Over twelve lunar cycles, Scarlett’s hair got cyclically caught in the shower drain, a red knot I plucked out and added to the limbed body of my design. Am I God or Frankenstein?
On a blood moon night, Scarlett declared on our shared crimson couch “I’m moving to an ocean shore room. Every morning, I’ll wash my long cherry hair in water that hasn’t just passed through pipes.” I grinned since I already had a hair-based replacement. Right from the start, my new roommate needed a heart to kickstart her hair-earning — excuse me — money-earning potential.
With Scarlett bathing in cerulean waves, I scampered my independent July legs down to Rory’s Butcher Shop at the corner of Harrison and Webster. Once I greeted the receding shoreline of Rory’s wispy hair, I purchased a pig’s heart.
Rory wrapped four chambers in bloody butcher paper. Through a solar whiplash, I sprinted home. On the kitchen countertop, my sweaty hands shoved the swine organ into Scarlett II, my hairy creation. I anointed myself a Frankensteinian God as I scampered with Scarlett II to the Harrison Hair Store that pays Washingtons and Jacksons and Franklins for real human hair.
In an August dusk, she bought a microwave with the paired value of her legs. “I enjoy steaming hot burritos.” In September, she handed over her arms to pay her hefty share of our water bill. “It’s take time to clean all my knots in the shower,” she declared over her spaghettini and meatballs dinner. When I told her the plumber’s price tag to clean our clogged drain, Scarlett II sold her torso with shame.
During the stinging days of October and November, her head rolled in pain over black snow between swallowing microwaved burritos at our apartment (they plopped undigested onto the floor) and Frank’s dive bar on Webster. Frank accepts bodiless customers. Her head plopped over a bucket she claimed as her own. Whenever she ordered a draft, Frank funneled her favorite pale ale or stout into her mouth. At last call, he dumped her beer mix and tears into the alleyway gutter.
Before November’s terminus, Scarlett II forfeited her head for her split of the December rent.
Ten heartbeats after I posted an ad for a new roommate, the Harrison Hair Store rang me up. “We found a pig’s heart in the torso you sold us. Can you pick it up?” When I brought the heart over to Rory’s, he grilled the red to black. We ate the chambers with a bottle of Merlot.
“Jasper, there’s a hair in my heart dinner.” “Well Rory, you should sell it to the Harrison Hair Store for a quarter.” “I’ll do it. I’m saving up to buy new shampoo.” “You know my roommate just moved out. Are you looking for a place?” “You don’t mind I’m a late-middle-aged balding man?” “No, not at all. My last roommate was way too hairy.”
Originally published in sPARKLE & bLINK 112 (November 2021); YouTube