illustration and avatar by Eddie Force

Gnaw wood

Leaning against my bathroom sink in the morning, I noticed for the first time how the light shone right through my hair, creating a wispy halo. I put my hand to my head, did it feel thinner? No, it felt just like it did yesterday. I pulled my hair back and looked at my hairline. It didn’t look like it was going anywhere. It still sat firmly four inches above my eyebrows. Maybe it used to be three inches? I went into my bedroom and grabbed my phone. I held it above my scalp, lined it up with my crown, and snapped a photo. 

Lowering the phone down to my eyes I was met with a horrifying image: a whorl, the size of an egg yolk, consisting of thin, weakened hairs. I zoomed in and assessed the damage more thoroughly. At the center of the spiral laid barren my arid, ruined scalp. Zooming in further, it resembled the face of a desert planet, my pores small sinkholes. Maybe there was a worm tunneling underneath, draining the life force from my healthy hairs, nibbling at their roots until they withered away, growing fatter and fatter by stealing my vitality. 

There were treatments for this, I knew. It wasn’t too late. There was Rogaine, Finasteride, castor oil, Biotin supplements, pumpkin seed oil, rosemary, laser therapy, hair transplants, micro needling, shampoos, scalp massaging regiments, dietary changes, etc. There have been hundreds of years of research put into this stuff. If Justin Theroux could beat this then so could I. Until then, I’d wear a hat. I’d convert to Judaism and wear a Kippah at all times, and once the treatments worked I’d just un-convert. If anyone made me take it off I’d call the ACLU. 

I spent the day wandering around my apartment, pawing at my scalp, pulling out hairs and analyzing the ends of them, looking for waxy bulbs or signs of miniaturization. Some came out plump and healthy, and others came out sickly and broken. The internet was giving me conflicting information and proving mostly unhelpful. I went to bed haunted with thoughts of life as a bald man. 

In my nightmare, my penis became smaller and smaller until it bore into my pelvis, and curled up inside like a sleeping animal. 

I awoke to a humming ambiance, like an airplane cabin. It sounded as if it was coming from above me. I placed a hand atop my head and grabbed at a void. I extended my hand further into the hole, wiggling my fingers, feeling nothing but cold space. How large had this spot gotten overnight? I jumped out of bed and into the bathroom. The glowing halo of wispy hairs from yesterday was gone now and instead, there was a faint black aura radiating from my crown. Light no longer shone through; in fact, it seemed as if the light was being sucked in. 

It was time I called a trichologist.

In the doctor’s office it was hard to hear her over the constant, dreadful woosh now resonating from the void in my skull, although it appeared she was stumped. I jokingly asked what stage of the Norwood scale I was on. Stage 8340201, I thought I heard her say. As she prodded the area with a tongue depressor, I could hear a muffled “oops” and saw her reach deeper into my head– her arm almost completely gone up to the shoulder. “OW!” She yanked her arm out suddenly. “Something bit me.” The tip of her finger had a small ring of crimson blood around it. Above the incessant hum, I could hear a shrill screeching come from somewhere deep inside me. The worm! 

It was time I called the army. 

I’m seated in a large, empty space somewhere classified. The airplane-cabin-humming is now deafening. There are military men all watching me and muttering things to themselves that I can’t hear. They had spent the day analyzing the hole, writing top-secret things in black notebooks. So far it seemed they had not gauged how deep I went. At one point they tied a chicken leg to a fishing line and tossed it into my head. When they reeled it back in, all that was left was a greasy white bone, speckled with tiny teeth marks. It was humiliating. 

There are schematics and equations written all over the whiteboard behind them but I can only focus on the stick figure drawn in the bottom corner. The one with Xs instead of eyes. One of them approaches me, timidly, holding a large stack of forms and a pen. He wants me to sign off on something. I yell over the hum that I don’t sign anything without knowing what it is and he scribbles something on a blank note card: We are going to drop a small nuclear device into your head. Will that help me grow my hair back? I yell again. He pauses, then writes: Maybe. So I sign the form.