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Bad Hair Day

by Melanie Ryther

            She threw the brush down hard enough to make it bounce back out of the sink. It clattered to a rest beside the tube of whitening toothpaste. “That’s it,” she said between gritted teeth. “I’ve had it with those twits. Where the hell did they get their training? Hair Styling School for the Demented and Deranged?”

            Serena glanced at the clock. Great, she thought. She had been fiddling with her hair for over an hour and not only did she still look like a male lion, but now she was going to be late for her date with Gerald. She hated rush jobs. It wasn’t that she couldn’t pull them off, but they offended her sense of style. Patient and planned performances that always left them begging for more—that’s what she prided herself on.
Serena focused once more on her image in the mirror. If only some other so-called professionals would take a little more pride in their work she wouldn’t be in this mess. Letting out a sigh, she wondered what the effect would be if she tied her hair back.

            Grabbing a handful of the bristly, fizzled mane, she twisted it behind her head and tried to imagine how Gerald would see her. Hmm. Probably scare the last remaining heartbeat or two right out of him.

            “Oh criminy, the hell with it,” she muttered, tossing her tangled strands to the side.  Confident she could pull a double some night to meet her quota, she decided to miss the date altogether. She would spend the time instead reporting the gum-snapping imbeciles to the boss. Serena smiled wickedly at herself in the mirror. Yeah, that was the ticket. Take it to The Man. Let the wheels of justice roll, and if some heads should happen to roll along with them, that was just fine with her.

            “You have a complaint?” he asked in that velvety stern voice that never failed to make Serena tremble with both anxiety and excitement.

            “Yes, sir. The hair stylists. Look at what they’ve done! I was supposed to be at the hospital with Gerald right now, but I couldn’t appear to him looking like I just put my finger in an electrical outlet. The poor guy would have a heart attack three hours before schedule. And this isn’t the first time they’ve done this to me. Remember the Mark Lewiston date a few months back?”

“Not your best work.”

“Exactly! Because I had to spend the first twenty minutes assuring him I wasn’t a psycho who had taken a scissors to my own head. Even at the end I don’t think he was entirely sure. I have a theory, Sir, that in addition to being unprofessional and uneducated idiots, they’re jealous of me and are out to sabotage my efforts.”        

“And why would they be jealous?”

“Simple. Because I get to work on the outside, and they’re stuck in this hellhole. No offense.”

            “I see. You realize, don’t you, that you’re leaving his fate up in the air? That bloody Father Murphy will be making the rounds right before they put Gerald under.” His eyes blazed to an even darker shade of red, and Serena flinched as she felt the heat casting out of them like spitting embers. “Last week he had three—three!—deathbed conversions.” Wisps of smoke billowed from his nostrils. “Like those should even count!”

He paused for several seconds, looking Serena over carefully as if seeing her for the first time, and then slowly spoke: “Nonetheless, your appearance does present a problem.”

            “What if I waited until the anesthesia kicked in?” she offered.

            “No. His free will must be working properly.” A smile slowly spread across his face. “But wait. I seem to remember something from his file that might just help us out with this little complication.” He held out a leathery palm and a thick manila folder materialized on it. With long, talon-like fingers, he riffled through the pages. “Uh huh, uh huh. Hmm. Yes, here we go. It seems our Gerald has a wide variety of tastes. I think we could expect similar satisfactory results by sending Simon in your place.”

            Serena arched an eyebrow but knew better than to risk a sassy remark.

            “Now, as for the stylists, I believe there is a serious need for hair help at the house of the Gorgon sisters. Ha! Medusa will love that house call! I owe her one anyway for leaving one of her, uh, hairs in my bed.”

            He shook his head at the private recollection, then suddenly retrained his glowing orbs on Serena. “That leaves only the question of what to do about you.”

            It could be worse, she thought, as she dodged another fireball from the latest solar flare. At least Mercury was warm. She’d have hated being banished, say, to Pluto where the surface temperature hovered around a brisk 380 degrees below zero.

            You need a new boss, her mother had warned her once. Gee, you think? She sighed. Well, Ma, what can I say? Boy, did she misread him wrong this time.

            “But I didn’t do anything wrong! I’m the one reporting the wrongdoers, remember?” she had argued.

            “And this is important to me how?”

            “Well, it’s, it’s . . . not fair!” She hated sounding pouty, but under these circumstances she couldn’t help it.

            He laughed. She remembered thinking he would never stop.

            “Fair. Oh yes, that’s me. The King of Fair. My dear Serena, I have many titles, but that certainly isn’t one of them. More to the point, you did do something wrong. You didn’t make your quota for the week. And doing a double shift to recompense invariably results in messy work.

            “Besides, you certainly aren’t going to be of much use to me looking as you do. A successful succubus needs to be comely and alluring. Frankly, my dear, you look like the love child of Don King and a disco-era Barbra Streisand.”

“Oh, and so the solution is to put me completely out of circulation,” Serena said defiantly. “You know I’m your best.”

            “Yes, your record is admirable. But we’re getting more and more of them coming down here all by their own efforts. I could actually use a little breathing room to catch up on record-keeping. Likewise, my dear, you need time for your new hair to grow in.”

            “What?” Serena shot her hand up to her head, where she felt a surface as smooth as the proverbial baby’s butt.

            “And where you’re going, you’ll get lots of Vitamin D to help restore it to its previous healthy luster and full body.”

            As she felt herself being transported through a tunnel of time and space, she could still hear his roaring laughter. You need to find a new line of work, her mother had told her once, a long, long time ago. It’s a little late for that now, Ma.

            Hell’s bells, she should have just gotten a wig.