Heritage (I) by Zero

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AUTHOR’S NOTE: You guys already know me, this is never just a haircut story. This one has heavy issues of generational trauma, anxiety and depression, so be warned it’s going to be a ride, buckle up. It’s also going to be a long one. As I always say: If you guys love it or hate it, feel more than free than let me know.




His father says he is sick of the men in the base calling his youngest son a pretty boy.

Liam knows the truth.

His father isn’t sick of the men in base and the names they’re calling him.

His father is sick of him.

Which is fair, because he is also sick of his father.

"I’ve been wanting to shave you for so long and get rid of this pretty hair. You know, you don’t need to have hair this pretty, boy" his father oils his hair clippers, not lifting his eyes to meet his gaze as they sit in front of each other on stools, in their garage.

His father has come back from deployment five days ago. Which means everything about him, every of his despicable personality traits is heightened.

Which means of course that he has finally followed through with his constant threat to send him off to a military boarding school.

His father is not only getting rid of his hair, he is getting rid of him. Liam knows it.

His father’s hair clippers are a familiar sight. A machine he and his brother faced every summer when they were both younger. He doesn’t know for how long his father has had them for sure. Knowing his father, it’s possible he bought them long before either him or his brother were born.

The same way his father had always spoken of how he imagined fathering boys since the very first day of his life that he knew he wanted to be a father.

Sometimes, he wishes that moment of clarity, that revelation of fatherhood had never reached his father.

"You’ll be a soldier, you won’t need hair, you won’t even want it when you’re out in the field" his father tests the hair clippers, he flicks the switch and they resurrect once more in his hand "Now, don’t move. Bow your head for me".

His brother never had to bow his head down for his father. This is the privileged treatment his father saves for him.

Liam takes a deep breath and runs a hand through his shoulder length hair, all too aware of how brushes against the back of his neck, of all the months it had taken him to grow it out this long.

"I won’t have my own son embarrassing me in military school with long hair like yours, boy" his father emphasizes.

Five days since he came back and not once has his father called him by his actual name.

Yes, military school, his inevitable and fated military career like his father. The gratitude that will one day bloom inside of his heart at his father’s involvement in his future and his life.

This is all playing in his father’s head like a film funded by the department of defense, he is sure.

It stars him, the teenaged rebel without a cause, being sent away from home to military boarding school as a last resort to set him straight and be tamed by the school’s officers and their unconventional methods and possible making friends and a girlfriend along the way (never mind the single sex situation, he will somehow fall in love with a girl while he is there), to return home a changed man who has come of age, willing and ready to follow into his father’s footsteps at long last, like he was always meant to be but refused to see, he just needed to be yelled at by a drill instructor and do pushups to realize that his father loves him.

This scene right here, is the beginning of his transformation montage for his father.

He bows his head, his locks cascading about his face one last time. Liam can’t see the guard or the blade his father is adjusting on the clippers, but he can see the ones he isn’t using, resting on the table beside them.

The guards his father has never used at all to cut his or his brother’s hair.

He knows his father will have him shorn like a recruit, like he has always threatened and desired to.

He closes his hands in fists over his knees. His father moves his locks away from his hairline to uncover his nape, the entire back of his neck.

The buzz comes in again. The blades lick his nape and move upwards, his father’s hands press them steadily in an ascendant movement towards his crown. He can feel his locks piling up in the clippers’ wake, the air beginning to hit his bare skin.

It might be a zero, double zero maybe. There are blades resting in the table where his father can reach them. There’s also a foil shaver within his father’s reach. He takes a deep, apprehensive breath when he sees it.

He can almost feel the steel pressing against the very follicles of his scalp, like his father wants his hair removed at the root.

It’s a sensation he hasn’t missed at all.

"You have a legacy to uphold".

The growl of the machine doesn’t swallow his father’s words. The roar punctuates his breathing. He can feel the strength of his father’s hands. He has known both the stone-coldness and the searing fire his father’s hands are capable of.

His father has never been one to be afraid to hurt him.

Liam flinches at the first clumps of dark hair falling on the floor underneath him.

His heritage is on the walls of the living room where his father has decided to shave him. Under the frozen gazes of the portraits of all the men that have borne his family name before him, underneath the weight of their memorabilia of guns and decorations and medals and swords.

"What legacy? Uncle Tom’s high-functioning alcoholism?".

His uncle has drinking issues. His father has anger issues. He has issues with authority. And his brother.

"… or my brother’s?" his mouth tends to run faster than his brain, and he can’t pull the brake on his next words "You know, the one who came back messed up in the head and tried to fix it with a bullet to his brain?".

His brother had issues with life itself. Irreconcilable ones.

His father stops his shearing when he listens to his words. The entire back of his head feels raw and naked already.

"Don’t you dare speak of your brother" his father grabs his chin and forces him to meet his gaze.

Silently, Liam challenges his father’s glare.

His father’s deep dark eyes, just like his own. His father looks at him at times like he would into a mirror. There is so much failure in the depths of both their eyes where they had once dreamed of battles won.

His father lets go of his jaw abruptly and gets up. He stands behind him now with the hair clippers still buzzing "You are an Eisen. You’re destined for causes bigger than yourself, you were born to serve like all of the men in this family have served. You’re old enough to start fulfilling your duties to yourself and your family".

The tension stays lodged between them. His father keeps a tight hold of his head as he resumes his shaving. He digs the metallic teeth deep into his hairline. The machine keeps roaring as his hair falls down in clumps.

He feels his father’s pace change. He holds the back of his head more viciously. He throws his head to one shoulder to the other with carelessness. He grinds the clippers harder against his skin, biting into his earlobe as he shaves around them, as he gets rid of both his sideburns.

This, his father shaving him mercilessly, has all happened so many times inside his head, that it almost feels like a memory.

He can still feel the hair on top of his head, his bangs still coming down to his lip. His father gathers them inside his hand and pulls them back, he presses the blades of the hair clippers against his forehead.

Liam refuses to close his eyes shut. To give his father any kind of reaction. To give him ammunition to use against him.

He curses inside as the clippers shriek against what remains of his bangs. As his father grabs the fistful of locks inside his head and tosses them on the floor, at his eye-level.

His father secures his head by the crown and commands Liam to stay still as he evens the haircut. The clippers move over his exposed scalp, the resistance

"There we are, now they can see your face and your eyes when you go to military school. They will know you’re an Eisen, that you’re my son" his father tilts his jaw upwards and runs the clippers back and forth over his forehead, all the way back to his crown.

For as long as he could remember, his own father had never let his own hair grow past millimeters. He knows he has inherited his father’s hair by the offhand comment of his friends, not because he has ever actually seen it himself. He is the one that takes the most after his father.

He feels a curse running through his veins when he looks at the portraits, the weapons, the military decorations.

His brother had to die and leave him as the sole heir of this cursed legacy.

His brother wasn’t satisfied with being the perfect son, he also had to be the dead one. His brother got to die, got to be a saint, got to be a martyr.

He sees the pile of his hair on the floor.

Liam hears the clippers being turned off. His father grabs the foil shaver.

"You f***ing scalped me, what blade did you use?" Liam inspects with his fingertips the rough, thin layer of stubble that remains in his head, he glances into the mirror, his head is a pale shade of gray from what little remains of his dark hair.
"Shut up, boy".
He frowns "I’m just asking a question".
"Double ought. Now stay quiet" his father answers back coldly "You know, your brother never complained during haircuts. He knew to trust my judgement".

He nudges his head forward and turns on the machine.

The foil shaver goes all over the lower parts of his head, below his crown. Liam winces as he can feel it ripping out the stubble on his nape, as his father presses it as hard as his skull allows it into his scalp.

His father has always been one obsessed with appearances, with having both his sons properly represent him and their family.

"How can you be proud of all of this?" Liam sees a portrait of his father standing in the middle of his two older brothers as teenagers "Of the bloodshed and the suffering our family has inflicted and endured. And for what?".
"You shut up and listen to me, boy" his father turns off the foil shaver and wipes bits of hair off his shoulders "You don’t get to question the sacrifices our family has made, you will respect and defend this legacy, with your life, if you have to. You’re going to make me proud in military school. Is that understood?".
He holds his breath and his words, then he nods "Yes, sir".
"We leave at four hundred" his father informs him "Finish packing your bags already".

Liam takes a deep breath. He glances into a portrait of his brother. One of the last photographs of him when he was alive.

His brother is posing at the edge of a bridge next to a man from his unit, they’re facing each other and his brother’s head is completely hairless.

Liam still remembers the night he woke up to a loud buzzing noise in the bathroom, after his brother had returned from deployment.

He had exchanged a silent glance with him as he found his brother shaving his own head bare, tufts of hair all over his naked chest.

An exhausted, broken look in his brother’s eyes as he removed every single hair off his head that still haunted him.

Three days later, his brother was dead.

Liam listens to his father ordering him to clean up the shorn hair on the floor and get rid of it.

He rises to his feet and looks at the tangled locks of his hair before moving to get the broom.




Liam drums quietly to a song as his father drives him to the military school.

The tall brick walls appear into the distance, the imposing gates. He has vague memories of the day they drove his brother here when he was a year or two younger than he is now.

He was a child back then, heartbroken that his brother wouldn’t live with them during the school year.

He is only giving military school a chance at the prospect of staying a couple years away from his father.

"Don’t leave this" his father tosses him a box as he gets off the car.
"What is this?" Liam catches a cardboard box.
"Your brother’s tapes from his deployment" his father informs him "We’re donating them to the school for research and educational purposes. His account of the campaign will be valuable teaching material for higher grades".
"What" he looks at his father in disbelief.
"They’re expecting those tapes. Deliver them as soon as you get there".
"No, this is the only recording we have left of Victor’s voice!" he is indignant "These are private! How can you just give them away like that? What the f*** is wrong with you?".
"It’s an order! Don’t talk to me!".
"Everything in order here, sir?" a man in uniform approaches them, he stands tall, his gaze flying over both of them.
"Lieutenant Rosales" his father recognizes the man.
"Colonel Eisen" the man briefly addresses his father, then he looks at him up and down "Liam, isn’t it?".
"Yes, this is Liam…" and in the sixth day, his father has finally called him by his name, placing a hand over his shoulder "My other son".

The other son. That’s what he usually is. He gets to be the not-firstborn. On rare occasions, he is Liam.

"I see" the lieutenant nods, his voice has a noticeable rasp, a breathiness to it "We’ll handle your boy, sir".
"I know" his father replies "I’ll be leaving now. Behave yourself, son".

Liam feels his father’s touch abandon him. He adjusts his backpack and his grip on the box, putting it under one of his arms and looks at lieutenant Rosales.

"You’re a legacy student here, I understand you know that comes with expectations, don’t you?".

The first thing he notices is his blond, stubbled hair. His eyes are a steel gray-blue. His back is wide, his shoulders look solid, strong. He is not remarkably tall. Still, he is a good-looking man.

"Freshly shaved, huh? I remember you had hair down to your shoulders in your brother’s funeral" the lieutenant reaches out and rubs the top of Liam’s head without a warning "That saves us a trip to the barber".

He jerks away violently and glares at the officer.

"You know, I served with your brother" Rosales speaks to him as he guides him through the gates "He always spoke about you. He kept telling everyone in our unit that his baby brother was pretty long-haired boy. Not anymore, it seems. Besides, we’ll have to keep you shaved here".
"I can tell" Liam answers back, looking over at the rest of the students with buzzed hair, remembering his own older brother when he came home for the spring breaks with his hair cut military-short.
"I heard you were the one who found your brother" the lieutenant says without looking at him.
He feels his blood run cold.
"I know a lot of things about you, Liam Eisen" the man stands before him "And unless you want me to use them against you, you will be the obedient, disciplined, model cadet your father is expecting you to be. Is that understood?".
"You have no right to…" the teenaged boy bites his tongue "Yes, sir".
"That’s better, you’re already learning" Rosales smiles briefly, pleased.




Liam drops the cardboard box on top of the night table and his backpack on the bed.

His roommates aren’t there. It’s two bunkbeds. He isn’t thrilled about sharing his space with three strange boys. The room is impersonal. If it wasn’t for the uniforms hanged on the closet door, he would think no one actually slept there.

Glancing into the mirror and seeing himself with his head shaved is still jarring.

His head is cold. And besides, he looks like his brother.

He sees the clean uniform he has to change into. Liam gets undressed and glances at the box with his brother’s tapes. He doesn’t appreciate the say his stubble rasps and gets stuck with the fabric of his t-shirt.

He is not giving them to the school for them to be dissected and analyzed like they’re doing an autopsy of his brother.

He opens it with a scissor he finds in one of the drawers.

He finds a printed sheet with annotations. His father has already curated the tapes and classified those ‘apt’ for teaching and educational ends, he has taken note of the minutes and seconds most ‘relevant’ for academic purposes.

His father has made annotations, a map of what each tape date corresponds to, a timeline of his son’s time of service and campaigns and the exact minutes where he discusses tactical matters.

Liam feels disgusted at the lengths his father goes to preserve their reputation.

He sees there is a cassette player he can use to listen to the records. He examines it. He can use his headphones on it. He takes the tapes.

His brother’s love for ancient technology both fascinated and frustrated him.

They’re labeled with dates. A handful of them have a red mark on them. Liam takes the sheet with annotations and searches for the meaning of the red X some of the tapes have.

Broken tape.

Why would his father give broken material to the military school?

He checks the time. He grabs his headphones and finishes dressing. Then, he puts one of the marked tapes on the machine and presses the play button.

"July. 22nd" his brother’s voice comes through "I’ve been home for a day… I can’t find a barbershop… I don’t feel like going to the base to get my hair cut… Liam says it looks fine… It doesn’t look or feel fine to me…".

Not broken apparently.

"EISEN!" there is a loud knock on the door.

Liam stops the cassette player and rushes to shove the box underneath his bed. He runs to answer the door, still putting the uniform on.

"What the f***, man!? Where the f*** have you’ve been!? We were waiting for you in formation!" a tall teenager gets in Liam’s face.
"Sorry, it took me a while to find the dorm" Liam lies.
"Do we have to babysit you, man? This is not how it works here" the boy scoffs "At least you’re already shaved… F***, they’ve scalped you. Must be one of the new barbers. Anyway, haul your ass to the gym, we don’t need trouble, get it?".
"Yeah, I’ll be there" he finishes tying up his running shoes.
"You better" his roommate shoots him a warning glare.

He watches him go. He has made up his mind, he won’t let the military school have his brother’s memories.

Not until he has saved them for himself.

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