IGNATIUS The Colors of Rage

Chapter e Reflex

He planted his feet and met her stare. His hand rose, and he sliced the scissors through the air at the height of his own chin. His voice was tight, and rumbling with pressure. “It’ll be right f*****g here; where he usually had it. Are you happy?! Hair is the least of our worries.”

Her expression softened and she glided a lock of her own hair through her hands. Her fingers caressed the strands softly. “Will it always grow so fast?”

Nansen’s arms dropped to his sides and he slouched his shoulders downward. “That’s it… I’m defeated.” He raised his hands like claws. “I want to strangle you, but I know that strangling you won’t work, so, I’ll just try to explain. The first time that hair is cut, the growing slows down, and it won’t grow back that fast ever again. It actually grows back very slowly, so you need to protect it if you don’t want to be bald for ten years.” 

She frowned at the very thought of it and wrinkled her nose. Her eyes observed the snowy shimmer of her locks closely. “Then, I shouldn’t cut it, just in case?” She looked up with large hopeful eyes. “What will happen if I never cut it?” 

Nansen couldn’t handle it. A growl of frustration mixed with anxiety traveled out of his throat and he clutched the scissors tighter in his grasp, nearly bending them useless. “You will be asleep... all the time, like an old fat cat, which might be better than having you around asking questions all the time! This is all really unimportant compared to the real problems at hand.”

Unconcerned for him, she peered elsewhere. “When it’s my turn, I am going to cut it really short. All the way to my chin-”

“No, you aren’t. You’re a woman. You need your hair to attract men.”

Her cheeks flushed red and she pinched her lips together. “Such useless jargon. Women aren’t to be looked at only in that way! Where I come from, men and women are equal, and can choose whichever hairstyle that they want.”

The scissor blades spliced through the air. “You aren’t where you were anymore, now are you? Here, you’re a woman. Here, you will look like a woman. Here, you’ll act like a woman-” Behind him, the door opened, creaking only once, and he silenced. His back flattened and his shoulders pulled back as he peered through the mirror, watching Baine enter the room. He swallowed dryly, folded his hands behind his back, and turned around. 

The second their eyes met, Baine recognized Nansen’s familiar twisted expression that meant he had bad news to deliver. Even so, Baine closed the door gently behind himself and released his shoulders. “It looks like you want to tell me something, Nansen. What is it?”

“I…” he choked. His breath was hindered, and the only way to breathe freely again was to let the confession out. The tension in his body snapped and he hunched forward submissively. His eyes shut and his head tilted back. His mouth opened and hung down in a frown. The words flew out of him as if they were bullets from an automatic rifle. “I’m sorry! I’m such an i***t! A fool! An impatient stupid fool! I’m sorry!”

Baine rolled his eyes and blew air out of his nose. “Oh, I’ve seen this act before. What did you do?” 

Nansen’s hands flipped up toward his shoulders and he flashed his palms, surrendering. “I took him to the feeding rooms! Please forgive me!” 

Baine’s eyes stretched round and his lips parted, genuinely surprised. “What?! When did you do that? I was only gone for a few hours! Besides… wasn’t he missing?”

Nansen’s expression was one of intense pain although he was feeling none of it physically. His upper back bent and he hunched forward more. His frown deepened. “I’m sorry Baine… I didn’t know what I was doing. I just wanted to make it up to you for running away earlier. Do you remember? When you could have used my help? I’d never taken anyone down for the first time and I didn’t think it would be that big of a deal.” He looked up, begging for mercy with his large droopy golden eyes. “Emi found him in stage two. We took him down there, because we needed to.” 

Disbelief flashed across Baine’s eyes and he marched up behind Iggy. He stared at him through the mirror. Confusion played dimly in both of their eyes as if neither of them knew the other. “Is this true?” he asked. Iggy was still too numb to the real world to converse in any way. Baine’s hand clamped over the top of his shoulder, but still, no real response. He shook him. “He still seems out of it… How long has he been like this?” 

“I know!” Nansen spun to standing at his side with his chest pointed toward the back of Iggy’s head. His knees bent and his hands rose in another large dramatic pose. “I didn’t want to tell you at all, but after what happened, there was just no way of hiding it.” 

“Well, that’s comforting.” Baine pulled away from the reflection. “Are you sure he had enough? He’s not really there.”

Nansen laughed nervously, yet feeling a little better now that some of the truth was out in the open. His hand flattened over his forehead and dragged down along the side of his neck. “That’s not all… either. When we first put him in there, he resisted, but then-”

Baine’s face hardened with one long blink and he planted his feet and pinned his hands on his hips in a refusal to believe. “He resisted? That doesn’t sound like stage two at all. You’re mistaken.”

Nansen laid a hand over his heart and nodded his head so that his eyes became wider and more visible. “I was shocked too, but then-”

Baine’s angry tone added another level of silence to the room. “‘But then?’ Start from the very beginning because this is all making very little sense. Where and who found him?”