The Beauty Shop

It could be said that she spent more time than most seven-year-olds thinking of biblically accurate angels. She was pleased by her name for the first six years of living, especially when spoken from the lips of her mother,

 “Angel, my love.” 

She thought the name rang to a similar tune of angelic concepts such as beauty, elegance, femininity, and light. Until that bright Sunday morning.

“Angels,” Pastor Dave preached, “are God's warriors. The way we depict them is an injustice.”

Angel, who usually took church as an opportunity to doze off in the cold metal folding chair once a week, was attentive to this particular sermon regarding her namesake. 

“Our protectors ain't rosy-cheeked doe-eyed fragile women and babies! No!” 

The crowd murmured its agreement, a sudden epiphany fed to them by Dave. They took it hungrily. 

“They’re ferocious beasts that bare four heads: a lion, an ox, an eagle, and a human. Wild wings and sporadic eyes. Humans should shutter with fear at the terrific sight of them!” His voice reverberated off the thin walls and into the ears of his audience, echoing between her skull all the way home. 

When she arrived in her bedroom, she looked in the mirror and screamed. Screamed and screamed until she coughed up blood and choked on it. Where she had once seen a halo glowing over her head in the reflection, she now saw an ox ripping through the flesh of her collarbone, fighting to make her neck his own. 

That day was just the start, ten years later and she still cannot look in the mirror without seeing them: the ox at her collarbone, the eagle pecking at her eyes until they bleed, or a lion when her face should be. 

Ten years is a long time, and she’s since conceived ways to sedate the hallucinations. The first way is avoiding mirrors, which is easier said than done, but she manages most of the time. 

Other times she has no choice but to face the glass. Cases where she needs to check an outfit, curl her hair, or clean the surface. So, she simply wears a mask: a ceramic piece she'd painted to look like a doll, a cardboard bunny with long floppy ears, or maybe a replica of her favorite celebrity made from plastic, complete with yarn hair. Her collection is endless. 

Angel finds an odd solace in making the masks, a tedious repetition that comes with the rhythm of crafting up her wildest dreams to tame the nightmares that sometimes bleed into the day. She adores every step of the process, from the initial sketch made on her pink bedroom floor, to adorning herself in the masks that serve as her own type of armor.

It is important to note that Angel is not aware that these visions in the mirror are hallucinations. No, Angel believes them to be real, and since she never told anyone, she never got help. She was too embarrassed to tell anyone what she really believed; that she had been cursed by Jesus Christ himself. A punishment for her sins, and that she must atone and take it in stride or else risk eternally burning in hellfire with the lion, the ox, and the eagle that haunt her.

The masks make her feel safe from the angels, but they also provided protection against the other war that had been waged upon her, beauty.

It could be said that she spent more time than most nine-year-olds thinking of her figure and face. What had started as pure admiration of women festered into jealousy and insecurity. It haunted her, the golden locks and tight waists that she saw in the Sunday morning cartoons and behind her eyes when she wished for rest. She felt vanity coursing through her veins with every beat of her bitter heart.

She didn't know what she looked like. Not truly. The few times she caught a glimpse in a mirror she was too petrified by the blood flooding from her eyes to really focus. The one time she permitted her mother to take a picture of her, Angel had sobbed and refused to leave her room for days, dry heaving and dizzy with disorientation and confusion. Her proportions were all wrong and her face was like that of an unfinished puzzle. 

Now, at seventeen, she is seeking validation and beauty, so she signed up to compete in her town’s annual pageant show. With a week left until the show, Angel struggles with one major problem: Lucy Colette. 

Lucy is known as the most desirable girl in town. With her shiny hair, bright eyes, and a small, curved nose she is delicate in every sense of the word. Everything that Angel is not.

Angel has been watching Lucy since eighth grade. Watching her apply lip gloss through the crack in the stall door, sketching Lucy’s face on her pink bedroom floor for a mask, following her home from school just to watch the way her hair catches and reflects the sunshine, even on gray days. For all her watching, Angel didn’t know much about Lucy Colette, just that the boys consistently rated her a ten, and that Angel was usually a five. And if the boys at school thought that, what would the panel at the Pageant Show think? 

Angel knew she had to act fast, so she did. After inviting Lucy Colette over for tea to discuss the Pageant, “girl to girl”, Angel swiftly cracked Lucy in the back of the head with a high heel. Hard.

Angel can’t quite remember how she dragged Lucy down into the basement. All she can focus on now is the way Lucy is awake again, screaming and screaming. And oh- no! That won't do! Now she's coughed up blood all over her pretty chin and long bouncy curls. Angel doesn’t want to hit the girl again, that would be cruel. Plus, she really needn't worry about her parents hearing, they never paid any mind to Angel’s screams. 

So Angel says, “shhhhh” and “here, let's get you cleaned up”, while rinsing the blood from the girl whose eyes keep flickering from her chains, to the stairs, and back to Angel again. Don’t look at her like that! She’s only doing what must be done, Miss Colette. 

Suddenly, Angel is very excited about the opening of this new Beauty Shop in her basement. She sets out to work. She carefully selects a mask for her task, deciding on the one she made of Lucy’s boyfriend. Yes, yes, that should help comfort her. She sets Lucy up in the chair in front of the mirror, and gets her tools out.

Angel doesn’t know if it's because of the mask, or the sudden buzzing sound, but Lucy begins to scream again, and Angel really doesn’t have time for this. She turns the radio up and takes the first swipe at Lucy’s hair. Feathery gold floats down to the ground leaving a stubbly scalp in its wake, and oops, best not to move Miss Colette! Now you’ve nicked your skin and you're bleeding. Maybe it's for the best that you get used to it.

Now that Lucy’s hair is completely gone, Angel moves onto the eyebrows, plucking and collecting each strand, but she takes care to switch to a different bag to store Lucy's eyelashes. It’s essential she doesn't mix the two up or the whole scheme might as well be thrown out! By the time she gets to the left eyelashes, Lucy's voice is but a rasp and her tears are sticky, but fickle. Good! She’s converted to the righteous, and knows her sacrifice is for the better.

It’s almost time for the Beauty Shop to close, but there's a few finishing touches that need to be taken care of because Lucy has beautiful red nails and Angel has no polish at all. Lucy takes a nap while Angel sings a soft lullaby to the beat of her work. Cutting and pulling off all of Lucy's nails until all ten are accounted for. Her work is almost done.

 But oh, how Lucy’s skin glows like pearls, clear as virtue and pretty as those magazines! She picks up her crafting knife and gets carving, the screams come anew, but end as abruptly as they started. 

After hours of sewing blonde hair, gluing pearly skin, arranging eye brows and lashes, donning red nails, and crying and laughing with her stolen lips, Angel finally stands on the pageant stage in a brand new mask. Complete with the final thing she stole, bright unseeing eyes.

The crowd erupts in applause like she had never heard. Whistles and cheering, with a first place trophy for the most desirable girl in town.