Shower Thoughts

Second day back and we’re already breaking the wordcount rules. But I missed Loren Eaton’s Advent Ghosts event this year, so here is my belated unrelated-to-Christmas Christmas Eve ghost story, a tradition I think is just plain much more fun than most of the others this time of year:

Lauren was taking a shower at Tina's the morning after when she saw the stray hairs draped artfully along the tile wall. Did Tina have another girlfriend on the side? She hadn't said anything in the couple of weeks they'd been dating. The hairs were long and dark; Tina had a blond buzz cut. Lauren dropped the hair into the trash with a shudder and decided to play it cool.

"When did you get your hair cut?" she asked Tina as she dressed for breakfast.

Tina gave her a funny look. "I've kept it short since I was twelve," she said.

Friday night, Lauren found more. This time, someone had dragged the loops into rough shapes:

H  e  l       o

          l

Did this other woman know about Lauren? Was this some sort of passive-aggressive joke? If it was Tina doing it, why wasn't she weirded out by finding alien hair in the shower that two close-cropped blonde women used? Lauren didn't want to touch them. The water from the shower made them droop and slip down the wall as she washed herself. When she looked again, the letters had shifted:

h   

     el

        p

An inexplicable fear seemed to follow the water from Lauren's tingling scalp down to her toes. She closed her eyes to rinse her face. When she opened them, she saw a new set of hair, impossibly set back at her eye level:

d  ow nh er   e

There was a scraping sound from the drain. Something cold touched Lauren's heel, ice against the steaming hot runoff. It felt like fingers.