Bobby’s barber is Michael, big-bellied and loud. He hums along with the clippers as he works, hair-cutting harmonizing. Michael has trimmed Bobby’s hair three or four times, but Bobby plans on finding a quieter barber once this is over. Bobby came to the shop tonight primarily because he couldn’t sleep; his head feels like the eight-hundred-degree surface of Mercury. An astronaut would last five seconds on that godforsaken planet before the spacesuit bubbled like hot soup, exposing delicate human skin that melted off and puddled on the bleached, scalding terrain. Desperate for any relief from this feeling, Bobby has come to Michael, the only barber working at 9:30 p.m. Maybe a buzz will cool things down.
“Ain’t gotta sweat so much, Bobby,” Michael says.
“Hot in here, man.”
Seated nearby in a folding chair is Quiet Lou, a wire hanger of a man. He folds a dollar bill repeatedly.
“You think it’s hot in here, Quiet Lou?”
Quiet Lou just shrugs.
Michael shrugs back. “You’re gonna dehydrate, Bobby.”
“Naw.”
“I can get you some water. I got a couple bottles in my fridge.”
“Nope.”
Michael turns to Quiet Lou. “Bobby don’t need nothing but to walk outta here looking pretty.”
Quiet Lou grunts and folds his bill another time.
“Heard you got a new job, Bobby,” Michael says.
“Up at the quarry. Busting my ass. Tired as shit.”
Bobby is expecting a response, but it doesn’t come. Instead, Michael kills the clippers and calls out, “God damn.”
“What?”
“Something’s been growing underneath your hair, dude. Real nasty.”
“What?”
In the reflection of the barbershop mirror, Bobby sees Michael pick up a smaller, handheld mirror. He spins Bobby around and holds the mirror up so Bobby can see the back of his head. Exposed in the newly shorn section is a spiraling fungus—ridged, angry, and puss-filled. Michael steps back.
Bobby’s eyes widen. He reaches to feel it, but Michael grabs his hand.
“Don’t touch it, dummy. Gonna spread that shit around.”
“What is it?”
Keeping his distance, Michael squints at the fungus.
“Ringworm maybe, but bigger,” Michael says. “Looks like it’s been growing a long-ass time under your hair. Alien shit.”
Quiet Lou stands and peers at the fungus, his face filling with disgust.
Sweat pours down Bobby’s neck. This is what he has most feared. Feeling crappy, the nagging sensation in his gut screaming that something is seriously wrong—maybe even Tommy Tumor or the Big C. But this is entirely unexpected.
“Get it off me!” Bobby shouts.
“Can’t,” Michael snaps. Repulsed, he rubs his hands on his shirt. “You’re infected with something, bro. You need a doctor.”
“I couldn’t see shit in the mirror. I wanna look. Take a picture.”
Michael grabs his cell phone, aims it nervously at the back of Bobby’s head, and snaps a photo. He leans a bit closer for a better shot.
Pop—snap—a bubbly growth on Bobby’s head ruptures and spews projectile-style onto Michael’s face. Michael reaches out, looking absurdly like a toddler reaching for his mother, jerks back, drops his phone, and starts to sizzle. The discharge eats like industrial-grade acid. Michael’s cheeks melt and the jellied red-pink flesh rolls back and clogs his throat, stifling his screams. He writhes, tumbles, drops his phone. His clippers fall the floor, activating. Their electric whine accompanies Michael’s gagging. His eyes bulge with pain and disbelief. Hair tumbles, gets swept away, grows back, flows wildly—covering everything. Michael’s dying world is clogged with hair.
Quiet Lou steps forward to help Michael, but there is no way to assist his bloody mash of a face. Bobby kicks out of the chair and rips the smock violently off his shoulders. Locks of his cut hair fly every which way. Some strands land delicately in Michael’s pooled blood.
Bobby stares at Michael’s body and then at Quiet Lou. “This ain’t my fault, man,” Bobby calls out. “Can’t blame me for this.”
Quiet Lou steps back. The clippers buzz, filling in for Quiet Lou’s silence. Bobby kicks the clippers into the wall, cutting off their noisy rattle.
“It’s that shit I’ve been breathing in the quarry!” Bobby cries out. “That’s what did this. Can’t blame me.”
A foreman had, in fact, made Bobby shovel out a special section of the quarry a few weeks earlier. The dust there was yellow, alien, and unlike anything else around it. Bobby had worn a respirator and a jumpsuit, but the dust seemed to seep through it. It adhered to his skin, burned his eyes, made him paranoid. He had cursed himself a fool for following the foreman’s orders. Ever since, he had felt the dust inside him, moving and shifting.
“I don’t know what’s going on,” Bobby tells Quiet Lou.
Quiet Lou can keep silent no longer. He lets loose, his voice reverberating through the shop.
“Shit! Shit! Shit! Shit!”
Bobby steps toward him, desperate to quiet down the man who never says anything.
“Get back motherfucker! Stay all the way back!”
Quiet Lou pulls a cell phone from his pocket. “I’m calling for help.”
Bobby waves his hands. “Stop for a second. Stop. Stop. They’re gonna blame me. They’re gonna lock me up. Put me in a cage. Send me to a lab.”
Bobby imagines himself cut to pieces on an examining table. That’s what the government does in these situations, doesn’t it? The movies were full of that kind of thing. But the government wouldn’t dissect his boss. It wouldn’t cut up the corporate leadership. Only Bobby would face the consequences.
Quiet Lou starts to dial 911, but his fingers tremble. Bobby reaches. Quiet Lou evades and grabs scissors from Michael’s barber stand, whooshing them through the air.
“Back off!” Quiet Lou shouts.
“Please, man,” Bobby pleads. “Give me a chance. Don’t call yet.”
Quiet Lou dials a couple of numbers but hesitates. “Michael needs an ambulance,” he says finally.
Tears form in Bobby’s eyes. His voice is soft. “That won’t help.”
Quiet Lou punches the final digit to complete the emergency call. “Sorry,” he says to Michael. He seems to mean it.
Suddenly bloody Michael twitches. He grasps Quiet Lou’s ankle and pulls him down. Michael struggles to his knees and he collapses onto Quiet Lou.
Quiet Lou screams underneath Michael’s crushing weight. He fights to get out, but Michael is too heavy. Quiet Lou waves the scissors in the air and plunges them into Michael’s back. Michael shifts and dies. Parts of his bloody face ooze and drop onto Quiet Lou’s nose and cheeks, instantly burning them with an acidic hiss. Lou screams, vomits, melts, and falls permanently silent.
A voice sounds from the cell phone. A dispatcher asks to explain the emergency. “Can you respond?” her voice calls out.
Bobby grabs the phone and ends the call. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. This ain’t my fault. I didn’t know.”
He looks sadly at Michael and Quiet Lou. He picks up Michael’s phone, scrolls quickly, and finds the photo of his fungus. He deletes it, drops the phone, and crushes it under his foot. He turns to the door but stops and searches. On a coat rack he finds an old hat—patriotic stars and stripes. He slips it over his exposed fungus and runs out the door, leaving the two bodies behind.
From the back room whirls Michael’s girlfriend, Mia. Loud music blares from her headphones. She has not heard any of the struggles. She holds two tall glasses filled with orange juice.
“Got you a drink, honey,” she calls out. She sways to the beat and calls out again: “Michael?”
She spots the two bodies on the floor and drops the glasses, shattering them. The clippers suddenly whir back to life, buzzing and rattling against the hard tiles. They leap up and sink into the back of Michael’s dead neck, letting loose an oozing stream of blood before falling back to the floor and clattering toward her. Standing in a puddle of orange juice and broken glass, Mia screams and screams and screams.