The final cut

The last rays of sunlight filtered through the dilapidated buildings as Sara decided it was time to head home. The deserted streets of this forgotten part of the city had never seemed so threatening. Her long blonde hair waved with each hurried step, shining like liquid gold under the dim light of dusk. Eighteen years she had been in this world, but never had she felt the unease that now gripped her chest.

It had all begun with that phone call. Her mother, with a broken voice, had asked her to pick up some medicine for her grandmother at the pharmacy in the old district. “Please, Sara. It’s urgent.” And she, unable to refuse, had crossed half the city to reach this ghost neighborhood where time seemed to have stopped decades ago.

The pharmacy was closed when she arrived. A faded sign announced it would reopen in an hour. Sara checked her watch: six-thirty. She decided to wait in a nearby café, but after two coffees and numerous glances at her watch, the pharmacy still had its shutters down. It was a quarter to eight, and night had already fallen over the neighborhood like a black velvet cloak.

Sara decided to head back. She took a shortcut through an alleyway that, as she remembered, would lead her directly to the bus stop. The silence was absolute, barely interrupted by the echo of her own footsteps. That’s when she heard it. At first, she couldn’t identify the sound, a kind of intermittent buzzing that seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere at once.

She quickened her pace. The feeling of being watched intensified when she turned the corner and found herself on a street she didn’t recognize. The facades, covered in graffiti, seemed to observe her with invisible eyes. Panic began to grow inside her when she realized she was lost.

The buzzing grew more intense. Sara stopped, trying to identify its source. To her right, a narrow alley seemed to vibrate with that sound. She shook her head, refusing to follow that direction, but when she turned around, she saw the silhouette. A shadow that instantly merged with the darkness.

“Hello?” her voice sounded fragile, childlike. “Is anyone there?”

Silence. Only that damn buzzing that now seemed to have moved into her head.

She started running aimlessly, with the sole objective of getting away from that presence that, she was sure, was following her. Her long golden hair shook violently, as if trying to escape from her skull. She turned left, then right, not caring where she was heading. When she finally stopped, panting, she found herself in a circular plaza surrounded by abandoned buildings.

In one of them, a flickering sign illuminated the night with its intermittent light: “Don Julio’s Barbershop.” Blue, white, red. The traditional colors rotated on a metal pole next to the entrance. The buzzing came from there, from the electric sign that was malfunctioning, emitting a sound that made her skin crawl.

Just as she was about to retreat, she heard footsteps. Someone, or something, was approaching from the street she had come from. Sara did the only thing she could think of: she pushed open the barbershop door and entered.

The interior was illuminated by a floor lamp that cast a yellowish light over the place. A huge mirror covered one of the walls, reflecting an old barber’s chair, one of those made of green leather and shiny metal. The scent of shaving lotion and talcum powder permeated the atmosphere.

“Hello?” called Sara, receiving no response.

Her eyes had adapted to the dimness enough to make out a door at the back of the shop. It probably led to a back room. She hesitated between waiting or taking a look. The fear of what might be outside made her decide to stay.

She approached the chair and ran her hand over the cracked leather. It seemed to be from another era. Everything in that place emanated a strange sense of timelessness. The walls were covered with black and white photographs of men with different haircuts and styles dating from the fifties. Some smiled at the camera, others looked seriously at the lens, but they all shared something: an empty expression in their eyes.

Suddenly, the back door opened. Sara was startled, turning abruptly to find herself facing the figure of an elderly man. He must have been around seventy, although his upright posture and precise movements contradicted his age. He wore an immaculate white coat and had perfectly combed silver hair swept back.

“Good evening,” said the man in a serene voice. “I wasn’t expecting visitors at this hour.”

“I’m sorry,” stammered Sara. “I got lost and… there was someone following me.”

The man observed her fixedly for a few seconds that seemed eternal to Sara. Then, a slight smile formed on his wrinkled face.

“Nobody comes around here for years,” he commented. “This neighborhood has been… dead for a long time.”

The way he pronounced the last word sent a shiver down Sara’s spine. The man approached the chair and turned it toward her with a gesture of invitation.

“Why don’t you sit down? You can wait here until you feel safe to leave. I’m Julio, the owner.”

Sara hesitated but finally agreed. She sat in the chair, which turned out to be more comfortable than it appeared. Don Julio positioned himself behind her, and their gazes met in the reflection of the mirror.

“You have beautiful hair,” commented the barber, taking a strand of her blonde mane between his fingers. “Very few female clients have passed through my barbershop in all these years.”

“Thank you,” Sara replied, uncomfortable. “I’ll only be here for a moment. As soon as I’m sure there’s no one outside, I’ll leave.”

Don Julio nodded, but he didn’t move away from her. His eyes, reflected in the mirror, had a strange gleam. Sara tried to stand up but discovered with horror that she couldn’t move. Her limbs seemed to have turned to lead.

“What… what’s happening to me?” she stammered, feeling panic rising in her throat.

“Be calm,” whispered Don Julio. “It’s normal. All my clients feel the same at first.”

The barber went to a cabinet and extracted a series of instruments that he meticulously placed on a small table next to the chair. Scissors, razors, combs, and hair clippers, all of them old but perfectly preserved. Sara couldn’t take her eyes off those objects, which gleamed under the dim light like instruments of torture.

“I don’t understand what’s happening,” said Sara, with a broken voice. “Please, let me go.”

Don Julio positioned himself in front of her, blocking her view of the mirror. His eyes, now close, looked like two dark wells.

“Forty-three years ago,” he began to narrate in a measured voice, “a young woman like you came into my barbershop. She also had long, beautiful blonde hair. Her name was Ana. She was my daughter.”

Sara felt a knot in her stomach. The old man’s face had transformed, showing a pain so deep that it was almost palpable.

“Ana suffered from hallucinations,” he continued. “She saw things, people who were chasing her. The doctors couldn’t help her. One day, she came to my barbershop, desperate, saying something was following her. I tried to calm her down, but she was out of her mind. She took one of my razors and…” he stopped, unable to continue.

The silence became dense, almost suffocating. Don Julio composed himself and continued:

“Since then, every so often, someone like you comes to my barbershop. Frightened young women, lost, with the same hair as my Ana. And I help them.”

Sara wanted to scream, but her throat seemed to have closed. Fear paralyzed her as much as that strange force that kept her immobile in the chair.

“Don’t worry,” said Don Julio, taking a hair clipper. “I won’t hurt you. I’ll just free you, like all the others.”

Sara watched in horror as the barber connected the machine to the power. The buzzing she had heard before returned, but now she identified its source: the old hair clipper that Don Julio held in his trembling hand.

“Please,” begged Sara, “I’m not Ana. My name is Sara, and I have a family waiting for me.”

Don Julio seemed not to hear her. With precise movements, he placed a black cape around her neck, adjusting it carefully. Sara felt tears sliding down her cheeks as she observed her reflection in the mirror. Her golden hair shone for the last time under the yellowish light.

“Long hair is dangerous,” muttered Don Julio, as if reciting a mantra. “They use it to find you. To cling to you. Without hair, you’ll be safe.”

“Who are ‘they’?” Sara managed to ask.

“Those who chase girls like Ana. Like you. Those who whisper in the darkness and hide in the shadows.”

Sara closed her eyes, trying to convince herself it was all a nightmare. But the touch of the old barber’s hands on her head was too real. She felt how he took a strand of her hair and gathered it with a band.

“First I’ll cut the long part,” he explained in a professional voice, as if he were performing a routine service. “That will make it easier afterward.”

The metallic sound of the scissors resonated in the silence of the barbershop. Sara kept her eyes closed, feeling how tears slid down her cheeks. A tug, and then the strange sensation of lightness. Don Julio had cut the first strand.

“Open your eyes, please,” asked the barber. “I need you to see what I’m doing. It’s important for the process.”

Sara obeyed, more out of fear than willingness. In the mirror, she saw how Don Julio held a ponytail of blonde hair about twelve inches long. His first trophy. With meticulousness, the barber placed the strand on the table and proceeded to gather another.

One by one, the strands of hair fell. The golden mane that had been her pride for years was disappearing, giving way to an irregular and disorderly cut that barely reached her nape. Sara observed the process in a state of shock, unable to assimilate what was happening.

“The first part is done,” announced Don Julio, contemplating his partial work. “Now comes the important part.”

He took the hair clipper and turned it on. The buzzing invaded the barbershop, resonating in Sara’s ears like a presage of the inevitable. Don Julio adjusted the clipper’s comb to the lowest position.

“I’ll shave your head down to the skin,” he explained calmly. “It’s the only way to be completely safe. Don’t worry, the hair will grow back… if you ever leave this place.”

Sara wanted to scream, but only a muffled groan came from her throat. Don Julio placed the clipper on her forehead and, with a firm movement, slid it backward. A path of white skin appeared where there had been hair before. The short strands fell onto the black cape and slipped to the floor.

The barber worked with surgical precision, passing the machine over and over her head. The sensation of the blades against her scalp, the mechanical sound of the device, the reflection of her transformation in the mirror… Everything was part of a nightmare from which Sara couldn’t wake up.

“It’s coming out well,” commented Don Julio, evaluating his work. “A perfectly proportioned skull. Some clients aren’t this lucky, you know? When I shave their heads, we discover imperfections, scars, deformities. But you… you have a perfect skull.”

The barber’s words sounded distant, as if they came from another world. Sara was no longer crying. Her gaze had become empty, just like that of the men in the photographs that decorated the walls. She understood that she was experiencing dissociation, mentally separating from what was happening to her body.

Don Julio continued with his task, meticulously shaving every inch of her head. When he reached the nape area, his movements became even more precise.

“This is the most delicate part,” he explained. “You have to be careful with the small protuberances at the base of the skull. A cut here could be dangerous.”

The machine buzzed as it eliminated the last vestiges of Sara’s blonde hair. Her reflection in the mirror showed a person she didn’t recognize: a young woman with delicate features and large blue eyes now framed by a perfectly shaved skull. The transformation was absolute.

Finally, Don Julio turned off the machine. Silence returned to the barbershop, interrupted only by Sara’s agitated breathing. The barber took a brush and dipped it in a container with talcum powder. With circular movements, he applied the white powder to the shaved head, gently massaging the scalp.

“This will calm the irritation,” he murmured. “The first shave always produces some discomfort.”

Sara remained motionless, captive to that invisible force that kept her tied to the chair. Don Julio took a warm towel and placed it on her head for a few seconds. Then he removed it and applied a transparent lotion that smelled of mint and alcohol.

“Perfect,” he said, admiring his work. “Now you’re safe. They won’t be able to find you.”

He carefully removed the cape, letting the hair remnants fall to the floor. The contrast between the pile of golden hair at her feet and Sara’s shaved head was overwhelming. Don Julio picked up an especially long strand and stored it in a drawer where Sara could see, horrified, dozens of similar strands of different blonde tones.

“All of you are part of my collection,” explained the barber. “All my Anas.”

Suddenly, the force that kept Sara immobile disappeared. She could move, but she was too weak, too traumatized to try to escape. Don Julio leaned over her, his eyes now full of a strange compassion.

“Soon you’ll understand that this was necessary,” he whispered. “They all understand, with time.”

Sara moved her fingers, then her hands. Slowly, she brought one of them to her head, feeling the strange texture of her exposed scalp. The sensation was so alien, so intimately violent, that a sob escaped from her throat.

“What are you going to do with me now?” she asked in a thread of a voice.

Don Julio smiled, a sad smile that didn’t reach his eyes.

“Nothing, dear. I’ve already done what I had to do. Now you’re free.”

With those words, the old barber headed for the back door through which he had appeared. Before crossing it, he turned one last time toward Sara.

“You can leave whenever you want. But I warn you: the world is not kind to different people. And now, you are… different.”

The door closed behind him, leaving Sara alone in the barbershop. She rose with trembling legs and approached the mirror, unable to recognize the person who looked back at her. Her trembling hand traveled over the smooth surface of her skull, feeling every irregularity, every little scar that had always been hidden under her mane.

Outside, the night was now complete. The barbershop sign continued to flicker: blue, white, red. Sara opened the door and went out to the deserted plaza. There was no one chasing her; there never had been. Just the delusion of an old man who saw his dead daughter in every blonde young woman who crossed his path.

The night cold caressed her shaved head as she walked aimlessly. Her transformation was irreversible, not because of the absence of hair, which would eventually grow back, but because of the experience that had mutilated something deeper inside her. Something that, like her golden mane, had fallen to the floor of that barbershop forever.

The tears had stopped flowing. In their place, a strange calm invaded her as she moved away from that place. Perhaps Don Julio was right about one thing: now she was different. And in that difference, as terrible as its origin might be, perhaps she would find a strength she never knew she possessed.

The buzzing of the hair clipper would continue to resonate in her nightmares for years, but Sara had survived. Without her hair, without a part of her identity, but with a story that, someday, she would have the courage to tell.