“Noooo!” I wailed, “Not a haircut!”  I was perched on the edge of my bed, clutching my brown locks. “Please, Mom, please, not a haircut! I don’t want my hair a millimeter shorter, and you know they never cut away under five inches.” She motioned for me to follow her, and after a wistful glance at my room, I followed.

We drove to a hair cuttery called “Great Clips.” I walked inside and scanned over the pictures of smiling models with long, flowing hair that lined the walls. There were some with short hair, and I wondered whether they thought that this hair cuttery was “great clips.” I turned away from the blank faces and turned to a plush chair covered in fabric that was covered in rubbery plastic. The chair was as artificial as the smiles on the model’s faces. As I sat down, it emitted a sound like the moan of a dying walrus. As my mother walked up to the counter, a large woman from behind the counter turned her face away from her phone to give a bored glance at us. She was wearing huge hoop earrings that dangled past her chin and brushed her thick shoulders.  Her ten other ear piercings  were smaller but just as noticeable. One opened up each ear lobe with a ring, making her ears look like hairy pieces of swiss cheese. She had black plastic eyelashes on and her nose ring made her look like a alien bull. Her intense makeup made her almost seem metallic. Her hair was cut short to her ears and dyed violent shades of pink, green, and blue. Her blue lipstick was so thick that it looked as if her lips were molded from wax. In contrast, she had on a plain, dirty black apron with the words “Great Clips” embroidered on the front.

She clutched my hand with her heavily manicured fingernails and pulled me to a chair. She dressed me in a garment like a criminal and told me to sit down in the plastic seat. She pushed me up higher in the chair and turned me to the mirror, chatting monotonously about the weather to an imaginary friend. I expected her to take a mugshot of me then but instead she took out a shiny silver blade. I had been sentenced to death. I closed my eyes as she hacked at my limbs.The hair cutter continued her meaningless babble. As I looked at the falling brown locks that had been attached to my head, I sank deeper into despair. The hair cutter wouldn’t stop talking to me, and I wouldn’t respond. I tugged at the arms of my chair like they were handcuffs. When it was finally time to leave the guillotine, I leapt out of the chair, threw off the prison garments, and ran out the door.
The next day, my mother realized with horror that the hair cutter had cut my hair into jagged clumps. There was only one option. We had to return to the prison. As I felt more shining brown locks of hair fall from the battlefield, I felt anger burn inside of me like a cannon. I could not stand another cut. I was even more thrilled that day to escape from my dungeon, no longer a prisoner of war.

The following morning, Mom made the same horrifying discovery as the previous day. My hair was jagged. This time, she didn’t take me to Great Clips. Instead, she drove me to a hair cuttery with an obvious but more modest name. It was called Hair Cuttery. I stepped inside the hair cuttery and took in a similar atmosphere as Great Clips. The men had mohawks and the women had cut their hair in similar fashions. They all dyed their hair and wore excessive and grotesque jewelry including cheek piercings except one. She was an elderly woman named Nancy. She motioned for me to sit in a chair and strapped me into prison garments while happily talking to another hair cutter about his drainage system. She snipped away merrily as she talked, and I watched again as pieces of my heart fell away from me. It seemed like hours before she pronounced my hair satisfactory. I looked in the mirror and shuddered at the length of my hair. It hung limp down to my chin. As I gazed at the fragments that remained of my long hair, I almost thought that I could see the “ghost of cuttery past.” I hoped it would haunt Great Clips forever.