Hair pt.2

[...posted by Ted H]

“Well?” Mark asked. Jared was taken aback. “What?” he asked. Mark held up the cigarette butt he had just put out. “Cig dude, you got another cig for me?” Jared dug out another cigarette and handed it to Mark. “Continue,” he said.

Mark just lit up and stayed silent.

“Hey,” Jared said “The deal was I keep handing you cigarettes and you keep telling me what happened, truthfully.” Mark blew out some smoke. “See, that’s the problem, I’m not sure how to tell this next part.”

“Just tell the truth.”

“I’m not sure you’ll believe me.”

“How so?”

“Dude, how open minded are you?”

“The name is Jared. Stop calling me ‘dude’.”

“Fair enough, Jared. How open minded are you?”

“I’m a cop. A certain level of open mindedness is required.”

“No, I’m talkin’ real open minded. Not like you believe in ghosts kind of open mindedness, but rather you believe ghosts can physically fuck you up kind of open mindedness.”

“Are you saying that ghosts are to blame and you’re just an innocent victim?”

“No, Jared, what I’m about to tell you is far more…unbelievable. I just wanna make sure you’re ready to hear it.”

“Oh I am,” Jared said as he lit up his own cigarette “Now, please, continue.”

* * * * * * *

So Tim’s standing on a table, right? No ones saying shit, just looking at him and wondering what he’s gonna do next. “You guys don’t know how important to me tonight this is that you come. I am relieved because so people now host for me. We are grateful.”

“…the hell is he saying?” Stan asked as everyone stared in awe at Tim and his hair, which was moving violently on its own. No one said anything as Tim raised his arms in the air and spoke again. “We need hosts!” he shouted “And grateful we to are have you take them all now in!”

Then Tim’s head exploded.

Yeah, that’s right. Tim’s head exploded. Pretty fucked up how casually I can say that now, huh? Tim’s head goes, blood and skull fragments splatter everywhere and all hell breaks loose. People started ducking and running, crying that someone must’ve had a gun. That wasn’t the case though, and people quickly forgot the gun theory when they noticed Tim’s hair had remained in tact on the ground after it had exploded off his head and fell over with the rest of the body.

The people closest to it had gathered around and someone picked the hair up to examine it. “How is it doing that?” someone asked just as the hair fell apart and the individual strands took a life of their own and started crawling all over the place and rushing to every person they could find.

The people who weren’t already fleeing towards the locked doors were now in a dead frenzy to escape but they didn’t get far. Tim’s hair began forcing themselves into peoples mouths, up their noses and in through their ears. People were screaming, crying and choking. The three of us guys just stood there by the bathroom though, not sure where we could possibly run.

“Chick in the bathroom really needs to hurry!” Jack screamed as he pounded feverishly on the door. The door swung open and the girl appeared in the doorway screaming “What!?” before she looked out at all the people and hair. “Oh my God…” she started as Jack grabbed her shoulders and forced her back into the bathroom. “Lets go Stan!” I screamed as he ran off towards the crowd. “Must be hero,” he said “Must save hot chick!”

Unfortunately, Stan never made it to save the hot chick he had met earlier. She had been overtaken by Tim’s hair as it forced its way into her and she became trampled by other choking, dying people. “Sherry!” Stan yelled! But he receive no response until he heard her call out “My name's Rebecca!”

“Rebecca?” Stan asked just before some hair had crawled up and he started choking with the rest of the party. Then he collapsed onto the floor with the other victims as hair crawled over the bodies in search of more people to attack. “Stan, no!” I yelled as two more people shouldered into me and all of us crammed into the bathroom. Jack was waiting and slammed the door shut as we entered. “Bath towels!” he yelled as he grabbed one and shoved it under the door.

“Oh shit!” a girl cried when she saw strands of hair start to weave under the door through the towels. “Get back!” I yelled as I pulled out my lighter and burnt the hair before any got in. “There’s more!” Jack yelled as he tried in vain to stuff towels under so the hair couldn’t get in. There were too many and I was starting to panic when I felt a hand on my shoulder and saw someone handing me a can of hairspray.

“Get back again!” I yelled as I sprayed into my lighter and lit up the towels, burning all the cursed hair to hell. Jack was behind me with one of those detachable shower heads from the (you guessed it) shower, putting out the small fires I was starting.

“Gaaaahhh!” I heard a man behind me yell as he stuck a finger in his ear and feverishly tried to pry something out. “One got in!” a girl yelled and without hesitation, I sprayed hairspray into the guys ear and told Jack to be ready.

“What are you doing?” Jack asked as I held my lighter to the guy’s ear and the sprayed again, igniting the side of the mans head. I doubt it was a very pleasant experience for him to have his ear canal set on fire, but in retrospect, it did momentarily save his life. The other two women in the bathroom screamed as Jack said for them to hold him down, which they did and Jack put out the ear fire. The guy stopped screaming and laid quiet on the floor while I went back to flame throwing the door and Jack went back to making sure anything that caught fire didn’t get out of hand.

Ten minutes had passed and the hair attacks were getting less and less frequent until nothing else tried to get through. “Is it safe?” one girl asked. Nobody answered until we heard talking and music outside. The party seemed to have started up once again. We exchanged confused looks until I decided to open the door. I pushed aside the smoldering, damp towel ashes and threw open the door, makeshift flame thrower ready to go. Even so, I wasn’t ready for the scene outside.

No one was dead.

People were socializing and chatting like nothing had happened. Tim’s body was no where to be found. Hell Stan was over in a corner trying to pick up that Rebecca chick. “This is…” Jack said from behind but never finished that thought.

“911, hospital…something,” the man on the ground muttered, hands clamped over his ear. “Can’t get reception in this house,” Jack said.

“We should leave,” I said “Get out, call the cops and get out of here.” Jack and one of the girls both nodded. “What if they try to stop us?” The other girl asked. “Stay here then,” Jack said “Stay with the ear dude. Lock the door and we’ll be back with help.”

So Jack, the girl and I left and made for the front door. “Please be unlocked,” I whispered to myself. “Uh…sorry for not opening the door sooner,” the girl said to Jack. Jack ignored her and grabbed my shoulder. “What about Stan?” he asked me.

I looked over to the man I thought I saw die earlier. He was still trying to pick up Rebecca, another person I watched die. “Meet me outside,” I said to Jack “I’ll get Stan.” Jack grabbed the girl and walked with her to the door while I made my way over to Stan. I am confused as hell at this point. Twenty million questions going through my head, and I ain’t got an answer for any of them.

“Stan,” I said when I reached him “Time to go.” Stan looked over at me and smiled. “Go without me dude, I’ll catch up later.”

…And then I set Stan on fire.

It was really more of a reflex, but when I saw Stan’s hair and how it was moving on its own like Tim’s, my body gave my brain no choice in the matter and fired the flamethrower at Stan. He went up quicker than a human should as I heard millions of tiny voices scream along with his. “Oh my God!” Rebecca cried out just as I set her on fire as well, mainly because her hair was behaving the same way. I realized everyone who was killed by Tim’s parasitic hair were now like hosts for them. Funny how I didn’t notice the whole hair thing sooner. Then again, it’s not the first thing I expected either. I came out ready to flame-throw the ground for Tim hair…not check everyone’s scalp for their own self aware hair.

Jack realized the situation too as he and the girl now sprinted for the door, which was still locked. Meanwhile, I was burning myself a path through the frightened people who were burning up as fast as hair does, which is incredibly fast. The shag carpeting went up pretty fast too, so now Tim’s house had become a bonfire, aided by the liquor strewed about. Jack had found a broken window and had climbed out with the girl, myself following behind them. Everyone still in that house at this point were as good as gone, which unfortunately meant the people we left in the bathroom were dead too. I should have attempted to save them, but the fire became an inferno pretty quick and I barely got out on my own accord.

* * * * * * *

“Not long after that, you guys arrived and picked my ass up for arson,” Mark said “End of story.”

“You honestly expect me to believe that?” Jared asked.

“If you want to. But it’s the truth.”

“What’s to say you didn’t imagine this in a drunk delusion?”

“I didn’t drink as much as you think. Besides, you’d sober up quick too when you watch a guys head explode.”

“And I bet since all the evidence is burned away, there’s no way we can disprove you. So I guess we’ll blame everything on hair and not charge you, eh?” Mark was silent. “So the guy you were with, Jack, what’s his last name? And who was the girl? We need to bring them in for questioning.”

Mark remained silent.

“I mean, they can only back your story up, right?”

“Or end up as accessories to these charges…”

Jared got up and made for the door. “Take my advice kid. Next time let your attorney do the talking.”

“Say what you will, but if I were you, I’d be both relieve and terrified.”

“Oh?” Jared asked, turning back to face Mark “What’s there to be relieved about? You murdered at least thirty people. I mean, you realize this conversation has been taped. You were read your rights beforehand and you openly admitted to starting the fire. So why should I be so relieved?”

Mark only smiled. “Because I held off the end of the world, or an invasion, or something bad like that.” Jared waved Mark off. The kid was clearly delusional, or drunk. Jared opened the door and stepped out, but one question lingered in his mind. “If you stopped whatever that was, then why did you say I should be terrified?”

“I did stop them, for now, but that window we escaped from was broken before we got to it,” Mark said as he finished off his last cigarette “I’m positive I didn’t get them all, some had escaped.” He held out his clenched fist and slowly opened it to reveal the string he was playing with earlier, which Jared though now looked more like a strand of hair, as long as his palm, and it was twitching on its own.