The spirits leave me gifts, from time to time.
Last time, it was a Rubik's cube without the little colored stickers on it. The time before that, it was a severed, half-decomposed human toe. The fact that this gift was a lock of hair was relatively tame.
I am never sure what they want me to do with these gifts, but it always works out well. Sometimes they guide me. Most of the time, they don't.
I picked up the lock of hair. It was a deep brown, like the color of mud and silt; it was straight and it reeked of passionfruit-scented conditioner. It was held together by a green ribbon and hot glue.
That was an odd coincidence, to me. I used a passionfruit-scented conditioner. I held my hair back with green ribbons. My hair was brown, like mud, like filth.
The spirits would never come for me, though. I'm useful to them. They love me.
*****
It woke me in the night, the hair. I considered it, sitting on my workbench in the other room, glowing faintly in the moonlight from the touch of yet another spirit.
Where did it come from? What was it for? Who would be haunting me this time? I didn't know.
I didn't know.
*****
I woke up sweating and tangled in my bedsheets. I rolled over, kicked my legs, and--
There, on the dresser. Next to my phone and my coiled-up earbuds. Was that what I thought it was?
Another lock of hair was there. It was the same as before, only far more damp and far less intriguing. No, it was more terrifying by far than last night's gift.
Confused, I reached out to pick it up. At the same time, I felt the side of my head.
There was nothing there.
The small chunk of hair I usually kept out of my pigtails-- to frame my face, you see, to keep the shape of it-- was gone. In its place was a bald spot the size of a quarter. I felt the rest of my head out of pure paranoia. There were at least three other bald spots. I didn't remember tying my hair with ribbons and cutting it off. It had to be the ghosts. They were coming for me, now, just like they had come for that little girl last year (the one the Rubik's cube came from) and the old child molester a few months ago. The spirits tortured them, took them to the ends of the earth and back. I helped them. Now it was my turn.
And I knew they wouldn't be merciful.
