Estimated reading time: 11 minutes
“Well, how was the trip?”
It was unseasonably warm weather for late April and Larry had wasted no opportunity to wheel out the barbeque the moment temperatures climbed above mid-teens. Not that his neighbour Raul was complaining. Both men stood by the grill, an eye on the meat patties and the other on their respective wives. Raul’s daughter was teaching the women a new variation of hopscotch, scrawled in chalk on the bricked backyard.
“Good, mate. Business is business, you know?”
Raul didn’t know, but nodded anyway as it seemed the right thing to do. He took a glug of his bottled beer and watched as the other man flipped the burning patties.
“How’s things with you two?” Larry asked. “How’s married life treating you?”
“Good,” Raul answered. “Actually, our little family might be getting bigger.”
“Another kid? You’re joking!”
Raul raised his beer to take another sip and held out two fingers as he did so.
“Twins? You lucky…how’d you manage that?”
“Want me to draw it in chalk for you?”
Larry laughed. Turning his attention back to the cooking meat, he spilled out an open tray of sausages and slotted them on the metal grill like raw pink soldiers in an orderly file. He reached for his beer, and clinked it with his neighbour.
“Congrats. I mean that.”
“Thanks man. What about you and Bernice?”
Larry took a swig of beer, before turning to gaze at his wife. Bernice was playing with the young girl and her mother, hopping gaily on one foot.
“It’ll happen man,” Raul said. “Just gotta keep the faith. Lar?”
“Can you see it?”
“See what?”
“Her scalp.”
“I’m not sure what you’re—”
Larry turned to Raul, eyes red-rimmed. Raul couldn’t tell whether it was from the smoke or something else.
“See the way the sun reflects off my wife’s head.”
“I don’t see…”
They watched the women and the young girl lark and hop and skip and jump. Children, young and old, with no cares in the world. Larry waved back at the gap-toothed girl, hair spilled into two pigtails.
“Just wait. There’s a bald spot in her hair. She tries to tie it together, fastens it with a hair clip, but you can see it in the right light.”
“Sorry, mate, I don’t know what you’re getting at.”
“Stress. We’ve been trying for three years now. She’s worrying herself sick that she – we – can’t conceive.”
“Oh, damn, I’m sorry to hear that.”
Larry knocked back the suds of his beer, swallowing tears, before reaching for a fresh one. Raul took the one that was passed his way, snapping the lid open off with the bottle opener. The other man returned to the grilled meat, flipping the burgers again, before rolling the sausages across. The burning coals sizzled beneath as oil dripped from the meat.
“Got some hair product from a specialist in Brazil. Supposed to grow it back. But I don’t think it’s working that well. She’s losing her confidence. It’ll be wearing hats next.”
“God. Is there anything we can do to help?”
“You’re helping by being here. Take her mind off it.”
“‘Course, of course.”
“Anyway, I think these burgers are ready. Best not say anything about the twins until I’ve let Bernice know myself, you know? OK, girls! Who’s hungry?”
–
Two weeks later, while Larry was in the downstairs study reading, he heard a dripping noise. The distracting metronomic tap-tapping caused him to pause, and leave the room.
“Bernice? Honey?”
When no response was received, he climbed the stairs and entered their bedroom. The ensuite was reserved for his wife, while he had his privacy in the separate bathroom. He knocked on the door.
“Honey?” The sound of the streaming shower crowded out his voice. Through the door, he could hear his wife humming a song. He was about to knock again. Best not disturb her, he thought, cheerfully, and went back downstairs again.
Later that evening, as they were dressing for bed, he returned to the issue.
“There’s a dripping sound directly above the study,” he said. “Did you hear it? Right around the time you took a shower.”
“Again?”
Larry nodded. “Are you closing the shower door right?”
“Of course, I am,” she said, fixing a bathing cap to her head – a new addition to her nighttime routine which apparently helped keep the serum oil in the scalp. Another ploy to prevent hair loss, but more importantly, they had both agreed, something that would prevent her scratching and pulling on her hair during sleep, which had been a new habit since learning, a week earlier, of their neighbours expectant twins.
“I’ll maybe have a look tomorrow in any case,” Larry said, getting into bed beside her. “Might be a cracked shower tile or something.”
“You worry too much,” Bernice said, turning away from him and snapping the bedside lamp off.
–
The next morning, when Bernice was grocery shopping, Larry went out to his shed and found a little toolbox he had been gifted from a neighbour when moving into the home, a decade earlier. He carried it inside and into the bedroom ensuite. He slid open the big curved glass doors of the shower and studied the floor with his eyes. He had initially planned to crawl around the small tiled square on his hands and knees, searching for hair line cracks in the tiles that would allow water to seep through, but that was no longer necessary, because in the corner of the shower, covering the plughole was a thick nest of wet black hair.
“Jesus, Bernice. Did it not occur to you…”
He reached into his toolbox and found latex gloves which he slipped on.
“…even for a minute, that the great, big, mop of hair…”
He stepped inside and crouched on one knee, pinching his nose with one hand, reaching down with the other.
“…might, just might be blocking up the drain. Overflowing the basin and flooding the floor below.”
Larry grabbed a handful of the hair and yanked. It barely budged on the first effort. He dug his nails in a little deeper, grabbing a fistful of the sunken wet mass.
“C’mon you dirty little…”
He pulled again and there was very little give. The hair seemed to be caught and intertwined around the spokes of the hole. He used a pincer movement with his fingers to pull on the outer edges of the hairy lump. Again, his efforts were in vain.
“Time for Plan B,” he said, and twisting around, reached a hand through the shower door and rummaged through the toolbox. Out fished a set of long nose pliers. He moved closer to the offending hole, crowded around it, shoulders leaning forward touching the corner walls. His head looked down between his kneeling stance and he poked the tip of the pliers through the furry mess and tightened both hands around the tool.
“Ready or not!”
Larry jerked back with his entire weight, and succeeded in pulling the obstruction. He fell backward against the partly open shower doors, still holding the pliers. He cursed, shocked to find that a long trail of hair still connected the lump to the drain. It extended like a long slimy rope, streaked in silver and shiny oils and God knows what else, he thought. A foul sulfurous smell emanated from the opening, which was still partially closed.
He curled a hand around the lank thing that looked like a grotesque ponytail and carefully pulled. To his surprise, the thing refused to budge. He took both hands, and, with more force, pulled harder. Straining, the foot-long wet and oily cord held strong. Larry wrapped the slick rope around his fists and for a final time yanked hard. The loop of hair raced from his palms and snapped back to the drain opening again.
“What the hell?”
He clambered out of the shower, gloves wet and stinking where he had touched it, and he slid them off, dropping them in the sink. Grim determination set in, and he marched downstairs to the kitchen. When he had returned, he had in his hand a bright orange bottle of UnblockIt – the fast acting, heavy duty, highly toxic sink and drain unblocker.
Once again, he stepped into the shower. His elbow bumped the little tray where his wife’s various shampoos and conditioners were stored. A familiar bottle dropped to the floor. He reached down for it, noticed that it was empty, and tossed it into his toolbox.
“Good riddance,” Larry said, and unscrewing the cap, tipped half the contents of UnblockIt slowly onto the inky black mass in the corner of the shower. He waited for the thick goo to submerge the hairy nest, probing and sinking deeper into the hole. Melting everything organic in its path. Acid that would bore a clean hole into the fetid, stinking blockage.
As Larry continued to wait, he heard the noise of a door opening downstairs.
“I’m home. Bumped into Tara. They’re coming over shortly for dinner. I bought…Lar? Where are you?”
“Up here, honey.”
“Up where?”
Larry heard the footsteps climb the stairs, and had secretly hoped the surprise could have waited until he had at least finished the job. The creeping gel of the drain blocker had encroached further on the black blob, and he poured on more to accelerate the process.
“In your shower.”
“In the shower?” Bernice said, crossing the hallway and entering the room. “What, are you doing in the—Larry, no!”
At the exact moment his wife shouted, another voice echoed. It was a scream, somewhere below him. Not in the room below him, but directly underneath him. Larry looked down, and watched as the rope of hair pulled clean through the plughole. In its place was a single bloodshot eye staring straight up at him. The inhumane scream, a sound of agonised pain, cried out again. There was a rattling movement under his feet, as something moved at pace.
“What have you done?”
Larry hopped out of the shower, and was amazed to see his wife jump inside. She was kneeling, hands flat on the floor and staring into the hole.
“Bern? Honey?”
“Get out!”
–
Thirty minutes later, Raul and Tara knocked on the kitchen door. Larry answered, and apologetically explained that Bernice wasn’t feeling well. Moments earlier, checking in on his wife, he had heard through the closed bathroom door, singing. The sound of a lullaby.
“It’s on us next time,” Larry explained. “We’ll make it up to you.”
“Don’t worry about it,” Tara said, as they turned to walk away. “Please, let me know if there’s anything we can do.”
“Raul, can I have a quick word?”
The man nodded to his wife and said he’d catch her up.
“What’s up, man?”
Larry reached into his jacket pocket, took out a plastic bottle and passed it to Raul.
“It’s the shampoo bottle I got for Bernice in Brazil. Thing is,” Larry said, “this isn’t one you get from the supermarket or the pharmacy. I got it from a witch doctor in the Amazon.”
“Larry, man. You shouldn’t be buying stuff where you don’t know where it came from. There could be anything in this.”
“Well, is there?”
“What?”
“You speak Portuguese. What does it say?”
Raul raised the bottle, turned it around, searching for something of significance.
“I don’t know any of these ingredients. Or the brand. Looks homemade. I can’t tell what’s in this.”
Larry, growing frustrated, pointed to a section of the bottle on the side with larger writing.
“Here. Confidence. Restores vitality. Nourishing. Even I can use a dictionary, Raul. Gives your hair more body. See?”
“Not exactly.” Raul said, pointing to the passage. “It actually says, ‘gives your hair a body’. Not more body. Anyway, I hope Bernice gets well soon. Take care, mate.”
This story was written for the ambitious creative project, ‘The Weekly Kook’, where I release a brand new short story every week for a year, totalling…yep, you guessed it – 52 stories.
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One Response
Eeeeeuuuuuuuuuwwwwwww …….. quite sneakily ………