It's the Hair

My family was grouped around the television arguing about what to watch. I was sitting on the couch with my mother and father seated on either side of me, my little sister, Natalie, was leaning against the coffee table with her legs crossed.

“I want to watch the Simpson’s,” Natalie argued.

This was one of the many reasons I was so different from my ten year old sister. Natalie absolutely loved the Simpson’s and I absolutely hated them.

“No,” said dad, “I think we better watch the news. You should always know what’s going on around the world.”

“Yes” mum agreed. Parents, don’t they know anything about kids. The news, even I would rather watch the Simpson’s.

My dad leaned forward to collect the remote and change the channel. Natalie folded her arms and put on a sulky face.

“It has been reported that a mad scientist has just escaped from a maximum security prison,” the news reader reported, “How he has accomplished this is unknown. A public warning has been issued and all people have been encouraged to lock their doors.”

“Oh my,” Mum exclaimed, sloping some of her drink down the front of her pink, T- shirt.

“In other news,” the news reader continued, “a local hairdresser has just retired, having turned seventy four last month, more on that tomorrow. Have a good night.”

Dad picked up the remote to turn the television off. “You know kids; it’s about time you had a haircut,” Mum said, turning toward me.

“I don’t think that’s necessary,” I replied, my hair wasn’t nearly long enough to get cut yet.

“Well I think that it’s a great idea,” Natalie jeered, “when can we go?”
“But,” I was starting to get nervous now, I couldn’t cut my hair, “the local hair dresser just retired, I’m afraid there’s nowhere else to go.”

“Oh, there are other hair dressers,” Mum smiled.

Darn. I was afraid of that.

“Come on Ashleigh, it’ll be fun,” Mum persisted, “your father needs a haircut too. It’ll be just like a family night out.”

“Yes,” Dad sighed. He didn’t seem to keen on the idea either, “It’ll be great, but for now I think its time for bed.”

As I headed upstairs after Natalie, who was positively skipping for joy at the thought of cutting her hair, a strange, ominous feeling filtered through me. I could just imagine myself heading to school with a bald head on Wednesday. I lifted my arms up to feel my head and gratefully felt a full set of hair perched on top.
These thoughts unfortunately didn’t leave as I slept. I had the worst dream. No nightmare more like… I was at school in my underwear, with no hair! Everyone was laughing as I slowly turned a violent shade of red.

.~.

The next day, Tuesday, was possibly the worst day ever and that wasn’t just because of school. Mum had picked a day and this was the day we would be getting our haircut. Natalie was all for it and set of to school with a bright smile on her face, long blond hair swaying in the wind, skipping just as she had the previous night. Mum was positively gleaming; it had been ages since we had done anything as a family and even getting our haircut together seemed to please her. Dad looked just as sad as I felt, even though he tried to hide. I hugged him as he got into his car and mum kissed him as I waved goodbye. After mum had hugged me one last time, I too headed off to school.

.~.

Unfortunately school went quickly since I wanted it to last longer and even when we had a substitute in maths, who took us out for a game of doge ball, I still couldn’t shake that image of myself in my underwear with no hair.
When the bell rang I took as long as possible to get outside and when I finally did, I found my parents and Natalie waiting for me.

My mum’s friend Loanne was a hairdresser, so that’s where we were headed.

“Oh,” Mum let out a startling cry and I couldn’t blame her. The place looked liked a herd of elephants had stampeded through here. It looked abandoned, or so I thought. At that very moment a man came out.

“Welcome,” the man said.

“Where’s Loanne?” Mum’s lip was quivering.

“Oh, I’m afraid she’s sick and won’t be coming in today,” he replied.

“But…the salon,” Mum was starting to go pale.

“Oh, this,”- he gestured behind himself, -“no we’re just doing some renovating. Please come in.”

Natalie was first to move, she seemed rather exited, completely unaware of what was going on around her. With a stern look at the rest of us we decided to follow. Mum was looking a little better and the man did seem quite friendly.

The inside wasn’t much different to the outside; there were cans of paint lying on the floor which reassured mum that they were renovating. “Now my speciality is dying, perhaps you’d like to have a change. I cut too.” he added.

Natalie was all for it and was the first to sit down. Mum agreed, so did dad and I, assuming we didn’t have a choice. We soon found out that the man’s name was Adam and he was very nice too. He was very talkative and fifty minutes later, after many conversations I finally got up from a chair being the last for Adam to work on. We had our hair cut (I only had a trim) and dyed, but the dye didn’t seem to be having much affect.

“I wouldn’t worry about that,” Adam said, “it takes a while to…sink in.”
There was something fishy about the way he had paused before finishing the sentence, but I didn’t let it get to me. He really did seem like a nice guy.

.~.

We got home at eight; it was daylight savings, so the sun was still out. There was much chatter at the dinner table, mum and Natalie were so exited; they had never had their hair dyed before.

“An early night I think,” Mum said, “I can’t wait to see the new colour.” Mum was still worried about Loanne; I could hear it in her voice. While doing her hair, Adam had to constantly reassure her Mum that Loanne had a miner cold.

The next day was really strange and probably the most exiting day of my life so far. This won’t surprise you, but I didn’t get my hair coloured and luckily I didn’t because that’s when it all went wrong. I had just woken up from the greatest night sleep in forever, when I heard the loudest scream come from the bathroom next door. Naturally it was Natalie, who else could scream that loud. I knew why she was screaming as soon as I walked through the door. Her hair was bright green. Natalie was standing in front of the mirror in her bright pink pyjamas, which now clashed horribly with her hair. She had stopped screaming but looked on the verge of tears.

“My…hair,” she could barley get the words out.

“Aaaah,” it was mum, with a scream to match her daughter’s.
Had the same thing happened to mum that had happened to Natalie? I wondered, and what about dad and me. I quickly looked in the mirror, nothing. It was the same shade of dark brown it always was.

“Aaaah,” another scream and it seemed to be a man’s.
Dad! I rushed towards our parents’ bedroom with Natalie hot on my tail. We reached the master bedroom with a bang. Natalie had crashed into me. We rushed to the unsuit bathroom. Natalie reached it first and let out another ear shattering scream followed by two others. Mum had bright orange hair and dad had fluoro pink hair.

“I am not going to school like this,” Natalie cried. I could tell that dad wasn’t very enthusiastic about going to work with fluoro pink hair either. So instead we decided to pay Adam a visit. Natalie insisted that we all wear hats before leaving the house, me as well.

We got there as fast as we could, but my family never made it into the salon. All of a sudden they were on the ground. Their hair was flashing a different colour every few seconds. Their arms and legs were flailing in every direction. Then suddenly they were off the ground and pushing me into the salon. What was going on? We entered the salon. Adam was there looking the happiest I had ever seen him.

“I take it my concoction has taken effect,” a wide grin spread across his face.

“What,” I stuttered, “did you do this?” I couldn’t believe this. This certainly was not the man I meet yesterday. I had to get away. I needed to find help for my family; certainly they were not conscious of what they were doing. I did the only thing I could think of. As my family loosened their grip around me I shoved them out of the way and ran! I headed towards the door, tripping things over in the process. I got outside with Adam still hot on my tail. If only I could get to the police station I thought to myself. Unfortunately I had no clue where the police station was and next thing I knew I was being half carried, half dragged back into the salon.

“Help,” I cried, who would save me and my family now?

There I was strapped to a chair, with tape over my mouth preventing me from speaking or screaming. Adam was holding a bucket of water by his side. What was he going to do, soak me to death? Even so, I was still very worried. My family was still acting strange and there was nobody here that could help me. I knew getting our hair cut was a bad idea.

I struggled and struggled, as hard as I could but the ropes were too tight. Fortunately I had a pretty strong kick, it was my only hope. I lifted my foot up and kicked with all my might. Adam staggered backwards and the bucket that he was currently holding above his head, ready to dump on me spilt everywhere. The water went all over me, Adam and my family. Then just as suddenly as they had started acting strange my family began to act like themselves. Natalie realised where she was. When she saw me she screamed. Mum and dad looked around too and after seeing me, grabbed Adam.

“Call the police,” dad said, as he pushed a struggling Adam to the floor.
Natalie untied me. She fumbled on the ropes quite a lot.

I headed straight to the phone, which was hanging on the wall, and dialled 000.

The police were here within minutes. “It turns out,” one of the officers said, “you just caught the mad scientist that escaped a few days ago. You see this?” he pointed towards the hair dye, “he was developing this in prison, said it would control the world, we thought he was crazy.” he paused, “I guess we were wrong,” the officer gestured around the room.

“No need to worry though, he’ll be going straight back to prison, twenty years. He was in there for murder in the first place. Killed his whole”-

“-I think that’s enough,” dad interrupted.

“Oh right, sorry,” he apologised.

“It’s probably best if you go home,” the other officer said, “it’s been a big day.”

“But, what about our hair,” Natalie asked.

“Oh I can fix that,” I smiled, while picking up another bucket full of water.

“How?” Natalie asked.

“Like this,” I poured the bucket over her head.

Natalie screamed and started spluttering. But she soon had a smile on her face. When she looked in the mirror, her hair had slowly started to turn back to its normal colour.

.~.

The next day at school was rather odd. It seemed that practically everyone had a strange hair colour; blue, pink, green, orange and even purple.

“Did you by any chance go to Loanne’s and get your hair coloured?” I asked one of my friends.

“Well, yeah,” she replied, “do you like the new colour?”

“I think it’s great,” I answered back.

That night the news broadcast was on the escaped convict who was captured by a local family. We all laughed. It was a scary experience but I have to admit, Natalie’s hair did look pretty funny.