Curse of the White Hair

by B. A. Sans

The sleep had crusted my eyes partially shut. I rubbed at them. I felt the hard pieces roll under the weight of my hand. It was going to be one of those days.

As I walked toward the bathroom rubbing my eyes, pain suddenly surged through my foot. In my blinded journey toward the bathroom, I had stubbed my left foot on the leg of the bed. I felt my body convulse with the shooting agony of the day's torture. And I still had to go to work!

I got to the bathroom and felt the first relief of the day. I trudged over to the mirror and casually looked at my sleepy presence staring back at me. Something wasn't right. My eyes reexamined the situation. There it was: a bright, white hair sticking right out of the top of my head!

Frantically, I raced to find a pair of tweezers. The cold metal clasped in my hand; I tore at the demon strand. Gripping with frenzied fingers, the tweezers worked their magic in ostracizing the wicked whiteness from my scalp.

Trying to let the agony of the thought go, I got dressed and left for work. As my car flew down the freeway, I felt the ease of the wind wipe the horrible morning away. It blew across my being; erasing the torture of white hair from my mind. And then I saw it!

The same damn white hair was stuck to my navy blue pants. The tip of it was waving in the wind as though it was saying hello. In shock, my hands jumped and the car swerved. By inches, I missed hitting an oncoming vehicle.

How can this be? I threw the wretched thing in the trash. How could it have gotten back here?

I grabbed the evil hair in my fingers and looked at it closely.

“You can go to hell!” I screamed at the hair. It continued waving in my grasp; its form of defiance.

I held my arm out the window and let the hair go. The impact of the wind blasted the abominable disease from my fingertips into the abyss. I was finally free.

There I was; sitting in my parking space at work. The air didn't seem to want to go into my lungs. I panted as I tried to calm my nerves.

It's going to be ok. It was just one little white hair. You knew it was coming eventually. At least it's better than being bald.

I felt a calming sense of ease scatter back through my body and felt like the horror of the hair was finally over. I walked up to my office and sat at my chair in my cubicle in a cool, collected manner. It was work time. I needed to be focused.

As I plugged away at the keyboard, I heard Roger walking up behind me. He was one of those guys who fancied himself as the social boss of the office; always walking around and talking a bunch of trash with everyone. I never knew how that guy still had a job.

“Hey Bob, how was the weekend?” I heard him say.

“It was all right,” I answered never taking my eyes away from the computer screen.

“Do anything interesting?” he continued.

“No,” I stated indifferently.

“Hey, what do we got here,” he exclaimed.

I tried not to pay any attention to him. I was hoping he was referring to something else in the office that he just spotted. Then I felt a light pressure on my shoulder. I jerked around to see Roger pinching something in front of me.

“Starting to go grey already, Bob!” he mocked. The demon hair lay motionless in his pinched grasp.

I screamed as my whole body lifted from my seat. Unaware of what I was doing, I suddenly found myself in the bathroom staring at my reflection in the mirror. Beads of sweat dripped from my hairline. I splashed water on my face hoping it would take the pain away.

All right, you got to get a hold of yourself. This is ridiculous. You're a grown man. That hair that Roger just found could have come from anywhere. It couldn't have been the same white hair from this morning.

As a drop of sweat ran down toward my eye, I lifted my hand to wipe it away. There on the back of my hand I caught a glimpse of something stringy and white. Screaming like a little school girl, I ran from the office and flew home as though the devil himself were chasing me.

I didn't care about anything. It was just a nightmare. I would wake up at any time and start the day over. I sat on my bed; huddled in the dark. I rocked back and forth knowing that it was bound to end at anytime. Sleep finally found its way to my eyelids.

When I woke up, I felt reenergized. My eyes were not crusted. I didn't feel overwhelmed. I didn't even kick the bed on the way to the bathroom. It was a dream after all; a horrible, horrible dream.

As I entered the bathroom, I retraced the same routine actions of my nightmare day and turned to wash my hands in the sink. My body froze.

In the mirror, my reflection stared back at me. Upon my reflection's scalp was a full head of bright, white hair. My lips separated, but no noise came out. I felt slightly dizzy, and then only saw black. At least it wasn't white!