Jane did her best to focus on her work. She was doing everything she could to push the memory of that horrible night into the back of her mind. She just focused on the wet head of hair sitting in front of her.
The customer is one of your typicals who frequent salons, a forty year old trophy wife who needs her annual wash and polish so she can continue to still look good while sitting on her husbands shelves next to his diploma from USC and his high school wrestling trophies. Her visit to the salon is a standard step in the polishing procedure, and it is necessary if you still want to be one of the ways he flaunts his wealth. You could tell she was forty, but all the same she still looked good. But no matter how good she looked, there was no hiding from the fact she was forty. She knew this, but she didn’t want to think about it. All she wanted to do was flip through her ELLE and act like she was getting her hair cut for her and not her husband.
As Jane ran the comb through the trophies wet hair, she looked around her work place. All she saw was vanity. Not in any mean, or egomaniacal sense, this is just what they know. But everyone in the room has only one concern and one concern only, how do I look in the mirror. All the people in the chairs were here to become beautiful or to up keep their beauty, while the people working here, were already beautiful. If you make people beautiful for a living, then you’d better make yourself beautiful to. Otherwise it would just be bad for business. That’s one of the big burdens of this occupation. You have to keep yourself beautiful, so that others can know you can make them beautiful to.
All of this beauty, and all of this vanity made Jane furious and sick to her stomach. She knew damn well, and everyone else knew for that matter, that she was the hottest piece of ass in the place. Her chest, hair, face, and ass all come together in perfect shape and proportion, naturally. And to top it off her hair and make up was the best in the place. Jane knew damn well she was the most beautiful and the best stylist in the god damned salon. And she was the most beautiful, and she knew that’s why it happened to her, he could have chosen any of the other girls in the entire city, what happened to her could have happened to any of these girls, but it happened to her…
She shook her head, she realized she was thinking about it again so she returned to her work. She grabbed the scissors and began her trimming, following each trim with a brush through the hair. “Focus on the work, Focus on work and nothing else,” she thought. She just repeated that over and over again in her mind. So she just went on working, cutting the hair, applying the bleach, she has four more clients today she needs to focus on work. So she did. She went through all the motions, working, always using her hands, keeping busy, but it just kept coming back. She replayed the entire thing every time she closed her eyes. With every blink, she saw the entire horror from start to finish.
Three weeks ago, she woke up when she heard the thud, by the time she had opened her eyes, he just sat right on top of her, and covered her mouth with his hand. He had a ski mask and a bowie knife. It was so cliché Jane was sickened by that sight alone. He held the knife in his other palm like he was ready to thrust the blade into her heart, like a stake in a vampires chest.
“You will do as I say,” that was all he said. He said almost nothing, his voice was so distinct, so raspy, impossible to disguise that he didn’t want to give his victim anything to identify him with.
Jane began to pray this was just a night mare, that this wasn’t happening. But it was, she knew it was real when he whipped it out. She knew because the pain that thing caused her was more horrible than the worst form of torture. The physical act didn’t hurt, the piece of shit’s cock was the smallest she had ever seen. Even the arm he kept twisted behind her back to keep her from fighting back didn’t hurt to much, it was just the shame of it. The fact she was now powerless to this bastard, this man who is not a man was now in control of this girl. She was his victim and no one else’s, His victim. She had lost her control, so now he had his power. This is the goal of the rapist, power. And this one succeeded, he now had control over her, he has his power, and she has none. Because she was the victim.
When it was all over, he said just one other thing, “Tell anyone, and I’ll kill you,” and he was gone. And he held so much power over her, she obeyed. She didn’t leap to the phone as soon as he was gone. She didn’t run into the street screaming for help. She didn’t do anything She just got into the fetal position, and cried.
It had been three weeks since the day she lost her power. And here she was, at the salon, like nothing happened. She was startled by almost anything. Bianca came up from behind and asked to borrow her tray, and she flinched like she was about to get punched.
Then she heard someone talk to Beth at the front desk behind her. It couldn’t be, she thought, but she recognized the voice. “I have an appointment,” was all he said to Beth, “with someone named Jane.” She turned around, and there was her rapist. She knew it, that voice, she only heard it twice, but she knew this was the man who held the power over her. This five foot five, muscle bound, pale little prick. This was the thin dicked bastard who stole the control of her life from her. This sack of shit had ruined Jane’s life, and now here he was waltzing right into her territory, right where she was supposed to feel secure, just to gloat about making her his victim. He thought he was being clever, but Jane knew from the second she heard that raspy voice, that she was in the presence of her tormentor, and she decided what to do.
She finally finished polishing the trophy, then sat the bastard in the chair, and tied the bib on him. “What to you want?” she asked.
“Short sides, long on top.” He said flipping through a GQ, doing his best to cover his smug evil smile. “Smile all you want you bastard piece of shit,” she thought. “Just you fucking wait.”
Jane turned him to the mirror, while she picked up the scissors, and taking her aim in the mirror, with one swift swing of the arm, she hit her target. She stabbed the entire pair of scissors into the bastards cheek and into the red depths of his throat splitting his cheek open so wide you could see his teeth. She then ripped the scissors out of the prick’s cheek, and let him fall to the ground screaming in pain.
Everyone in the salon was scared stiff. Out of now where Jane had just stabbed a customer in the face. And now he was lying on the ground screaming in pain, while blood pumped out of the hole in his cheek, as if someone had struck red oil in the side of his face. Jane just stood there and smiled as he squirmed on the ground like the worm he was, vomiting and squirting blood, he had lost his control. Jane had the power now. She now held the power of taking a life, of deciding if this monster should live or die. And when he finally stopped squirming, and died, the transfer of power was complete. It didn’t matter that she was getting taken away by the police, she would tell them the truth, and eventually she’d get off, no court would convict a girl who looked like her. She had her power back. She was in control of her life again.
And he was dead.
James J Jackson 