final whistle blew and Manchester City had claimed not only the Champions League title but also the English Premiership and the FA Cup all in the same year, she cheered and jumped and threw her arms around anyone who would hug her. She’d snap a picture with each of them and then get passed to the next, and then the next and next until, slightly dizzy and kind of drunk, she wound up in Grant’s arms. Her boyfriend’s embrace filled her with a giddy energy, especially after the big win, and she was too preoccupied with wondering how soon everyone would leave so she could burn off that energy with him to realize he lifted her, spun, and set her down on that stool he’d placed at the center of the room.

But when he let go and stepped away, she finally realized everyone was looking at her. The room grew silent, with some people grinning, others looking at her nervously, and a few taking more pictures.

“What’s up?” She asked. 

Grant reappeared at her side, handing her a fresh pint of beer. “You’ll need this,” he said mischievously.

Normally she wasn’t one to question catered beer, but… “What for?”

Marianne, her best friend since primary school, stepped forward and turned the screen of her phone so Alicia could see it. “Remember this?” She handed her phone over, and then stepped behind Alicia to undo that perfectly messy bun, running her fingers down through the golden, Rapunzelesque waves before stepping in front of her again.

Alicia looked at the phone as she chugged the beer down. It was open to her own Instagram account, specifically to a post she had made at the very start of the Premier League season and when she had first discovered the joy of making AI-assisted avatars of herself. The post had about six fake photos of her mugging for the camera with AI-generated buzzcuts. 

Something didn’t seem right here. She took another drink of her beer and furrowed her brow. “What am I looked at?”

As someone started running a comb through her hair — in a rather well-practiced manner, with long, slow strokes, she noted — Marianne tapped the caption beneath the photos.

What do you think? It said. If we get a treble this year, I’ll do it!

Her eyes widened and she almost dropped the rest of her beer. Chuckles started, followed by laughter when she let her expression go full blast into shock and refusal. “Oh no! No way!” She laughed, tossing Marianne’s phone back to her. 

“You really going to break your word to all your followers?” Grant’s buddy Peter asked. He stood just a few feet away, his own phone up and filming the whole ordeal.

Tingles of an oddly exciting panic burst out across every inch of Alicia’s skin, running up and down from her scalp to her toes. She was suddenly very well of someone having a grip on the base of a tightly-formed ponytail, with the tender comb-strokes suddenly taking on the sinister task of gathering any refugee tresses back into its grasp. 

They weren’t really expecting her to do this, were they? “That was a joke!” She insisted. She could feel her forehead wrinkling as her eyebrows knitted together, and one hand grasped the seat of the stool as a sudden lightheadedness crashed into her. Her beer was taken away, which she knew was for the best, but before she could thank the person who seized it, another full pint replaced the original.

Oh, fuck, they were serious about this.

And they were filming it so everyone would know she bailed on a silly promise she never really meant. 

“But Grant loves it!” She blurted out as her heart began to race and her palms grew sweaty. “I can’t break his heart like that.”

For the first time ever, Grant’s voice sent chills down her spine and he leaned over her right shoulder and smiled as he replied, “Who do you think has the scissors, love?” With a dramatic flair that betrayed her personal Adonis’s drama club kid background, he held a pair of long, silver shears in front of her face, forcing her to cross her eyes as he snapped them open and shut.

“Oh god,” she whispered. His lips pressed against her cheek as she felt the blood drain from her face, and then he disappeared again. 

But his grip on her ponytail remained. It tightened, even, and a slight lifting gesture resulted in Alicia looking down at her own bare knees, shaking as they were beneath the hems of her cute white shorts. “Alicia Penbrooke, the sporting gods heard your vow, and must be appeased.”

Even with how loud her the mock cheers and laughter of her friends was, Alicia could only focus on the brief sting of the cold scissors brushing against her neck, and then the hideously loud, angry crunching that began as short bursts of tension tugged of her beautiful, lush mane before fading and returning and fading again. She clenched her eyes shut and grimaced as the people around her hooted and hollered, and with a quivering hand she lifted her pint to her lips and tried to drink, spilling a good bit down the front of her jersey as Grant continued to chop and chop behind her.

Slowly, silky blonde locks began to fall forward, brushing past her ears and curtaining against her right cheek. She lowered her beer and opened her eyes, seeing for the first time in at least a decade, blunt, choppy ends of her treasured golden fleece barely reaching past her chin. 

The weirdly excited tingles and prickles never ceased as Grant worked—commenting on how formidable her thick, lush ponytail was as he cut—but, to Alicia’s surprise, the fright and nervousness faded. Her heart was still racing, but not quite as much, and it seemed to stop completely when the final snap of Grant’s scissors sounded. 

Everything in the room went silent, and Alicia sat with a slacked jaw as she looked at the ragged, shorn ends of the hair framing her face. She lifted her chin, letting the bobbed locks rest against her cheeks as she looked over the faces of her friends. She couldn’t remember the last time her hair was this short, and she was almost certain none of them had seen her like this before. 

A few eyebrows lifted, waiting for her reaction, and so she made them wait, lifting her beer to her lips and finishing it quickly before tossing the empty glass to Marianne. 

“Step one done, I guess?” She finally said.

Cheers erupted, probably mostly because everyone was glad she didn’t have a panic attack. Grant held her ponytail up, the beautiful, thick, silky waves dancing in the air as he proclaimed, “The sacrifice is accepted!”

Maybe it was the booze, but Alicia laughed. Then she reached out, pushing his hand away and the ponytail out of sight because in all honesty, she wasn’t sure she could look at it for long without bursting into tears.

After the ponytail disappeared — that gorgeous, envy-inducing mass of rich blonde tresses — Grant nuzzled his lips to her ear and whispered, “You’re such a good sport.”

Any snarky reply she was about to give died when she heard a loud pop and an angry whirring behind her. Grant’s hand then rested against the crown of her head and tilted her chin downward. Cool, vibrating plastic rested against her nape as she looked at the goosebumps forming on her legs, and an electric pulse of pure pleasure took her by surprise, racing down between her thighs as those vibrating blades slowly moved up her nape, burrowing into the thick, haphazardly chopped hair there. Their tone changed dramatically when they met the full weight of her healthy, carefully tended hair, but there was no chance her beloved mane would win this battle. Slowly the clippers moved upward, replacing the familiar warmth of softness of her hair with a brutal, naked coolness as they approached the curve above, relentlessly purring against her nape and sending chills of delight through her body. 

She squirmed against the stool when Grant pulled the clippers away and then started a new path up the back of her head next to the old one, and found herself folding her arms across her chest in a mock pout to hopefully hide how surprisingly stiff her nipples had become.

Her breathing grew a little ragged as Grant worked, his heavy but gentle hand resting on her shoulder as he mercilessly reduced the golden fleece she had always been identified with to… a length she had never actually been forewarned about. 

Here she was, with her friends cheering the revelation of every curve of her scalp, watching and filming her dear boyfriend denuding her of her crowning glory, and her body was doubling down on the betrayal with a growing warmth between her thighs and in her cheeks. Even when Grant passed the clippers off to Marianne, and she to Peter and he to someone else, each of them taking a pass or two, she felt herself starting to lose her grip on herself in a way she never had around any of these people besides Grant. The humiliation mixed with the unexpected excitement to create an even more potent force, one that had her begging for a way to be rid of it before she screamed out in front of everyone.

It was when the clippers had moved so far to the right that they teased her ear with every pass that she had to chew her lip to avoid a moan, and when a swath of incredibly soft, silky locks landed on her bare thigh before sliding to the floor that she almost ground her hips down against the stool. 

Her sharp intake of breath could have been mistaken as someone fighting not to cry, and she assumed that was the case when Grant motion for the shearing to stop and leaned in to hug her, but he knew her too well. No, he had seen the signs, he knew the signs, and as he held her he ruthlessly nibbled her naked, exposed right ear and whispered, “You’re about to come, aren’t you?”

His right hand tucked her remaining locks back behind her left ear and traveled back to lightly, slowly caress the thick, soft velvet her tumbling mane had become, and in desperation she bit down on his shoulder and held him tightly, hoping the orgasm that rocked her body — the orgasm she was having in front of so many of her friends and that was even being recorded by them — looked like nothing more than nervous sobs.

When it passed, after her breathing almost returned to normal, his lips pressed against her and then, feeling her cheeks burn with satisfaction, humiliation, and naughty delight, she tried to regain her composure in front of her sympathetic friends. “It’s okay,” she assured them in a very shaky voice. Grant took the clippers back and them again as she sat up straight, letting Grant press them to her left temple and rake them back over her ear. “Too late to stop now, right?”

Some friends laughed, and she smiled in return, but there was a horror she was forced to face when the chills gifted to her by the rumbling clippers continued even after she had broken. But fuck it, she decided, and she closed her eyes, tilting her head to the side as Grant worked, savoring the feel of the harsh plastic as it ride up the side of her head again and again. It took a slight pause when her ears and nape had been left completely bare and vulnerable, returning a few moments afterward when Grant risked launching her into another orgasm by cupping her nape and setting the humming devil machine against her forehead. 

She swallowed her nervousness, biting her bottom lip as he looked down at her and then swept the clippers back. Again and again they mowed and chewed their way over her head, shearing away the last of any notable length of her locks that remained. A few wisps, pathetic remnants of what was once a glorious head of hair, fell in front of her, resting lightly on her nose or her chest before she brushed them away. 

Once her hair stopped resisting, once there wasn’t enough to even slow the brisk strokes Grant took with the clippers, the excitement died down a little. Her heart and breathes returned to something a little more normal, at least until she was forced to deal with an errant thought of what she’d tell people at work or what her parents would think. But fortunately there wasn’t much time for that, as Grant worked quickly, swapping blades from time to time and repeating some of the paths he had taken before. She didn’t know why he did that, but she didn’t ask, deciding that she would get her answer when she finally saw herself afterward.

A round of applause broke out when Grant finally set the clippers down. A few pictures were taken before she even knew what she looked like, and despite her half-hearted protests, eventually a bath towel was set in her lap and loaded up with every bit of hair that had been stolen from her. Despite having cared for it so attentively herself, she couldn’t believe the incredible mass had all been on her head just a short while before. Even leaving the hefty, almost-one-meter long ponytail aside, there was a huge amount of shorn locks in her lap when it was finished being gathered from around the stool.

Finally, when it all was taken away from her, she was able to reach up and feel her head.

“Holy shit!” She blurted out, giving birth to another round of laughter and jokes. Fearful of the effect too much caressing would have, she only allowed herself one pass with each hand, feeling the soft bristles atop her head give way to the velvety covering above her ears and the harsh, sandpapery feel near her nape. She trembled after that one and only pass, and was grateful that everyone seemed to realize that, despite the glory of their team’s win, it was probably time to head home.

That, at least, let her know relief was in sight even as everyone who left felt the need to rub her crewcut head, with some hands lingering longer than others and eliciting more of a humiliating purr from someone deep down inside of her, no matter who they were. Nearby, Grant grinned incessantly, his smile growing wider every time he — if not hearing it — felt one of those purrs in his soul.

When the front door finally closed, she heard him ask, “So are you going to kill me?” but she was already gone. She fled to the bedroom, snapping on the light and darting in front of her mirror, gasping and stepping back when she saw the unfamiliar brunette looking back at her. Every single golden highlight had been shorn, every single hint at the natural, if somewhat dark, blonde she had been had been harvested. Instead, not even three quarters of an inch of light brown locks stood at attention near her forehead, her natural parting forming a crease just above the outer edge of her right eyebrow that gave some semblance of style. 

The soft pelt grew shorter and shorter as it approached the crown of her head, fading to about a quarter inch in length above her ears before fading further down to maybe — maybe — an eighth of an inch at most around each of them and at her nape.

Her light blue eyes somehow seemed brighter than before, but the rest of her features — sharp even with soft waves of golden hair surrounding them — looked so much harsher and angular. She wasn’t so insecure as to think she was no longer beautiful; she absolutely was, but in a completely different way than before. Striking might be a better word, especially with how her ears… oh god, had her ears always looked like little radar dishes? 

Grant appeared beside her, on hand landing softly against her nape and brushing upward, his fingers moving in lazy circles as she closed her eyes, leaned back against him, and finally gave into the sort of moan and shudder that she’d been fighting for the past hour or so.

As her hands slid under her jersey and undid the buttons and zipper of her shorts, he assured her, “It’ll grow back.”

She turned, letting her shorts fall around her ankles as she shoved him back onto the bed. She grabbed the hem of her jersey and pulled it over her head, still executing the well-practiced head toss that would have pulled her magnificent long hair free if she still had it. If.

Narrowing her eyes, she shook her head and straddled his hips, grasping the belt that kept her from her desired prize. 

“Don’t be so certain,” she growled, leaning in for a hungry kiss and introducing him to the monster he created.

 

—

The End

 

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Hope you liked this one — as always, any input is appreciated! You never know what might inspire the next vignette.