The Brat

The Brat

By Shorngirl

I hated taking my brother to the barber, let’s get that out on the table right away. Ever since I was twelve, I was railroaded into the task every other Saturday, and that seriously cut into the things that I could do with my friends. Inevitably it was in the middle of the day, and that just blew.

Steven was now twelve, perfectly capable of walking himself to the barber, but for whatever reason, my mother insisted that I accompany him. I guess now she worried that he’d go spend the money elsewhere and come home without a haircut.

I was in between my senior year and my first year at university and had just celebrated my eighteenth birthday. School had been out for nearly a month, and my last summer at home was quickly sinking into the sunset. Every day with my friends was precious, so when Sherry announced that she was having a party out at her family cottage, I was keen to go.

“Sherry’s having a get-together out at the cottage, Mom. Do you mind if I go?” I asked, knowing that I wouldn’t allow her to say no. Even though I was eighteen, she still treated me like I was eight. I knew I deserved it.

“Not if there’s going to be any drinking out there.” My mother insisted. “Is it another one of those sleepovers?”

“Mom, it’s always a sleepover out there. It takes an hour to get there.” I insisted.

“Fine, fine. But you be careful on those jet-skis, Breanna. God, I hate those things.” She muttered under her breath. “And, no drinking!” She added.

“Yes, Mom,” I whined. Did she expect me to be a tea-totaler for the rest of my life? Cripes! I knew I was being bratty, but I wasn’t denying that I was; a brat that is. Deep down, I knew I was a spoiled little brat, and I worried that one day I would pay for it. My mother put up with my antics for the most part, and that was probably the problem.

“You know you promised you’d take Stevie to the barber’s today.” My mother reminded, as I grabbed my bathing suit off the line in the yard.

“Oh, come on, Mom. Today?” I glanced over at Steven, defeating the universe on his X-Box.

“No arguments young lady.” She blurted as I slipped by her in the kitchen.

“Fine. Steven, come on. Haircut!” I yelled, eliciting only a quick glance in my direction. “Save it, Dinky, or I’ll shut it off.” I grabbed the remote off the coffee table and pointed it menacingly at the TV. He hated when I called him that. I was brutal ever since I saw how minuscule he was down there.

“Okay, okay!” He snapped, sending the game into suspended animation. “You’re such a brat, Bree.” He snipped.

I nodded my head in agreement. “You better believe it, snot.”

We climbed into my brand new Chevy Impala, and took off for the middle of town, and the small plaza where Hank’s barbershop was. It was tucked into an obscure corner of the place, and if you didn’t know it was there, you’d walk right by it.

To my relief, there was only one kid ahead Steven, so I figured we’d be out of there in no time. The barber, the original Hank’s son, was at least sixty now, which said something for how long the shop had been there. He looked over in my direction, and it always made me nervous.

When it was finally Steven’s turn, I took a quick glance down at my watch, knowing that everyone was probably already at the cottage. “Damn.” I cursed under my breath.

I watched as the barber used the clippers to buzz Steven’s hair down to the prescribed length my mother had set out years before. It wasn’t exactly a buzzcut, but not far off. He looked good with it, and Steven could give a rat’s ass about his hair anyway. He just wanted to get back to his game, and I just wanted to leave.

“You mind if I use the restroom?” I asked, having had to pee since we left the house.

“In the back, third door down on the left. Says ‘Men’ on it, but you can lock the door.” He smirked. God that guy was creepy.

I found the restroom, which consisted of two urinals and a toilet with no door on the stall, that I wouldn’t sit on if my life depended on it. Doing the toilet paper thing, I peed as fast as I could. I stopped to put some lipstick on in the hazy mirror and quickly made my way back into the shop.

By the time I got back to my seat, Hank jr. was already removing the cape from Steven’s shoulders. I reached into my pocket and handed over the twenty my mother had given me and led my brother out to the car. “Come on. I’m so late.”

“Late for what?” Steven asked.

“It’s girl stuff!” I said, as he twisted his face into a sneer.

“I’m leaving now!” I yelled, but my mother was obviously on one of her extended phone calls with one of her friends. Steven was already back at the Xbox before I was back out the door.

On the way through town, I quickly stopped at the 7-11 for a pack of cigarettes, which my mother had yet to discover I used, and was horrified to discover that my wallet was missing. “What the…”

Then I suddenly remembered pulling the wallet out when I was looking for my lip gloss. “Shit, shit, shit.” I snipped, as I spun the car around, praying that no one had found it in the seedy men’s room. I literally flew into the parking lot, and it was a good thing there were only two cops in our little town, because they most certainly would have ticketed me for reckless driving that day.

I parked, a little cockeyed, and ran for the doors to the barbershop, and panicked when I found they were locked. “Nooo!” Cupping my hands around my eyes, I peered inside, and was amazed to see Hank Jr. still puttering around the shop. I knocked on the glass which quickly had him pointing to the closed sign on the door. More insistently this time, I knocked louder.

Annoyed, the old boy came to the front of the shop and stared at me through the glass. “We’re closed.” He mouthed sotto voce.

“I left my wallet in your restroom!” I yelled.

An eyebrow went up, and then he grinned. For a moment, I almost left the wallet there, but he was already unlocking the door. “Thank’s Mister. I’ll just be a second.” I quick-walked to the back of the shop and down the darkened hallway to the restroom. Opening the door, I was relieved to see my wallet exactly where I had left it. I quickly checked myself one last time in the mirror and deposited my wallet back into my purse.

As I headed towards the front of the shop, I sensed something wasn’t right. The blinds had been drawn down, and when I got to the door, it was locked! Panicked, I turned around expecting to see the old man, but there was no one. I quickly looked back out towards my car and saw old Hank Jr. getting into his car. “Are you kidding me?” I yelled, banging on the glass from the inside now. He couldn’t possibly have forgotten I was in his shop. It hadn’t even been thirty seconds.

I watched in disbelief as his car slowly pulled away from its spot and disappeared out of the parking lot. The door was key locked from both sides, the only modern thing in the entire shop. “He did this on purpose!” I scowled. “He had to have.”

Slowly, the light began to fade outside as the evening approached. No longer was I worried about the party I was missing, or even that I almost lost my wallet. This guy had seemingly locked me in his barbershop, deliberately.

While I still had light, I desperately searched for another way out. Surely the place had a back door. When I finally found it, it was padlocked with a hasp. I must have gone through every drawer in the place looking for a spare key, but there was nothing.

The light was fading quickly now, so I went to the front to try and find the light switches. Just at the front of the hallway, a row of six toggles did absolutely nothing when thrown. I could see that the streetlights were starting to come on outside. I knew there were lights on earlier in the day. There must be a breaker box or something. I made my way down the hallway, which was quickly becoming totally dark, but despite looking in nearly every room, no breaker box was found.

Completely out of ideas, I went back to the front, sitting in one of the swivel chairs that the barbers used to cut hair in. “What the fuck!” I screamed. “Break the glass. I’m gonna break the damned glass.” Resolved now, to escape by any means necessary, I searched for something to throw against the front windows, to break out of my prison.

The only thing I could find in the encroaching darkness, that was even remotely heavy enough, were the chairs that lined the one wall. I raised the blinds and hoisted one of the chairs over my head, flinging it with all my strength at the glass. To my shock and horror, the chair simply bounced off the window, not even cracking it. I did this several times, until I was well and truly out of breath.

Suddenly, I realized that I had completely overlooked something so obvious. Dashing for my purse I pulled out my phone, intending to call 911, anything to get out of that place. The screen was black when I held it up, and failed to light when I hit the power button. Finally, a little red bar appeared at the bottom. “No!” I screamed pathetically. My phone was totally dead. I knew I had a charger in my car, but a lot of good that did me.

Exhausted and disgusted with myself, I sat back in the swivel chair and started to cry. What the fuck was I going to do. I was completely locked in, and there was absolutely no way out. Soon, the only light in the shop was what bled in from the street some hundred yards away. It was only enough to just barely move around by.

I wasn’t sure just how long I had been sitting there in that chair, and it was entirely possible that I had drifted off when a set of headlights appeared in the parking lot. I ran to the front of the shop and pressed my face against the window. Whoever it was had pulled up right next to my car. “What the hell?”

The interior lights went on and I realized that hadn’t thought to lock my car, and when it started pulling away, I also knew that I had left the keys in the ignition. Someone was stealing my car! I banged on the glass in frustration, to no avail. Watching helplessly, my chevy disappeared, followed a few moments later by the car which had pulled in beside it. I was beginning to have a very bad feeling about this.

Something was about to happen, and it was scaring me to death. I ran back to one of the cutting stations, and searched blindly for anything to protect myself. All that I could muster was a pair of scissors, but I took them, knowing that they might be my only protection against whatever this maniac had planned for me.

Sure enough, about an hour later, the same car pulled up to the front of the shop, the headlights illuminating the place like a shadowbox. I was not going to make this easy. I ran back to the restroom and locked myself inside, fumbling in the dark for a moment. Seconds later I heard the unmistakable sound of keys being turned in the lock.

There was quiet conversation going on, so I knew there were two of them. Then there was silence.

“Come on, girly.” A voice boomed out, almost directly outside the restroom. “Don’t make this harder than it has to be.”

My breathing nearly stopped, and I held the scissors high over my head as the door handle was tried.

“She’s in here, Hank.” A gravelly voice insisted.

“Don’t kick it in, I got the key.” I heard Hank’s voice for the first time, clearly, the son of a bitch.

As the door swung open, I lunged out of the corner I was in, slashing madly with the scissors. I thought I might have caught one of them before they effectively got ahold of me and wrenched them out of my hand.

“Let go of me, damn it!” I yelled, as they hauled me out into the shop. I was suddenly blinded as Hank must have turned the power back on and the lights brightly illuminated the place. They roughly deposited into one of the swivel chairs and a rope quickly secured me to the thing, cinched tightly over my hips. A second later my wrists were fastened to the arms with duct tape, despite my flailing. The last things were my legs. I managed to kick the one guy but they eventually taped my ankles to the base of the chair. In one last motion, they slapped a length of tape over my mouth, muffling my yelling to a garbled hum.

“Jeez, Hank, she a fighter, huh?” The guy complained, holding his knee where I had connected with my foot.

“Not for much longer.” Hank resolved.

I struggled to see what exactly he was doing, but when he turned around with a set of clippers in his hand, my struggling continued, to no avail. The rope and the duct tape held firm.

“You think your brother’s hair was short, girly?” Watch this.” He spun the chair so I was looking directly into the plate glass mirror that adorned the wall above his workspace. Stepping behind me, he raised the clippers to my forehead.

Beneath the tape gag, I was screaming, pleading for him to stop. But as the clipper’s whine changed to a raspy buzz I knew he had moved them into my hair. Slowly, tortuously, he peeled my hair away from my scalp. Long silky strands of blonde slithered over my shoulders and onto my lap. They swirled lifelessly as they floated by my face.

I knew I was crying, but I wasn’t certain if they were tears of grief or anger. When he had shaved the top of my head to the skin, he stopped, as if admiring the ridiculous spectacle in the mirror.

“Maybe we should leave her like this.” Hank joked with the other guy, who sat in the chairs opposite, watching. Again, I started to writhe in my bonds. “I don’t think she wants me to stop. Do you want me to stop?”

I stared directly into his eyes, and if looks could kill, he would have had two holes bored through his skull.

Sighing, he fired up the clippers and began shaving the sides of my head, until all that remained was a long tail that hung from the crown. My ears were bare, and my earrings looked weirdly out of place. Throwing my head forward, I felt the hot blades race up my nape to the crown of my head, removing the last of my precious hair. It had been my best feature. Boys used to love it, other girls were jealous of it. Now it was completely gone.

To add insult to injury, Hank whisked away my eyebrows at the end. Two quick strokes and I was looking more like an alien than the blonde fox I had always considered myself to be. What were people going to think? I’d have to hide. No one could see me like this.

The deed completed, Hank and this other guy, who I thought I recognized, untied me. I thought they were going to let me go, but that was too optimistic.

“We’re going for a little ride, girly.” Hank insisted. Wrestling me through the door, I noticed that the car they were driving was mine. They threw me into the driver’s seat, hank climbing in beside me. He showed me a straight razor, opening it to reveal the deadly metal blade. “You’re gonna drive to wherever it was you were in such a hurry to get to this afternoon,” Hank ordered, raising the blade so it was inches from my right cheek. “I believe it was a cottage on Willow Lake?”

How the hell did he know that? I couldn’t possibly show up at the party like this. I’d be laughed out of town. “I can’t. I’d be humiliated.” I sobbed.

“That’s the idea, Breanna.” Hank sneered. “We’re knocking you down a peg, well, a bunch of pegs.” Hank chuckled.

I failed to find the humor, for some reason. Putting the car in drive, I considered driving into a tree or something, but then it was my car, the one I had convinced my mother to buy for me. I couldn’t destroy it, even if it meant facing complete social suicide.

I could see the lights in my rearview mirror as we drove, and I knew it was the other guy following us. Hank seemed to be admiring me as I drove, and it freaked me out.

“You get off on this, Hank? Humiliating women?” I snapped, stepping on the gas a little harder.

“No, not unless they’re spoiled little brats like you.” He accused.

How the hell did this guy know anything about me? I wondered. I mean it was no secret that I was a bit of a punk, and I’d been called out a few times for mouthing off to my mother in public. Was this karma coming back to bite me?

I began to panic when I saw the turn-off for Willow Lake. How on earth could I walk into a party where everyone knew me, like this. Every single one of my friends was going to be there. This was a nightmare.

As we pulled up to the cottage, I was hoping that the party was over, and everyone had gone to bed. Instead, I saw that everything seemed to be in full swing, all the lights were on, and I could see people in the backyard and on the deck down by the lake. My heart was beating out of my chest.

“Time for your big reveal, girly.” Hank reached over and pulled the keys out of the ignition and got out of the car. He had insisted that I pull into the driveway, so there was no escape. To my absolute horror, he threw my keys into the front lawn. In this darkness, there was no way I could find them.

I watched as he walked away, getting into the car that pulled up to the bottom of the drive. Then he was gone, and I was alone. I wondered about just staying in my car. Maybe I could just wait out the dawn. And then find my keys, and leave without anyone knowing I had been there.

Those hopes were dashed when I saw Sherry come out the front door obviously heading for her car. She paused for a moment when she saw my car, but I ducked down before she spotted me.

“When did Breanna get here?” She asked, Susan was right behind her.

“I don’t know. I haven’t seen her. We’ll catch her when we get back with the beer.” Susan said, slipping into Sherry’s Toyota. For a moment I thought I was in the clear, but Sherry, ever inquisitive, walked over to find me slouched into the seat.

“What the… Oh..my..god!” Sherry screamed. “Bree?”

The gig was up, and I knew it. Resolutely, I sat up revealing my baldness to my closest friend. “Sherry, wait.” But she was already running for the back of the house. Within seconds, my car was surrounded by almost every girl I knew. Feeling stupid for hiding, I emerged and tried to stand tall with my new sleeker appearance.

None of them were kind, or worried, and were whispering amongst themselves as I stood there exposed. I was humiliated beyond measure as I slowly made my way to the house. Soon, with the shock of seeing me out of the way, the remarks began, along with a good amount of laughter and jeering.

Finally, Sherry rescued me from the girls who I thought were my friends. Obviously, the bratty punk now humbled was too good for them not to take advantage of.

“What on earth possessed you to do this to yourself, Bree?” Sherry asked, concerned.

I thought about telling the truth. Telling them I was kidnapped and shaved against my will just sounded too far-fetched for even me to believe, or anyone else for that matter. “Well, sometimes you just lose your mind and do something crazy,” I said, and loud enough that everyone could hear.

I had let Hank and his accomplice off the hook, and I didn’t know why. Perhaps I knew, deep down, that I had this coming. This was my punishment for all the miserable, spoiled brat behavior I had exhibited for my entire teenage life. I allowed the humiliation to wash over me, to soak into my middle, and to my surprise, it came to rest in my sex.

I began to feel incredibly aroused all of a sudden. With everyone looking at me, with my bald head and shaved eyebrows, I began to know how it felt to be submissive. It was something that I had never known in my entire life. I had always been on top, the bully, the brat, and now I was lower than the lowest.

I could feel it in the way the girls talked to me, talked down to me, that I had fallen. Never again could I be that haughty brat again; it would be impossible after this. For as far as everyone knew, this was an act of self-sabotage, of social suicide, of complete and unmitigated debasement. The fact that they thought I had done it to myself, gave them all the power and stripped me of everything.

I found myself fetching drinks for them, clearing their empties, and waiting on them in general. To think that the last time I was here, it was they who were fawning over me. Now the tables had been turned.

I have always known how cruel girls can be, I was as guilty, more so than most. So, it was no surprise that by the end of the party, I was the butt of a cruel joke.

Sherry, my best friend, or so I thought, spilled an entire glass of wine down the front of me, soaking my white shirt and shorts.

“Oh, Bree, I’m so sorry. You better take them off so I can throw them into the wash to soak.” Sherry insisted.

“Here? Now?” I questioned.

“Why not? I mean, we’re all girls, right.” Sherry reasoned, to the enthusiastic voices of the rest.

Not knowing what possessed me, I did exactly as she asked. I removed my shirt, leaving my naked breasts visible to everyone. Without too much hesitation, I did the same with my white shorts. I knew that they both were ruined, that no amount of soaking was going to get the red wine out.

“Might as well give me those too.” Sherry snipped, pointing to my panties, my last shred of clothing.

I cringed, but whatever this was, this yearning for humiliation, I slid them down my slender legs and handed them to her. There was a round of applause from the girls as I stood naked and hairless before them. My neatly shaved pussy meant that I was totally hairless, and that wasn’t lost on any of them.

The tasks that I was performing for them, from that point on went far beyond simply waiting on them. My arousal was in full swing, and being fed viciously by this yearning for humiliation. I began to stoop to tasks that were shockingly crude.

I was now their slave, and they let me know it. It had started with my rubbing their feet, and then kissing them, and finally licking them, all of them, even Sherry’s. My best friend, who was crueler than any of them, had decided that it was not enough. She removed her shorts and pulled my face into her pussy, forcing me to bring her to orgasm. It was revolting to me. I had never had any attraction to women in my life, and this was the ultimate humiliation. Not wanting to be left out, each girl in turn was serviced by my tongue. Of course, none of them could keep their hands off my hairless head as I licked them, and that was fueling my arousal even more. By the time I had finished, and all the girls had achieved at least one orgasm, some even more, I was beside myself with lust.

I rolled onto my back on the damp grass and pulled my knees back. I was completely on display when I began to masturbate. Something was screaming inside me that this was so over the top, but when one of the girls tossed a beer bottle in my direction I knew that I was to be degraded even further.

I slowly inserted the neck of the bottle into my streaming slot, while my fingers whisked away at my clit. They chanted ‘bald slut, bald slut, bald slut!’ louder and louder, until they were screaming it at me. So, it was to their laughter and ridicule that I came harder, louder, and longer than I had ever come in my life.

My world was in ruins, I had lost all my friends, and I was a social pariah. So, I wondered why, after all of that, I found myself walking through the doors of Hank’s barbershop the following Saturday.

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