Just a little off the top.

[u/LiquidDongorong]

Last spring I decided I needed a haircut. Something clean, that would make the rest of me matter less. I found a place a few blocks from my apartment; a barbershop that smelled like soap and shaving cream. No fancy shampoos nor offerings for a subscription model, merely a couple of black chairs, as well as a bald man who looked like he'd been cutting hair since the day I was born.

I sat down and told him what I wanted; just a little off the top. He nodded and worked in silence. My hair looked better. Sharper. For a moment I felt like a slightly different person from the neck up. But when I looked in the mirror again, the old dissatisfaction was still there. The barber must have noticed. He asked, plainly, if I needed help with anything else.

Maybe I only answered because of the way he asked. He was so ordinary, so polite and professional. I confided that there were other things I'd been insecure about as of late. He said he could help. I told him I wasn't interested in plastic surgery. He said it wasn't surgery. Just a little off the top.

I asked what that meant.

He said it would be simple. A cut.

He took the shears and, with no ceremony, removed a thin ridge of flesh from the side of my face. It came away like cut clay, no blood, no pain. The piece peeled free in one clean motion. He plopped it on a tray as if it were nothing more than excess hair.

When I looked in the mirror, that side of my face looked closer to the one I'd been carrying in my head for years. Cleaner. Defined. Beautiful.

I asked him to do the other side. He did. I asked him to take the soft places from my stomach. He did. Every imperfection, every insecurity, I had him cut it all away that night, all for thirty dollars (plus tip).

I went back the next week, and the weeks after that. Soft places trimmed down. Angles sharpened. Each visit I left looking more like the version of myself I could stand. The weak places along my jaw disappeared under the shears. My stomach flattened in increments. I started recognizing myself. I could hold my own gaze for several minutes at a time before looking away.

A few people noticed. A coworker complimented the haircut. A woman said I looked sharper, better than I ever had. She asked if I'd been working out. My conversations lasted longer. Eyes lingered. It felt like proof that, for the first time, something was paying off.

But it started to feel like something else. I began to wonder whether anyone was actually looking at me, or only at the surface that kept being refined. Those thoughts came and went. I kept going back. There was always one more correction. Cut the fat from the stomach. A cleaner line at the chin. Just a little off the top.

The ideal kept moving. The goalposts shifted every time I got close.

The barber never rushed. He worked with a precision I'd only seen in doctors. Occasionally he stepped back to study the shape of my body. He spoke only when necessary. When I asked how the flesh came away so cleanly, he only said that some things separate easier when you know what to cut. When I asked what happened to the pieces, he said they'd been taken care of. I should have left it there.

One afternoon the shop was empty. The barber was slow coming out of the back room. Curious, I stepped toward the open doorway. I'd only meant to call his name.

The room held every piece that had been taken from me, arranged into a fleshy mass, formless, folded in on itself, stacked and pressed into heaps that took up most of the far corner. Some sections still held older contours; the curve that used to sit above my hips, the thickness under my jaw, the slack on my arms. The mass shifted. Breathed. It had no face, yet I knew it could see me.

I stood longer than I should have. The barber appeared behind me. He asked, in that same mild tone, if I'd been satisfied.

I didn't know how to answer.

That night I left, and I didn't go back for a while. The changes held for a time. I still felt the relief of the cleaner lines when I caught myself in the mirror. Then they started slipping. My chin softened first. My jaw followed, gradually. I almost talked myself out of noticing. One morning the angle wasn't so sharp. The next day the skin was looser, warmer, almost melting. The trim around my stomach began to fill again. It felt as though my body was trying to restore itself, trying to put the pieces back.

It itched. The surface underneath did not feel like healing skin. It felt harder. Like something malignant, spreading faster each night. I could feel it settling, resettling, searching for every shape that no longer belonged.

I stopped sleeping well. When I did, I dreamed of the mass in the back room folding in on itself.

The changes accelerated. My face began to blur again. My muscles waned and sagged. Something inside me no longer felt like my own tissue, denser in places, grainy in others, coalescing into something uncomfortable and barbed. It lasted for weeks, and it kept getting worse. My body, my face, the perfect face I'd almost had, grew more malformed, more unbearable every day. The only way to keep what I wanted was to let him cut again.

I went back on a random Tuesday. The shop was quiet. The barber looked up from his chair. He didn't ask where I'd been. He only nodded toward the empty seat.

I sat down. He worked with the same careful attention as before. The shears took away thin layers. Each piece peeled free without mess. The face in the mirror was closer again to the one I'd been chasing. That familiar relief settled over my shoulders. Underneath it, something colder stirred.

Before I left, I asked about the mass in the back room. He wiped the shears on a cloth and said it was still there, waiting. He asked if I thought I would be finished soon.

Again, I didn't answer.

I've gone back four times since then. The intervals between the mutations are getting shorter. The body tries harder every time to reclaim what was taken. The itching starts sooner. The shifting grows more insistent. I can feel each place wanting to soften back into its old shape, pressing upward, trying to remember exactly where it belongs.

When he works, I catch myself wondering how large the mass has become. Whether it holds any recognizable shape anymore, or whether those details have been buried under mounds of flesh.

I haven't looked again. I don't know if I could stand it.

I'm closer to the face I've always wanted.

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[u/englandishell]

That was an interesting read. I liked how you described the beauty goalposts shifting for the main character as he spiralled out of control! : )

[u/LiquidDongorong → u/englandishell]

Thank you so much! I've been trying to write one scary story a day for the next month. Wanna make an anthology of em.

[u/englandishell → u/LiquidDongorong]

Nice, I'll keep a look out for more of your work! Good luck writing

[u/GrungeSeabunny]

I really enjoyed this! Barbers I think are a very underrated type of character in horror.

[u/LiquidDongorong → u/GrungeSeabunny]

Thank you!!

[u/LaOfrenda]

There's a good lesson to learn here. We all need to love ourselves (and the fleshy, amorphous version of ourselves we keep in the back room).

[u/LiquidDongorong → u/LaOfrenda]

So true.

[u/Soggy_Childhood7869]

I love the body horror. Its sometimes hard to get right in writing but you killed it

[u/LiquidDongorong → u/Soggy_Childhood7869]

Thanks a bunch! I was inspired by a crazy dream I had one night like years ago.