Afro Monster

By Emily Taus
The alarm went off and I slumped up in bed, the dim morning light peering onto my bed spread, illuminating the green blanket to a spring fresh hue. The turban slowly began drifting my head backwards from the weight, the back of the towering bundle skimming my shoulders. An impatient urge shot through my body and I leapt out of bed. The serum must have really worked, I thought as I gazed into the mirror above the dresser. I hurriedly swung my head about looking for the end of the cloth to unwind the twisted tangle. The top of my head looked mummified, and a shiver shot through me when I realized that I might really be unleashing a monster once I got the damn thing off and set my hair free. Pam snatched up the bottle of Afro Monster Hair Serum and read the instructions she neglected to read last night when she slathered her cropped do. HOW TO USE: Apply a small dollop to palms and gently massage onto scalp before bed. Wrap hair in cloth turban for bed. Repeat nightly for a week and watch your afro grow from FLAT to FAB!!!! Terror began to slink onto my face, and I flipped the bottle upside down, shaking it, and there wasnt a drop left to be had. Shit, I said to myself, and anger grew briefly knowing

it was nobodys fault but my own for being too impatient to read the instructions. I could feel the energy of the thing that had appeared on my head overnight, like someone kind of new alien crop circle, and it wanted out of that turban. It wanted to be free! Pam began unwinding the turban furiously, the snarled white strip of cloth growing higher and higher and higher every moment as they left her head and began to pile on the floor. Clumps of black afro shot through the open spaces, jetting out like branches on an overgrown bush. The more she unwound the more she realized the severity of her situation. She didnt realize what she was about to unleash. My eyes fixed on the mirror studying the monster that was on top of my head that grew overnight. I began shaking my head back and forth, watching the giant afro ruffle and wobble, pulling my fingers through its springy strands. My hair had grown to about the size of a beach ball over night, and it hung down past my eyes like the lacey veil of a hat you might wear to a funeral. Every time I moved my head wiry strands swept across my back and shoulders, scraping my skin. Sure, it was fabulous and fluffy, I thought, but this cant stand! Ive got to cut itno! Hack it! I cant be seen with this! Actually, I cant even see past this! I ran for the

scissors in the bathroom, my feet slapping onto the cool tile as I leapt across the hall. I began furiously chopping at the beast, savagely snipping the coarse hairs like a surgeon snips at the organs of his patient. One wrong snip and the patients life was over, one more snip and my afro would be dead.or so I thought. I flopped to the floor, drained from taming the beast, needing a moment to get it together before I got ready for work. My dampened black skin stuck to the cold tub as I lay against it. I went to light a cigarette, my body limp on the floor. My

arm shook as I raised the lighter, flicking it, bringing it to the tip of the white stick. But before I could make contact, a lanky arm of hair spurt over my face, and before I knew it my head looked like a bon fire pit. Within two minutes time my head went from afro to bald, back to afro, then a raging inferno. Spastically I popped up and pounded solidly on my heels, flinging my head into the toilet to extinguish the flames. Now this was war. I brushed the soggy and charred clumps from the top of my head into the toilet with the rest of the afro carnage and hurriedly began dressing for work before the beast sprouted back. Last night, as Pam applied the serum, the thought of trumping her co-worker Mimis afro had consumed her and brought on tingling feelings of excitement to her belly when she
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imagined walking into the office the next morning with her stunning new do. Mimi had the best afro at The Daily Root, the grass-roots political newspaper they worked for. But that was last night, before this monster on her head had taken over. I headed out the door and slung my leg over my motorcycle and flicked the starter, shooting down my driveway. As I began to speed through the streets of downtown I realized that my afro had started to grow back again. My afro was so robust and solid that it was like a great wall that wouldnt allow wind to pass through it. The dense mass was like a wind screen, resisting and forcing my head back so far that I couldnt keep my head up. I cant see a goddamn thing with my head bent back to my ass! Pam said to herself as she pulled up to a stop light finally sitting up. In her fretful state her mind was frantically searching for a way to tame this beast when the car behind her began croaking its horn. Hey Lady! Trim that shit! I cant even see the stop light! Pams focus snapped back and she reached up padding the wooly mammoth until her hands couldnt reach any farther. Her afro had grown to the size of a small evergreen tree, about five feet high. Doom saturated her in an electrifying moment, and her fear of the afro monster began to exceed what had been her limits.
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I flipped backwards on my bike, navigating with one hand and the other clutching my mirror I ripped off to see where I was going. A few minutes later I stopped in front of the parking garage and flipped front ways on my bike to find the attendants eyes nearly popped out of his skull and his slack mouth hanging open collecting flies. You want me to pick up your jaw for ya!? You look like youve never seen an afro before, jerk! I hollered as I began to pull into the garage. As I motored up to the entrance my afro smacked into the side of the building, freezing my body in place with a rigid smack, and my bike kept cruising from under me and rolled a few feet by itself before it came crashing to the garage floor. Kicking my feet and wiggling my hips I finally freed myself from the brick building, falling to the ground, my afro pulling from the brick like the sound of pulling Velcro strips apart. I noticed a stack of newspapers outside of the donut shop next store, and I ripped the string that was binding them together and frantically wound it around my bushy coif until I had created a lizard-like tail seven feet long. I picked up my creatures tail and started off running towards the stairs inside the garage. Park that for me, will ya! I curtly told the attendant as he was frozen in shock, like some poor victim of Medusa curse! I
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had to get to work on time and had five minutes to race up the 14 flights of stairs. Pam burst through her office door, panting, her ebony chest desperately pumping to suck in air. Good morn..Pam, are you alright? What happened to your hair? Tammy, the receptionist said, cocking her head to the side in wonderment as alarm swelled in her voice. Hey. Whwhawhats up? Pam said, expelling the words from her throat in exhausted heaves of breathlessness. Tammy just stared at Pam, like she had fallen under the Medusa spell like the parking garage jerk. I. Grewww. An afro. Last night. Pam said with little panting breaths. She slung the giant tail, what had become of the restrained afro, around the right side of her body and it hit the ground with a thud. Suddenly, a creaking began to erupt from behind her, and the string burst off the tail, flinging the afro into its desired free form which had now grown so large that it was pushing up the ceiling tiles. WHAAAA!!!! ITS ALIVE! AAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHEEEEEEEE! TAKE COVER! Tammy screamed, and everyone in the office who wasnt already looking turned in horror to see my afro growing larger and larger by the second. I looked around me and noticed that it had grown so great and so large that it had swallowed a mini
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palm tree plant about four feet from where I was sitting and was making its way towards Clydes desk where it swallowed his typewriter and rolodex within 30 seconds! Tammy took off for the stairs and lashed out at the fire alarm triggering the whaling alert as she leapt down the stairs. Suddenly a stampede rumbled in the office as everyone began to flee from my afro which was growing so rapidly that it had burst through the ceiling and I could see Silly Slappy Pranks, the gag-gift company above us through a slight crevice where my afro had burst through and made a giant hole in their floor. It was pandemonium! Within three minutes the entire building was empty, expect for me. People really move when they are scared! The sirens in the distance came blaring through the window, where my afro had broken through and had begun to cascade down the building. As I sat in the office alone, I began cursing myself out through my soft weeping. I wondered why I felt the imperative need to outdo Mimi and her giant afro? I didnt even see that bitch in the office today, I thought to myself. I was more upset with the fact that my impatience and jealously had created this monster, this beast, that couldnt be tamed or defeated. That was three days ago, and I am a prisoner in my office, in my own afro now. The damn thing wouldnt stop growing, and completely swallowed up the entire building. It burst through
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the windows of the 14th floor, grew up through the ceiling all the way to the 17th and out the top of the roof, and cascaded down covering the entire damn building like the branches of a willow tree. It swallowed me up too. Im stuck inside this thing. I cant get any food or water and Im real weak. A radio mustve gotten stuck in my afro somewhere close to my ear because I can hear the news reports and they are saying that the fire department has wired the building with explosives and they plan to take it down. So now it is just me cocooned in this afro monster, and everyone is going to remember Pam and the biggest afro ever, and I hope Mimi does tooI think I feel the rumble of the building now.