Kevin
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Gotham was quiet in the way a held breath was quiet.
At 1:17 in the morning, Black Canary stood on the edge of a rooftop and watched headlights crawl between the old brick buildings below. Her long blonde hair streamed behind her in the cold wind, bright against her black leather jacket. Somewhere three streets away, a siren rose and faded. Nothing else moved.
“Quiet,” Dinah murmured.
Tap… tap…
She turned. The roof behind her was empty.
Dinah crossed it at a run, vaulted the parapet and landed on a fire escape. Metal rang under her boots. She descended two flights before twisting to look back. Nobody followed, but the sound came again—closer this time.
Snip.
That was not a footstep.
She dropped to the street. Decorative lamps cast pale circles over the pavement, all identical except the thirteenth. That one was taller, older, its ironwork curling around the glass like black fingers.
The light flickered as she passed beneath it.
“You’ve had three blocks,” Dinah called. “Come out.”
The lamp clicked off.
A pale hand appeared behind her shoulder. Dinah spun, but something struck the back of her head. She dropped to one knee and drew breath for her Canary Cry. A glowing band tightened around her throat, crushing the sound before it formed. Darkness folded over her. For one disjointed instant she saw old scissors, a comb, tarnished clippers and a straight razor floating in the black.
Then came one last, patient snip.
* * *
Dinah woke to the creak of leather.
Her wrists were strapped to an antique barber chair. A black cape had been fastened tightly around her neck, while her hair spilled intact over the chair back. A cracked mirror faced her. Dim white tubes glowed along its ornate frame, revealing shelves of rusted tools and glass bottles filled with shadow.
“No,” she said.
In the mirror, a tall figure formed behind her. It wore the outline of a barber’s coat, but no face occupied the darkness beneath its hat. Two white points burned where eyes should have been.
It lifted a thick section from the left side of her head and combed it smooth.
“Absolutely not.”
Large scissors opened around the hair at shoulder level. Dinah pulled until the restraints bit into her wrists.
Snip.
The blades ground through the bundle. A long blonde section slid down the cape and landed across her lap. The left side ended abruptly at her shoulder while the right still flowed past her back.
For a second, disbelief displaced fear. Then Dinah raised her eyes to the mirror.
“You just made this personal.”
The Shearer gathered the remaining length on her right. The scissors closed near her jaw, and another heavy lock dropped. It combed the hair at the back straight down, cutting repeatedly until severed waves surrounded the chair. Each metallic snip left her neck more exposed. When it finally stepped aside, a rough chin-length bob framed her face, jagged, uneven and nothing like a style she would have chosen.
Dinah glared at her reflection. The creature wanted her watching.
An old set of clippers floated from the counter.
They snapped on beside her ear.
Bzzzzzz.
“No clippers.”
The Shearer ignored her. Cold metal touched her left sideburn and travelled upward. The vibration passed through her skull as a broad strip of blonde hair tumbled across the cape. In the mirror, pale scalp appeared over her ear. The clippers climbed again, widening the closely shorn area.
Dinah had worn her hair short before, but that choice had always belonged to her. This was different. Every pass was deliberate theft, the creature pausing after each one so she could see the widening damage. Loose hair caught against her lips and eyelashes. A thick piece clung to the cape near her collarbone until the Shearer brushed it away with almost professional neatness. The gesture enraged her more than the violence. It was behaving as though she were an ordinary customer who had requested this.
Dinah twisted hard enough to rock the chair. The figure moved to her right and repeated the process. Short pieces fell in a steady golden rain. Both sides were reduced almost to the scalp, leaving the top long, disordered and hanging over the clipped sections.
Her anger tightened into alarm. It was not stopping.
The Shearer planted the clippers at the centre of her forehead.
“Don’t.”
The teeth drove backward through the longer hair. A bare strip opened from her hairline to her crown, dividing what remained. Blonde strands spilled down either side of her face.
“No!”
The cry came out human and helpless. The creature methodically cleared one half of the top, then the other. It ran the clippers over her crown and down her nape until only faint blonde stubble remained. Dinah stared at the stranger in the mirror: exposed scalp, dark lipstick, furious blue eyes, and piles of hair where her familiar reflection should have been.
The clippers fell silent.
For one hopeful breath, she thought it was finished.
Then a brush spread warm white lather across her scalp.
The straight razor caught the mirror light. It scraped from her temple upward with a soft shhk, leaving perfectly smooth skin behind. Another stroke cleared the crown. The blade worked around her ears, over the back and finally across the top until no shadow of stubble remained.
When the Shearer wiped away the last traces of foam, Dinah’s head shone beneath the cold bulbs. Every blonde lock lay on the cape or floor.
It had taken everything.
* * *
Morning traffic found Black Canary hanging upside down by her ankles from the thirteenth lamp.
“Is that Black Canary?” someone asked.
Phones rose around her. Dinah opened her eyes to a crowd that appeared inverted.
“Why is everyone upside down?”
Two civilians cut her loose. She twisted in the fall and landed upright, expecting relief. Instead, everyone stared several inches above her eyes.
Dinah slowly raised a hand. Her palm met bare, impossibly smooth scalp.
“No.”
Her fingers travelled over the top and down the back. There was not even stubble.
Someone offered her a coat. Another person quietly lowered a phone after meeting her eyes. Dinah wrapped the coat around her shoulders and walked away before the gathering could decide whether she needed sympathy, questions or another photograph. Every window became an unwanted mirror. Each reflection showed the same impossible outline: familiar face, familiar body, nothing above them except smooth skin catching the morning sun.
Three days later, there was still none.
In her bathroom, shampoo, conditioner, brushes and styling products sat untouched. Dinah inspected her scalp beneath merciless white light, then used a hand mirror to examine the back.
Nothing.
This was not normal hair loss.
Zatanna opened her townhouse door at dusk. Her glossy black hair fell straight past her waist, and thick blunt bangs formed a perfect line across her forehead.
“Dinah, if this is about—” She saw her. “Oh.”
“You get one joke.”
Zatanna’s lips, painted a deep red, pressed together. “I choose survival.”
Minutes later, glowing symbols circled Dinah’s head while Zatanna examined her with careful fingertips. Her expression grew steadily more serious.
“Your follicles weren’t damaged,” she said.
“Good.”
“They aren’t there.”
Zatanna attempted a biological restoration spell. Golden light gathered around Dinah’s scalp, and for a glorious second several blonde strands appeared. Dinah touched them in astonishment.
They dissolved into sparkling dust.
Her scalp returned to perfect smoothness.
“I hate magic,” Dinah said.
An enchanted mirror provided the explanation. The restoration spell had succeeded; Dinah’s body had simply restored itself to baldness immediately afterward. Something had rewritten the definition of her natural state.
Their research led them through brittle diaries and yellowed newspapers. An 1898 photograph showed a bald woman beneath the same lamp. A 1926 headline announced that another victim had been found shorn. By 1954, Gotham had given the creature a name: the Lamplight Shearer.
The details changed with every account, but the ritual did not. Victims heard footsteps that were not footsteps. A lamp went dark. They woke restrained before a cracked mirror and were forced to watch their hair disappear in stages. One woman described a rough crop, then clippers, then the razor. Another wrote that the spirit arranged her severed braids on the counter before shaving her. The Shearer did not simply remove hair. It prolonged the moment when the victim understood exactly how much remained to be taken.
Every recorded victim had remained permanently bald.
“Actors, singers, performers, socialites,” Zatanna said, arranging the records across her table. One hand moved unconsciously down the immaculate length of her hair. “And every one of them had long hair.”
Dinah noticed the gesture. “You’re a famous performer with long hair.”
“I noticed.”
That evening, Zatanna stood before her vanity with scissors and a comb. She divided her hair into precise sections, leaving her blunt fringe untouched.
“This theory has holes,” Dinah warned.
“So does keeping waist-length hair while something hunts long-haired women.”
Zatanna drew the first glossy section forward, held it at her jaw and closed the scissors. The heavy lock slipped free. Her controlled expression faltered at the sudden loss of weight, but she continued. Long black sections fell across the chair and floor as she cut around the back, then the opposite side.
Dinah watched each section slide away. Zatanna worked slowly, measuring every cut twice, yet her breathing changed whenever the scissors closed. The hair had been part of her stage silhouette for years, sweeping behind her when she turned and flashing under theatre lights during every bow. She was choosing the cut, but fear had put the scissors in her hand. By the halfway point, one side curved neatly along her jaw while the other still fell past her waist. Zatanna studied the divided reflection for several seconds before cutting through the remaining length.
The result was a sleek jaw-length bob with a sharp horizontal edge. Her bangs remained thick and perfectly straight. Zatanna ran both hands along the smooth sides, turning her head to study the severe new outline. With red lipstick and a touch of rose blush, the shorter style made her high cheekbones look even sharper.
“Okay,” Dinah admitted.
“Okay?”
“Annoyingly good.”
For four days, nothing happened. Zatanna combed her bob smooth each morning and tucked one side behind her ear while she worked. Dinah grew comfortable enough to stop wearing hats. They began to believe they had won.
Then Zatanna found a diary entry they had missed.
I cut my hair short so the creature could not take me.
On the next page: It came the following night.
Zatanna stood so quickly her chair scraped the floor.
“It doesn’t target long hair.”
“Then what does it target?”
“People afraid of losing it.”
One section of her bob lifted by itself.
Snip.
A short black lock fell onto the open diary. The lights went out.
“Zee!”
Dinah lunged, but the Shearer unfolded from the darkness behind Zatanna. Violet light filled the room. When it vanished, Zatanna was gone.
* * *
Zatanna woke in the antique chair with her mouth sealed by glowing stitches. Her sleek bob remained mostly intact. The Shearer appeared in the cracked mirror and raised its comb.
She knew what happened next.
It combed her left side straight and cut high near her cheek. A large black section slid across the cape. The clean geometry of her bob became lopsided in one stroke. Zatanna pulled against the straps as the opposite side was shortened, then watched the polished back edge disappear beneath repeated cuts close to her nape.
The clippers started.
They moved from her left sideburn over her ear, reducing the dark hair almost to scalp. The right side followed. Tiny black fragments covered her shoulders while the longer top and blunt bangs remained like the last pieces of her old reflection.
The creature drew her fringe down with a comb.
Zatanna’s control finally broke. No sound escaped the magic sealing her mouth, but her eyes widened as the scissors aligned above her eyebrows.
Snip.
The entire heavy fringe fell into her lap. Her forehead was fully exposed. Before she could absorb the change, the clippers touched her new hairline and drove backward, opening a wide pale strip through the longer top.
The strip looked unnaturally bright against the black hair still hanging on either side. Zatanna tried to form a backward spell through the seal over her mouth, shaping each silent syllable with desperate precision, but the Shearer tightened the glowing stitches. It turned her head toward the mirror and held her there. The next clipper pass ran parallel to the first, then another crossed it from the opposite direction. Her carefully controlled appearance came apart in blunt, mechanical lanes.
Pass after pass stripped away the rest. The crown, sides and nape were reduced to dark stubble, making every contour of her head visible. Zatanna stared into the mirror, red lips parted, rose blush stark against her pale face.
Then came the lather.
The straight razor scraped away the stubble in smooth overlapping strokes. Black specks collected in the foam. The last shadow vanished from her scalp, leaving it as bare and polished as Dinah’s.
Everything.
Across Gotham, Dinah found the thirteenth lamp blazing with violet light. A crown-shaped symbol burned beneath it. The Shearer’s anchor.
She planted her feet, filled her lungs and unleashed the Canary Cry.
“ENOUGH!”
Sound struck the symbol like a physical force. Stone split. Glass exploded. The lamp ruptured in a column of white light as the Shearer disintegrated into smoke and sparks.
Dinah found Zatanna falling from the vanished chair and caught her. Zatanna’s first free movement was to raise a trembling hand to her smooth scalp.
“It took everything,” she whispered.
“I know.”
Later, in the safety of the townhouse, Zatanna tried one final restoration spell. Golden light circled both women and faded without producing a single strand.
“The Shearer is gone,” she said.
“But?”
“What it removed stays removed.”
They walked through Gotham together that night. Dinah moved with her familiar confidence, her bare head lifted to the cold air. Beside her, Zatanna kept touching the side of her scalp, still surprised each time her fingers found nothing.
They passed a shop window and both slowed. For the first time, no cracked mirror separated them from their reflections. Dinah’s stronger features and dark lipstick made her look defiant even in stillness. Zatanna remained unmistakable beside her: narrower face, high cheekbones, vivid red lips and soft blush, now framed by nothing at all. She straightened her collar, then deliberately lowered her hand from her head. The absence was permanent, but it would not be the only thing anyone saw.
Behind them, the broken thirteenth lamp stood dark.
“You stop reaching for your hair eventually,” Dinah said.
Zatanna glanced at her. “How eventually?”
Dinah smiled without slowing.
“I’ll let you know.”
