The Monster and the Butterfly

One - Lily

Squeeeeeaaaalssnip.

A dark yellow lock of hair falls.

Squeealssnip-snip.

And then two more.

Snip. Snip. Snip. Snip.

And then even more, far more than I care to count.

Strands of yellowish gold block my vision as Mrs. Grace continues to carelessly hack away at my hair, wielding only a pair of squealing scissors that reek of rusted metal clutched in her sweating meaty grip as her weapon of choice.

"Goodness," she grunts huskily, her word annunciated with another dry scream of scissors snipping through hair, "This ought to sell well on the market... Thank God you came to me."

As much as such words ought to have brightened my heart with pride, I cannot be proud, or feel honor, at the compliment. There's only shame as she cuts away more and more of my femininity, my identity, with every clip of those rusted shears. The embarrassment of now being the bearer of a mark of pure desperation and poverty as I'm to go about my daily duties burns the surface of my flesh and pricks the corners of my eyes with warm tears I refuse to let fall.

I wish to thank her in return for an offer so generous (truly, it was one I couldn't refuse), but I'm unable to. I fear that if I speak, my words will emerge as a pathetic cry.

It was just last week that little Emma Jameson, and her mother, from down the hall had come home, along with my sister Gertrude, after a long day at the laundry with their hair gone, cut right down to the scalp so that they bore nothing more than irregular patches of brown. When I questioned Emma Jameson about their hair (or rather the lack thereof), she directed me to a being known only as Mrs. Grace, an old, vulture-like woman that always occupies on the corner of London Street and Rose Lane, eager to buy and sell girls' hair. Her offers often ranged from five shillings to a whole pound, or so I'm told. Regardless, it's good money. Good money I can, and shall, use!

The air is embittered with a harsh chill that bites at my newly exposed scalp. It bites like the jaws of some rabid beast hellbent on reminding me of the shame bubbling and frothing deep within my soul.

As Mrs. Grace continues on with her work, I can do nothing but stare down at the strands of yellow that litter the grimy, reeking street surrounding the crate I sit upon. The humiliation that had infected my soul now begins to fester, mutating into a grotesquely new emotion that vaguely resembles anger. In an attempt to tame it, I force myself to look straight ahead, into the street swollen with the crowd of early morning, of omnibuses and cabs, of drunkards and dollymops skittering to and fro, between the tall buildings that squeeze together, looming over us like hideous turrets, and make these alleyways cramped veins of human bodies and industry. Making us nothing more than rabbits trapped in an ever-shrinking—ever-suffocating—burrow.

I ought to be accustomed to the feeling of tight closeness by now. But I'm not, I think as I tighten my palms' grips on my arms. I never will be.

Across the way, through the tangle of walking limbs and rolling wheels, I catch the listless, milky-colored gaze of a beggar. His clothes are nothing but rags, his beard a patchy collection of silver hairs, and his left leg is missing, most likely lost to the grinding teeth of industry's gears, being reduced to a fleshy stump hidden beneath the leg of his trousers tied in a loose knot. A tin cup sits before him, but people actively step around it, evading him as though he is the personification of some venomous blight that'll infect them if they merely glance at him.