He still found her hairs in his books, trailing their way through the pages like so many snakes. He's open one and a long, thin dark hair would be lying there, curled up, on the page. It always made him feel as though he should read those passages marked by the hair, as if it might be something she had done on purpose - a last jab at him through literature. This last time, he sat there, still, just staring at the thing. It was looking at him, that he was sure of, and it annoyed him immensely that it had such audacity. This, then, was how badly off he was - hairs in his books annoyed him almost beyond reason. He sat for at least and hour, having his staring contest with the damn thing. He'd sit there until it gave in. In the end, the only reason he looked away was because he couldn't tell where the eyes were. It was all so dark and smooth, it was impossible to see a face in the thing. He felt it was cheating. But he left it there, for later. Maybe he could come back and catch it looking at him again, and maybe this time there would be a face, or at least something more than just smoothness.

It was his cleaning lady who picked it up first thing in the morning. He should have left her a note, and years later he would still have that same thought. As if the hair had had something important to say, and now he'd never know. He looked for it, just in case, but it wasn't anywhere in the room. And he looked everywhere. When he was done he sat in the middle of the place, surrounded by all of the things hat he had been able to move. The desk and the bed and the table and the kitchen sink were all that was left standing. But at least, he thought, at least the hair wasn't there. It was, in a way, a relief to not have it there. But still, years later he would still think to himself, "I should have left her a note. Things might be better now if I had."

A few days later, he found another one. It, like it's predecessor, was in a book. But this one he didn't see until it grabbed onto his sleeve and hung there for some moments. Now, the thought, they're touching me. He was struck by his sense of amazing calm. That last one would have driven him mad had it touched him, but this one didn't have the same dirty nasty streak that other one had had. He almost like this one. It wasn't bad at all and he sat there for sometime with it dangling off of him. It was like sitting with an old friend. Or having a good drink with a stranger in a bar. All those cliches applied at this moment to this particular hair. He decided this one he wouldn't lose. He'd write a note to the cleaning lady - Don't take this. - and everything would be fine and dandy.

He wrote the note, with the hair looking complacently on, in a pile of blankets, sitting in the very middle of it. Then the note, and the hair, went on his night stand. That oughta do, he thought, and went out.

For the next week or so, he and the hair spent a majority of their time together. They didn't really do anything in particular, nothing great or intellectually stimulating. The hair would just sit on his sleeve, or sometimes in his lap when he was feeling really affectionate, and they'd enjoy each other.

But, as fate would have it, the hair left one day. He was pretty sure it wasn't his cleaning lady this time. It left in the middle of the night, and as far as he was aware, his cleaning lady hadn't yet started coming in then. It was his fault, he realized a few days later, but at the time he blamed it all on the hair. It had never actually been content with him, it had never actually been happy; "it was just faking it's affection all along," ran through his mind all day. Of course by the time he figured out what had really happened it was much too late to do anything about it at all.

What had really happened was that he had left the window open. The poor hair must have drifted out on the first draft that happened along. This pissed him off so much that he neglected sleep and eat for a whole week. He drank though. Following the quaint advice to drink to drown his sorrows. When he recalled that the hair had used to say that to him, he went on another binge, which would only end when he found the third, and - yes - last hair. He would never find another of her hairs in his books after that third one for the simple reason that he never opened another of his books as long as he lived. He sold them all after the third hair left him, too.

It took him another month or so after the second hair - he never gave them names, which might strike you as odd, but it's really not - to open another book. And for a long time, he didn't find anything unusual in his books. He was content. He didn't need her hairs, he didn't want them either. He also had no use for them, so it all worked out fine. He was beginning, or so he thought, a new phase in his life. Books held no threat for him now and he would frequently spend hours looking at them. Even his cleaning lady noticed a difference in his manner. He was cheerful, happy, even breezy at times. It was all good.

But then came along that fateful day when everything went wrong again. It started off as a nice enough day. The birds were singing. The cats were mewing. The leaves wererustling. There was a general feeling of contentment in the air. It was fall.

He sat down with a book - an old favorite - Moby Dick, shall we say. He opened it to page one. He looked down at the first words....they were obscured, very slightly, by something long, curled, dark, sleek - no! He shivered violently. It was another hair, and this one wasn't very nice at all. It didn't say anything in all the 5 days they were together. It just sat on the mantle and stared at him. Even when he asked it if would like to come over and sit on the dresser or on the bed with him while he read, or if it wanted a nice place to sleep, or even something to eat - it said nothing. It just sat there and stared at him, leering and sneering at everything he did and said.

It took him 5 days to get rid of it. He left windows open. He asked it if it wanted to take a long walk in the park with him at midnight. He introduced it to the cat that lived next-door. He even neglected to leave a note for his cleaning lady, but it wouldn't leave. He took a turn for the worst again. He stopped sleeping. One night he even sat up all night in a bus station, sleeping fitfully and catching a bad cold, because he couldn't go back there and face that hair. The other nights he just sat up and stared back at the hair. Every once in a while he'd try to strike up a conversation with it. He say nice things about the weather, his day, ask after the hair's day. Nothing worked. It just stared back at him.

The morning that his cleaning lady found him curled up in the gutter outside his apartment building was the morning the hair left.

It had taken a lot out of him to have those three hairs around him. He went to see a psychologist - at his cleaning lady's recommendation - who told him that it might be a good idea to sell all his books, to avoid more hairs coming to live with him. He stopped going to the psychologist - he said it was because the poor man reminded him of the second hair - but he did take his advice. He got rid of all his books at the used book store two towns over - he didn't want those books to be anywhere near him for a long time.

As far as I know now, he's doing fine. He doesn't read much anymore, and he doesn't like talking too much about anything, but all those hairs are gone. And as far as I know, he hasn't spent anymore nights in bus stations since then, or gutters for that matter. His cleaning lady says he's doing well - he lives a neat and tidy life and doesn't drink as much these days - and I'm inclined to believe her.

Thanks Meg! If you would like to donate something, just drop me a line at gleep9@hotmail.com. It's spring cleaning around here, so head on back to either the Literature or Main page.