Eva sat deep in the leather chair and sighed. So much time wasted here ! Soft music and the gentle trickling of water filled the air as four skillful pair of hands rummaged through her thick auburn hair. Now and then a long lock would obsure her view of the marble fountain set in the middle of the salon. It had taken her a very long time to grow it. Patience, care and numerous free blow jobs to numerous boring people but it was worth it. Now and then a hand would harvest a heavy thud of a swollen abdomen rich with blood, hitting the glass bottomed jar. They would be counted, pierced and then tested. Two hours everyday. To keep her hair clean. To keep that damned scanner negative. Nobody wanted a bald scabby whore, well not the clients she knew. Redheads were a rare commodity, redheads who scanned yellow even more so.
Eva had heard rumours of what it was like. The eggs so small they would first go unnoticed. They would hatch, fixing their tube-like mouths to the skin by gluing themselves to the surrounding hair. Once tightly secured, they would feed and feed and grow and grow so quickly, within ten days it would be too late. And while sucking our blood, in some godly exchange, they would release toxins in our bloodstream. Other rumours whispered of a new burrowing kind, a kind that favoured the haven found under warm moist skin and an endless supply of food. Like us, they had adapted, like us they had become lazy. First the headaches would appear, then the hallucinations or the pain as the now adults broke free, eating and breeding on scalp, underarms or in the most intimate darkness of all. And the fever, always the fever. If lucky, death would come and knock on your door. If he didn't, he would wait a few extra hours at the bottom of Greystones Bridge or at the head of an oncoming train. Anything short, sweet and painless. Anything but the Final Phase. Decades of chemical artifical sprays used to control them and now they were controlling us. She shuddered. One pair of hands inquired if she was cold. Eva shook her head. She had wasted enough time here already. She wasn't going to waste any more by talking. At least she could afford the daily control in a private salon. No backstreet barber shop for her!
Such was the privilege of being rich, extremely rich! The wealthy let their hair grow, their parasites were hand picked and treated everyday, while the poor... ah the poor... Somewhere on the lower social ladder somebody had to have their face covered in shit, as long as she wasn't at the bottom, she didn't care.
The bald receptionist faintly smiled and passed Eva's wrist under the Council's scanner. It flashed yellow.
The artifical voice gently annonced; « Scan negative. Four sterile adults. Zero nits»
The receptionist smiled, « You are free to go. Same time tomorrow ?»
Eva nodded and left.
She never bothered talking to eggheads, after all they were nothing.
