Strands of Her by Olivia Salter / Short Fiction / Horror

 

Strands of Her

By Olivia Salter

Word Count: 1,963

Kia never intended to buy anything from the street vendor. She was only killing time between the bus and her night shift at the Waffle House. But the velvet-lined table, draped in a sheer purple cloth and surrounded by mannequin heads with cascading waves, stopped her.

The wigs shimmered unnaturally under the flickering lamplight of the abandoned parking lot. Jet black coils, honeyed ringlets, tight 4C curls, bone-straight silk—each one more beautiful than the last. Real hair. Human hair.

Kia’s own hair had been falling out in clumps since her last relaxer turned wrong. She’d been tying scarves tighter and tighter, avoiding mirrors. The ache of self-consciousness clung to her like a second skin. But these wigs? They were radiant. Regal.

“You got a good eye,” the vendor said.

Kia hadn’t seen her approach. The woman was tiny, wrapped in a fur-trimmed coat, her smile slinking beneath hollow cheekbones. Her voice sounded like a cough halfway through a cigarette.

“They come from all over,” she said, gesturing to the display. “India. Brazil. Nigeria. Even some real local pieces. Pure. Untouched. No heat. No dye. Hair full of memory.”

“Memory?” Kia repeated.

“Everything we are stays in the strand,” the woman said, lifting a long, dark curl between her fingers. “Energy. Story. Soul. We only give what the head no longer needs.”

Kia squinted. “Wait, you mean—these are from dead people?”

The woman smiled wider. “Don’t they always say, beauty is eternal?”

Kia should’ve walked away. She should’ve laughed, called the woman crazy. But her hand moved before her brain. It hovered over a curly bob with a deep side part and a shine like oil on water. It was soft. Too soft.

“How much?” Kia asked.

The woman held up five fingers. “But once it’s yours, it’s yours. Can’t give it back.”

Kia paid. It was all the cash she had left for the week, but she didn’t care. Something about the wig pulled her. A magnetism that felt warm, familiar. She took it home and, under the yellow glow of her bathroom light, she placed it on her head.

The fit was perfect. Uncannily so. The curls framed her face like they belonged there. She turned her head left, then right. Ran her fingers through the strands. It didn’t even feel like a wig. It felt… natural.

She wore it out the next day.

And people stared.

But not in the usual way, not like they were judging her for being tired or Black or poor. They stared like she glowed. Like she’d stepped out of a magazine. At the Waffle House, her manager stammered when he asked her to wait tables instead of working the register. Customers tipped extra. Even James, her regular who never said more than “scattered, smothered, covered,” looked at her like she’d grown wings.

Kia felt beautiful. That night, she ran her fingers through the curls and whispered, “Thank you.”

She swore the wig pulsed. Like it heard her.

Then, deep in the quiet of her apartment, a sound slithered through the air. A whisper. Faint, like breath against her ear.

“You’re welcome.”

Two nights later, she started dreaming.

She was underground. Cold. Dirt in her throat. Someone was screaming, but the sound never left their mouth. Nails scratched the inside of a coffin lid. The air was thick—choking—with decay and... grief.

Kia woke up gagging, clutching her throat as if she could still feel the weight of the soil pressing in. Her sheets were damp with sweat, clinging to her body like a second skin. She sat up, rubbing her arms, shivering despite the heat in her apartment.

Then she saw it.

The wig.

It sat on her nightstand exactly where she had left it. But it wasn’t the same.

It looked longer.

The curls were tighter, richer, like they had been freshly coiled overnight. Darker, too, though she hadn’t washed it, hadn’t even touched it since tossing it aside two days ago.

With slow, reluctant fingers, she picked it up.

It was damp.

Heavy with moisture, as if it had been left out in a storm. Droplets clung to the ends of the strands, slipping down onto her fingers. And when she turned it over, she saw something caught in the netting.

A fingernail.

Lavender polish, chipped and cracked.

Kia gasped and dropped the wig, stumbling back like it had bitten her. Her scalp tingled, burned with phantom fingers, as if the wig had been trying to creep back on while she slept.

No. No. It was a prank. Had to be.

Maybe the vendor used recycled burial hair from morticians or something. Maybe this was what the lady meant by “local.”

Still, she wore it again.

She didn’t want to—but the mirror begged her to.

When it was on, she wasn’t just Kia anymore. She was stunning. Radiant. Magnetic. Even her voice changed—silkier, smoother, a sound that made people lean in closer, listen harder. Men followed her home with wide, wet eyes, tripping over their own feet to be near her. Her ex called after six months of silence, his voice trembling when he said her name.

Like he couldn’t believe he had ever let her go.

But something changed.

The dreams got worse.

The woman from the grave began speaking. Whispering. Pleading.

Find me.
Fix me.
Free me.

Kia’s hands moved in her sleep. She woke up one night digging into her mattress, fingernails split and bloodied, clawing at something that wasn’t there.

She couldn’t eat. Couldn’t rest.

And the wig—it moved.

She saw it crawl once, inching across the floor like it had tiny legs, dragging itself toward her.

That was the final straw.

She grabbed it with shaking hands, stuffed it into a trash bag, and dragged it outside. The dumpster behind her apartment reeked of old food, but she didn’t care. She shoved the bag in, tied it tight, and set it on fire.

The flames devoured the hair, twisting it like burning flesh. The air filled with the stench of rot and something worse—something sweet and spoiled, like decay masked by perfume. Kia covered her mouth, eyes stinging.

It was over.

She slept better that night.

But in the morning, it was back.

Sitting on her dresser.

Damp. Perfect.

And this time, there was dirt under its lace front.

Kia went back to the lot. The vendor was gone.

In her place was a small girl, maybe nine, hair shaved down to the scalp, sitting cross-legged on the same velvet cloth. Her eyes were too old for her body.

“She said you’d be back,” the girl mumbled. “She don’t sell to people twice. You ain’t supposed to wear the hair more than three nights. After that, it gets hungry.”

Kia trembled. “Whose hair was it?”

The girl tilted her head. “Used to be a preacher’s daughter. Died in ’92. Buried with her Bible and her mama’s ring. But they dug her up. She was fresh.”

Kia’s mouth went dry. “What do I do?”

The girl didn’t answer. She just stared. And then, almost too softly to hear, she said, “She wants her face back.”

She tried to swallow, but her throat wouldn’t cooperate. “What do you mean, her face?”

The girl didn’t blink. Her eyes, dark and depthless, stayed locked on Kia’s own, unrelenting. “The preacher’s daughter. She wants back what was hers.”

Kia’s stomach lurched. She had thought the hair was just… hair. An extension, a weave, something exotic but harmless. But when she had pinned it into her braids that first night, she had felt something—an odd tingling along her scalp, like the strands were whispering against her skin.

And the dreams.

A girl standing at the foot of Kia’s bed, face blurred like smeared paint, mouth moving in silent rage. A hand reaching—no, clawing—at Kia’s head, fingers sinking into her skull like roots into soil.

Kia squeezed her eyes shut. “I—I can take it out,” she whispered. “I’ll burn it. I’ll—”

The girl shook her head. “It don’t work like that.”

The wind picked up, rustling the abandoned lot, sending dried leaves skittering across the cracked pavement. Kia shivered. “Then what do I do?”

The girl pushed herself to her feet, slow and deliberate. She was small, but her presence was heavy, as if something larger lurked just beneath her skin.

“You give her back what she lost,” the girl said finally.

Kia’s pulse pounded. “And if I don’t?”

The girl’s lips barely moved, but the words cut through the cooling air like a blade.

“Then she takes it.”

Kia’s breath gasped, and she took a stumbling step backward. The evening air had turned thick, pressing against her skin like damp wool. She hadn’t noticed before, but the lot smelled strange—like turned earth and something sweeter beneath it, something wrong.

That night, Kia locked the wig in the freezer, double-bagged. She told herself it was just paranoia, that the strange whispers she’d heard when she wore it were only in her head. Still, she made sure to push it behind the frozen peas and the half-empty tub of ice cream, as if burying it beneath layers of frost would silence whatever had been murmuring against her scalp.

She wrapped her scarf tightly around her braids and climbed into bed, forcing herself to scroll through her phone, watch a mindless show—anything to keep her thoughts from spiraling.

But at 3:33 a.m., something whispered beneath her floorboards.

“You borrowed my beauty. Now give me your body.”

The voice was soft but insistent, slipping between the cracks of her consciousness like a draft of cold air. Kia’s limbs went stiff. Her breath hitched in her throat. She tried to turn her head, to move even a finger, but her body refused.

The air in her room thickened, heavy with the scent of lavender and something else—something damp, something rotten. Then came the pressure. A slow, deliberate weight against her forehead. Cold. Wet. The touch of lace.

No—

The wig.

It pressed down over her scalp, the icy fibers slithering into place. Curls coiled and twisted around her throat, tightening with a slow, merciless patience.

Kia’s chest seized. Her vision darkened. She could feel the weight of the grave in the air, the pull of something unseen but hungry.

Her last breath bloomed against her lips, tinged with lavender and dirt.

The next morning, Kia stood in the mirror, perfectly still. But her eyes looked wrong. They were too far apart, almost as if her face had been subtly rearranged overnight. Her skin was unnaturally smooth, stretched taut over her bones, reflecting the soft morning light in a way that made her seem more doll than human. And her smile… practiced. Too perfect, too precise, like it had been sculpted rather than formed by emotion.

She reached up, fingers trembling, and brushed the wig gently. The strands were soft, silken, warmer than she remembered them being when she first picked it up. It settled on her scalp like a second skin, whispering secrets she couldn't quite understand. It was hers now. Forever.

Outside, beneath the ancient oak, the girl moved with quiet precision, setting up the deep crimson velvet cloth over the wooden stand. The morning mist curled around her ankles as she placed another mannequin head atop its perch, careful, reverent. A new offering. Another crown.

Her hands hovered over the freshly adorned mannequin, fingers barely grazing the strands of hair before she murmured the familiar words:

“Hair full of memory,” she whispered.

She turned slightly, her gaze lifting to the house, to the window where Kia stood frozen. A knowing smile curled her lips.

“Only give what the head no longer needs.”