ShreyF
An original haircut story available on my patreon
Ellyse Morgan had spent eight years growing her hair, and Anne Voss had spent nearly as long finding new ways to annoy her.
Their feud began with small things. Anne kicked footballs over the fence. She borrowed garden tools without asking and returned them dirty. She played music beside her open bedroom window whenever Ellyse tried to work from home. Ellyse retaliated with complaints to Anne’s mother, disapproving looks, and speeches about responsibility that Anne could imitate perfectly.
The one subject Anne usually avoided was Ellyse’s hair. Everyone on their street knew how much it mattered to her. As a teenager Ellyse had worn it in a short, practical crop that she hated, and growing it had become a private test of patience. She learned which brushes prevented breakage, which oils kept the ends smooth, and how to sleep with the entire length braided loosely over one shoulder. On windy mornings she spent ten careful minutes untangling it. On wash days it could take half an afternoon to dry. The trouble was worth it whenever she saw that unbroken golden length in the mirror.
Anne mocked the routine, of course. She called the bathroom cabinet Ellyse’s “hair laboratory” and once asked if the blonde mane required its own postal address. Yet she had never pulled it, cut it, or put anything in it. Even their feud had rules—or so Ellyse believed.
One warm Saturday, Ellyse carried a book into the garden and stretched out beneath the apple tree. Her blonde hair lay across the blanket in a glossy sheet reaching past her waist. She had washed it that morning, brushed it until it shone, and warned herself not to fall asleep outside.
She woke forty minutes later to suppressed laughter behind the fence.
Something cold and sticky clung to the ends of her hair. Ellyse gathered the heavy length over her shoulder and discovered a wet stripe of bright pink paint running through it.
“ANNE!”
The laughter stopped. A gate slammed.
Ellyse marched next door with the stained hair held away from her clothes. Mrs. Voss opened the door, took one look at it, and closed her eyes.
“What did she do?”
Anne appeared on the stairs wearing her innocence badly. Purple dye streaked her long dark hair, and pink paint marked two fingertips she had forgotten to wash.
“It was an experiment,” she said.
“On my head?” Ellyse demanded.
Mrs. Voss ordered Anne downstairs. While Anne insisted the paint would wash out, Ellyse listed every prank from the previous six months. Her anger rose further whenever Anne rolled her eyes.
“She needs consequences,” Ellyse said. “Real ones. Maybe start with that ridiculous hair. If she wants to act like a delinquent, take her to a barbershop and have it cut properly.”
For the first time, Anne stopped smiling.
Mrs. Voss looked from the paint on Ellyse’s hair to the purple streaks in her daughter’s. “That,” she said slowly, “is not a bad idea.”
An hour later, the three of them stood outside Barb’s Barbershop on the high street. It was narrow and old-fashioned, with red vinyl chairs, large mirrors, and hairstyle photographs showing practical cuts. Anne hovered near the door with her long hair loose around her shoulders. Ellyse remained beside her partly because Mrs. Voss had asked for moral support and partly because she wanted to see whether Anne could still smirk once the scissors appeared.
The air inside smelled of talcum powder, disinfectant, and warm clipper oil. Beneath each mirror stood a regimented row of combs and metal guards. There were no curling irons, bottles of expensive conditioner, or glossy pictures of elaborate long styles. A broom waited beside a mound of short brown clippings from the previous customer. Anne noticed all of it. Her fingers crept protectively into her purple-streaked lengths.
“This is a men’s barbershop,” she said.
“Hair is hair,” Barb replied.
Ellyse almost smiled. The room looked like exactly the sort of place where Anne might finally learn that consequences were not designed around her preferences.
Barb, a broad-shouldered barber with tattooed forearms, listened while Mrs. Voss explained that the girl had been warned repeatedly. She placed cash on the counter and added a generous tip.
“I need to collect some shopping,” Mrs. Voss said. “Don’t let her talk you out of it. Either of them can argue for Britain when they get started.”
Barb glanced at Anne, then at Ellyse. “Understood.”
Ellyse did not notice the misunderstanding. Anne did.
Mrs. Voss left. Barb pointed to the first chair, and Anne sat with the posture of someone mounting a scaffold. A cape snapped around her neck. Her dark hair was brushed straight, divided into sections, and gathered away from her face.
“Just above the shoulders?” Anne tried.
“Your mother paid for discipline, not a trim,” Barb said.
Ellyse folded her arms. “Perhaps you should have thought of that before using my hair as a canvas.”
The first thick section fell. Anne flinched as cold scissors worked above her ear. Dark lengths slid over the cape, purple streaks disappearing among them. Barb exposed both ears, reduced the back with clippers, and blended the remaining top into a severe military fade. Each pass erased another trace of the style Anne had chosen for herself.
At first Anne tried bargaining. She promised to clean the paint from Ellyse’s hair, pay for a salon treatment, and do every household chore for a month. When none of that worked, she watched silently as locks accumulated around the chair. The clippers climbed behind her ear with a harsh buzz, leaving a dark shadow where glossy hair had rested seconds earlier. Barb tilted her head forward and cleared the nape in overlapping passes. Anne’s expression shifted from outrage to humiliation as the mirror revealed more of the finished shape.
When the cape came off, Anne stared at the unfamiliar shape in the mirror. The sides and back were clipped close, while a short dark layer remained on top. She rubbed the bristles above one ear, furious and close to tears.
Ellyse tried not to look pleased. She failed.
“It suits you,” she said. “Very responsible.”
Anne turned. Her wounded expression hardened into calculation.
Barb swept the floor, then nodded toward the second chair. “Your turn, blondie.”
Ellyse laughed. “Very funny.”
Barb did not laugh.
“The mother paid for both girls.”
“She paid for Anne. I’m twenty-five. I don’t even live with her.”
Barb frowned toward the door. “She said neither girl was to talk me out of it.”
“She is not my mother!”
Ellyse backed away, her waist-length hair swinging behind her. Barb stepped between her and the exit.
“Anne,” Ellyse said, “tell her.”
Anne touched her fresh fade. “You seemed confident when it was my turn.”
“Tell her the truth.”
Anne considered it. Then she smiled. “Mum says we’re practically sisters.”
What followed happened too quickly for Ellyse to turn disbelief into escape. Barb guided her firmly into the chair. Ellyse tried to rise, but a wrist strap clicked shut. As she reached across to undo it, Barb secured the other. A broad restraint closed across her upper body.
“Take these off!”
“Keep still and this will be easier.”
“This isn’t funny anymore!”
Anne sat beside the counter, her earlier misery already fading. “It wasn’t funny when my hair was coming off either.”
Barb wrapped a neck strip around Ellyse and fastened a huge black cape. Her body disappeared beneath it, but her blonde hair remained outside, spread in shining rivers over both shoulders. Even Anne leaned closer at the sheer amount of it.
“I forgot how much there actually is,” she said.
“Don’t touch it.”
Ellyse kept twisting toward her, demanding that she call Mrs. Voss. Barb steadied her chin and told her to face forward. When Ellyse continued shouting and jerking her head, Barb fitted a simple mouth covering to keep her still.
Her protests became muffled. Her eyes promised murder.
Barb began to brush.
Starting at the ends, she worked upward until every strand fell straight down Ellyse’s back. The familiar tug of the brush made the situation feel more real, not less. Ellyse watched in the mirror as Barb created a precise center part from forehead to nape, dividing eight years of growth into two equal halves.
She tied each half into a thick low ponytail.
Anne tilted her head. “Two of them?”
“Easier to handle,” Barb replied.
Ellyse’s eyes widened as Barb drew the right ponytail outward and opened a large pair of shears around it at jaw level.
The blades closed with a dry crunch.
Ellyse felt each bite travel through her scalp. The ponytail resisted, compressed, then separated. Barb lifted it away: a heavy golden rope ending in the pink-stained tips.
The right side of Ellyse’s head now hung in a hacked, uneven curtain around her jaw. The left ponytail still reached almost to her waist.
Anne’s mouth fell open. “Whoa.”
Ellyse stared at the impossible reflection—half long, half gone. She pulled against the straps until they rattled. The remaining ponytail swung across the cape while tears gathered in her eyes.
Anne studied the lopsided result. “You look completely ridiculous.”
Barb reached for the second ponytail.
Ellyse shook her head frantically. For one desperate moment she hoped the barber might leave it, even though the asymmetry was absurd. It was still hair. It was still hers.
The shears opened.
Another series of hard crunches ended that hope. The second ponytail dropped beside the first. Ellyse was left with a wildly uneven bob: one side near her jaw, the other brushing her shoulder, with long pieces hanging at the nape.
“Okay,” Anne said. “That’s bad.”
Barb combed the damaged shape down. There was no going back, only shorter. She cut roughly around the rear, and large blonde chunks slid down the cape. Snip by snip, the shoulder-length pieces vanished. Ellyse watched every lock fall.
The result briefly resembled a bulky bob between her ears and jaw. Then Barb lifted a thick section above the left ear and chopped it several inches shorter. Another section came off on the opposite side. One ear emerged. Long fringe and crown pieces remained while the sides became irregular and bare.
Ellyse looked toward Anne, pleading now.
Anne understood. “You told Mum I needed discipline.”
More locks fell together as Barb worked around the ears and back. Ellyse squeezed her eyes shut, but she could still hear the scissors beside them and feel loose hair landing on the cape. When she finally looked again, the bob had become an uneven pixie. One side was shorter, the back stuck out in random pieces, and the fringe ended at several different lengths.
It was horrible—but it was hair.
Maybe Barb was finished.
The scissors touched the counter.
Ellyse’s shoulders loosened.
Then Barb picked up the clippers.
Anne saw them first. “Oh.” Her grin returned.
The switch clicked. A mechanical buzz filled the shop. Ellyse’s relief vanished as the clippers appeared beside her reflection.
Barb placed them at her right temple.
Ellyse shut her eyes. The blades drove upward and backward, peeling away several inches of the pixie and leaving a clean strip of pale stubble. Hair tumbled down the cape in soft clumps.
When she opened her eyes, the strip was unmistakable.
The barber made a second pass beside it, then a third. Half the right side disappeared. Against the untouched, choppy left half, the exposed scalp looked shockingly bare. Tears ran freely down Ellyse’s cheeks.
“It’s even shorter than mine,” Anne said, leaning toward the mirror. “Way shorter.”
Barb buzzed the remaining right side, then moved behind the chair and pushed the clippers upward through the nape. Blonde pieces slid down Ellyse’s back. The vibration traveled through her skull, steady and inescapable.
I want my hair back, she thought.
The clippers rose behind the left ear. The back vanished next, leaving only a rough strip across the upper crown and the last longer pieces at the front. Everything else had been reduced to short, severe bristles.
“That’s all you’ve got left,” Anne said.
Barb combed through the narrow strip once. Ellyse followed the comb with her eyes, silently begging her to leave it.
The clippers entered beneath its front edge.
The final blonde hair folded forward and slid onto the cape. Barb ran the clippers from front to back across the crown, then in the opposite direction until no ridge remained. Tiny clippings mixed with the earlier locks. On the counter behind them lay the two enormous ponytails.
First feet. Then inches. Then almost nothing.
Barb cleaned around Ellyse’s ears and trimmed the nape. Anne stood behind her in the mirror, and her military fade now looked generous by comparison.
“Guess I’m the long-haired one now.”
Ellyse closed her eyes.
The mouth covering came off. She said nothing. The wrist straps clicked open, and her hands flew immediately to her head. Her fingertips found unfamiliar bristles above her ear and stopped.
“There’s nothing there,” she whispered.
Barb turned the chair fully toward the mirror.
Ellyse barely recognized the woman staring back. Her blonde hair had become an extremely short, severe buzz cut. Her eyes were red from crying; her face held horror, grief, and an anger too deep for shouting. Anne stood behind her, smiling, while the severed ponytails rested on the counter like evidence.
She turned her head slightly. The light caught the pale scalp above her temples. Without the familiar weight against her back, every movement felt wrong. Her neck seemed exposed; her face looked sharper and younger at once. She rubbed the crown, hoping absurdly to discover that the mirror was exaggerating the damage, but the same rough stubble met her palm in every direction. The cape below was covered in the missing versions of her hair: shoulder-length pieces, short chopped locks, wisps from the pixie, and fine clippings from the final passes.
“Finished,” Barb said.
“You cut all of it off.”
“Looks practical,” Anne replied.
The shop bell jingled.
Mrs. Voss entered carrying shopping bags. She looked first at Anne’s military fade, then at Ellyse. The color drained from her face.
“Why is Ellyse shaved?”
Barb frowned. “You paid for both girls.”
“I paid for Anne!”
Silence filled the shop.
Ellyse slowly turned toward her neighbor. Anne was already smiling.
Outside, Mrs. Voss apologized so quickly that her words collided. Ellyse stood on the pavement holding both ponytails against her chest. Anne remained several feet away, rubbing her fade.
“Ellyse, I’m so sorry,” Mrs. Voss said. “I meant Anne. Only Anne.”
“I know.”
Ellyse looked directly at Anne. “You could have told her.”
Anne shrugged. “I could have.”
That evening, Ellyse sat beside her bedroom window in pajamas. One of her old brushes lay on the desk beside the two ponytails. Whenever she forgot and raised a hand to sweep her hair aside, her palm met the harsh bristles of the buzz cut.
Movement appeared in the neighboring window.
Anne caught her eye, grinned, and gave a cheerful wave.
Ellyse’s grief cooled into something harder. She stood, seized the curtains, and slammed them shut.
Some feuds eventually burned themselves out.
This one had just found fuel.
