The Ladies of Horror
Picture-Prompt Writing Challenge!

Bramble
by Sonora Taylor

Mimi loved her hair. It grew past her shoulders into long and flowing locks. Those locks, however, loved to tangle; and Mimi’s mother hated having to brush them out.

“You have so many rat’s nests in here, I expect a rodent to come crawling out any minute,” her mother said as she brushed her hair in increased frustration. But Mimi ignored her mother’s anger, instead focusing on the bramble of her hair as it grew outwards and upwards, floating and spilling in all directions over her shoulders.

One morning, Mimi’s mother had had enough. She tugged the brush from another rat’s nest and threw it on the bathroom floor. The thwack against the tiles rang in Mimi’s ears as her mother opened up a drawer.

“Enough!” her mother said. She grabbed the tangles in Mimi’s hair and cut them.

Mimi screamed as she saw her hair fall to the floor, a clump that resembled a wounded animal. “No!” she yelled as her mother continued to cut. “I like my hair!”

Her mother ignored her and kept cutting. She pinned Mimi down with palms that dug into her shoulders with increasing pain. Mimi twisted and turned like her beloved curls, which floated to the floor like falling tears. “No, no, NO!”

Mimi jerked so had that the scissors slipped. The blade scratched a newly-shorn spot on her head, and Mimi felt a cool trickle of blood seep through the searing warmth of pain that emanated across her head.

“Serves you right,” her mother spat as she slammed the scissors down on the sink. “Crying over all that ugly hair.”

Mimi grabbed a tissue and held it to her head. She ran out of the bathroom, avoiding the mirror. She didn’t want to see what she’d become. She ran into the backyard and fell to her knees between a copse of trees whose dead branches littered the ground. She began to cry. Her blood and tears fell on the branches.

Mimi heard a stirring beneath her. She looked down and saw tender leaves sprouting from the dead branches. Roots sprang forth and curled themselves around her legs and waist. She was about to run, when she felt the wound on her head grow cool. She touched the wound and felt soft leaves. Branches and twigs grew as well, until Mimi felt her hand pushed away by the growing height and width of the bramble.

Mimi’s mother came outside, her eyes down as she smoked a cigarette. “Come inside,” she said as she looked up. She dropped her cigarette when she saw Mimi.

Mimi felt the power of the trees within her, and smiled as the branches around her lashed towards her mother. “Serves you right,” she said as they ensnared her mother’s ankles. “Cutting off all of my beautiful hair.”

Fiction © Copyright Sonora Taylor
Image courtesy of  Pixabay.com

More from Sonora Taylor:

Little Paranoias: Stories

Is it a knock on the door, or a gust of wind? A trick of the light, or someone who’ll see what you’ve done?

“Little Paranoias: Stories” features twenty tales of the little things that drive our deepest fears. It tells the stories of terror and sorrow, lust at the end of the world and death as an unwanted second chance. It dives into the darkest corners of the minds of men, women, and children. It wanders into the forest and touches every corner of the capital. Everyone has something to fear — but after all, it’s those little paranoias that drive our day-to-day.

Available on Amazon!

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