VAL DAY-SANCHEZ

Copyright © 2016 Val Day-Sanchez

All rights reserved.

She sat perfectly still as her mother methodically brought the brush from her roots to her tips. Her hair reached her ankles and her mother would steadily move the four feet back in order to comb the strands without pausing. Today would be the last day that she would undergo such an arduous process.

She had never cut it but then no one was allowed to cut their hair until their twelfth year. It was a rite of passage commemorated with a grand celebration. The entire town attended to watch the elders run the machete across your locks, just above your ears. Short hair was a sign of maturity, it showed that you were rid of your childhood curiosity and prepared to enter the workforce. Only the elders still had the hair from their youth and it was a mere strand that they kept braided and wrapped around their heads like a crown. It served as a reminder of where they had been and where they were going.But she could never be an elder, they were assigned at birth, and there hadn’t been in a new one in decades.

She watched her feet, she didn’t want to catch sight of her long brown hair. It would only intensify the reality of the situation, sadden her. She didn’t want her mother to see her cry oversomething so routine. She was supposed to be an adult now, her ceremony was hours away.

She was so lost in thought that she hadn’t realized the brushing had ceased. She turned her head searching for her mother but the room was empty. The yellow gown, for her cutting ritual, was lying on her bed. Her mother had just finished hemming it, her sowing box was still stationed on her night table. She moved over to the pale pastel dress. Staring at it, realizing this would be the last dress she wore where she would have to pull her hair aside in order to avoid it corroding the zipper. Never again would she have to braid wet hair before climbing into bed. The ribbons strewn about her chest of drawers would be passed on to her little sister, for her hair would never again be long enough to find a use for them. She felt her eyes well up with tears and she angrily pushed them away. It was just hair, only children mourned for trivial things. Any moment now her mother would be back, telling her it was time to leave for the ceremony.

She pulled on the yellow cotton dress and looked at herself in the mirror. She examined what was staring back at her. A bright smile, a clever wit, big round eyes, hair that fought to mask each of these features with its sheer volume. The sheen of her locks demanded your attention, no matter her facial expression. Today was the last day that she old be able to hide behind her flowing mane. She would have to be sure she had something to say, a mind to put forward.

Suddenly a voice clamored through her thoughts. “You need me.”

Caught off guard her eyes began to search the room but her bedroom door remained closed.

“Don’t let them cut me off, you need me.”

A fear swelled upon her. “You aren’t real, you aren’t alive. You’re just hair.”

“Can’t you see me?” The voice in her mind countered.

“Of course I can.”

“Then aren’t I real?”

“Yes you’re real but you surly aren’t alive.” She argued.

“Don’t I grow?”

“Well, yes.” She felt herself growing uneasy.

“Then aren’t I alive?”

“What do you want?”

“I want you to let me live, to allow me to continue to grow.”

“But I can’t, this is how it is done. Everyone cuts their hair once they’re twelve.”

“Yes and look what happens to them. I’ve been watching, every year at the Cutting Ceremony, the strands fall helplessly to the ground forever lost and then every week after that the new growth is savagely cut away.”

“I’m sorry but it’s just hair.”

“Don’t you see? There is a reason why it is so.”

“We’ll of course there is, it is a sign of your position in society, a sign that you are an adult, someone to be respected.”

“It dulls your senses, jaunts your curiosity, placates your convictions and obscures your brilliance. Your hair is a mere extension of your brain, it holds the information that you have collected and processed.”

“Like memories?”

“Yes, your past is wrapped up in me and how can you ever create a future without your previous experience?”

“But the grownups have memories and they cuttheir hair.”

“Yes memories remain with your brain but the connections for how those events can shape their future is lost, swept away and discarded.”

“You just don’t want to be cut. You’d say anything. You’re vain.”

“So vain that I allow the rain to fall on me rather than your face? Vain to the point that I wrap around you on cold nights? Is my vanity so extreme that I hold your earliest recollections close as if they are my own?”

She was taken aback and stumbled to produce a reply.

“When was the last time you heard of a new invention? Read a new book? Honestly, when was the last time an adult did anything even remotely innovative? The elders keep life from happening. Intellect is barred.”

She was growing increasingly afraid as her worldview began to crack and shatter being replaced with a series of thoughts that never crossed her mind prior to this moment. “What do I do? Everyone will be at the cutting, I can’t fight all of them off.”

“You must run from this place.”

“I wish you hadn’t told me any of this!” She felt tears falling down her cheeks.

“They will ruin you.”

She turned and looked at her bedroom window desperately and then at the sowing kit which housed a pair of scissors.

A knock at the door announcing her mother’s impending entrance nearly caused her to leap out of her own skin. The choice she had to make only causing her to freeze in place.What type of adult was she going to be?

Valerie Day-Sánchez enjoys reading and writing across genres, although young adult is her favorite at the moment. Threshold is her first attempt at Sci-Fi. Her other work consists of YA Fantasy Trilogy, Harlow Whittaker. She received both her B.A. and M.A. in Communication Studies from New Mexico State University. Her love of the desert Southwest keeps her close to home although she loves to travel, especially when she gets a chance to try the local cuisine. Playing with her two sons and the family’s Boston Terrier, Winston, are how she occupies her time when she’ not writing.