Nonsequential Vignettes of The Wigmaker

1.

“Wear it, Marie,” said Heath, “for a woman does as she’s told.”

The brown locks fell about Marie’s forehead, framing her face, and for an instant Heath glimpsed a ghost in the twinkle of her eyes, veiled in part behind a wave of hair.

“And stand there by the window. Yes, there in that patch of sunlight.”

Marie obliged, and the golden brown gleamed like syrup.

“Off with you,” said Heath.

Marie made to leave, but he grabbed her wrist, his grip firm as a corset.

“The wig,” he said.

She removed it, revealing flaxen hair beneath.

In his nascent solitude, Heath knelt in the sunlight where he caressed his newly made wig.

2.

Heath pushed a hook through the wig cap and was knotting a strand with his calloused fingers, dirt beneath his nails, when two brown ears and two brown eyes appeared at his window. Heath dropped the wig and jumped out of his chair. The small brown creature, it roamed around his studio, tail swaying like a plume, before it sat back on its hindlegs and meowed.

“What?” demanded Heath.

It rubbed against his legs, purring.

And before he could kick it with his boot, its brown eyes rose to meet his, and they were familiar, dark and piercing.

“Cathy?” he said.

3.

The windows banged in their frames, wind whistling through the cracks, and even the trees outstretched their arms and scratched against the glass.

Don’t leave me, came the voice – a plea. Heath stirred from sleep, gripping the sheets to his chest as branches shrieked outside his window. He walked barefoot to the window where he rested his palm, staring out at the moonlit moors, and the distant silhouette of a tombstone.

“Come back to bed,” said Marie, bare save for her nightgown.

“I shall,” replied Heath, but he was far away, his whisper like an echo from that elsewhere. He was absent; and though audible, his responses seemed merely mouthed. Marie sensed she was reading his lips more often, it seemed, than actually hearing him.

4.

Crackling fireplace, and a swig of oblivion which singed the throat. Heath wandered around his studio like a ghost, eyes absent, eyes elsewhere.

There was a knock at the door, and it creaked open an inch.

“Darling?”

“Begone,” he yelled, his glass shattering against the wall.

Marie hurriedly shut the door and disappeared from sight.

“My soul,” whispered Heath, keeling over. “It has gone wandering again, a barefoot somnambulist roaming the moors.”

And the firelight, it flickered across the shards of glass, as Heath fell into a slumber right there on the floorboards, upon which he later vomited up all that liquid mercy.

5.

On his candlelit desk were scattered ventilating needles, shears, pins, and a wig cap on a block casting a shadow across his hands. He snatched at it – only air.

You abandoned me, came the voice. Will you have me freeze out here alone?

“Tell me you’re playing hide and seek,” mumbled Heath, and slumped back in his chair, a glass now dangling precariously between his thumb and forefinger.

“Tell me you’re playing hide and seek,” he commanded, as the shadow flickered.

He took the last sip of orange oblivion, leaning forward in his chair, elbows on his knees, unkempt hair about his sullen face. He swirled an ice cube round his empty glass.

“Tell me you’re playing hide and seek,” he whispered, before squeezing his eyes shut.

6.

“Adorn your hair with this heather,” said Heath, outreaching a purple palm.

Marie obliged, tucking with care the violet bells behind her ears and in her brown wig.

“Wilder, like a child who rolls and tumbles down these hills, squealing with laughter.”

“Like so?” asked Marie, carefully fluffing her wig as one does a pillow, and from beneath the brown peeked her natural blonde locks as though from between curtains.

Heath sighed and turned to face the window, the gnarled tree outside like an oracle’s bony hand.

“What grieves you, my love?”

“Why must you wear it improperly?”

7.

Heath lay in the grass, the wuthering winds tangling in knots his hair.

“Forgive me,” he whispered to the heavens, grey, his brow furrowed as the storm clouds crackled with thunder.

“I can no longer tell the waking world from a dream. Were you buried or was it I? Do I find myself in Hell or are these the gates to Paradise?”

And the breeze caressed his cheek as it began to pitter-patter, raindrops sticking to the grass like dew.

“I’ll catch my death,” muttered Heath as he watched the black clouds roll in. With them came showers which flattened the heather and transformed into a second skin his white shirt.

8.

Heath dusted the dirt off the coffin lid which opened with a creak, sweet and nauseating was the scent that wafted over him. But the blue face, blue lids, blue lips, they beckoned with their familiarity. You’re home, came the voice, and Heath climbed in. Home – he was home.

He buried his face in her neck, putrid, and gagged involuntarily.

“Cathy,” he managed, burying his face in her hair, his begrimed hands on her cold cheeks.

“I would slit a thousand throats if it endowed with one last breath your worn lungs.”

His gnarled hands found Cathy’s shoulders, and he shook her hard like old times – times when she wouldn’t listen.

“With that single breath, would you not plant on these parched lips a final kiss?” he insisted, before pressing his lips against hers, sickly sweet and unresponsive.

He lay his face against her chest where the odour, it was bearable, and threw his arms around her still body.

“Even my blood pines for the warmth of yours. This flesh, Cathy, so cold, tell me it is but a farce, that I should open my eyes and find you beside me, our little ones climbing into bed to bid us good morning.”

And he closed his eyes and fleshed out that elsewhere, so vivid – if only he were sleeping, if only he could wake up.

“Heaven help us,” he whispered.

*

“Do forgive me, Cathy. I need a token to recall that you were not but a dream. You see, I cannot lose you entirely.” And he sobbed into the rotting chest of Catherine, before he pulled from his pocket a hairdresser’s shears.