I guess I can just start when I first noticed the hair. It was morning about a month ago, maybe a little less. I had the dream again, the one I have most nights. In the dream, I’m swinging in the park where we had our sort of first date, and Holly is swinging next to me. I’m the age I am now, but she’s the age she was then, well, not the age she was during the first date, but the age she was when she left, twenty-seven.
She looks beautiful in the dream, just like she did in life. She’s wearing a little flowy dress that doesn’t quite come down to her knees, the blue one with pink and white roses on it. When she swings forward the dress runs up her tanned thighs, and dream me looks every time. She’s barefoot, and she’s laughing, at least at first, like I just said something really funny, but the dream always starts there, with her laughing, and then the laughter stops and her smile fades and we both stop swinging and just sit there, kind of swaying back and forth a little bit. She digs her toes into the sand and waits for me to speak first.
“I miss you,” I say ever night almost, in the dream. She smiled at me, a sad smile, the only kind of smile I got at the end.
“I miss you too,” she says. I wonder if this is what she would really say if she was still here, but the dream Holly says it and I savor the words off of her lips like someone savors good scotch.
“I don’t know why you did what you did,” I say and she shrugs her shoulders. She looks down at her buried toes, her shoulder-length blonde hair falling to obscure her face. I lean toward her and tuck her hair behind her ear so I can see her. I open my mouth to speak in the dream but she turns on me.
“Can’t we just sit here and enjoy one another? Do we have to talk about it? I did it, okay? I did it and maybe I regret it if I can. I don’t know, this isn’t really me, this is the me that lives inside your head.” Those words crush me, and that’s usually when I wake up, drenched in a cold sweat. Some dreams vanish when you wake, in bits and pieces, chugging like milk from an overturned jug. But this dream never does, it didn’t the first time I had it, and it doesn’t now.
I lay in bed, feeling my heart race, and I relive the dream in my head.
That’s what I did that morning, the morning I found my heart string. Eventually, I got up and went to the bathroom, giving up on more sleep. I stopped at the sink and looked into the mirror and that’s when I saw it: a great oily black hair jutting from my chest, thick and curled. I looked down, putting my chin to my chest as I touched the hair.
It seemed to thrum almost, not with energy, but bumping to the beat of my heart. It was as if I could check my pulse by setting the pad of my forefinger on that hair. It was long, maybe half an inch. I could curl it once around my finger. I did so and pulled quickly trying to pluck it, but it I couldn’t get a good grip on it.
I tried to pluck it for a few minutes and then gave up. Instead, I opened my medicine cabinet, pulled out my razor, and ran it dry right across the hair.
I winced in pain as it was sliced away from my body. It must have been ingrown, that’s what I thought at the time. I know better now. The hair fell into my sink and I picked it up and held it before my eyes. The end was red, a tiny drop of blood. Very ingrown, apparently.
I showered and dressed and went to work early, pulling into the parking lot just as the Sun rose in the sky, turning it the brilliant orange of dawn. I sat in my car and waited an hour for my boss to show up and followed him in since he had the keys. I worked at a small trucking company, handling payroll. I had always been good at math, something Holly hated about me because she was so shit at it. I mean like, she would freeze up if you asked her a simple multiplication problem, so sure she would get it wrong. So she clammed up to keep herself from any sense of embarrassment. She had always struggled with that, being embarrassed. If she said something wrong or did something wrong, she felt like it was the end of the world. Her eyes would well with tears and she’d excuse herself from whatever the situation was and she would go and stew for the rest of the night.
My work is nothing special, easy for me, but not fulfilling like it once was. I hardly spoke to anyone that day, like I usually do. They know I was married, and they know I’m not now, but they don’t know that Holly hung herself.
That was almost ten years ago when she left. She went to work like any other morning, but she must have just gone around the corner and waited for me to leave. because she went back to our home, and I can picture so clearly, what she must have done, just from how she left things. I can see her in her skirt and blouse, I can see her stepping in through the front door and kicking her heels off. One stood upright and one was on its side.
She went into the kitchen and got a glass of water, drinking half of it, leaving a little smudge of lipstick on the rim, and setting it next to the sink. Then she went to the basement door, pulling off her thigh-high stockings as she did so. Those were for me, I’m crazy about legs, and lose it for thigh-high stockings. The ones she wore the day she hung herself were nude, with frilly elastic tops.
As she moved down the stairs she undressed completely, her skirt, blouse, and panties discarded on the wooden steps. In the basement, she took an extension cord from a hook on the wall, threw it over a metal bar that ran along the ceiling, and looped the end into a noose. Up onto an ottoman that went with a chair we no longer had, and bye bye Holly.
On the way home from work I thought about stopping at Champ’s, the local bar, to see Leah, a cute twenty-something whom I’ve gotten to know pretty well. There’s chemistry there, and I think she would accept if I asked her out, but I’m just not sure I’m ready. I mean, it’s only been ten years, right?
I just came home that day, the day I found the heart string, that day almost a month ago. I sat on the couch and absently scratched at my chest through my shirt. It was itchy there, right where the long hair had been. I slid my hand in through the neck of my shirt and my fingers touched a long, oily, almost stiff hair that thrummed along with the beat of my heart.
I pulled my hand out and stood, taking my shirt off as I went to the bathroom. Looking in the mirror, I saw that the hair had grown back, just as long as it had been. I couldn’t believe it. I even checked the bathroom garbage and there was the first hair, right on top. I took my razor and shaved it off again, wincing in pain as I did so. I kept checking for the rest of the evening, but the hair didn’t grow back. That night I slept better. I didn’t dream of Holly, I dreamt of Leah. Sexy little Leah, in bed with me. It was a good dream, I guess. When I woke my hand went to my chest.
There was the hair.
And that’s how the month has gone. I shave it or clip it off with scissors, and it’s back before you know it. Each time I get rid of it, it hurts, and it bleeds, just a little. I don’t know what to do. I saw once on the internet a hair that had sort of gone back into the skin and grew that way, spiraling around itself under the skin, longer and longer, and then poking back out. Maybe that’s what’s happened here. I think tonight when I get home from work I’m going to try to pull the hair out. Maybe I can get it all, instead of just clipping a bit of it. There’s clearly more in there. I think I might stop by Champ’s and ask Leah out too. What’s the harm?
I guess I can come back and let you all know what happens, one way or the other. I’ll have this damned hair out of me at least, and maybe I’ll need advice on just what the hell I’m going to wear on a date. Do I sign off or anything? Like with my name? That seems like it could be right.
Okay, back with more later. Wish me luck.
Kevin.