This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.
The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/CalaveraBlues on 2024-11-25 13:24:49+00:00.
It was 1995, and the decade so far had not been kind. I would sit at home, wallow in my own self-pity, self-loathing, self... well, everything. The only person I ever really interacted with was Mother. And the many customers that my night job forced upon me. I would deliver pizzas from a place not far from me, a real shithole called Augustino's. A real authentic Italian experience. Hell, even the rats loved the pizza. Tips were poor, hours were anti-social (not that it really mattered), and the bonus free pizza was inedible. Even at my lowest, I would not touch that pizza. The clientele of Augustino's were less discerning - you don't order a pizza at 4am and expect a culinary Pierre White experience after all.
It was 2am, on some rancid December night. Mariah was dribbling out of the car radio, as my hands froze behind the wheel. The heater had broken months before. One of life's little luxuries you don't think about until there is literal ice on the inside of your car windscreen. I turned right under the bridge, and that familiar shudder came over me. It was not the weather. That bridge was the great sentinel between shit and shitter. This part of the city was not where you want to be. Not in the day. Not right now, in the icy night. I passed some boarded up shops and hit the little town dead centre. I parked up. Even over the radio (Last Christmas now, the staticky remix that only my speakers would allow), I could hear it. Techno, trance, house - whatever it was. It blasted out of the customer's house, covering most of the street. I grabbed the pizza. It was cold, but I didn't think these pill popping teens would care, so I didn't even prepare the apology. The hand off was smooth. A teen, pre-puberty moustache, pupils the size of dinner plates, thrust some notes at me, grabbed the pizza, hollared something incomprehensible to whoever was inside, and shut the door. Enjoy the pizza ya little shit.
My phone had rung on the way home. I answered. It was Augustino himself (well, Ramesh, but he owned the place and that name didn't quite have the same all-Italian ring to it). After a long rant, of which I understand around half, he put down the phone. I was fired. The little drug den residents had found a hair in the pizza. I had worn my hair long in those days. I fancied myself an Alice in Chains, Pearl Jam, Nirvana kind of loner. No one else working at the pizza place had long hair. Just me. And that's exactly what they had described. A long, brown hair, wrapped around pepperoni and sausage. I pulled up at the side of the road, and wept into my steering wheel.
It had been a few weeks later when Mother had suggested the job. It was during our nightly routine. I was brushing Mother's hair, lamenting my stupidity at not being able to find a job. She sat and listened, as all good mothers do, until, through tears, I told her I was useless at everything I tried. She had grabbed my wrist, and held it, hard. You keep me beautiful, she said. Look at me. Look at my hair. This is because of you.
The barbershop came only weeks later. It was steady. I had cut Mother's hair since I was a child. I had never really used clippers, but it was easy enough. The other lads in the shop didn't really speak, but the work was constant and kept my mind focused. It was almost relaxing. I had noticed though, that the less favourable clients always ended up in my chair. People that, if my life was an old Looney Toons cartoon, would have stink lines emanating from them. One man literally fouled himself right in front of me. It took an hour to clean the smell out of the chair. So it was no surprise, that when she walked in, she was pointed in my direction.
To this day, her face is still a blur. It's as though a mannequin, blank faced and devoid of any kind of humanity, walked across the room that day, and sat down before me. It was only when she was right next to me, that it finally became apparent. Her hair, the only way I can explain it, was... rotting. What I supposed was naturally grey hair had large black spots, the size of 50 pence pieces, littered all over her scalp. One patch of hair simply broke off as I attempted to rake the brush through it. I hadn't quite mastered the small talk aspect of the job yet, but what was anyone in this position supposed to say? She certainly didn't mind. She didn't speak a single word throughout the entire ordeal. The water ran black as I tilted her head back. Globs of filth and broken hair repeatedly blocked the plug. I held back my gag reflex, sometimes unsuccessfully. Several extremely large handfuls of shampoo later, it finally ran clean. Not actually having told me what style she wanted, I trimmed the ends of her hair, split like tree roots, and blow dried her hair. I remember thinking that the blow dryer was probably the one thing I wouldn't have to throw away after this.
It had begun to grow dark outside. How long had I been at this? I looked up and around me for what seemed like the first time in hours. The others were completing their closing routine. I looked back at her. I almost gasped. She looked... good. It hung just below her shoulders, jet black and shiny. A sense of familiarity came over me as I stepped back, almost in shock. Did she pay? I can't remember. So much from that day was like a vague dream. Under the circumstances, I understand why.
Mother died the next day. It was sudden and unexpected. She had had the cruelness of someone past their years, but her energy was undying. I remember feeling lost, rather than upset. Especially when it came to packing her things. I bagged up her clothes to drop off at the nearest charity shop. The table of her vanity mirror was still packed with her make up. I grabbed a box and started to throw her things into it, palettes of blush and little tubes of mascara, when I yanked my hand back. A drop of blood dripped onto the dresser. It took me a few seconds to realise what had happened, when I looked down. Mother's hairbrush lay there, a few shiny droplets visible on the clump of black hair still within its bristles.
It was a few days later, and the house felt empty. It dawned on me just how big of a presence Mother had on the house, and just how little I owned. I had begun repurposing Mother's room into something more suitable, and was rocking the large dresser and mirror side to side, trying to get it through the door, when I felt a sharp sting in my fingertips. The cut from earlier in the week had opened, but it wasn't the only source of pain. The four fingers on my right hand burned. I raised them up and went cold. Splinters protruded from each one. The mirror was made of wood but, they couldn't have been from that. They were hair splinters. I had heard the staff at the shop mention them, and I thought they were some kind of cautionary tale about paying attention with the clippers. But here they were. The skin around them was blotchy and irritated. How long had they been there? They were jet black. Surely I would have noticed them? The chill came back as I imagined the rotten hair of that woman piercing my skin like a syringe, and festering there for days. I ran to one of the boxes in the room, and rummaged through for Mother's tweezers I had packed away days earlier. I found them, and plucked at hair hanging out of my fingers like spider legs. I tugged at each one. Some were half an inch long or even more. It was impossible that I hadn't noticed. After around ten minutes, each of my fingers bore jagged holes in their tips, which I plastered up, with hopes to forget the whole ordeal. But from that day, it only got worse.
Around a week later, I still hadn't been to work. The thought of going back made me want to throw up, so I told the owner I was still grieving. He reluctantly understood. It was around this time that the dreams had started. I would be in bed, and I would awake in my dream, coughing endlessly. I wouldn't be able to breathe, and I would start to panic. I would feel a scratching in my throat, and shove my fingers in my mouth, desperately trying to breathe. It was there I would begin to pull, and thick black locks of hair would make their way up my throat. No matter how much I pulled out, I still wouldn't be able to breathe. I would be surrounded by it, lying on piles of hair, and yet more would come.
I only wish they had stayed dreams. Almost exactly a month to the day that Mother had died, my left eye began to itch. It was when my vision began to get blurry that I became worried. I had checked for an errant eyelash for what seemed like hours in the mirror, when I finally saw it. I grabbed the tweezers and took a deep breath to try and stop my hand from shaking. I had to use my left hand. I hadn't dared to remove the plasters on my right. After a few attempts, I managed to grip the eyelash. I carefully tried to remove it, pulling it slowly towards the mirror. At first, I thought I had dropped it, as I felt no relief. If anything, the irritation had turned into pain. I positioned myself differently in the mirror, psyching myself up to grab it again, when I realised the hair was in the grip tweezers still. It wasn't an eyelash. It draped around three inches away from my eye, but was still embedded in the fleshy mass under my eyeball. I dropped the tweezers and the hair hung limply across my cheek. I grabbed it with my fingers and pulled. My eye began to water from the pain and the tears as I began to see the full extent of what was happening...
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