Identity: Chapter 1 by Julia Young

Identity: Chapter 1
The hands were grasping an electric buzzer, maneuvering it swiftly across a disappearing forest of hair. Cutting each little tree at the top of its roots, only little stumps were left in their follicles. These hands went through this motion so swift and skillfully that they almost resembled machinery, a robot even.  Whoever owned these hands-- these tools-- would be proud, for looking upon the landscape they just mowed was like looking at art: a perfectly leveled layer of hair covered the head below the hands, no strands daring to deviate from the height of the others surrounding it. It was entrancing looking at all those little stumps, all arranged neatly on a pale round head. But the hands weren't done. A thick pearly substance began to drown the stubs of hair, followed by a thin white cloth. Suddenly there was a loud rip followed by what sounded like a distant and muffled scream. The hair was gone. All the hand's expertise gone in one quick motion. Strip by strip the cloth was pulled, bringing along with it the wax and the small hairs-- this time removing the roots from their follicles to reveal tiny bright red beads of blood in their place. Who's hands were these? My view shifted from their palms to their wrists, slowly tracing them all the way up to a chest... but who's chest? My frame of vision could not trace this chest up to a neck, let alone a face. I hit a dead end, and was forced to move elsewhere, forced to go across the room. Taking my attention away from the hands, I now saw a white wall, on it, nothing but a mirror; a mirror revealing what could be a barber and his client, only they were both stripped bare of all their hair. I chuckled to myself thinking about what an awful barber this person was, imagining the look on their customer's face when they looked in the mirror. But this customer's eyes were glazed over and expressionless, while the strange excuse for a barber quietly chuckled to herself.

I was inspired to write this short piece based on the picture above. We did a lot of this type of descriptive writing in Brennan's class last year, and I really enjoyed it. This picture, which is actually part of a whole collection of similarly eerie photos, was very intriguing to me; with the minimalist background, the futuristic outfits, the lack of color, and the different positioning and expressions of each of the subjects, this picture portrayed a very creepy, cold, and almost "utopian gone distopian" vibe. The one aspect of the picture that specifically related to my writing was the girl sitting under the plastic and the positioning of the other girl's hands on her head. This reminded me of someone getting their haircut. However, factoring in all of the other aspects of the picture, this was not your normal/ typical hair appointment.
Because this picture included so many other intriguing details, this post is only the first chapter of a bigger story. For my next post, the story will be continued based off of the same picture, but I may add some of the other pictures from the collection.