FORAY Barber Jack

An excerpt from the journal of
Barber Jack
found amongst the Black Island Massacre

nd once there was a young man in England, which town exactly doesn't matter, this is just a story. But his name was Jack. Now, Jack was a tall, strong young lad but he always had a certain way about him. He kept his hair combed just so, and as soon as he discovered he could, he set to shaving with a passion.

The crisp smell of the soap and creme, the brisk snap of the clean towel, the beautiful glitter of the scissors and razor. It was all such a delight to Jack that he could not help but to become a barber. That was just naturally what he was. So year in and year out, young Jack gave this chap a haircut and that one a shave, and soon one day owned his own shop. But into that shop one eve walked a shadow.

The stranger's eyes bore into Jack's like his own father's had. And when he knicked the stranger just once, it didn't even seem unnatural when he found himself on the floor gasping for breath and feeling as though the very life had been nearly sucked out of him. And here he drank from the knick on the stranger's chin as though it were some fountain of life.

And so it continued for years it seemed, he drank from the stranger on occasion and combed his hair perfectly every evening and carefully shaved him just so. And every so often Jack would slip a little and a hair fall out of place across the stranger's brow or just a tiny slip with the razor and Jack would suffer for days, the agonies of broken bones, and deep rakes across his face with the razor, or his hair being pulled out in great mats caked in blood. That's what it always came back to, the grooming, the blood, the drinking, the beatings, the healing.

"I love you," Jack said one day to the stranger and looked up at the mirror on the wall. "I mean just look at you . . . " But there was no one there. His comb cut through so much thin air and he spoke to nothingness.

The stranger shattered his mirror and beat Jack senselessly. "Look at me. Don't you ever look at my reflection ever again."

"But I am your reflection, milord."

"Yes, you are." And the stranger shattered Jack as his reflection should have been shattered with the mirror should he have cast one.

Morning dawned, and Jack realized it had not dawned on him for some time. "Barber Jack, there is your reflection, look upon it. It lies burning there in the dawn sun. Will you be my barber, now, Jack?"

Written by Conrad Hubbard for the
Daylight Army chronicle for Las Vegas by Night

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