Late Sunday afternoon is when everybody visited. Late Sunday afternoon, at Condlin’s Barbershop, from four to five (before sweeping), strands of grays, platinums, and ebonies make a carpet on the floor. Nobody gets their hair cut then, so Mr. Condlin, owner and proprietor, sits at his little wooden desk and reads the paper.
But at four-ten-precisely, just as Mr. Condlin discovers that a new feud has broken out in some African country or another (were the Boers still fighting the Brits?) , a tall, honey-colored man in a tattered safari jacket enters and takes a seat. Mr. Condlin surveys him carefully. He is unusual in appearance, not just because of his clothes, but also for his features: on his one cheek, he wears a scar of indeterminate origin, on the other, a burn. He is carrying, in a leather holster, a revolver with fluted chambers. On his back, the man has strapped a monolithic lever-action rifle with a gaping bore. On his right hip, he carries a survival knife; its serrated teeth show through the canvas sheath like the muzzled jaw of some great beast.
After passing a leery and expectant look, the foreigner takes Mr. Condlin’s newspaper and begins to read.
“Botswana?” he exclaimed. Then he grumbles and returns to his paper.
Mr. Condlin, a barber for some twenty-seven years now since his retirement from the Army, and some before then, knows his job. He throws an apron over the man; the stranger continues to read.
Condlin, still wary, decides very carefully what to say.
“Did you kill anything?”
“Yes.”
“The deer…” Condlin suggests, putting on his best straight face, “They are very thick around here.”
“Deer?” the hunter asks. The hunter seems puzzled- he searches around for words, then grunts and turns back to the mirror.
Condlin takes a comb from an acrylic worktop and pulls up and away from the scalp; it grips a heavy lock of hair in its teeth. His scissors object noisily as he tries to fight his way through the jungle of the man’s hair.
“How close?” Condlin asks.
“As close as your fingers.”
Condlin decides not to pursue it further. He begins to cut.
Every few seconds, periodically, a snip penetrates the silence of the shop. They are very loud, almost rude, almost sacrilegious. Hair falls to the floor slowly, wafting like maple seeds, spinning, colliding.
“It got me in the gut,” he says, abruptly.
“What did?” Condlin asks, confused.
“The elephant; it gored me. I limped away. The Hindu chap I had hired, he patched me up. He seemed rather shaken about it – I don’t know why. He’s the only reason I’m alive.”
Condlin grimaces.
He continues to cut, snipping minutely until the hunter’s hair is a straight and spiny veneer on his scalp. When Condlin has finished, he holds up a mirror to his customer's face so the hunter can admire and appraise himself.
“Would you like the moustache as well?” the barber asks.
“I suppose so. Go in rough, come out smooth. You know the drill.”
Condlin nods, and takes from the shelf a silver can of shaving cream and an ivory-handled straight razor, filed to sparkling sharpness.
The hunter leans back sorely and closes his eyes, breathing deeply and slowly. Condlin squeezes a dab of foam into his hands and begims to rub them together until they were filled with an airy froth. He began to spread the concoction, an aloe derivative, on the customer’s face. Best they not be stinging when they leave.
The hunter’s head bounces back and forth like a marionette as Condlin roughly applies the shaving cream to his sideburns, chin, lip, and brow. When the man is hidden snugly behind a sheen of white foam, Condlin wipes down the razor and began to slowly drag it against the foam. The man’s beard and moustache are thick: so thick, in fact, that Condlin at one point has to stop and sharpen the blade.
The hunter winces every time another swath of dark, bristly hair is cut away.
“Shaving…” he remarks, “If you can get gored by a bloody elephant and still wince every time you shave, it must truly be a curse from the Almighty.”
“Truly,” Condlin agrees. Condlin has long since stopped feeling pain.
At last the man’s face is clean: a shaven skull. Through empty eye sockets and a toothless mouth, he thanks Condlin.
The man exits through the glass door, emblazoned with Condlin's signature scrawl. A guide meets him, and ushers him away, into the Afterlife.
Another customer comes in. Another soul.
Author notes
Something that came to me. It never actually started as an insight into, well, the Afterlife. It was just a British big-game hunter walking into a barbershop. It was only then that I thought: "What if that hunter had died?" and then "What if every soul had to get a haircut on the way into the Afterlife?".
The story came naturally from there.
A contest entry
- Have some fun. by Sammeh Cat X.
100 points, ended August 17, 2007, 31 entries
• next story in this contest, remove from contest - Simple Originality by The Imagined.
550 points, ended August 16, 2007, 21 entries
• next story in this contest, remove from contest
Please tell me what you think
Comments
1 - 10 of 10
-
THis is really nifty=] I really enjoyed=D
There was a spelling mistake in there you might want to fix. Verysmall but none the less.
This is A wonderful story=D
beginning: 4, language: 5, plot: 5, ending: 4, dialog: 4, characters: 5.
-
Superb!
A brilliantly related story, with an amazing level of depth - I like the way you set the timing around the time of the Boer War, which set you up for the idea of a big-game hunter. The twist at the end is amazing - the soul's tidy up for Heaven or Hell - very, very clever!
beginning: 4, language: 5, plot: 5, ending: 5, dialog: 5, characters: 5.
-
"..just as Mr. Condlin discovers that a new feud has broken out in some African country or another (were the Boers still fighting the Brits?)..." I'm not sure of the relevance here to the story. I know that you're trying to show what Condlin's doing when the man walks in, but it seems very irrelevant and adds nothing to the story.
"...canvas sheath like some the muzzled jaw of some great beast." Typo
"After passing a leery and expectant look, the foreigner (it is a foreigner, Mr. Condlin’s prejudices have determined) takes Mr. Condlin’s newspaper and begins to read." Would probably be better as:
"After passing a leery and expectant look, the foreigner, as indicated by Mr. Condlin's prejudices, takes Mr. Condlin’s newspaper and begins to read."
That's just my opinion. It flows a bit nicer than the way you have it written, which throws in a bit of an unnecessary pause to the story.
"He has to make him fit in; the poor fellow doesn’t seem to know yet." Does Mr. Condlin have to make the hunter fit in? I'm a bit confused by this part.
“Shaving…” he remarks, “If you can get gored by a bloody elephant and still wince every time you shave, it must truly be a curse from the Almighty.” In this sentence it is not made clear whether Condlin or the hunter is talking. The reader has to wait until the next paragraph to figure it out.
Ha ha. That was a pretty good twist at the end. But why did you say they were in paradise, and in your author's notes say he was on his way to hell?
Anyway, nice story. Very interesting
-
Damn entertaining!
I really enjoyed these characters... the Hunter was great, and the barber was really cute.
However, I thought it ended too abruptly.
"Then he turns, and walks out into the Afterlife." is waaaaay to blunt. Shoot, have him met outside the door by some demon, beast or something. Then, he's led down a staircase... another customer comes in like "My hunting buddy just got killed, gored by an elephant, I got hit too...but thank god I'm OK."
That's how I'd like it, anyway.
Like the "clean shaven kull" bit. Creepy, sort of.
The dialogue is awesome... very realistic, smooth, and interesting. A lot of people DON'T effing know how to do that. -
wonderful.
very entertaining, well written and great twist. I thoroughly enjoyed this story.
beginning: 5, language: 5, plot: 5, ending: 5, dialog: 5, characters: 5.
-
I like the level of description on this. It's a good, original story, and I like the end. Thank you for entering.
-
WOAAAAH!
That is one kick ass trick ending. Absolutely loved it. I was so confused at parts at first, but then when I got to the end, BA BAM! It all made sense! So I went back and read it again. That was great. Loved the setting, characters, the whole she-bang. A little tense-ing problems, but those could just be typos. Banging story, def. contest worthy. Why don't the kids under me appreciate it as much? Loooosahs. Maybe it's just different when you're used to reading the author's school reports all the time.
-
nice story
-
While I didn't mind the supernatural element I think the story would have stood without it all together (well, with an ending to the non- supernatural story anyway)
Why is it the gateway to hell? -
Interesting all the way through. That great twist at the end when I found out the hunter was dead was the best. It made the story more then just another ordinary story it made it Great, Original, and Creative.
Adding your comment:
1 - 10 of 10
