Anonymouzhuman
“You really think this is a good idea?” Nithya tugged at the hem of her oversized university t shirt, eyeing the crowded auditorium doors. Flyers for the “Bright Futures Initiative” fluttered under cheap tape, their edges curling in the humid air.Her long and thick knee length braid swaying with her movements
Nithya’s roommate Priya rolled her eyes and shoved a clipboard into her hands. “It’s just volunteer hours with free pizza. Stop acting like I’m dragging you to a cult initiation.” The pen attached to the clipboard had teeth marks on it, and someone had drawn a tiny frowning face on the side where the ink was low.
Nithya scribbled her name on the sign-up sheet, barely registering the small print at the bottom about “participation requirements.” The clipboard vanished into a pile of others as Priya pulled her toward the pizza table, where a sweating grad student was separating slices with the precision of a lab technician.
The lights dimmed abruptly, and a spotlight hit the makeshift stage—just a few plywood risers with a folding chair bolted strangely to the center. A woman in a lab coat strode out, clapping her hands like a kindergarten teacher. “Welcome, altruists!” Her voice was too loud for the mic. “Today, your generosity will literally change lives.”
Nithya froze mid-bite as a projector screen unfurled behind the woman, showing before-and-after photos of bald children smiling weakly in hospital gowns. Priya elbowed her ribs. “Oh shit,” she muttered through a mouthful of pepperoni. “This is that head-shaving thing for cancer kids. The one I told you not to Google.”
A clipboard-toting volunteer tapped Nithya’s shoulder. “You’re next,” they chirped, pointing to the chair where electric clippers buzzed like an angry hornet. The crowd began chanting her name—the one she’d signed without reading—as the lab-coated woman beckoned with the exaggerated grin of a gameshow host.
The chanting grew louder, rhythmic and relentless, as if the entire auditorium had become a living thing pressing against Nithya’s ribs. Her fingers instinctively flew to her hair, the thick strands slipping through them like silk ropes—her grandmother’s pride, her mother’s daily braiding ritual, the thing strangers stopped her for in grocery store lines. The clippers whined higher in pitch.
Priya grabbed her wrist, nails digging in. “We can bolt,” she hissed, jerking her head toward the emergency exit. But the crowd had already closed ranks, a wall of eager faces and raised phones filming. The lab-coated woman—Dr. Somebody, the banner behind her declared—leaned into the mic. “Nithya, sweetheart, these kids need your courage!” The screen flashed a close-up of a toddler with IV tubes tangled in tiny fists.
Nithya’s legs moved without permission, carrying her toward the chair like a sleepwalker. The folding seat creaked under her weight. Someone draped a scratchy cape over her shoulders, the polyester smelling like stale detergent and nervous sweat. Behind her, a stylist—too young, with chipped blue nail polish—clicked the clippers on and off like she was testing a trigger.
The first touch of metal to her nape sent a jolt down Nithya’s spine. The vibration traveled up her skull as the stylist hesitated. “All the way?” she whispered, thumb hovering over the length guard. Dr. Somebody swooped in, knocking the guard to the floor with a plastic clatter. “Every inch!” she crowed, seizing the clippers herself. The crowd whooped as the first black cascade tumbled into Nithya’s lap, heavier than she expected.
The clippers died mid-hum as Dr. Somebody yanked the cord from the outlet with theatrical flair. “Let’s make this *official*,” she announced, producing a can of shaving cream from her lab coat pocket with a magician’s flourish. The aerosol hissed obscenely loud in the sudden silence, spraying a foamy white spiral onto Nithya’s scalp where the clippers had left uneven patches like a poorly mown lawn.
Nithya’s stomach lurched as the stylist—blue nails trembling now—accepted the straight razor Dr. Somebody thrust toward her. “For the *smooth* finish these children deserve,” the doctor purred into the mic, winking at the audience. Someone in the front row giggled nervously. The razor’s edge caught the stage lights as the stylist turned it, casting a thin silver glare across Nithya’s vision. She squeezed her eyes shut, but not before seeing her own reflection warped in the steel: a distorted version of herself, already half-gone.
The first drag of the blade was colder than Nithya anticipated. Not the quick, buzzing efficiency of the clippers, but a slow, intimate scraping that left her scalp tingling and raw. Dr. Somebody’s breath hit her ear, stale coffee and spearmint gum. “Hold still, hero,” she cooed as the stylist flinched at a bead of blood welling up near Nithya’s temple. The doctor dabbed it away with her sleeve before the crowd could see, her grip vise-tight on Nithya’s shoulder. “We want you *perfect* for the after photos.”
A tear escaped Nithya’s lashes, tracking down to her jawline where it mingled with fallen strands of hair stuck to her skin. The razor paused—just for a heartbeat—before continuing its methodical work. Somewhere beyond the spotlight’s glare, Priya’s voice cut through the cloying applause: “This is *bullshit*!” But the emergency exit doors slammed shut with a decisive thud, and the stylist’s next stroke took the last of Nithya’s eyebrows with it.
The cold slap of wax against her bare scalp made Nithya gasp—a sound drowned out by the cooing crowd as Dr. Somebody worked the viscous paste into her skull with the vigor of a shoe shiner at a train station. “For *maximum* shine,” the doctor explained to the audience, fingers digging crescents into Nithya’s temples as she buffed. The chemical stench of lemon-scented wax clashed with the iron tang of fresh blood still seeping from micro-cuts along Nithya’s hairline.
They pivoted her chair toward the projector screen without warning, where a live feed now showed her waxed head gleaming like a plastic doll’s under the stage lights. Nithya’s reflection was all wrong—too pale, too wide-eyed, her neck looking obscenely long without the curtain of hair framing it. Dr. Somebody adjusted Nithya’s chin with two fingers like a photographer arranging a reluctant toddler. “Smile for the children!” The command came with a pinch to her trapezius muscle that made her lips jerk upward involuntarily. Behind them, a volunteer frantically swapped out donation buckets, the first one overflowing with coiled black hair that still held the shape of Nithya’s braid from that morning.
Flashbulbs popped in sync with the jarring click of a handheld tally counter. “That’s seven hundred Instagram stories tagged!” announced a sweaty undergrad crouched by the power strips. Dr. Somebody seized Nithya’s wrist and thrust her limp hand into the nearest bucket, pressing her palm down until hair filaments wormed between her fingers. “Hold it *up*,” she hissed through her grin, and Nithya obeyed, her arm rising as if pulled by strings. The resulting photo—her glazed eyes, the grotesque trophy of her own hair clutched in a white-knuckled grip—would later trend on Twitter with the caption “BALD AND BEAUTIFUL.”
Priya’s sneaker squeaked against the stage as she lunged forward, knocking over a tripod. “She didn’t consent to this!” The protest cracked mid-sentence, raw as Nithya’s scalp. But the stylist was already fitting a too-large baseball cap over Nithya’s sticky head, the brim shadowing her face as Dr. Somebody guided her toward the “After” photo backdrop—a mural of cartoonish rainbows ending in a pot labeled “HOPE.” Dr. Somebody crowed, and the cameras ate it up.
