Bad Hair Day

This work is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 (Attribution, Non-Commercial, No Derivatives).

by Trevor Mendham

Brushing back his long, brown hair, Kevin studied the bloodshot eyes that looked at him from the bathroom mirror. He yawned and scratched his armpit lazily then stretched. He really shouldn’t have had that last pint. Well, it wasn’t his first hangover, he’d just have to struggle through the day. Nobody would believe him if he tried to pull yet another sickie.

He picked up the electric razor and switched it on, wincing slightly at the annoying buzz it made. Pulling back the skin of his cheek, still damp from showering, he prepared to run the foil over his stubble.

When he placed the razor on his skin it sounded as if the buzzing noise became slightly louder and higher pitched. Instead of gliding across his stubble the razor’s head pinched his skin. Kevin swore and switched it off, rubbing the now slightly sore patch on his cheek. “Bloody thing, I really need to get a new one,” he murmured, then prepared to try again on the other side of his face. Once again the razor’s noise became unusually high pitched but this time the buzz turned into a twang and Kevin felt a sharp cut across his face. He dropped the razor and slapped his hand to the wound. It came away with blood on it. Jesus fuck, what sort of idiot could cut himself shaving with an electric razor? He switched off the still buzzing unit and saw that the foil had snapped, its severed edge having done the damage to his skin.

Fortunately the cut wasn’t very deep. He didn’t have a spare foil - another thing he’d been meaning to do for ages - so it would be a case of going to work unshaven. He sighed. This was not turning into a good day.

Wrapping a towel round himself he headed out into the kitchen where he turned on the television, muting the sound and just glancing at the rolling headlines which showed that the world was continuing as normal. He threw two slices of bread into the toaster and started making himself a cup of strong coffee. His head was seriously throbbing now so he downed a couple of tablets whilst waiting for the toast to cook.

Had he really had that much to drink? He didn’t think so. Going over the previous evening in his head he counted up the drinks and it definitely wasn’t enough to account for this. Now he thought about it, that last pint had tasted a bit off. A dirty glass perhaps? Well he wouldn’t be going back to that pub again. Not for a while anyway.

The toaster pinged as the cooked bread jumped up. Kevin reached out and picked up a plate from besides the sink. As he did so, a thick lock of his hair slipped forwards over his right eye. Putting down the plate he brushed the hair back, only to have another lock fall over the left eye. Sighing he swept that back too, then picked up the plate again with one hand and the toast with the other. At that moment the hair fell forwards over both eyes, momentarily blinding him. He instinctively brought both hands up to his head to brush the rogue locks aside, dropping the plate and the toast as he did so. They hit the hard kitchen floor and the plate broke with a loud crack.

“Jesus fuck, what a day...” he muttered. He tried sweeping back his hair again, but every time he did so it fell forwards. “New razor and a trip to the barber today then, I think.” He put two more slices of bread in the toaster then, still fighting to keep his hair in place, returned to the bathroom.

There he took a brush and comb and began trying to tame his unruly hair and get it to stay in place. The first few times it simply fell back over his eyes whenever he let go, so he tried wetting it in the sink then holding it in place with the comb. This seemed to work... at least for a few seconds. Then he felt a pulling sensation on the comb. It was gentle at first then there was a jerk and the comb was actually tugged out of his hand.

Looking in the mirror he saw a large lock of hair was wrapped around the comb. But what made him rub his eyes was that the hair was rising upwards from his head and waving the comb about in the air. “I must be more hungover than I thought,” he muttered to himself. “I’m seeing things.” Reaching up he took hold of the comb, only to have it snatched from his grasp again as the lock of hair pulled it away.

“Enough!” he yelled. He yanked open the bathroom cabinet and grabbed a pair of medical scissors. He might end up looking a mess but it would be worth it to stop this day getting any crazier. Holding the lock of hair out straight he placed the scissors near the base and began to cut.

Only to find that nothing happened. The hair felt soft and smooth as usual but had gained the strength of steel wire. The scissors didn’t even scratch it, let alone cut. What did happen is that some of the other long hairs reached up from his head and wrapped themselves around his wrist. They didn’t try to pull his hand away, instead they began squeezing tightly. Meanwhile other strands reached up and pressed their ends into his flesh. They felt like sharp pins and he could feel the tiny stabs of pain. Then they started to make their way along his arm, heading towards his veins.

As Kevin tried unsuccessfully to pull his hand free he could feel the trickles of blood from his arm dripping down onto his scalp. He let the scissors drop so he could focus his attention on getting free.

At the same time as the scissors fell, the scratching on his arm stopped and his wrist was released along with the comb. He snatched his hand away and looked back in the mirror where he could see the strands of hair standing up from his blooded head and waving around in the air as if performing a victory dance.

“Screw this!” He massaged his wrist. It was covered in scratches, some deep and a few dangerously close to his veins. He took a bandage from the bathroom cabinet and wrapped it around the wounds to stem the bleeding. As he did so he noticed something that made him smile for the first time that morning.

At the back of the cupboard, previously hidden by the bandage, was a large tube. Depilatory cream, left there by an old girlfriend. Used for removing hair.

He took out the tube and gave the instructions a quick glance. It clearly said not to be used on the head or face, but things had gone beyond worrying about that. So he squeezed the stuff out and spread it generously over his head, rubbing it into the roots of the hair. This took longer than he expected as he had to keep pulling his hand away from the curls that tried to grab it and hold it back. Once done with his scalp he spread what was left over the unyielding stubble on his chin.

He washed his hands and threw away the now empty tube. He could feel his hair writhing around, wriggling and pulling as if trying to escape from his head, so presumably that meant it was working. Well, it was doing something anyway. He paced up and down the small bathroom, occasionally looking in the mirror, until there was no further movement from the hair. He’d probably left it longer than the instructions on the tube had said, but he didn’t care. Stepping into the shower he began washing the muck off his head.

God it smelt foul. His head was stinging really badly, but that didn’t matter. The important thing was that the hair - he no longer thought of it as ‘his’ hair - was coming off easily, falling into the plughole where it remained still. He’d have to clean that out later.

Once his scalp and chin felt smooth, Kevin turned off the shower and, without waiting to dry himself, went to look in the mirror. A wonderfully bald head peered back at him. It was also bright red and painful - clearly he’d left the cream on for way too long. He’d probably have to stay indoors for at least a week, but that was better than the nightmare he’d just ended. He sighed happily.

Then he screamed and bent double.

His hands clawed uselessly at his groin as dozens of small, razor sharp hairs shredded his penis, slashed through his scrotum and then speared his testicles.

Author’s Notes:

This story originally appeared in my self-published short story collection Rest In Fear 2.

Not a lot to say here. I simply took the banal expression and produced a literal interpretation. For some reason it seems that female readers enjoy it more than males!