Woke up, hair all over my lap and a black plastic apron noose-tight around my neck. It took a moment to focus on the mirror and see that my head was shaved. Spent years growing the hair and now it was chopped down like a tree. I see the Greek letters painted across the apron.
Duct-taped to the barber’s chair, the metallic tape reflected speckles of light which bounced from ceiling to mirror like a disco ball. I was naked, could feel the apron rubbing against my skin. The room stank; not just of debauchery, something sicker. I’d soiled myself. There were whispers. Something crawled inside my ass like a spider.
I looked around. The room was small and empty and fire ants crawled across cracks in orange tiles. I felt like garbage wrapped in plastic, but–but I’d always wanted to be accepted by my brothers and was almost part of their family. Red numbers blinked on the digital clock over the door.
I vomited, a drunken volcano erupting in the jungle of my madness. Tiny voices in my head; frat boys screaming. Barber combs swam in a jar of blue. The jar reminded me of the formaldehyde that the Delta Phi Gamma brothers penetrated us with last Saturday evening. There was a dirty rubber plunger in the corner, a deck of playing cards scattered across the floor. The room seemed more dungeon than barber shop.
Laughter. I could hear her in the other room. “We only want you to bring your girl so we can tickle her with the tickle feather,” Brother Dominic had said. “I promise we will take good care of her.” Sara was eager to participate. A little too eager if you ask me.
Initially the twelve brothers had brought us into that other room: Sara, me, some prostitute off the street, and this cretin Sean Warner–my competition for the last remaining spot in the fraternity. Sean swore the woman was his girl, but I could smell a whore a mile away. She looked like she wanted to play, but I had a feeling she was paid to be friendly. “The places her mouth has been,” I said to my shadow.
I could hear only one voice next door: Sara’s. “Stop it…stop it,” she screamed.
The blue combs were shaking in their jar and the plastic apron was riding up my rear. My mind had never been clearer. Veins throbbing, vision swimming; beyond the bloodshot blue of eyes. The screaming fell into awkward silence.
The door swung inwards. In the mirror, I saw Brother Dominic enter, his head down and hooded in a monk’s brown cloak. He swung a censer back and forth and incense filled the room.
About the author:
Matthew Dexter lives and writes in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico. He will also probably die in Mexico. This lunatic gringo has been known to drink beer and eat tacos. He belongs in an insane asylum.
