A Hairy Fairy-Tale
An allegory of otherness.
She had been an early bloomer. Puberty had hit her hard and fast, and while her girlfriends at school had remained flat-chested and hairless like Sphinx cats, she had grown tall, buxom, and hirsute as soon as she’d hit ten years old.
Thick, coarse hair sprouted from her arms and armpits, her legs, and her pubis, a dense thicket of black knot-weed that emerged relentlessly from the sides of her knickers. By the time she’d reached twelve, she could no longer wear a ladies swimsuit and, on the rare occasions when swimming could not easily be avoided (damned compulsory Physical Education lessons!), she wore a pair of men’s swimming shorts and a t-shirt. It only really served to make her conspicuous, though, and she endured sideways glances, smirks and cutting remarks from all of her peers throughout high school.
She spent her teenage years jealously eyeing the pretty girls, those lithe little vixens with their pert and perfectly formed B-cups, their slim waists and their carefully tended bikini lines. With their smooth skin, with light hairs in all the correct places, theirs was a perfection she could never hope to emulate. Her dark complexion already made her an outcast in an American town populated by white-skinned but perma-tanned blonde cheerleaders and pale pretty-boy jocks. Her hereditary hirsutism was just another marker of her "other"-ness.
Well might you ask, could she not have shaved? Or waxed? She had tried, of course she had. But the shaving only made the hair grow back thicker, and the waxing hurt so badly that she cried on the two occasions she visited the salon. She was resigned to living with her hairy pelt, hidden behind long-sleeves and dark trousers.
As she reached her twenties and thirties, the hair grew longer, thicker coarser. Like creeping tendrils, it now seemed to cover her entire body in a relentless, unstoppable wave. Even her face started to sprout thick, dark whiskers that were so unconquerable that even the bleach she used to try and minimise their conspicuousness was completely ineffective.
Worse still, the black fuzz that covered her browline and parts of her chin and jaw had proceeded with age to spread further across her face. The older she became, the more the bristle seemed to envelope her, rendering the woman inside almost completely invisible. In shame and humiliation, she withdrew from the world and retreated deep into the forest.
Finding an old abandoned wood-cutter's cabin, she used the branches from a nearby birch tree to clear away the cobwebs and dirt, and set out the few meagre possessions she had brought with her on her solemn journey. That night, as she lay alone on the creaky, rusted iron bed and stained single mattress that had been left behind by the previous inhabitant, she cried bitter tears of loneliness. She had never had a friend, had never been touched. People had always been afraid to come too close to her, as though the hairy menace might jump from its host and infect them. She had never known love, or intimacy; the kiss of a lover, a touch of adoration, and her soul wept with longing.
A year passed. In that time her hair had continued to grow, and she now resembled a wooly sheepdog. One day, as she sat huddled on the bed, she heard noises outside. She pulled her long, thick tresses away from her ears and strained to listen. Yes, there was someone or something out in the forest, loitering near her cabin, and creeping amongst the trees.
The steps grew closer, and she felt her heart racing. Someone was coming; someone would see her hideous hairy form. Could it be a hunter? Would they mistake her for a wild animal and shoot? Could it be a nervous child, who would run back to their home and tell of the terrifying monster encamped in the forest? She hadn't seen another living soul in over a year. What might one do to her now that she was barely recognisable as a human?
She drew her knees up to her chest and tightened her arms around her body, trying to make herself as small as possible.There was nowhere for her to hide in her little home with its one small bed, but perhaps if she stayed very, very still, she could remain unnoticed.
As she sat there frightened, and huddled like a big black ball of knitting yarn, one of her moustache hairs started tickling at her nostril. She scrunched up her nose and squinched her lips, trying to quell the irritation, but this only made the tickle worse. She realised with horror that the sneeze was coming, and she could do nothing to stop it.
The sneeze sounded thunderous when it came, and seemed to reverberate around the cabin. There was no way it could have gone unnoticed and, as though to verify that fear, the footsteps outside stopped suddenly. The forest fell silent.
The woman could feel the blood surging through her veins, her heart leaping behind her hairy chest. She sat perfectly still, perfectly silence, hoping beyond all hope that whatever was outside would shake away the sound of her sneeze as a figment of imagination.
She couldn't hear anything outside anymore; she could hear nothing but the rush of her own blood in her ears, insulated and amplified by the curtain of hair that covered her head and neck.
Suddenly a face appeared at the window. She saw it between the veil of her hair that fell over her eyes. She couldn’t quite tell what she was looking at; the creature that peered in her was almost ethereal in its pallor. Indeed, its skin was so pale it seemed almost translucent. It had not a hair on its head, nor brows or eyelashes. Its ghostly face was thin and angular, with razor sharp cheekbones, but there was an enchanting softness to the hairless skin that made the stranger look like a little baby.
Its light blue eyes stared hard at the tangled mass of hair curled in a ball on the bed. With a wide-eyed horror, it seemed to recognise the human gaze staring out at her, unblinking from amongst the weed-like hair.
The two beings stared at each other for what seemed an eternity, before the pale creature backed slowly away from the window and disappeared. Seconds later, the door of the cabin creaked open slowly, and the pale spectre entered.
"Hello?" it said, and reached out a timorous hand toward the huddled tangled shape of the hairy woman. "Hello?"
The hirsute woman blinked, and turned her head toward her strange, ethereal visitor. Immediately, the outstretched hand was retracted, pulled back in fright and pressed to the figure's chest.
"Please don't be afraid of me," said the hairy figure, nervously. "I am not a monster. I am a human, a human woman."
The pale, hairless creature took several creeping steps forward, and fixed her with a quizzical expression. Wonderment filled its wide, marble-like eyes, and a nervous smile seemed to form on its lips.
"I have never seen a woman such as you before," said the pale, hairless creature. "But I am not afraid. For I am a human woman, too, though I do not look like you. I cannot grow any hair anywhere on my body, you see. I have been this way since birth.People in the town stare at me, or point and laugh. They call me "Mole-Rat". I came into the forest because some young children were chasing me, calling me a freak, and I became lost. When I saw your cabin, I thought it might make for shelter tonight, as the dark night will soon be here and I didn't want to be out in the forest alone in the dark."
The hairy woman replied, "If you are not too afraid of me, you may share my roof for tonight. I know what it is to be shunned by people for my body hair, and am sorry that you are likewise shamed for your lack of it."
The two women sat in the darkness that night in an easy, comfortable rapport, recounting the feelings of shame and sadness that hair or its absence had evoked in them.
As they talked, and cried together, their confidence grew, and with nervous, hesitant hands, each reached out to touch the other. The hairy woman felt smooth, bare skin beneath her fingers, something that she had not felt since her infancy. The hairless woman ran her fingertips over the other’s warm luxuriant hair, and smiled. Each woman experienced in each other that which their own bodies could not supply, and each felt less alone than they could ever remember being.
It was early the next morning, as the pale sunlight began to struggle through the dense forest canopy, that the two women fell asleep together on the small single bed, holding each other close and savouring the dichotomy of their difference while knowing each other to be, in their essence, the same.
Jupiter Grant is a self-published author, blogger, narrator and audiobook producer.
Enquiries and comments are always welcome. You can also find me on Twitter @GrantJupiter
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