Post by Georgina on Mar 21, 2009 11:33:02 GMT -5
Re-posted to give this lovely piece of writing its very own space. -- G
Submitted to Writer’s Digest “Short, Short Story” Contest on December 1, 2006. Word count 1493.
I didn't get so much as an honourable mention but I enjoyed putting the words together.
She was young and thin and fragile looking as if she was made only of pipe cleaners and skin. Her mousy hair was always in her eyes and she chewed gum and popped and cracked it annoyingly but when she grinned at you it was the first time in your life you felt like you’d been smiled at.
Mandy worked at the beauty shop up on the hill just a few blocks from the center of town. It was the best shop in town; its regular customers were the women who knew all the best lowdown, and Mandy was known across three counties for being the best shampoo girl.
No one knew much about Mandy other than she wasn’t local and that she was renting one of the tiny cabins in a campground out by the lake. She was neat and clean and she dressed presentably. She cheerfully pitched in, without being asked, to help with chores around the shop and she was quick with a compliment and slow to frustrate.
But no one really cared where she lived or where she’d come from or what she was like. They wouldn’t have cared if she’d had two heads. They cared only that she was available when they wanted their hair washed.
When she’d first started working at the salon, word got around fast about Mandy’s shampoo abilities. She was gifted, that’s all there was to it. No one had ever washed hair like Mandy.
Before too long, women who’d already experienced Mandy’s ‘gift’ came by just to watch her wash someone else’s hair. They sat around pretending to be waiting for a stylist, “just a quick trim,“ they lied and they hid behind magazines and watched as Mandy seated the lucky, dirty-haired recipient and slowly reclined the shampoo chair.
Mesmerized, the women didn’t realize that their own heads made small imitation movements while they watched Mandy gather up handfuls of hair and gently tug this way and that, until the head and the hair was situated just right in the shampoo bowl.
It was so quiet in that beauty shop that each and every woman there unknowingly obeyed Mandy’s whispered command, “Close your eyes, now,” when she turned on the sprayer and, starting at the hairline, slowly sprayed warm water back and forth, in little undulating motions, causing goose bumps to flow from one end of a body to the other.
No one breathed when her hard little breasts grazed the side of the woman’s face as Mandy turned off the water and reached for the shampoo.
No ordinary shampoo, Mandy created the stuff in her own tiny kitchen. She conjured it up, playing with potions and adding pinches of one thing and drops of another until the concoction was just right. She captured it in a brown glass bottle and carried it with her to and from the shop every day. No one was ever allowed to touch it.
When she blended the shampoo into your hair, no matter how hard you tried to place that scent you couldn‘t do it.
The fragrance was mysterious and the liquid as dark as the forest floor but there were cool, silvery notes of ozone and freedom too, and the cloud of luxurious foam that enveloped your head was so strangely luminescent you knew you could stand in front of the Moon herself and proudly proclaim you’d discovered the source of her light.
As Mandy began to scrub she leaned in close to you, massaging here, stroking there, she prodded at the back of your neck and she lightly scratched the top of your head with her fingernails. It didn’t matter if you’d washed your own hair just that morning, only her hands could dislodge the grunge left behind by everyday life.
Your arms dropped away from the shampoo chair and hung straight down at your sides and your little moans of pleasure could be heard throughout the quiet shop.
It was all very sensual and erotic and somehow mothering at the same time and when she was finished and whispered for you to open your eyes, there she was gazing at you, one eyebrow wickedly cocked, a small grin lifting the corners of her mouth, as if she were silently asking, “Was it good for you?” No one was quite sure if it was naughty or nice. No one cared.
Mandy always had to help the women up from the chair; their eyes were glazed over and their mouths hung slightly open as if they’d been lightly sedated or stunned by the touch of a lover and their heads tingled most pleasantly with sultry little explosions of scalp rejuvenation.
“Come on, sugar,” Mandy would gently chuckle and lead the woman to the chair of a waiting stylist where she helped her sit, patted her arm and moved on to the next customer.
All the other women in the shop began to breathe again and their sighs of vicarious contentment caused small eddies of air to waft through the shop. Stylists picked up their scissors once more and the ceiling fan resumed its silent circuit of never ending circles.
When autumn came and stripped all the leaves from the trees lining the streets in town the air turned chilly and dry. More and more women came to the shop seeking new do’s for the upcoming holidays. The shampoo bowl was the busiest station in the salon.
Mandy’s hands became red and chapped. Every morning before she started work, and again at the end of her shift, she treated her hands to a cooling lotion she made herself from goat milk and honey.
But the condition of her hands worsened and angry fissures appeared on her knuckles and oozed tiny, red threads of blood. She tried wearing latex gloves but she was allergic to latex and her hands looked worse than before. She tried rubber gloves but the women whined that they could not feel her fingers and she wasn’t scratching their heads like before.
The women brought expensive medicated creams and instructed her to sleep with her hands in cotton gloves.
But they did not think to suggest that someone else wash their hair for a few days to give Mandy‘s hands a break.
Mandy’s hands got worse and began to peel as if they’d been burned by the hottest fire. She could be seen walking home from work at night rubbing snow on them and waving her hands in front of her, trying to ease the hot blistered feeling.
Her hands were so chapped and raw that none of the women would look at them anymore and they had a hard time looking in Mandy’s eyes.
And still they kept coming to get their hair washed. And still Mandy washed their heads.
Sometimes, as she laid a head gently down in the shampoo bowl, the woman would catch sight of one silvered tear tracing down Mandy’s cheek and onto her upper lip where she quickly licked it away and pretended, along with the customer, it hadn’t really been there.
On the first day of Winter, Mandy did not come to work on time. The stylists stood by their empty chairs and looked at their watches. The women waiting for shampoos began to pace around the shop in their plastic shampoo capes, their faces red with the effort, and they flapped like birds to keep cool under all that plastic. But Mandy did not show up.
Some of the women decided to drive to the cabin to check on Mandy, perhaps she was ill or hurt and needed them to help her get to work. It was a long walk, they would give her a ride. They jumped in their cars and drove to the lake and people in town stopped to stare at the convoy of plastic-caped women, driving too fast and squealing their tires.
When they arrived, a man at the entrance to the campground pointed out Mandy’s cabin, and they drove furiously down the gravel lane to the tiny structure. They got out of their cars and fluttered to the door, knocked loudly and stomped their feet to keep warm on the little wooden porch. But no one answered the door.
Maddened by the desire for clean heads the women broke in the front door. They surged into the cabin and then stood stock still, panting and huffing and some of them began to sob.
Mandy was no where to be found. It didn’t look like anyone had ever lived in that cabin. There were no signs of any human habitation. No furniture, no curtains, not even a dust bunny in a corner. No shampoo. No Mandy.
Slowly, the women drove back to the beauty shop, returned their shampoo capes, picked up their coats and left. The stylists sat down in their own chairs and watched the ceiling fan whir around and around, until it wobbled unexpectedly, and ground to a stop.
Written by: Patchoulli
Submitted to Writer’s Digest “Short, Short Story” Contest on December 1, 2006. Word count 1493.
I didn't get so much as an honourable mention but I enjoyed putting the words together.
She was young and thin and fragile looking as if she was made only of pipe cleaners and skin. Her mousy hair was always in her eyes and she chewed gum and popped and cracked it annoyingly but when she grinned at you it was the first time in your life you felt like you’d been smiled at.
Mandy worked at the beauty shop up on the hill just a few blocks from the center of town. It was the best shop in town; its regular customers were the women who knew all the best lowdown, and Mandy was known across three counties for being the best shampoo girl.
No one knew much about Mandy other than she wasn’t local and that she was renting one of the tiny cabins in a campground out by the lake. She was neat and clean and she dressed presentably. She cheerfully pitched in, without being asked, to help with chores around the shop and she was quick with a compliment and slow to frustrate.
But no one really cared where she lived or where she’d come from or what she was like. They wouldn’t have cared if she’d had two heads. They cared only that she was available when they wanted their hair washed.
When she’d first started working at the salon, word got around fast about Mandy’s shampoo abilities. She was gifted, that’s all there was to it. No one had ever washed hair like Mandy.
Before too long, women who’d already experienced Mandy’s ‘gift’ came by just to watch her wash someone else’s hair. They sat around pretending to be waiting for a stylist, “just a quick trim,“ they lied and they hid behind magazines and watched as Mandy seated the lucky, dirty-haired recipient and slowly reclined the shampoo chair.
Mesmerized, the women didn’t realize that their own heads made small imitation movements while they watched Mandy gather up handfuls of hair and gently tug this way and that, until the head and the hair was situated just right in the shampoo bowl.
It was so quiet in that beauty shop that each and every woman there unknowingly obeyed Mandy’s whispered command, “Close your eyes, now,” when she turned on the sprayer and, starting at the hairline, slowly sprayed warm water back and forth, in little undulating motions, causing goose bumps to flow from one end of a body to the other.
No one breathed when her hard little breasts grazed the side of the woman’s face as Mandy turned off the water and reached for the shampoo.
No ordinary shampoo, Mandy created the stuff in her own tiny kitchen. She conjured it up, playing with potions and adding pinches of one thing and drops of another until the concoction was just right. She captured it in a brown glass bottle and carried it with her to and from the shop every day. No one was ever allowed to touch it.
When she blended the shampoo into your hair, no matter how hard you tried to place that scent you couldn‘t do it.
The fragrance was mysterious and the liquid as dark as the forest floor but there were cool, silvery notes of ozone and freedom too, and the cloud of luxurious foam that enveloped your head was so strangely luminescent you knew you could stand in front of the Moon herself and proudly proclaim you’d discovered the source of her light.
As Mandy began to scrub she leaned in close to you, massaging here, stroking there, she prodded at the back of your neck and she lightly scratched the top of your head with her fingernails. It didn’t matter if you’d washed your own hair just that morning, only her hands could dislodge the grunge left behind by everyday life.
Your arms dropped away from the shampoo chair and hung straight down at your sides and your little moans of pleasure could be heard throughout the quiet shop.
It was all very sensual and erotic and somehow mothering at the same time and when she was finished and whispered for you to open your eyes, there she was gazing at you, one eyebrow wickedly cocked, a small grin lifting the corners of her mouth, as if she were silently asking, “Was it good for you?” No one was quite sure if it was naughty or nice. No one cared.
Mandy always had to help the women up from the chair; their eyes were glazed over and their mouths hung slightly open as if they’d been lightly sedated or stunned by the touch of a lover and their heads tingled most pleasantly with sultry little explosions of scalp rejuvenation.
“Come on, sugar,” Mandy would gently chuckle and lead the woman to the chair of a waiting stylist where she helped her sit, patted her arm and moved on to the next customer.
All the other women in the shop began to breathe again and their sighs of vicarious contentment caused small eddies of air to waft through the shop. Stylists picked up their scissors once more and the ceiling fan resumed its silent circuit of never ending circles.
When autumn came and stripped all the leaves from the trees lining the streets in town the air turned chilly and dry. More and more women came to the shop seeking new do’s for the upcoming holidays. The shampoo bowl was the busiest station in the salon.
Mandy’s hands became red and chapped. Every morning before she started work, and again at the end of her shift, she treated her hands to a cooling lotion she made herself from goat milk and honey.
But the condition of her hands worsened and angry fissures appeared on her knuckles and oozed tiny, red threads of blood. She tried wearing latex gloves but she was allergic to latex and her hands looked worse than before. She tried rubber gloves but the women whined that they could not feel her fingers and she wasn’t scratching their heads like before.
The women brought expensive medicated creams and instructed her to sleep with her hands in cotton gloves.
But they did not think to suggest that someone else wash their hair for a few days to give Mandy‘s hands a break.
Mandy’s hands got worse and began to peel as if they’d been burned by the hottest fire. She could be seen walking home from work at night rubbing snow on them and waving her hands in front of her, trying to ease the hot blistered feeling.
Her hands were so chapped and raw that none of the women would look at them anymore and they had a hard time looking in Mandy’s eyes.
And still they kept coming to get their hair washed. And still Mandy washed their heads.
Sometimes, as she laid a head gently down in the shampoo bowl, the woman would catch sight of one silvered tear tracing down Mandy’s cheek and onto her upper lip where she quickly licked it away and pretended, along with the customer, it hadn’t really been there.
On the first day of Winter, Mandy did not come to work on time. The stylists stood by their empty chairs and looked at their watches. The women waiting for shampoos began to pace around the shop in their plastic shampoo capes, their faces red with the effort, and they flapped like birds to keep cool under all that plastic. But Mandy did not show up.
Some of the women decided to drive to the cabin to check on Mandy, perhaps she was ill or hurt and needed them to help her get to work. It was a long walk, they would give her a ride. They jumped in their cars and drove to the lake and people in town stopped to stare at the convoy of plastic-caped women, driving too fast and squealing their tires.
When they arrived, a man at the entrance to the campground pointed out Mandy’s cabin, and they drove furiously down the gravel lane to the tiny structure. They got out of their cars and fluttered to the door, knocked loudly and stomped their feet to keep warm on the little wooden porch. But no one answered the door.
Maddened by the desire for clean heads the women broke in the front door. They surged into the cabin and then stood stock still, panting and huffing and some of them began to sob.
Mandy was no where to be found. It didn’t look like anyone had ever lived in that cabin. There were no signs of any human habitation. No furniture, no curtains, not even a dust bunny in a corner. No shampoo. No Mandy.
Slowly, the women drove back to the beauty shop, returned their shampoo capes, picked up their coats and left. The stylists sat down in their own chairs and watched the ceiling fan whir around and around, until it wobbled unexpectedly, and ground to a stop.
Written by: Patchoulli
