by Alana Greig
“Fruit is better, and my animals really like berries.”
For whatever reason, that day the fawn was brave enough to come into the garden and approach Rachael. It was a moment before she noticed her new companion. Martha made a dash for the camera to capture this first for her daughter; back at the window, she raised the camera to her eye to focus the frame and then froze. Rachael had her hand raised towards the deer with her tiny palm filled with berries; her silent plea was clear—"please be my friend.”
As the young deer took a few slow steps closer and stretched its graceful neck to sample the sweet treat held out to it, everything changed. The camera shutter went off as Rachael’s beautiful hair whipped up suddenly, as if caught in a strong gust of wind. It dragged the small girl about; she was a puppet, caught in an invisible hand that pulled the child round as if she weighed nothing at all.
Rachael was too shocked to cry out at first, but then she found her voice. The scream bubbled up from a deep place inside her, the place where the worst nightmares live. Just as the first strains of her high-pitched squeal escaped her lips, Martha had unfrozen, dropped the camera, and ran for the back door to save her child from an unknown danger.
Rachael’s long golden hair was no longer a beautiful waterfall of shining gold, it was a weapon, a hangman’s rope. It was deadly. The thick tail of hair coiled itself around the fawn’s neck. Rachael’s screams were hysterical; it was a sound that could chill one’s blood.
Almost to her child now, Martha watched as little Rachael thrashed and screamed as if controlled by an unseen force. She was thrown backward towards her forgotten tea party which had not so long ago given her such joy. It was then that the scene took a rapid turn. It all happened so fast. Martha reached her child just as her hair whipped viciously back and then gently fell against Rachael’s quivering back. But it was the loud crack of the fawn’s neck that froze them; that would never be forgotten. Martha hid the little girl’s face in her chest. She watched in horror as the creature, an innocent child, much like her own, collapsed into the clover beneath its hooves. Its huge brown eyes were glassy, devoid of life. Martha knew that this had not been Rachael’s doing. The tiny body she held was shaking; she was terrified.
There was something within her though; it was evil, there was no doubt about that. The only comfort to be had in that moment was that it only seemed to be strong enough to control her hair. Martha prayed that it would never gain any more strength.
Why had her hair not attacked me?
Then she remembered she always wore a protection spell, ever since the feeling of otherness had hung about the child. The question then was what the hell was she going to do to protect Rachael essentially from herself?
TWELVE YEARS LATER . . .
Racheal had learned to live with her affliction as best as she could. Martha was a powerful magic user and had cast many charms and wards so that Rachael’s hair no longer attacked anyone that came too close, including animals. In the end though, at around the age of thirteen, Martha stopped taking Rachael out into the wider world. By the time she was seventeen, Rachael was lonely and resentful of her virtual prisoner status.
Imagine being seventeen and never having friends; imagine the complete feeling of loneliness. Apart from her mother who was a constant companion, she was utterly alone. Rachael hated her life, and like every other girl her age, she was desperate for friends and her first love. Over time, she argued with Martha about the reasons why she would be fine in the outside world, how the magic would hold, and there really wasn’t a need to worry; there hadn’t been an incident for years. The answer was always no, and they fought for days, both becoming resentful of their circumstances. The more Martha tried to explain, the more Rachael’s temper would increase.
It reached the breaking point two months after her seventeenth birthday; she became so agitated that somehow, she managed to break through the binding spell. Thankfully, Martha had preempted this and managed to repair the damage and cast a stronger binding spell over Rachael’s hair while it was already reaching for her throat. After that, there was no more talk about going outside for a while. However, it was becoming clear to Martha that Rachael was turning into quite a volatile young woman, and therefore, extra care needed to be taken. Rachael was becoming extremely dangerous.
It was with a heavy heart that she decided it was best that Rachael be kept in isolation, shrouded by magic, where she could live out her days safely. It was a hard decision to make and one Martha did not relish. She treated Rachael as if she were her own child; she loved her like only a mother could. She had tried everything to remedy this curse that lived within the child; nothing worked.
Martha recalled the day she had tried to cut Rachael’s hair. She still bore the scars from the cutting shears that had ended up dug deep into her flesh; she walked with a limp now thanks to that fateful day.
Getting Rachael to the abandoned folly by the river was no easy feat. The home was beautiful; Martha had seen to that. It contained a library, music room, kitchen, bedroom, and a tower to take in the views. It was of the finest stone and, thanks to a few spells, would never age or fall into disrepair. Rachael was in love with the house; she ran through the rooms excitedly choosing where her favourite objects and keepsakes would live, and tried to decide which room she would use as a bedroom, the actual bedroom or the tower. It was when Martha came to leave that she realised that she was going to be living in this house alone. It was a prison. The rage overcame her once more.
Martha made it out of the house before the enchantment surrounding Rachael’s hair broke again. She stood outside the small folly a moment to catch her breath, and then began to throw up the magical wards and concealing the doors and windows. Rachael would still be able to see out, but no one would be able to see in; to the casual observer this folly would appear abandoned and dilapidated. Deeply hurt by what she had had to do, Martha left the riverbank and her child; the sound of breaking furniture followed her as she made her way back through the forest.
Rachael had never been so angry; she was a prisoner in a gilded cage. The food magically replenished itself whenever she ate something. There was always fresh water, and her home never became dirty even though she made no attempts to clean.
All that time alone had a rather damaging effect on Rachael, her mind imploded. Humans are a social species; they thrive on that essential contact with their own kind. Rachael needed to feel valued and loved and alive. She needed to be a part of the world to truly live. But she wasn’t, she wasn’t a part of any world, and gradually, piece by shattered piece, her mind unraveled.
Time meant little when one is a prisoner in solitary confinement, so she wasn’t sure whether a day, a month, a year, a decade, or longer had passed. There were no mirrors within her house. She had no idea how aged she had become. The one thing she was sure of was her hair, her beautiful cursed hair. It swept the floor and fell around her feet in pools of gold. It was unchanged. Forever vibrant and strong.
The day she saw a stranger approach her secluded home was a great cause for concern. She knew two things must have happened. The wards hiding the folly from the world must be gone. This also meant that her mother, Martha, was dead. The heartbreak she felt was all consuming. The guilt was overwhelming, and her rage was overpowering. The anger crashed over her in waves that felt like they would tear her apart.
How long has she been here?
How long had it been since she had seen her mother’s face?
How lonely and broken had she truly become?
Looking at the door, she realised a horrible truth. Now she that had the freedom she had craved for so long, she didn’t want it.
She watched the woman approach and laugh, so even after all these years alone there was no prince to save her like in the story books she had read when she was a child. No, it was just some woman walking through the woods, a woman who had stumbled into a clearing containing a beautiful home with a deadly secret.
Rachael watched
the woman approach with envious eyes; it wasn’t fair. She watched the sun glint off of chestnut brown hair, and the rosy cheeks that spoke of days spent in the sun. The anger within her boiled over. How dare this woman come here and mock her with her freedom and happiness when all Rachael had was this house and her anger and her hair.
In a moment of absolute fury, she decided that this woman, this stranger didn’t deserve the happiness; she did. Let this stranger be locked away in this prison; let her go slowly mad within the gilded cage. It was her turn to be free. She had waited long enough, and now there was no one, no magic, and no reason, for her to stay within these walls a moment longer.
Unfortunately, Rachael had forgotten the consequences of being around others. There was no way that she could just simply grab the woman, put her in the house, lock the door, and walk away. There were other things to consider, like her cursed hair.
It was too late by the time her mind cooled enough to realise her error. Meters of her golden hair flew about her the second the door was opened. Unlike when she was a child, her hair was much longer, and so the thrashing of it didn’t affect her as it had back then. It cascaded around her like a golden sea. The other woman had turned at the sound of the door opening, only to be greeted by Rachael’s hair wrapping her from ankles to neck. Rachael stared in a mixture of horror and manic glee.
It was over quickly, as it had been with the deer all those years ago. Only this time, Rachael felt real fear and real guilt for what had happened. If she had only stayed in the house and heeded her mother’s warning; then here wouldn’t be a mummified woman trapped within her hair. Her loneliness was a small price to pay when compared to murder.
With tears in her eyes, she yanked on her hair and watched it unfurl from the now dead woman. It returned to its usual innate self. Mouthing the word “sorry” to her victim, Rachael gathered up her hair, backed into her home, and closed the door. Still clutching her tresses to her chest, she headed to the kitchen. There was no way she was willing to live like this; there was no way she could allow that to happen again. Reaching blindly into one of the drawers, she pulled out a pair of cutting shears. The second they were in her hand, the hair, her hair, the crowning glory that caused so much suffering, attacked.
MANY YEARS LATER . . .
The folly was found again, this time by an architect. The land had been bought by a wealthy business owner who wanted to use the property for a holiday home. When the man tried to enter the house, he found the door jammed shut. Looking through the windows, he was shocked to see the remains of what appeared to be two desiccated females; one was on the kitchen table surrounded by long dead flowers, and the other was in the middle of the kitchen floor with a pair of cutting shears near her right hand. The only thing that was very out of place—other than the dead bodies in the middle of the kitchen—was that most of the room was covered in masses of golden hair.
As his hand touched the window, something shot out of the gloomy corner of the room and thumped against the window, rattling the panes. Stepping back in shock, he looked to see what had caused the bang. All the colour drained from his face as he realised the thing that was rapping on the window was a lock of the golden hair.
TINY VIRUS
BASED ON THUMBELINA
Germs, disgusting microscopic, destructive entities. They will wipe out the human race someday; in the distant future, there will be a virus so devastating that we will not be able to contain it or cure it with our surgeries and chemicals. So, let’s take a moment to think about that possible future. A future where a tiny vial that contains a lethal pathogen code-named THUMBELINA exists.
Why would we suspend reality, you’re thinking, and create this terrible world-altering virus? What if at this moment, in a lab somewhere, a clever scientist has already created such a thing.
What if this isn’t hypothetical at all?
Somewhere in the world right now, there is a secret facility that cultivates highly advanced genetically modified foodstuffs and animals. Now imagine that somehow, some of the GM corn accidentally became contaminated with a form of weaponised bubonic plague. Sounds far- fetched right? But mistakes happen every day in labs all over the world. So, it’s really not unimaginable, is it?
World leaders could, and possibly already, cover up major accidents that take place in facilities that we, the public, know nothing about.
The agent code-named THUMBELINA came into being by the cross contamination of two highly developed, yet extremely different, entities. Unfortunately, this accident was missed, and the corn was sent for its usual batch of routine tests.
One of the tests is to feed the milled corn to animals, to ensure it is safe for human consumption. Animals in themselves are a wild card. Why, you ask? Because they carry hitchhikers also known as fleas. The fleas became carries for the virus and spread it from animal to animal in a very short space of time. THUMBELINA was now in active population.
Within the space of two weeks, twenty percent of the entire facility was locked down, quarantined, and for all intents and purposes, forgotten about by the government that set it up in the first place. THUMBELINA mutated quickly and was now the world’s most deadly contagion that had ever been recorded.
Professor Jarvis was the leader in the field of biochemical warfare. When she heard of the new highly contagious virus she was horrified and spent many hours studying the infected as best as she could. She noticed that depending on the host, the symptoms and rapidity of the illness progression differed greatly.
For example, the first host, who we shall name Patient Zero, was a mouse; now, the mice had been fed a mixture of seed and milled GM corn for precisely five months and sixteen days. It took Patient Zero three days to reach what Prof. Jarvis hypothesised was the last stages of the infection’s life cycle. Once the rodents had died, more tests were undertaken. It was discovered that their organs had liquefied after death, or right before, leaving what appeared to be a skin sack sitting in a puddle of foul-smelling bodily fluids.
It was also noted by Prof. Jarvis, that each rodent that she examined was completely devoid of fleas, bone marrow, and all soft tissues. As the virus spread from species to species, she watched in fascination. Depending on the next host’s diet and breed, the presentation of the virus changed the symptomatic output of the patient. To her horror, it was also mutating at an alarming rate. This new and disturbing finding caused her to take on the incredibly dangerous task of collecting samples from each species that has contracted THUMBELINA. Thus, beginning a lengthy process of trying to create either an antiviral or a cure. At the very least, an antiviral would slow down the progression. Hopefully.
Things seem to be advancing as well as could be expected, until it spread to the amphibians. Once the toads became infected, the entire game changed. The toads were living in biologically altered habitats. The origins of the introduction of THUMBELINA was unknown to the professor; she could only assume that somehow the water supply had become infected. This posed new challenges, for her and the two biologists she had managed to recruit, on this mission to contain the virus and potentially save mankind.
Toads by nature are quite hardy. However, when startled or threatened, they have a nasty habit of squirting a toxin at their would-be attacker. This is called the bufotoxin. When the toads came into contact with the virus, their bufotoxin levels altered immeasurably. Now, the toads were constantly secreting this altered toxin rather than just as a form of defence. The knock-on effect of this new mutation of THUMBELINA meant that every aquatic animal and vegetation that came into contact with either the host or the water supply became infected with a brand new strain.
Prof. Jarvis watched in horror as entire biodomes of amphibians, fish, and vegetation died within a week, sometimes in as little as a few hours. It was then that she reached the conclusion; THUMBELINA was never going to be curable.
The facility had been on lockdown since Patient Zero had been identified and then subsequently died. This, however, didn’t see
m to bother the pioneering microbiologist, Prof. Nugent. He had, against the advice of every authority who knew about the facility, decided to return to the site after its closing.
When Prof. Nugent arrived and practically beat the front door down, Jarvis felt she had no choice but to allow him entry. If there was one thing that had been drummed into her by the officials who came to evacuate staff, it was that no matter what happened, no one must ever know this place or these experiments existed.
As soon as the new professor gained access, he exam‐ ined the timeline of THUMBELINA and its mutations. He was lost for words; the rapid spread of the virus was unprecedented. It was highly adaptable and resistant to all strains of antidote that had been created thus far. He asked Prof. Jarvis and her team for every piece of evidence, every scrap of data and any physical samples they had collected since the outbreak.
Together, the team of four worked tirelessly in their tiny section of the facility, trying to find a way to at least slow THUMBELINA down. It was during a routine check of the aviary that one of the biologists suffered a tear in their biohazard suit. This on its own would not have posed a great risk, however, he didn’t notice the breach and then continued his tour and entered the amphibians’ biodome. As soon as his hand was submerged in the water to collect the latest sample, his fate was sealed. The bufotoxin that the toads secrete causes skin irritation in human, usually completely harmless. In this case, it was weaponised, and as soon as Mike scratched absently as his irritated skin, he created microscopic tears with his fingernails which allowed THUMBELINA into his bloodstream. Mike became patient zero of the human race. For any biologist, the jump from domestic or wild animals to the human population is their worse night‐ mare; they all hope it will never come to pass.