I’ve always suffered from dandruff. When I was younger I really struggled with it, I hadn’t yet learned how to combat it and was teased mercilessly by the kids in my school. Now that I’m older I’ve learned the best way to keep it in check is to keep my hair really short and wash it daily with special shampoo. I rarely get flare ups now, and when I do it’s always triggered by me being lax on one of those two things, like when I forgot to pack shampoo while camping and spent the weekend making my own personal snow flurries on my shoulders. Or the time I tried to grow my hair out to impress a girl.
Usually it’s really easy to follow my two simple rules. Unfortunately, things sometimes crop up that are completely out of my control. Two days ago I came down with a horrible case of food poisoning. I spent the entire time leaning over the toilet, sitting on the toilet, or curled up in front of the toilet. Hygiene was the furthest thing from my mind while all my insides wanted to be on my outside. It was absolutely miserable, but last night my gut finally settled enough for me to crawl my way into my bed and get some sleep.
Seeing myself in the bathroom mirror this morning was a bit of a shock, eyes bloodshot, face pale and caked in days old sweat, hair slick with oil and flecked with unmistakable white flakes that I instantly knew was a particularly bad dandruff flare up. I looked awful.
I was inspecting my reflection when a tiny movement caught my eye. Shifting my gaze to the collar of my dirty shirt I saw a sprinkling of dandruff had collected on my shoulder. Sighing, a bit disgusted, I lifted my hand to brush it off. My hand stopped as I saw movement again. I leaned in closer to the mirror and saw one of the flakes on my shoulder give a small shudder. I twisted my head around and pulled the shoulder of my shirt to one side, trying to get a better look. Holding my breath, I watched as several of the flakes made tiny, jerking movements.
Puzzled, I picked a flake off my shoulder and held it in front of me, gazing intently at it. It looked exactly as you’d expect, just a bit of dead skin. But there was something strange about it. I brought it closer to my nose, squinting a bit as I struggled to make out further details. There was an odd texture to this flake. It wasn’t smooth and brittle like dandruff normally is. Gripped between my fingers it seemed to shiver, the surface changing and distorting. I brought it even closer, practically cross eyed at this point.
Tiny legs writhed along one side of the flake.
I jerked my head back in disgust, dropping the thing into the sink. It floated down through the air and settled in the basin.
I stared at it, dumbstruck. Surely I had imagined it, right? I’ve heard of lice, but this was dandruff. Just dandruff. Dandruff didn’t move. It wasn’t alive.
My gaze returned to the smattering of flakes on my shoulder and I cautiously picked off another and brought it up to my face for inspection.
There was no mistaking it this time. The surface of the flake moved in waves as tiny legs wriggled frantically in the air, looking for purchase.
I gasped in horror, eyes flying to my reflection. I lunged closer to the mirror and started digging desperately through my hair looking for dandruff patches. I quickly found one and froze, watching it carefully for signs of movement. This patch was particularly bad and I could see the red, irritated skin surrounding the edges where the scaly, dead flake met my scalp.
I felt something prickle along my scalp. Sweat?
No movement.
Carefully, fingers quivering, I reached up and worked a fingernail under the edge of the large, scaly patch. I had to have been mistaken, maybe the movement I saw was from mites on my clothes? It couldn’t be the dandruff itself, it just couldn’t.
Eyes fixed on the piece, I slowly pulled it from my scalp. It came off as one large chunk, flat and irregular, roughly the size of the nail on my pinky finger. I eyed it wearily, unwilling to turn it over and check the underside, fearing what might be hiding underneath. Steeling myself and taking a deep breath, I looked.
All the air left my lungs at once as I screamed. The bottom of the large piece was covered with those legs. Hundreds of tiny, wriggling legs. There were so many. Writhing, thrashing, flailing, squirming, *searching*.
An itching, crawling sensation swept across my scalp. I twisted away from the mirror and ripped open the shower curtain behind me, wrenching the water on as hot as it’d go. Not even bothering to undress I scrambled into the shower, scattering soap and bottles onto the floor. I fumbled with them, finally finding my dandruff shampoo and emptied the entire contents onto my head. I scrubbed, viciously clawing and scratching at the scales and flakes on my head.
I could feel them. Biting, itching, crawling.
The suds swirling around my feet started to turn a pale pink, then slowly morphed into a bright red. Still I scrubbed. My scalp burned. Soap ran down my face and my vision blurred. Blinded by soap and steam I scrubbed and scoured, crying in terror and pain.
At some point my roommate started pounding on the bathroom door, no doubt hearing my yelling. When I didn’t answer he shouldered the door open and came bursting in.
There he found me. Standing fully clothed in the shower, scratching frantically at my scalp, shampoo gone and head crowned with thick, crimson bubbles.
I’m in the hospital now, head bandaged. They’re saying dehydration from my food poisoning had caused me to hallucinate. But I know what happened. The legs, the crawling. I think I got them all. I can no longer feel them creeping across my scalp, feeding and burrowing.
My roommate is here in my hospital room keeping me company. I’ve been cleared mentally and allowed to access my phone. It was really nice of him to stay, but as I sit here, typing all this out, I’ve noticed his hand keeps absently trailing up to his head to scratch.