andead99
Amelia was spending her only day off from work as she used to: walking the crowded streets of her city. She loved to do it in what she thought was her best clothing: a turtleneck sweater, a modestly long skirt (usually up to the calf but today she wore a knee-length one) and a pair of heeled sandals .
She let running down her back her lush, long, straight and dark brown hair, like the bark of a tree.
The locks of her forehead tucked behind her ears so as not to cover her delicate face adorned with little makeup.
Looked like her very classic and conservative style wouldn’t last much longer.
The streets had already filled up early in the morning and by the time Amelia had arrived they were nothing short of packed due to the market stalls. Thousands of old and young people wandered among the vendors to scrutinize and evaluate the goods. That day many more than expected had arrived and consequently the curious people had also multiplied.
Even though Amelia was on the widest street in the city, she felt decidedly oppressed, she almost couldn’t breathe in the midst of that rampant crowd.
Suddenly she felt crushed between two people, a third came at her without even apologizing and finally a group of kids pushed her aside, against one of the shop windows on the street, or more precisely against the door of one of them . Stumbling on the doorstep, she accidentally opened the door to the shop, and walked in on it by accident.
“Oh, there you are! I’ve been waiting for you for 30 minutes! I don’t have so much time to waste, I!”
“What?”
“You’re the girl who made the 10 A.M. appointment, right? Come on, sit here, we’ve already wasted enough time!”
Amelia suddenly found herself being forcibly dragged towards a chair placed in front of a mirror. It took her a while to realize that she was inside a salon.
By the time she had realized that, she already had a cape tied around her neck and fastened tightly behind her head.
“You told me you just needed to tidy up the perm and the sides but it seems to me that there’s a lot more to cut here than I thought. Now your hair is all straight again, and look at the regrowth! Don’t be afraid, dear. Now I’ll take care of making them beautiful and short again! Just how you wanted them.”
The elderly hairdresser gathered the hair on top of Amelia’s head with a pair of barrettes and left much of her hair hanging down the sides and behind her.
“N-No, wait, there must have been a mistake-“
Amelia didn’t had time to finish her sentence before she felt a buzz run behind her, pushing her head forward as a vibrating object ran from the back of her neck to the top of her head, over and over again. The hairdresser’s shoes quickly filled with long brown locks. Poor Amelia was at the mercy of the clippers in the old salon owner’s hands, Marianne.
The clippers worked quickly on all sides of her head, even going just above the temples, freeing Amelia’s head from years and years of hair care.
“Don’t you see how much better it already looks without all this length? But why did you let them grow so much, I wonder?”
“But I do not…”
Amelia’s words died in her throat, strangled by the tears she was trying to hold back.
“There’s no need to worry, you’ll see I won’t be much longer.”
Marianne loosened the hair on the top of her and proceeded to shorten the hair that had remained intact until then. Almost 80 cm reduced to just 7-8 cm. All in little more than a couple of snips.
“Sorry if I cut them a little roughly, but you’ll see that you won’t notice anything with the perm.”
Without wasting time, Marianne brought a trolley towards her with curlers of all sizes on it. She took the smaller, tighter ones and strand by strand, pulling not very gently, she wrapped all of Amelia’s hair in the small plastic tubes.
From a shelf she then took a small bottle with some acrid-smelling liquid inside and poured it almost entirely onto the coiled hair of her victim.
“Don’t worry about the sides, now let’s finish the perm and then I’ll give you some more tidying up.”
Still forcefully, Marianne lifted Amelia out of her chair and yanked her until she sat under a large helmet that blew hot air. She paid attention to the time by leaving the girl under the helmet for about twenty minutes. Once finished, Marianne placed Amelia’s head over the wash basin to wash away all the chemical that Amelia had put in her hair earlier.
Amelia felt like a toy being pulled this way and that, at the old lady’s mercy, as she took her place in front of the mirror again.
Quickly drying her hair with an hairdryer, Amelia saw in front of her a long strip of small, tight curls all over the top of her hair, while the sides and nape were shaved.
Marianne’s hands once again approached the shaved part of Amelia’s head, sliding a foil shaver to free her from all the stubble left by the clippers, making the sides shaved just before completely hairless.
The hairdresser, freeing Amelia from the cape, took a step back to see her result on her involuntary client.
“Well… now that I see it, it’s not exactly the best style you’ve ever seen. But if you like it… after all, you asked me!”
“But I haven’t made any appointment, let alone to request… this!” Amelia said, pointing to her head.
They both looked at each other, not understanding exactly what had happened.
“Well… I just cut your hair, and now I also expect you to pay me!”
Amelia could do nothing but pay what was requested and leave, almost pushed out the salon by Marianne.
After leaving the shop, all the people she came across couldn’t help but stare at that mass of curls on top of the rest of her completely naked head.
Surely, the worst part of that day would be the walk home.
