The doctor blinked at her. She sat on the edge of the table, swathed in a paper robe, swinging her bare legs and looking at him expectantly.
“Now, let me see if I have this correct, you want me to infect you with Alopecia.”
She nodded, the thin fuzz of copper covering her scalp gleaming in the overhead light. “It’s a disease where the body fights hair,” she began. “Many people who have the disease…”
“… are completely hairless. I know.” This had to be one of the nuttier requests he’d ever heard. He couldn’t wait to tell the guys on Saturday when they played poker.
She blushed. “Right. You’re a doctor. I almost forgot.”
“Ms. Fields, Alopecia is…”
She cut him off. “Tangie. And yes, I know it’s a genetic disorder. But there have been advances in genetic medicine in the last decade…”
He checked her chart as she continued to very carefully explain the disease to him. Tangerine Fields? What a name. No wonder she was bonzo: The schoolyard teasing must have been merciless. When she finished chattering, he gently, firmly, told her that Alopecia Areata was a genetic disorder and that under no circumstances would he even consider “infecting” her with it, even if it were possible.
She did not look at all surprised, she just sighed, her little heart shaped face pensive.
“I understand. I guess I was just looking for the easy way.”
“I’m glad you understand Ms. Fields,” he began.
“Tangie. And I do understand. Really. I guess I’ll just have to go through the chemotherapy then.”
“Ms… Tangie… you don’t have cancer.”
Ten minutes later, he steered her to the door by her elbow with a referral to one of his poker buddies. Let Don deal with her; he had the degree in psychology. Closing the door firmly behind the wacky little pixie faced woman, he wondered if he had time for a quick nip of scotch before his next patient.
* * *
Tangie stood in front of the chipped sink in her bathroom. She sang songs under her breath, counted backwards from five hundred, bounced on her toes, and tried to ignore the burning sensation that covered her from head to toe. The depilatory had been on for over twenty minutes, but it was her experience that forty five minutes did a better job. In a weird way, the burning felt right. She decided to kill the last fifteen minutes tweezing her eyelashes.
Afterwards, it was still no good. She’d tried waxing, of course, but there were so many parts of her that she couldn’t reach and she couldn’t afford to have it done professionally. Electrolysis was out of the question. She was on disability - being inherently evil meant she couldn’t work - and she had hoped to have the problem covered medically; what else was Medicare for?
She spent the next week pulling out her eyelashes and checking the rest of her body carefully to see if the evil would return. Sure enough, as soon as her scalp started to develop faint red fuzz, she started thinking about fire. The wickedness grew and she couldn’t put on more hair remover because she’d get chemical burns again and they’d put her back in the “home”. The “home” was Hades. They wouldn’t let her have depilatory or razors or even tweezers, and she always had to lie and tell them that she felt better in order to leave.
“Fire, inferno, infernus, explosion, expulsum.” Once, the words helped. But not anymore. She thought them out loud and they chased away the evil for a time, but as the red covered her, so did thoughts of fire.
Blaze, burn, fire, flame. Words to drive the evil off and candles to keep it at bay. The evil crisped away from the fire with the smell of Hades; even the smallest of them couldn’t withstand the cleansing heat. Sometimes the fire needed help. Lighter fluid was good. Incinerate, incendia, fire, ignus, fire, purgo, burn. Sometimes the nonsense worked, but fire worked every time.
Pacing around her shabby house and running her hands over her body, feeling for signs of evil. The burns hurt, but not as bad as the evil and burned skin didn’t grow hair. Home was Hades and Hades was home so she had to be careful not to burn herself too badly. Abyssus, incedia, fire, blaze. The mark of evil was in the roots of her hair which sprouted over her body like tiny flames. She couldn’t stop; it would grow, so she paced and screamed the words, but the evil grew, and the fire burned.
She thought at first she was dreaming again. She heard the words and her own voice from long ago intoning and screaming,
“Reprobo veneficus ut abyssus per incendia! In incendia Abyssus! Send the witch to the fires of Hades!” She tried to struggle free of the flame but it was all around her; it was on her. It was agony and she knew she was dying, but before she did, she remembered burning the witch.
She had persecuted the woman, condemned her to torture by insisting that her red hair was the mark of evil. Tangie had lied and testified, and she had personally lit the pyre. When the torch touched dry wood, the woman had cursed her, lifetimes ago. For one brief moment, Tangie was sane and she remembered burning herself time and time again, and she despaired, knowing she would burn in her next life too. This was her curse, and it was as eternal; she bore the roots of all evil.