Flattop lover2
The Cursed Shop
A long time ago in a little mountain village in Central Europe lived a blacksmith and his bride. They lived a simple life but made the most of it driven on by their love and passion for each other. What they didn’t know was that the women of the village were jealous of the blacksmith’s wife’s beauty and long curly red hair, and believed she was using these assets to tempt their husbands.
One day while the blacksmith was in a neighboring village shoeing a horse, the women of the town paid a visit to his wife. They found her working in the yard and immediately surrounded her and tackled her to the ground. Several women held her down while others sliced away at her hair with their knifes and scratched at her face with their nails to destroy her beauty.
What they didn’t realize at the time was that the larger women sitting on her to hold her down were also preventing her from breathing. When they had satisfied themselves that her hair and beauty had been destroyed, they stood back to admire their handy work only then realizing that she wasn’t moving. A few kicked her thinking it was an act, but soon accepted that she was not faking and that they had gone too far. They all agreed to run away back to their homes and to never speak of this again.
The blacksmith returned from his long day’s work and journey hoping to find a warm meal, pint of ale, and pleasure of his woman. Instead, he found his wife’s corpse in the front yard. Her hair cut to the scalp and loose strands blown across the yard. Her face cut and bleeding to the point she was almost unrecognizable. Her clothes torn from her body, bruised and cut from one end to the other with one breast partially severed.
He pushed his emotions aside and carried his love’s body into the house to clean it up. He bandaged and wrapped her body then carried it out back and began digging a hole in the rocky soil for her remains. As an afterthought, he dug a second hole for the unborn child she was carrying. It felt like the right thing to do at the time.
Only after that was accomplished did he allow his emotions to wash over him. The despair and anger roiled in him. He knew who had done this and he would have his revenge. He went to his workshop and crafted a bell, then set out in search of the mountain witch to help him curse the object.
He was giving up hope of finding her when he found himself snared in one of her traps. The witch had every intention of killing him until he mentioned his quest to take the beauty from all the people of the village. This mission seemed to line up with her own personal goals so she set him free and placed a curse on the bell he had constructed. She then sent him on his way to seek his revenge.
When the blacksmith returned to the village he played the part of a grieving widow, and invited the town folks to his home to properly remember her. With the town folks gathered, many of which couldn’t look him in the eye, he showed them the bell he had constructed to remember her and rang it in her honor.
What no one realized was that hearing that bell triggered the curse in them. The bell had made them all highly susceptible to suggestions to cut their hair. He then worked into his comments about his wife, “imagine yourself in my wife’s place, having all your hair savagely removed from your head”, all the while knowing that subconsciously they were powerless to resist this subliminal command.
Once the remembrance ended the town folks returned to their homes and each in their own way sought the destruction and removal of their hair. Some hacked it off, some burned it off, some pulled it out, most inflicting permanent damage and scarring in the process. No one but blacksmith was immune to the spell.
Only after the spell had wreaked its havoc and the townsfolk started to resume daily life did they realize that some great evil had possessed them all, and they immediately knew who to blame. The mob raced to the blacksmith’s home and stoned him to death as he stood defiantly next to his wife’s and unborn child’s graves.
The cursed bell was placed in a box and hidden in the upper reaches of the local church. There it remained for centuries, until recently when the old church was torn down in the name of progress. The bell wound up in the hands of the owner of an import/export company who thought this might be a great gift for his younger brother who was about to open his own barbershop.
Gary loved the bell his brother gave him and attached to the barbershop door to alert him to customers entering and exiting. He’d been a barber for 15 years working in someone else’s shop, and was excited to have his own barbershop now.
Many client’s followed him to this new shop and there was had a steady stream of customers the first few weeks. There was something very different happening though that he couldn’t understand.
His customary practice at the end of haircut is to ask the client if they like their haircut or if they would like him to cut it shorter. In that two week span, not one client had turned down the offer to go shorter, many ending up bald in the process. He couldn’t offer to take them any shorter than bald.
The more this happened, the more he came to believe that some other force was at work here. Are clients unable to say no to his suggestions? He needed to find out, and as fate would have, the perfect opportunity presented itself that day.
A mother with two young boys came in for haircuts, the bell on the door announcing their arrival. In the short time they waited, this woman yelled at and slapped each boy with little provocation. He quickly tidied up both boys’ hair, and as the youngest son stepped out of the barber chair, Gary asked the mother if she had ever considered a flattop haircut.
Now came the moment of truth. Would she think he was weird and never bring her boys back (no big loss there), or would she accept the suggestion and sit in the chair?
The woman looked up at him blankly, turned towards her boys, and instructed them to have a seat while mommy gets a haircut. She then proceeded to the barber chair and sat down in it like it was the most natural thing to do in the world. Gary quickly pushed her chestnut bra strap length curly hair aside so he could get the neck tissue and cape on her. He quickly pumped the chair up, pulled her hair back into a pony tail, grabbed his scissors from his chest pocket, and began snipping away it.
It fell free in short order, and he unceremoniously dropped it in her lap. Still no reaction from her. Her hair now look like a roughly cut chin length bob, but not for long. Gary picked up his big black Oster 76s, put the #0 blade on and fired them up. Starting on her left side he methodically peeled her remaining hair to the top of her head, and worked his way around to the right side leaving just the faintest stubble behind.
What remained on top looked like a horribly pruned brown juniper bush or better yet-side show Bob-ish. Using his comb placed flat about an inch above her hairline in front he ran the clippers over it sending everything above the comb onto her cheek and down into her lap. He repositioned the comb a little farther back and repeated the process until he reached the back of her head creating a nice flat surface on top of her head.
He then sprayed her hair heavily with hairspray and used a blow dryer to get it to stand up perfectly straight. He then started the process again with the flat comb in front and worked his way to the back a couple of times taking her hair a little shorter each to time. He finished the top by freehanding several passes to make it perfectly level.
Next came the sides. Holding the comb vertically and starting at her front temple he used the clippers to create a vertical wall around the flattop finishing once he reached the other side. A little shaving cream and razor around the bottom of the hairline and she was done. Brown hair covered her shoulders, lap and the floor. Her boys had sat speechless for 50 minutes while this haircut transpired.
Gary turned the chair towards the mirror so she could get her first glimpse of her flattop. He had taken it nice and short with a crisp landing strip running down the middle. Her reaction was still stoic, and again, he wasn’t convinced his theory was sound so he pushed again saying, “do you like it or would you like it shorter? Perhaps shaved?”
She looked at him in the mirror with her blank expression again and almost robotically said, “shave it please”. Now he was scared. What supernatural phenomena is at work in his shop? Or does she just have a hair fetish and he is exaggerating?
He spun the chair back to face the front windows and using his #00000 blade made quick work of skinning her head completely. He lathered her head and shaved it twice, first with the grain then against it to create a perfectly smooth scalp.
Wanting one last test to satisfy his theory, he offered to shave her eyebrows, thinking no mother in there right mind would agree to this. Again without blinking the mother nodded her head in agreement and said, “yes, please do.” He made two quick swipes with shaving cream and the razor and they were gone. This once beauty queen-esque mother now had an almost alien appearance with large protruding ears and an odd shaped head.
He removed the cape and neck strip and sent her and her shocked boys on their way. He sat in his chair and contemplated what he had learned. He now understood the bad juju at work here and needed to be careful with his suggestions.
Over the next few weeks he watched what he said, and reserved his suggestions for only those that he felt deserved it. A hipster that came in talking on his phone the whole time he waited his turn left the shop with a horseshoe flattop. A teenager that disrespected his mother and used profanity at her was on the receiving end of a #1 bald fade. A teenage girl with long blonde hair that seemed to be taking too much pleasure in ordering short summer buzzcuts for her brothers left the shop sporting a short bowl cut with shaved back and sides.
What he hadn’t expected was that this black magic could affect him too. In the middle of giving a regular client a tidy up on his flattop, the client asked him if he had ever had one. The next thing he knew he was closing the shop up a little early and walking a few block down to another barbershop, walking through the door, taking a seat in an open barber chair and requesting a flattop. When the barber commented that he’d look great with a high and tight flattop, he whole heartedly agreed and left the shop with just a small fraction of the hair he walked in with.
He quickly realized that was a risk he’d have to be willing to accept to keep his own shop. Unfortunately, clients started to decline. When barbers get a reputation for skinning their clients, folks start looking for other barbershops to go to. And so, after another six months of declining clients Gary had to close the shop and went back to the old shop he had come from.
The shop has sat vacant for the past several months while the landlord looks for a new tenant. Rumor has it a successful salon is looking at it for a second location.
