by Jake Carlstad
It was one year ago on the twelfth of May when I discovered that I was going bald.
I had just gotten out of a hot shower and was beginning to dry my hair when I noticed something new: my scalp. My heart stopped. It couldn’t be happening. I was too young to go bald! My father had a full head of hair until the day he died, it didn’t make any sense. Each day after that I took note of all the hair that seemed to be going into the drain after each shower. It was not too long ago after that, I noticed I had a bald spot. I had begun to take medication recommended to me by my doctor. They made me feel like death but I kept taking them regardless. They didn’t work. By September of last year, the majority of my hair had fallen away and I had begun to take drastic measures.
My first step was setting up a lab in the basement of my house. I had elected to not mention this to my land lady Tammy. Every waking second of my life was spent in that lab. Work, family, relationships—none of that was as important as fixing this problem. I had spent Valentine’s Day alone in my lab. On February 15th my girlfriend left me. She didn’t understand. One stupid day was nothing in comparison to what I was on the cusp of discovering.
By July 1st I was 100% bald but I had discovered something amazing after toiling away fruitlessly in the lab. I believed I had finally found it. The cure to baldness. And it was. It very much was. Oh god was it ever. But let us not get ahead of ourselves here. I had produced a salve and needed to test it. I was tempted to immediately lather it upon my scalp but I still had a modicum of scientific rigour left. On July 2nd I went to a local pet store and purchased a naked mole rat. Back in my lab I applied the salve to it and placed it in a plexiglass container and began to observe.
For the first hour it appeared that nothing was happening and my miracle cure was a failure. I was about to abandon hope when I noticed a single brown hair sprouting out of the back of its head. Then another. Then another. Before my very eyes, the naked mole rat was completely covered in fur. It worked! I was a genius! I had done something humanity has been searching for since the dawn of the Homo Erectus and we first noticed the follicles upon our head leave us. A purely rational scientist would then have attempted to replicate experiments on another rat or at the very least monitor this rat for several weeks before concluding anything. But alas, my objectivity had long since evaporated and I was left in a state of pure manic elation. My heart began to race. And before I knew it I had begun to rub in the solution onto my bare head. I then ran to the bathroom and sat in front of the mirror and waited.
It was not until two hours later on July 3rd, 1:23 am, did I notice a newly regained follicle emerging, sprouting forth like a single flower in a barren desert. Not long after was it followed by another, then another, then another. A full head of newly growing hair. It was a wondrous sight. I marvelled over it for hours before being struck by a wave of weariness. To my astonishment, I realised I had hardly slept for more than a couple hours over the last several days. Giddy with a mix of excitement and exhaustion I passed out on my unmade bed.
I slept until the early afternoon and awoke exhausted and ravenous. I stumbled out of bed and ran into the bathroom to examine what had happened while I was asleep. To my shock, not only did my hair grow overnight, it had grown almost down to my shoulders. My experiment had succeeded beyond my wildest dreams. I had to cut my self congratulations short. My stomach screamed out a protest. I appeared to have forgone eating during my period of hyper focus. My fridge was nearly empty by the time I was satiated. After my celebratory feast I thought about what my next step should be. After looking at my newly grown unruly locks I thought it might be best if I paid my barber a visit. I returned home with a dapper fade and reviewed my notes. But it was not too long afterwards I was even more hungry than in the morning. I ate three bowls of cereal and one large frozen pizza. One hour later I was still hungry. Perhaps hunger was a side effect of the serum? I decided to investigate more the next day. I was too tired to deal with it today.
I awoke the next day in a fit of famishment. It felt like I had fasted for a week. I had to eat every last bit of food in my house before I was able to think straight. I went to my bathroom mirror and to my shock, my hair was well below my shoulders again. And maybe…no it couldn’t be. I needed to measure this. I stepped on a scale and saw that I had lost over eight kilograms since I had applied the salve. This made no sense. I ran downstairs to my lab to look over my notes. Sitting at my desk I saw something out of the corner of my eyes that sent a shiver down my spine.
It was the plexiglass box I had placed the naked mole rat inside of. It was stuffed with hair. My hands were shaking as I removed the lid. I couldn’t see the rat in the pile of fur. I reached inside the box and lifted up the hair ball that was once a bald rat. I felt the body underneath all the hair. It was shriveled and dried out like a raisin. I shaved off the mountain of brown fur and performed a rudimentary biopsy. It looked like it had died of severe malnutrition. Like it had starved to death in the time since I had fed it yesterday. My stomach began to growl.
On July 5th my hair had grown below my back. I shaved it off and went to the grocery store. It had all grown back by the time I was home. I put every waking hour into finding an antidote to the hell I had put upon myself.
On July 7th I had empirical evidence that the rate of growth was increasing. As the speed of hair growth was proportional to my hunger. My hypothesis was that the salve that I created was causing my body to redirect the majority of the nutrients and calories I consumed to the growth of my hair. It appears that the rate at this process is increasing day by day.
By July 8th I was losing about five kilograms per day. I ate the amount of calories recommended to about ten people per day but I was shriveling up. My hair was growing so fast that I needed to shave my hair about once every two hours or it would grow past my knees.
By July 10th I needed to shave my head one every hour. It felt like I was being eaten from the inside out. No amount of food would push away the hunger.
It is now July 13th. Today’s date. I wrote this note in hopes of explaining what had happened to me. I have given up on finding a cure. I’m too hungry and tired to even try anymore. I burned all my notes and have destroyed all my equipment. I will take the secrets of my hubris to the grave. The rate of hair growth is increasing. I began this letter with a fully shaved head. In the ten minutes it took for me to write this, it is now below my feet.
It was a cool Autumn day when Tammy went to check in on James, her strange and eccentric tenant. He had not paid rent for over a month and was no longer responding to her phone calls. He did not answer the door when she rang the bell. She unlocked the door and slowly walked into the madhouse. An immediate stench of musky bile hit her. She wretched and covered her nose and mouth with a handkerchief. “James?” she said. Was he home? He must be, she saw his car in the driveway still. She called his name again. Again, no answer. All the lights were out and the blinds closed. She could barely see piles of empty cans littering the floor. Along with …wait, is that…hair? Her hands stumbled around the hallway wall until she eventually found a light switch. The bright fluorescent light illuminated the horror with perfect clarity. Mountains upon mountains of black hair like fine tentacles squirming around the floor. Like the branches of a tree they all culminated into the entrance to the basement. Her legs had belied her fear, as they seemed to carry her down those steps on their own accord. Each creak of the stair increased her dread of what would await her at the bottom. The single bulb of illumination hanging from the ceiling flickered on and off. On. Off. On. Off. She reached the bottom while the lights were off. It flicked on and she saw it all. The hundreds and hundreds of strands of hair she followed down the steps all flowed into the head of some creature that looked like a five foot mass of beef jerky. A human, whose insides looked like they were sucked out with a vacuum. One skeletal hand gripped onto a leather notebook. The other hand gripped onto the mass of hair jetting out of the skull. Like it was trying to pull it out.
Jake Carlstad was born and raised in the small town of Beaverlodge, Alberta. A true nerd to his core, he grew up with a love of filmmaking, technology, and fantasy novels. He moved to Edmonton to study Electrical Engineering at U of A. He currently works as an Engineer while writing and pursuing other creative work in his free time. Inspired by authors such as Steven King, Michael Moorcock, Neil Gaiman, Ursula K. Le Guin and the EC comic’s of the 1950’s, Jake loves the creative freedom and story possibilities of Speculative Fiction.
Capital City Press Anthology 