The Long Strands of the Loft

I remember it like a splinter under the skin, a memory I can’t dig out. It was during my junior year at Ashworth University, in a cramped lecture hall that smelled of dust and old varnish. I had a friend, Caleb, who sat behind me in Professor Hargrove’s history seminar. My hair was long then, reaching the middle of my back, and it would spill over the back of my chair, brushing against his desk. He had a habit of tugging on it, playfully, to get my attention. I’d flick my hair forward, and he’d chuckle. This became our little ritual.

Then I got it cut, just below my shoulder blades. It felt lighter, freer. But the ritual didn’t stop. He’d still find a stray strand and give it a gentle pull. I thought nothing of it, even when it grew more persistent. One afternoon, we were reading aloud from a thick tome on medieval trade routes. I felt a sharp tug, harder than usual. I flinched but continued, tying my hair into a messy bun to keep it out of his reach. The tugging didn’t stop. In fact, it grew more insistent, each yank a little harder, a little more aggressive. I gritted my teeth, trying to focus on the text, but the tugs came faster, like a metronome of irritation.

When Professor Hargrove stepped out to fetch a misplaced document, I snapped. I turned around, ready to hiss at Caleb, but the seat behind me was empty. The entire row was empty. Caleb had been absent all day. A cold dread coiled in my stomach. I turned back to my desk, and there was a folded piece of paper, neatly placed on my notebook. It was from Alex, who sat two rows to my left. The note read: ‘Dude, your hair is moving on its own. It’s like it’s reaching out to you.’ I stared at the note, then at my own hair, which lay innocently over my shoulder. The room felt colder, the shadows deeper.

I tried to shake it off, thinking it was a prank. But as I looked down, a single strand of my hair lifted, as if caught in a breeze, and pointed toward the empty seat behind me. A whisper, too faint to understand, seemed to come from that direction. My heart hammered. I scooped up my hair and clutched it, feeling a strange resistance, as if it were alive. The rest of the class passed in a blur. Alex avoided my gaze. Caleb texted me later saying he had a doctor’s appointment.

That night, I couldn’t sleep. I kept feeling a phantom tug at my scalp, even though my hair was tied in a tight braid. Around midnight, I heard a soft rustling from my dresser, where I had left a hairbrush. I turned on the lamp. The brush was moving across the wooden surface, dragging several long, dark strands that seemed to extend from the brush into the shadows. They were my hair, but they moved with a life of their own, coiling and uncoiling like serpents. I watched, paralyzed, as one strand snaked toward the corner of the room, where the darkness seemed to pulse.

I threw the brush out the window. The next morning, it was on my doorstep, with a small note written in my own handwriting: ‘Don’t cut me.’ I didn’t remember writing it. The handwriting was mine, but the sentiment was alien. Over the next week, the tugs became a constant presence, even when I was alone. I felt them in the shower, in my sleep, in the middle of lectures. I cut my hair shorter, almost to my ears. That night, I found every strand I had cut arranged on my pillow in the shape of a noose.

I called Alex in a panic. He told me he hadn’t seen anything weird, but his voice was tight. Then he said something that chilled me: ‘You know, in the old dormitory, the one they tore down, there was a strange fungus in the vents. It grew in hair-like filaments. People said it caused hallucinations.’ I hung up. I went to the library, looking for any record of that fungus. I found an obscure journal article about a researcher who studied it, claiming it had a ‘mimetic’ quality, imitating the forms of things it touched. The article ended mid-sentence: ‘It learns the shape of its host…’

I stopped going to classes. I wrapped my head in scarves, but I could still feel the tugging. It was inside my skull now, a pull at the roots of my thoughts. I started pulling my own hair out, trying to free myself. My scalp became sore, and my fingers came away with clumps of hair. But the strands I pulled, they seemed to grow back instantly, darker, thicker. I looked in the mirror and saw my reflection, but behind me, in the glass, there was a silhouette with long, flowing hair, darker than absence. It raised a hand and waved.

I fled. I took a bus to the coast, to a small town where no one knew me. I shaved my head completely. The tugging stopped for a day. I felt a fragile peace. But that night, as I lay in a motel bed, I felt a single strand brush across my cheek. I opened my eyes. The ceiling was covered in a fine, dark web, pulsating slowly. And from the center of the web, a thin strand descended, hovering above my face. It whispered, in a voice that was almost my own, ‘You can’t cut what’s already part of you.’ I woke up screaming, but the scream was drowned out by the soft, terrible sound of hair growing.