In the soot-stained city of Razorhollow, where the fog clung like a shroud to the cobblestones, Silas the Barber didn’t just cut hair—he trimmed fates.
His shop was a narrow slit of a place, its walls lined with jars of preserved curls—each labeled in spidery ink. "A gambler’s luck, 1872." "A widow’s grief, 1889." "A liar’s tongue, unmarked." The townsfolk whispered that if Silas nicked you just so with his silver shears, he could snip away a bad memory, a guilty conscience, even a broken heart.
"Hair remembers," he’d say, stroking the jars. "And I collect its confessions."
Then Mira Thorn walked in—again—this time with a braid of jet-black hair that stirred in its velvet wrap like a sleeping serpent.
"It’s growing back," she said, her voice hollow. "Where it shouldn’t."
Silas knew that braid.
He’d burned it twenty years ago.
Yet here it was, longer than before, the ends split into tiny, fingerlike tendrils. When he held it to the light, the strands twitched toward his wrists, hungry.
That night, Silas broke his own rule.
He listened to the jars.
The whispers weren’t memories.
They were instructions.
By dawn, every mirror in Razorhollow had fogged over—not with steam, but with breath, as though something had pressed its face against the other side. The townsfolk found their pillows littered with hair that wasn’t theirs, their combs clogged with strands that moved on their own.
And Silas?
They found him in his barber’s chair, his head shaved to the scalp, his mouth stitched shut with his own thread.
The jars were empty.
The shears dripped.
And in the largest mirror, a shadow stood—just out of focus—holding something long and braided and still growing.
Now, when the fog rolls in, children dare each other to whisper their names to their reflections.
The lucky ones hear nothing.
The others?
They hear snip.
Final Note:
Mira Thorn was never a customer. She’s the first lock you ever lost—the one that remembers the shape of your scalp. Touch your neck. Do you feel... stubble?
