Hair Today, Gone Tomorrow

Four figures stood on the dock, looking down at the sharp wet rocks and delighting in the water droplets that spritzed on them with the crashing of each wave. They impatiently glanced down at their watches, and then out at the streets, hoping to catch a glimpse of the fifth member, who was running late.

The first was called Edmund Lestorious. He had a big bottom lip. You’d think it was made of lead. His spine had more twists and curves than a pretzel, and he spent most of his time leaned over an old wooden cane. He wore an eye aching yellowish green flannel. He was the oldest of five, but you couldn’t tell just by looking at him.

The second’s name was Kent Rifle, a nickname he had gotten back in the Second World War. He no longer shot his rifle. He was too old. His index fingers were mangled from his arthritis, and his hands were shaky. He couldn’t keep a rifle level. If you were to give him a pistol, he could still shoot with the best of them.

The third was Miss Janice Flemming, the first and only female to have entered Lestorious’ Clan since the dawn of its conception. Had she been twenty years younger, one may actually notice that she was a female.

The fourth man was Gregory Gruntles, a dwarf with stubby legs and arms, and a bloated stomach that was as hard as steel. He was a marvel to look at; most people will never see a dwarf live as long as Gregory had. He let out a long sigh and dragged his hand across his face.

“What’s taking him?” Gregory said.

“Tell me about it. We gotta stand around all day for this prick?” asked Kent.

“He has that new place on the island,” Janice said in his defense. “He should be here any second.”

Edmund’s tremendous lip curled, and he shook his head. “No excuses. He’s been a member before any of you. He knows when we meet and he knows better than to be late.”

He came eventually, the fifth man, out of breath and glistening with sweat. His name was Vincent Dean. His old, wise eyes were magnified by thick framed glasses. He quickly shuffled his feet when he walked, trying to get to the dock as fast as he could.

When Vincent finally stood beside Edmund, huffing for breath and muttering apologies for his tardiness, he looked at Edmund and said, “I think I found something very important.”

The meeting, which usually involved talking about things like budgets, odd ends, ‘hunting grounds’, and a big doll had been postponed. The five members of the Lestorious Clan jumped onto the ferry and took it to the island where Vincent lived.

While the five sat on the ferry, they saw two beautiful twin girls, aged seven, with silky golden blonde hair. Just the sight of their hair made Gregory’s mouth water. He made slurping noises, not regarding his surroundings, and went so far as to reach his tiny little hands out towards the girls. Edmund slammed the bottom of his cane on the floor, snapping Gregory out of whatever trance he was in.

Gregory wiped the dribble off of his chin and apologized to the four.

“Remember your place,” Janice hissed. When she hissed like that, she sounded like an old man. Kent laughed and gave Gregory a hardy pat on the back.

“Can’t stop a beast on the hunt,” he said.

“Don’t encourage him,” Janice said.

Vince had a fairly large two room apartment that overlooked the water. It should be said that the elder members of the Lestorious Clan craved water. They needed to live and hold meetings near it. It was in there blood. For centuries, the Lestorious Clan had met on ice caps, until their ancestors finally set south in their boats for America. Now they met beside rivers.

Vince’s couch was covered with pillows and blankets, while both bedrooms were filled with books. In the center of the living room was a tall brown cube that looked to be some sort of marble. Symbols were etched into the cube. The cube was a key, a Rosetta stone, for a language once spoken by the Lestorious Clan, but was now forgotten. Each member, upon seeing the cube, walked over to it and kissed it.

“Here,” Vince said, tapping on one side of the marble cube. “I’ve been comparing notes and texts with this cube, and I think we may have made a mistake with the Golden Rule.”

“What?” Edmund screamed.

Vince put his hands up, an offering of peace. “Give me a second. I think we just misread it, is all.”

Kent shook his head and tapped his twisted arthritic finger against his chin. “This doesn’t make sense. The rule has been unaltered since... Hell, we don’t even know.”

“I know,” Vince said. He placed his hand on the marble stone. “I think the old scholars had figured out the right words after our heritage was lost, but I think they misinterpreted its meaning.”

“Are you trying to say that our whole life’s ambition is a waste?” asked Gregory.

“No,” said Vince, “I just think that we’ll be obtaining different results.”

“You’re wrong,” said Edmund, who had been the leader of the Lestorious Clan for the last ninety years, and who single handedly retrieved all of the Lestorious doctrines that had been damaged or lost since the “Great Fire” that had occurred in 1003 AD, when the Vikings invaded.

“Well,” Janice said. “What do you think the Golden Rule is supposed to say?”

Vince shook his head. “I’m not sure, exactly.”

“The Creators of the Doll will have Their Will cast upon them until the Sun burns out!” said Gregory. “That’s what the Golden Rule is.”

“That’s what it is,” Kent said.

“All I’m saying is that it may not be that.”

The members left Vince’s apartment rather irritated. They all went back to Edmund’s house, as they did after all of their meetings. Edmund lived in an old Victorian by the water. You couldn’t tell it from the clothes he wore, but Edmund had great taste. The entire inside of the home was filled with flawless antiques, whose wood glowed brilliantly.

There was one room that did not glow. It was an unfurnished, windowless room that was located in the heart of the house. Within the room was a blanket, a bare light bulb that clung to the ceiling, and the doll, which stood upon the blanket.

The doll was almost complete. It consisted of billions of strands of hair, each plucked off of a young, virgin girl’s head, and carefully placed one on top of the other, making a human sized figure. Of the billions of strands, there were hundreds of different colors, and even more different textures and thicknesses. It was a gruesome thing, a statue of decay and filth that housed fleas and flakes of skin. But to the Lestorious Clan, it was their Goddess and their Savior.

Edmund and the others stood in the door way. Kent cleared his throat, urging to others to part way as he walked towards the doll.

“I got these before,” he said, fishing a small plastic bag out of his coat pocket with his crooked finger. “From church.” The plastic bag had three strands of curly red hair in it. “Gotta love church,” Kent said, “You just pluck these clean off their heads, they holler out in pain, and then their moms shut them right up.”

Kent placed the three strands of hair on top of the doll’s head. He licked his fingers and gently pasted the hairs down.

“How many more hairs do you figure it’d take before the doll comes to life?” Gregory asked Edmund. Edmund shrugged.

“It’s only a matter of time,” he said.

“We’re so close,” Janice said.

They went about their week and visited their normal ‘hunting grounds’. Janice visited some barber shops with scotch tape on the toes of her shoes, which she used to discreetly catch the hair of young girls before it hit the ground. The hair was no good after it hit the ground. Edmund visited the ICUs of different hospitals shortly prior to visiting hours, with tears in his eyes and flowers in his hands. Convincing the guards to let him in early was easy, and plucking some strands of hair off of young, unconscious girls who were under the mercy of life support machines was equally as easy. Explaining to the nurses why he was throwing out a perfectly good bouquet of flowers prior to leaving was hard. Kent spent his hours hunting in the churches, where he would wrap his twisted fingers around praying girls’ hair and quickly yanked it out. He found great amusement not in the act of pulling out the hair, but in the fact that most of them wouldn’t even bother to turn their heads in fear of what their oblivious parents may do to them if they were to break prayer. Gregory, the most horrid of the club members, found his hair on the heads of girls playing in parks in low income neighborhoods. Most of the time, there wasn’t a parent around to tell him off.

Vince did not hunt this week. He sat inside his apartment and studied the texts and compared words against the stone. The more Vince researched and dug around, the more worried he became.

Something was not right.

Outside the texts in Vince’s apartment, there was no written history of the Lestorious tribe. From what he gathered, or at least what he thought he gathered from the cryptic passages, the Lestorious clan was a great arctic tribe who prided themselves on their vast knowledge of astronomy, sailing and magic. According to Vince’s grandfather, Dolan, who was of the first generation of Lestorious to come to America, the great Shaman from the old county could cast fire spells and even bathe themselves in flame. Fire was big in the Lestorious text. It appeared in almost every paragraph.

It was a Friday night and Edmund had just come home from an evening at the hospital. Edmund entered the doll’s room and placed the twelve strands of hair he had plucked off a young girl who had been hospitalized in a car crash on the doll.

The room that did not glow now glowed.

The doll that did not move now moved.

Edmund’s eyes peeled and his lips quivered. Leaning his weight on his cane, he carefully descended to his knees. He blinked constantly to squeeze the tears out of his eyes. His entire life’s work, the life’s work of his fathers and his fathers’ fathers had been realized.

A hole formed in the Doll’s head, a mouth, with which the Doll said, “Crngh Vndlat inslurven.”

Its voice sounded like billions of young virgin girl’s whispers.

It was speaking the Old Tongue. Of all the Lestorious members, the five elders and their kin, only Vance had a real grasp of the Old Tongue. He quickly got Vance on the phone.

All five elders stood around the glowing doll that night.

Gregory grabbed his chest when he saw the doll. Too much excitement. The heart in his chest froze, but he forced it to continue. It was pure will that kept him alive. Kent rushed to Gregory’s side, only to be shooed away by Gregory’s waving hand.

“I’m good,” Gregory said to his friend.

The elders were excited, save for Vance, who had a grave look on his face.

To each of the elders, the doll said, “Crngh Vndlat inslurven.”

“What does it mean?” Kent asked.

“Vndlat. That’s the creators of the doll. Us. And crngh means hair,” said Vance.

“Yes,” Janice said to the doll. “We got the hair and made you.” She said her words slowly, as if she were talking to a young child or a pet.

“What’s the second word mean?” asked Edmund.

“Hmm,” said Vance.

“We know you know what it means!” Gregory spat, white balls of foam shooting out of his mouth. “Be quick about it!” He grabbed his chest harder. “I ain’t gonna last long.”

“Inslurven. It means to offer,” said Vance. “The doll wants us to offer it a strand of our hair.”

Four plucked hairs off their bodies in an instant and placed them into the doll’s open palm. The doll did not move.

“What’s going on?” Gregory said. His face was contorted in pain.

“I haven’t given it my hair yet,” said Vance.

“What’re you waiting on?” Gregory screamed through clenched teeth.

“I have a bad feeling about this,” Vance said. “I want to know the Golden Rule before I give it my offering.”

Janice urgently placed her hand on his shoulder and said, “Vance, we know it! The Creators will have Their Will cast upon them. Gregory’s Will will be to stay alive. Please, give it your hair!”

“No,” Vance said.

“Bastard!” Gregory hissed, no longer breathing.

A sharp feeling of pain and Vance’s head was ripped back. Kent clung to Vance’s hair with his curled fingers. He pulled and ripped until Vance had a bald spot on his head. He marched beside the doll and sprinkled Vance’s hair into its palm like party confetti.

The doll did not move.

“Oh, for Christ’s sake!” Kent screamed.

“I have to offer the hair!” Vance screamed out, still feeling the horrid sting in his scalp. “You can’t make an offering for me!”

“Fine, I’m sorry,” Kent said. He reached into his pocket and retrieved a revolver. He pointed it at Vance. “Make your damn offering. Now.”

Gregory’s legs gave way and he fell to his stomach. His eyes were wide and vacant, and stared out at nothing at all.

“Gregory!” Janice said. She bent and tried to resuscitate him.

Kent’s lips were pressed white tight against one another. He lowered his gun momentarily to look at his good friend’s dead body.

“You could have done something,” Kent said. “The doll could have saved him.”

He raised his gun again.

“It was his time,” Vance said.

“Gregory was my best friend,” Kent said.

Edmund walked between Vance and the gun with his hands raised in the air.

“Nobody has to be shot,” he said. “Vance didn’t kill Gregory-”

“He didn’t save him either,” Kent said.

“Put the gun away. Vance will give his offering and then we will be kings,” Edmund said. “The world will be ours.”

“And Gregory won’t see it...” Kent said.

“I’m not giving my offering. Not until I know what the Golden Rule is.”

“Oh, come now!” Edmund screamed. “You know it! We all know it!”

Tears streamed down Janice’s face. She cradled Gregory’s head on her lap.

Vance stood very still and abruptly shook his head.

“He’s not an elder if I kill him,” said Kent. “Let me kill him.”

Vance could feel his heart freeze, much like Gregory’s, in Edmund’s silence.

Then, before Kent’s gun erupted, Edmund spoke.

“We’ve been waiting for this moment for centuries. We can’t wait any longer.”

Edmund and Janice looked away. They couldn’t bear seeing two of their friends die in one evening. Kent aligned his gun with Vance’s right eye. He was a good shot; Vance knew the bullet was going to surge through his eye and brain, then explode out the back of his skull.

Kent took a breath, steadied his hand.

“I’m no longer part of the Lestorious club,” Vance said.

“What?” said Edmund.

“I resign. Me and my kin.”

Before Kent could pull the hammer back on his gun, before he could even think over what Vance had said, a presence was upon him. The doll had its arms latched tightly around Kent’s waist. It giggled, much like how a billion girls would giggle, and then it hurled Kent through the roof and into the sky. He traveled far, far, until he was out of sky and out of sight.

The doll moved in a flash and grabbed both Edmund and Janice by their wrists and hurled them through the roof and into space. Then, moving like a blur, the doll was gone. It went looking for their kin.

Vance’s body was shaking uncontrollably when he got home. He sipped some warm water, hoping that it would get him settled, but it didn’t.

The Lestorious were an old race of people, a powerful race whose members could summon fire and bathe in flames. They were indigenous to the northern regions of Greenland, but as any of the members could tell you, they hated the cold. Hated it. They loved hot flames. They bathed in hot flames.

That night, when Vance looked at the marble stone he had used to decipher some of the texts, he couldn’t help but giggle a low, sad giggle.

“The Golden Rule. The Creators of the Doll will have their Will cast upon them until the Sun burns out.”

Laughter erupted and he shook his head.

“No. The Creators of the Doll will be cast into the Sun.’

The laughter quickly died and the tears came. All of his friends were gone.

Vance wondered what he should do with all of the Lestorious texts he had in his home. Burning them seemed like a fitting idea.