Tag: Issue 4

Zahirra Dayal

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Sundays smelled like burnt hair because that was when you had your hair tamed. First, your aunt took your wet hair and marshalled it with crocodile-teeth hair grips. Then, she released each small section from the mouth of the crocodile and aimed the Philips blow dryer like a gun at close range.

The stretching and pulling squinted your eyes. You heard the sizzling of your singed curls. The burnt smell floated around the room and into your nose, making your nostrils flare. You sat frozen to the stool for the hour it took to wage battle with Mother Nature. After your hair was blow dried, you studied the flattened version of yourself in the oval mirror of her oak dressing table. You felt the distance widen between you and the girl in the mirror. 

“That’s better,” she said, smoothing down your brown hair with the coconut oil spread like butter on her palms.  

You could feel the edge of your freedom 

“I’m not finished with you yet!” she snapped, sensing you were about to fidget. 

You didn’t move, supressing the raging restlessness that flowed through you. She divided your straightened hair into two, rolled it into four balls which she fixed with triangular pins that dug into your scalp. Last, she put a brown stocking over your head and told you not to take it off to seal in the straightness. She was terrified that rain, humidity or any form of invisible moisture would undo all of her work in an instant; so precarious is the nature of blow-dried hair.  

“Be careful with it or it will turn frizzy and wild again,” she warned before you broke free and ran outside to play.

Now that you own your hair and your Sundays, you wash it and leave it to dry naturally. It grows bigger as the moisture evaporates. A tangled mass of untameable brown curls rises to frame your face. The woman in the oval mirror smiles back.

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Zahirra Dayal is a writer and language teacher living in London. She has also lived in Zimbabwe, South Africa and The United Arab Emirates and draws from these diverse experiences. She has stories in Fahmidan Journal, Ayaskala, Small Leaf Press, Opia, Odd Mag and Melbourne Culture Corner. She tweets (@ZahirraD).

Martha Lane

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This is a story about making popcorn

I had a silicone contraption for the microwave. But it, or the machine, bust. A kilo of kernels mocks me for surrendering to whiny cries at the shop. He wanted pop-pop, he wanted pop-pop, he wanted, he wanted.

He wants.

I want to stop making it in a pan, bopping belligerent fingers away.

‘Hot,’ I snap.

The golden pebbles burst, bright white clouds. Cumulus climbing, rising. Rolling.

The boy’s hunger is climbing. Howls rising, he’s rolling.

I consider burning his precious treat.

But I want peace.

I offer him the bowl, a ceasefire.

‘Pop-pop drop.’

It’s seconds before white clouds clutter a linoleum sky.

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Birds? Here, sir. Bees? Here.

Abigail’s tooth came out in the night. She’d spent all morning waggling her slimy pink tongue through the gap. Showing anyone who couldn’t think of an excuse to get away fast enough. Moving up and down the queue like a flamingo, parading. The teacher blows his whistle, and we bustle into the classroom. Fold ourselves into the seats. Human origami.

Abigail stays standing, thrusts her gums in the teacher’s face.

“Have you been kissing boys, Abigail?”

She flushes. Her giggles ripple through the room. I concentrate on my shoes, look at where I’ve picked the stitching away, so only a shadow flower remains. Elbows dig and lips smack until the teacher calls for quiet.

Abigail flutters to her seat. Even toothless, she is very pretty. In the corner of my workbook a swarm of bees appear, stings glinting. I try not to think about Abigail kissing boys as I dig my pencil deep into the paper, wondering how hard I’ll have to push to make it crumble into dust.

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Martha Lane writes in short bursts between wrangling two small children. They are an inspiration and hinderance in equal measure. Her flash has been published by perhappened mag, Bandit and Reflex Fiction, among others. She’s incredibly bored of lockdown. She tweets (@poor_and_clean).

Elizabeth M Castillo

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I weave it round and round my hand. It is fine, and bright, and surprisingly resilient. Its taut lines catch the smallest hint of the day that threatens to break at my bedroom window, and I twine it tighter, lacing it like macramé between my fingers and thumb. I hold it fast, more so than I ever have before. I will not let it slip through my fingers. This time, I will not let it go.

For the past ten years it has been there, crumpled in my pocket, occasionally getting caught on my cuff or wedding band as I rummage about in there, looking for some, very likely unrelated thing. At times I imagined I felt it tugging gently at me, as if to remind me it was still there, waiting patiently to be taken up with force. With purpose. With an end.

But sometimes, life goes quiet, and the strobe lighting and bedlam are gone for an instant, and I am left with nothing but to take stock of myself. In those moments I would remember it there, stuffed unceremoniously away in the recesses of my pocket, in the recesses of my memory, and my heart. Left there, as something that is of little consequence, but persists nonetheless. Without food, nor air, nor light, and yet, somehow, still living.

It is terribly fine, and terribly fragile, and for the best part of these years I feared it ended in emptiness. Nothing there. Nothing on the other side. A memory perhaps, of classes and dresses and hopefully a little laughter, but nothing more. How could there be? There was only ever one side to this thing. I looked, and I looked, but there was no trace of anything, or anyone, at the other end. 

But just like the untamed beast that it is, my heart decided it was time to take things into its own hands. After a short labour it gave birth to a story, and with it, a small flicker of hope and its fraternal twin; a tiny drop of madness. Then I looked. I looked once, I looked again, and I looked one more time for good measure. I traced this soft, silken thing as it stretched perilously across the Pyrenees and the peninsula. It tunneled its way under the ocean, battling through the Amazon brush, braving the Atacama desert, scaling the Andes and plunging fearlessly into the restless city streets until it came to its final destination at the other end of itself.

I pull it tight, tight across my palm, and close my fingers over the dent where it is almost cutting into my skin. I hold fast to it, bringing my closed fist up to my cheek where I rest my face against it, as sleep claims me once again. I have tamed both my hope and my madness, and the threat of emptiness on the other side has left. And at such close quarters, with it so tightly wrapped around my fingers, I am sure to feel the slightest pull, the smallest tug, any movement on the other end of this terribly fine thing. 

It is the thread that anchors me to the end of the earth, to the corner of the world, to where you are.

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Elizabeth M Castillo is a British-Mauritian poet, writer and language teacher. She lives in Paris with her family and two cats. When not writing poetry, she can be found working on her podcast or webcomic, pottering about her garden, or writing a variety of different things under a variety of pen names.

David Tay

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It’s been 8 years since I was here, here at the barbershop a couple blocks from home. I used to call it the “cut hair shop”.

She cut more than my hair though.

What she wielded wasn’t so much a buzzer as it was a lawnmower. Too loud. Too close to my face. And then the scissors. Snip, snip, snip. What if she cut my ear? Snip, snip, snip. She never did cut me, but I’ve left the shop with my skin red and burning. Mom said that I always left the place in tears.

But how do you cut someone’s hair when they’re kicking and screaming all over the place? When they’re crying before you can even get to work? Like they don’t trust you.

Now I’m here again, eight years after. I hear a familiar chime as I open the door. She hasn’t changed, not a single bit. Silent and strong as I remember. She studies me, gestures to the seat. Does she recognise me still? Is it because of the mask?

“You’re so big already” she says. I smile beneath the mask, and I hope she sees it in my eyes.

How long? Do you want a fade? You want your sides shaved? The usual.

She plugs the buzzer in. BZZZZZ. Good old lawnmower.

I close my eyes. It’s a bit of trepidation. But really, it’s to show you that I can sit still now. I trust you. I trust your hands. I trust your juddering buzzer and your sharp scissors.

I stiffen as the buzzing closes in on my ear.

My eyes are shut.

Hair falls on my shoulder and my feet. The strands that spill in front of my eyes tickle, itches. Not going to scratch it. Not going to interrupt your work. Obediently, I tilt my head as you pin the flap of my ear to get to the sides.

Are you smiling? I can’t tell with my eyes shut. I trust you. I trust your hands. Your cold blade doesn’t frighten me anymore.

That one hurt a little. I wince, twitch, but I’m not kicking and screaming in the chair, am I?

Yes, I’m heading back to Singapore next month. Yeah, my brother’s already working. And yeah, time really does fly, doesn’t it?

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David Tay is a Sarawakian studying in Singapore. His writing and photography seek to capture the emotions felt in the unconscious everyday. Find him on Twitter and Instagram (@oidavidah). ‘I trust you now, can you tell?’ is a work of creative nonfiction.