AB
Hi friends—it’s been a while! This story popped into my head this week and I felt compelled to write it down immediately. I’ve got lots of other ideas brewing and I hope to get back to being a regular contributor soon.
P.S. For those of you who are only in it for the hair content, not the plot, the haircut comes early in this story. But if you care about the mystery, you’re going to have to read to the end. Enjoy!
8:00 a.m.
Kimberly woke up with a strand of hair draped over her shoulder, tickling her neck. “That’s odd,” she thought to herself. She distinctly remembered putting her hair up in its regular “pineapple” ponytail on top of her head. Had it come loose in her sleep?
It was a distinct possibility. She didn’t remember tossing and turning all night, but she didn’t feel rested at all. And if she had tossed and turned, it could have loosened her scrunchie. Her head was throbbing far more than it should have been, given the aspirin she took last night, and her eyes were dry, both of which would be the expected aftermath of a night of hard partying.
Only Kimberly had cut her night short last night, coming home relatively early last night after developing a headache. She’d only had a single drink before that, hours before she went to bed.
She cleared her throat, testing for signs of hoarseness or mucus—signs she might be coming down with something. But everything felt fine there. Next, she plugged one nostril and breathed sharply through the other to check for congestion. All clear on the first side, she repeated the process on the second side. Her sinuses seemed fine, too.
Bothered, now, by the hair in her face, Kimberly moved her hand from her nose to her cheek and went to brush the hair off, only to find that instead of flopping back over her shoulder, it caught on her hand and then landed across her chest. A long, loose red curl. Completely severed from her head.
Kimberly shot up in bed and the curl landed in her lap. As did several others that had apparently rested on her shoulders while she slept. She let out a startled cry and looked around the room. More long locks of red curls, curls that should have been attached to her scalp, were scattered across the room, creating a path to her dresser that ended in a mountain of red hair. Her eyes slowly swept from the floor to the top of the chest. When she moved into the apartment, she’d set it up to function as a vanity, topping it with a big mirror and sets of small drawers to hold makeup and cosmetics. On the surface was a set of black clippers, plugged in where her blow dryer could usually be found, strands of red hair clinging to the device’s affixed purple guard.
For the first time since she woke up that morning, Kimberly raised a tentative hand to her head. She prayed to a god she’d never had much use for until now that she was having some sort of hallucination. Or that her friends had pulled some sort of prank. That when she touched her head she’d still find the familiar softness of her thick, copper-colored curls where they were supposed to be. But she knew, even before her hand made contact, what she’d find: a soft pelt of short fuzz, barely long enough to even be called hair.
Kimberly ran to the mirror, almost slipping on the hair on the floor, to get visual confirmation of what she felt. The young woman she saw there was unfamiliar, almost alien—all eyes and cheekbones and neck. Her eyes. Her cheekbones. Her neck. And covering her head, maybe a quarter of an inch of the natural red she was known for.
What was missing from the picture, though, was any explanation of how she had gotten this way.
4:00 a.m.
Kimberly held the clippers in her hand, examining them closely. Something didn’t feel quite right, but she couldn’t identify what, or why.
“I am going to shave my head,” she announced to the empty room, and although the statement felt wrong coming out of her mouth, she knew the act itself was inevitable. She was going to shave her head and that’s all there was to it.
She flipped the switch on the clippers and began to raise them to her head, but something stopped her. A voice inside her head, telling her to at least use a guard. Kimberly picked one at random—a plastic purple comb-like attachment emblazoned with the number two—attached it, and turned the clippers back on. “I am going to shave my head,” she repeated to herself, because even though the guard would keep her from being truly bald, the quarter of an inch of hair that would remain when she was done would be insignificant after a lifetime of waist-length curls.
The moment she pushed the buzzing clippers from her forehead to her crown she felt an immense relief come over her body. The tension that had kept her from sleeping suddenly let go. She watched in the mirror as a strip of short hair appeared where the clippers had passed, then looked over her shoulder at the long clump of red curls sliding down her back and onto the floor. There was a twinge of sadness, but only a twinge. She kept going.
Kimberly brought the clippers to her forehead again and made a pass just to the right of the first, overlapping it just enough to make sure no errant long hairs would escape their destruction. The clippers sent pleasant vibrations down her arm and over the top of her head, and she lined up her third pass as soon as the second was completed, then a fourth pass and a fifth. Soon, the entire right side of her head was practically bare, covered only by what the plastic guard didn’t let the clippers take.
Kimberly shut off the clippers and ran a hand over the shorn section of her hair. A little zing shot down her spine and into the pit of her stomach, but she didn’t examine its meaning. Not yet.
Somewhere, in the back of her mind, was the voice from before, telling her that she could stop here. That she could put the clippers away and stop at a dramatic, albeit slightly dated, side undercut. That most of her hair could still be spared the clippers’ destruction. Kimberly shook the notion away. “I am going to shave my head,” she said again, turning the clippers back on and bringing them back to the top of her head, expanding the buzzed area in a way that soon rendered getting away with an undercut impossible.
Kimberly continued to buzz off strips of red curls. She let them fall to her shoulders, her breasts, her feet. She didn’t make any move to brush the locks to the floor, though plenty of them did, and soon she was standing in a mountain of red silk. She thought to herself how soft it felt, pleased her extensive hair care routine had been effective, and if there was a moment of regret that all of the time and expense previously dedicated to her hair was now wasted, she pushed it away quickly enough and continued to add to the pile, running the clippers back and forth over her head.
When Kimberly finished the top and both sides of her head and only the hair covering her nape remained in its pristine state, she turned the clippers off again. This time, she raised both hands to her head. It felt so strange, without the thick forest of curls that usually covered it. So small. But also so soft. So very, very soft. She found she didn’t want to stop petting herself and, perhaps more surprisingly, that every time she ran her hands over her head the warm, wet feeling that had begun to pool between her legs grew.
A look of confusion flashed across her features in the mirror. Kimberly paused her exploration of her shorn scalp to ponder over her expression. What was there to be confused about? She was shaving her head and it felt incredible. That voice in the back of her mind that had given her pause twice before knocked on the door of her consciousness to remind her how much she had loved her hair, and the attention that came with it. She drowned it out with the sound of the clippers, as she switched them back on.
The moment the clippers touched her nape, Kimberly’s stomach contracted. As good as the clippers had felt before, this was better. The last of her hair cascaded to the ground, leaving her well and truly shorn, and the hand that wasn’t holding the clippers traveled to her belly, inside the waistband of her sleep shorts, and to her swollen clit. The abundant wetness of her cunt made her fingers easily glide back and forth over the tender nub until she came with a deep nonverbal grunt, doubled over in pleasure.
Kimberly licked her own wetness off of her fingers—salty, familiar—and then used that hand to sweep over her head, looking for any uneven spots that she’d then re-buzz with the clippers still held in the other. And when everything seemed even, Kimberly switched off the clippers and put them down on her dresser. She leaned into the mirror and examined herself. Long red curls still lay across her shoulders and chest, a testament to the destruction she had just wrought. “Ah yes,” she said, turning her head from side to side to truly see what she had done. “Yes. That’s right. This was what I was supposed to do.”
Kimberly walked back to her bed, heedless of the fact that she was kicking shorn hair along her path, and climbed under the covers without brushing the severed locks resting on her shoulders to the ground.
Under the covers, one of Kimberly’s hands traveled to her head, the other back between her legs, and she gently stroked both destinations, giving way once again to a pleasure unlike any she had felt before.
And now, at last, she could sleep.
3:30 a.m.
Kimberly was almost feral by the time she heard the knock on her apartment door. She threw it open to a tired man in a jumpsuit emblazoned with the word DLVR—the name of the local start-up that promised gig workers available to run your most important errands, 24 hours a day. The man looked at Kimberly’s hair, streaming down her back, almost to her waist, then looked around her to see if someone else was in the apartment. She could tell what he was thinking. Surely this beautiful woman with the beautiful hair would not have sent him on this particular errand, especially not in the middle of the night. It had to be for someone else—a roommate. A boyfriend. A dog, maybe?
But no. To what she was sure would be his horror if she told him, this delivery was for her.
Kimberly thanked the man and tapped the button on the tablet he produced to confirm receipt of her delivery, adding a substantial tip to the charge. She watched him walk down the hall and get on the elevator before closing her door and locking it, throwing the deadbolt to be absolutely sure nobody would interrupt what she was about to do.
The DLVR-branded brown paper bag the man had handed her was heavier than Kimberly expected it to be. She carried it down the hall to her bedroom, careful for once to avoid the loud floorboard outside her roommate’s bedroom, then shut her door. Kimberly sat down on her bed and opened the bag, removing the box from inside, annoyed to find it taped shut. Too eager to find a blade to slice through the tape, she ripped the box open and pulled out a shiny, black set of hair clippers.
2:00 a.m.
Kimberly threw off her covers and got out of bed. She had been tossing and turning for two hours now. There was something she needed to do. Something she’d forgotten, maybe. But she couldn’t for the life of her remember what it was.
She picked up her phone and scrolled to her calendar to make sure she hadn’t missed a shift at work. But no, she wasn’t scheduled to work again until Tuesday, and anyway, they would have called her if she’d no-showed. Had she stood up a date? Maybe one she forgot to put on her calendar? She launched her dating app and scrolled through her inbox, but none of the people she’d been chatting with had sent her messages accusing her of ghosting, nor had any of them suggested weekend plans she’d failed to confirm.
Maybe it was school related? Kimberly picked up the notebook in which she recorded all of her assignments but didn’t see any exams she had to cram for or any papers she had to urgently write.
Had she forgotten to tell someone happy birthday? Her mom’s wasn’t until next month, and Kimberly was certain she called her dad when his happened two weeks ago. Both of her sisters had summer birthdays, and her grandmother’s was in late December, more than two months away. None of her friends had recent birthdays marked in her calendar, either.
This wasn’t the weekend her roommate would be out of town and needed Kimberly to water her plants. It wasn’t the day she’d marked on her calendar when tickets for her favorite band’s tour were going on sale.
Kimberly paced her room. What was it? What was it?
Then she walked past her dresser. A flash of coppery red caught her eye. Kimberly turned to look herself in the mirror. Reached a hand up and removed her scrunchie, letting her long red curls fall around her shoulders and spill down her back.
Ah yes. That was it. That was what she was supposed to do.
12:00 a.m.
Kimberly couldn’t put her finger on it, but something didn’t feel right. She still had the little headache she’d left the club with, but it wasn’t just that.
As she flipped her hair forward and gathered it all loosely in her favorite satin scrunchie, she felt a pulling sensation near her temple, as if the hair there—and only the hair there—had been wrapped in the hair tie too many times. Kimberly let her hair down and again made her nightly pineapple, but now the uncomfortable tugging was at her hairline, near her nape.
Three more attempts later and Kimberly finally had her hair comfortably up. She washed her face, brushed her teeth, and changed into the shorts and camisole that served as her pajamas.
Still, something felt off. Kimberly left her bedroom and stood by her roommate’s closed door. She raised her hand to knock, but heard a quiet snoring from the apartment’s second bedroom and decided not to wake her friend. Wincing as she once again stepped on the creaky floorboard in the hall, she went to the main room and checked to make sure she’d locked the door when she came in. She had, but she hadn’t thrown the deadbolt, unsure whether her roommate was home yet.
That must be it, Kimberly thought. Assured that both residents of apartment 3F were home, she threw the deadbolt, poured herself a glass of water in the kitchen, swallowed a few aspirin for her headache, and headed back to her room. Exhausted from a long day and a night out with her friends, Kimberly climbed into bed, pulled up the covers, and closed her eyes.
11:30 p.m.
“What about the guy who was strutting around like a rooster?” Emily cackled. “His cock-a-doodle-doo was surprisingly realistic.”
“I was a fan of the woman who sang like Celine Dion,” Kimberly added. “She was remarkably talented. I wasn’t expecting that at all.”
“Yeah, they were great, but I could have done without the dude who wanted everyone to know how big his dick is,” Melissa added.
“Yeah,” Kimberly agreed with a sigh. “Didn’t love that.”
“Some guy’s always gotta ruin it for everybody,” Emily said.
The three friends were walking back to Kimberly’s building after their evening plans. It was early, but Kimberly had complained of a headache when she left the club and declined to go on to the next location with her friends. True “girls’ girls” both, they insisted on walking her home before they continued with their evening, wanting to make sure she got there safely.
“You sure you’re going to be okay?” Melissa asked as they approached Kimberly’s building.
“Yeah, I’m fine,” Kimberly insisted. “I’m going to wash my face, brush my teeth, and go straight to bed. I’m sure I’ll feel better in the morning.”
“Do you want us to walk you up?” Emily asked.
“Nah. You two go have fun. We’ll text tomorrow.”
Both friends hugged Kimberly and kissed her on the cheek, then made their way to the subway station at the corner. Kimberly watched them disappear down the stairs, then unlocked her door and began to walk up the three flights to her apartment.
It really was annoying that she’d developed a headache tonight. She would have loved to stay out with her friends. “But what can you do?” she asked herself aloud as she hit the third floor landing.
Kimberly headed straight to her bathroom to brush her teeth and wash her face. She was ready to get some sleep.
9:30 p.m.
The club was dark and filled with small round tables, each sporting a lit candle.
The hostess guided Kimberly, Emily, and Melissa to their table, right in front of the stage. This wasn’t their usual sort of Friday night outing, but Emily had won the tickets, and as poor college students, who were they to pass up anything free?
“So, who’s going to volunteer?” Melissa asked. Emily and Kimberly both looked at her and shook their heads. “Come on!” Melissa insisted. “We’re in the front row. One of us has to do it!”
“So why not you?” Emily asked.
“Stage fright,” Melissa said. “I’ll get up there and freeze.”
“Well I’m not doing it either,” Emily insisted. “I just know I’ll wind up doing something embarrassing.”
“Everyone is going to do something embarrassing,” Melissa insisted. “That’s kind of the point.”
“Still a no,” Emily said, crossing her arms.
Melissa turned to Kimberly.
“No, no, no, no,” Kimberly said. “Absolutely not!”
“Why not?” Melissa whined. “Out of the three of us, you’re the performer.”
“‘No’ is a complete sentence, Melissa,” Kimberly said.
“So is ‘please,’” Melissa retorted. Then she put her hands together and gave her friend her best puppy eyes. “Pleeeeeeeaaaaaassssse?”
Kimberly sighed. Melissa had pregamed their outing and Kimberly knew that drunk Mel was also persistent Mel. “Fine,” she said. “I’ll do it for an unnamed favor, to be determined later.”
“Deal!” Melissa said enthusiastically, just as the lights in the room dimmed further.
“Ladies and gentlemen, plus our friends beyond the binary,” the emcee boomed from offstage. “Welcome to The Riot. We’re happy to have you tonight. Please remember to shut off your cellphones, unwrap your candies, yada yada. Ordinarily I’d tell you no heckling but this is a different kind of show.” The emcee reviewed a few more venue rules, then concluded: “Oh, and remember to tip your waiters and waitresses. With all of that out of the way, I’m now happy to bring to the stage, straight from The Best American Talent Show, David Sayers, Master Hypnotist!”
A spotlight hit the stage and a tall, attractive man in his mid-thirties came out. He wore a black shirt and black slacks and launched into a funny monologue about his time competing on the reality show the emcee mentioned—Kimberly had never heard of it, or of this Sayers guy, but she supposed he was funny enough, especially if they weren’t paying.
“And now,” the performer said, after holding for laughs at his punchline, “I’m going to ask for volunteers from the audience.” After a reluctant pause, during which Melissa shot her a pointed look, Kimberly raised her hand. “Ah yes,” Sayers said, his eyes landing on her immediately. “The redhead in the front row. Thank you for volunteering first.” He extended a hand and helped her step up onto the stage, then turned his attention to the rest of the audience, eventually collecting about fifteen other people.
Sayers stepped to the side of the stage and half addressed the audience, half addressed the volunteers. “Now,” he said, “some of you may be wondering why I have so many people up here. It’s almost too crowded to move!” The audience chucked. “That’s simple,” Sayers continued. “It’s been my experience—and this is documented science, so it’s not just me—that not everyone is susceptible to hypnosis. In fact about 25% of the population is either difficult to hypnotize or flat-out cannot be hypnotized. So, if my math checks out,” he paused to elaborately count on his fingers, “at least four of you are going to be back in your seats shortly. And if that’s you, hey, it’s been fun. You’ll feel me tap you on your shoulder and you can return to your seat.”
One man on the stage raised his hand. “Uh, I tried hypnotherapy to quit smoking and it didn’t work,” he offered, when Sayers eyes landed on him.
“My friend,” Sayers said, good naturedly, walking over and giving his shoulder a dramatic tap, “then why in the world did you even volunteer? Get back down there to your seat and order another drink.” He waited for the man to clamber off the stage, and then turned his back to the audience, focusing entirely on the remaining audience members who were still with him.
“Okay, volunteers, I’m going to ask you all to have a seat here on the stage floor.” Sayers noticed Kimberly and a few women in the group hesitate. “It’s okay,” he assured them, “the staff here assures me they mopped it at least two weeks ago.” Pulling her long curls over her shoulder to avoid accidentally sitting on it, Kimberly chuckled and took a seat, and the other women joined her.
“Now,” Sayers began, before launching into what was clearly his hypnosis script, full of calming cues and breathing exercises. Kimberly watched the people around her soften and turn glassy eyed, but she still felt alert, awake, not at all hypnotized. There was a moment where she found herself maybe, possibly, going under, but she shook her head and any hypnotic effects she might have been feeling fell away. After a few moments more of sitting there unaffected, Sayers tapped her on the shoulder. “Thanks,” he said quietly, offering his hand again to help her stand. “Guess you’re one of the 25%!”
Kimberly returned to her table. A drink was waiting for her. “When it didn’t look like you were going to go under, we ordered you a G&T,” Emily whispered.
“We figured you’d be back soon,” Melissa added, also under her breath. “But you looked really pretty on the stage while you were up there.”
The show was entertaining enough, with Sayers cracking jokes and telling stories while coaching his volunteers to do a number of things—some funny, some impressive, some a bit uncomfortable. A few more volunteers were dismissed over the course of the show, one for behaving inappropriately and the others for seeming to be insufficiently under Sayers’ hypnosis.
After about an hour and a half of hypnosis-enhanced antics, Sayers had the volunteers remaining onstage sit back down on the ground. “Now,” he said to the audience, “some people think that what we do here isn’t real, that these folks up here are just playing along. So before I wake them back up and say goodbye to all of you, we’re going to plant one last suggestion. I’ll have no way of knowing if it works, but you, their friends and loved ones, will. And if you see them engaging in one of these activities, you’ll know that this whole show, everything you saw tonight, was 100% real.”
He turned back to the volunteers, angling just enough to keep an eye on the audience, too. “My friends,” he said, to the people seated on the ground before him. “Tonight, before you go to bed, you have to do something that’s totally out of character for you. The only caveat is, you can’t hurt yourself or anyone else, physically or emotionally. But that leaves plenty of completely harmless stuff, right?” He turned to the audience. “Things like writing an actual physical letter to your best friend. Volunteering for your work softball team when you usually turn your nose up at it. Taking a sudden interest in gardening. What kind of stuff can you think of, folks? I’m especially asking those of you who came here tonight with one of the people up on this stage, because you know what’s out of character for them, but anyone can chime in.”
“Ask out your crush!” a guy around Kimberly’s age called from a few rows back.
“Yes!” Sayers exclaimed. “That’s exactly the sort of thing I’m talking about! What else?”
“Give money to an unhoused person you’d otherwise ignore,” someone at the table next to Kimberly suggested. “But like, a lot of money. At least $50.”
“Ooooh,” Sayers said. “I like that. Not only does it not hurt anybody, it actively helps someone. I’m going to have to remember that!”
“Tell off your boss!” yelled a middle-aged woman from the back of the crowd.
“Maaaaybe,” Sayers said, “But only if you have another job lined up. Otherwise you’re kinda hurting yourself, right?”
A few more suggestions came in from the audience. The wife of one of the men onstage suggested “list some of your sports memorabilia that’s taking up half of the basement on eBay,” which got a huge laugh and Sayers instant approval. The friend of someone else on stage shouted out: “book that damn vacation already, you workaholic!” and Sayers agreed that yes, as long as the expense wouldn’t hurt, that was a great suggestion. “Dye your hair pink!” yelled a person with a similarly hued topknot.
“Oooh!” shouted Melissa, before Sayers could respond to the bubblegum-tressed person who made the last suggestion. “Even better: shave your head!” A few people in the audience whooped and clapped at the suggestion.
Kimberly blinked and looked at her friend. “What?” Melissa whispered. “It’s not like you’re still up there.”
“Ah,” Sayers said after the audience died down. “That’s an interesting one, because you have to really think about what we mean by harm here. Unless you’re a hair model doing shampoo ads, shaving your head probably won’t actually hurt you or anyone else. But we do live in a society where for some people, appearances matter a lot, and shaving your head could hurt your job prospects or relationships, which could then hurt you. So let’s say this: if you are a person who will not be hurt in any way because of it…yes. Sure! Shave your head!”
Kimberly must have spaced out for the last few minutes of the show, because the next thing she knew, the audience was filing out of the club. Standing beside her, Emily asked: “You okay?”
“Yeah,” Kimberly replied, shaking her head as if to clear it and rising from her seat. “Just…a little headache. I’m sure I’ll be fine once I get home.”
