“The Cut I Didn’t ask for” by Shortter_Flatter

---

I hadn’t planned on getting my hair cut that day.

It was one of those overcast Saturdays that pressed down on you, where your thoughts wander into places you’d rather avoid. The kind of day that makes you restless for change, any change, even if it’s just cleaning up your look. So I turned down Main Street and walked into that old barbershop with slowly spinning barber pole.

The place was quiet inside. No music, just the faint hum of fluorescent lights and the occasional snip from behind the chair. There was only one barber on duty: a tall woman, sharply dressed in all black, her movements precise and brisk. Her hair was buzzed on the sides, longer on top—sculpted like a pomp.

Her name tag said "Rae."

She didn’t look up right away, just waved me over with a flick of her fingers. I sat in the old chair, the leather creaking under my weight. She snapped the cape around my neck in one fluid motion like she’d done it a thousand times—probably had.

"So, what’s it gonna be?" she asked, flipping on the clippers. The sound filled the room, low and electric.

I hesitated. "Just a cleanup. Trim the sides, little off the top. Nothing crazy."

She nodded once. I thought that was the end of it.

I was wrong.

Before I could blink, the clippers came down in a clean, merciless path down the center of my scalp. I felt the cold steel against my skin, the weight of hair falling away. I froze.

"Wait—what the hell are you doing?!" I jerked in the chair, wide-eyed.

"Relax," she said, cool as ice. "It’s a #3 clipper guard. Clean. Simple. Efficient."

"But I didn’t ask for a buzzcut!"

"Nope," she said. "But you needed one."

My heart raced. My reflection stared back at me in disbelief—half-buzzed, half-my-old-self, as if my identity had been split with a single swipe.

"You don’t get to decide that," I said, voice rising.

She paused, looking at me through the mirror. "Look at you. You walked in here not really knowing what you wanted. I’ve seen it a thousand times. You hesitated even when you spoke. You needed someone to commit for you."

She didn’t say it cruelly. She said it like she was tired of people pretending they were in control when they clearly weren’t.

"You think I wanted to be this person?" she asked suddenly, not looking at me but continuing to cut. "You think I dreamed of making decisions for strangers because they don’t have the spine to make them themselves?"

I blinked. "…What?"

"My father used to own this place. He ran it for thirty-five years. Toughest man I ever knew. When he got sick, I came back from New York. Gave up my career. Took over for him." She shrugged. "It wasn’t the plan. But plans are overrated."

She looked me dead in the eyes through the mirror. "The clippers don’t lie. They don’t stall. They don’t worry if it’s the right choice. They just do. And honestly? That’s how people should live."

She finished the buzz in sharp, even passes. My hair now reduced to a short, bristly uniformity. The man in the mirror wasn’t who I expected to see—but he looked… sharper. Stripped of indecision. Maybe even stronger.

She dusted me off and pulled the cape free with a snap. "You don’t like it? Tough. It’s done. But I promise you this—you’ll get more honest reactions from people with that cut than you ever did with the overgrown fluff you walked in with."

I stood slowly. My scalp felt exposed to the air, and my confidence felt like it was trying to catch up with me.

As I reached for my wallet, I noticed something tucked behind the mirror: a black-and-white photo of Rae, back when she had long, curled hair and wore a bright-red dress. She was laughing, standing beside an older man in a barber’s apron. Her eyes were wide, full of something I couldn’t quite name.

She caught me looking.

"That was before," she said quietly.

"Before what?"

She paused. "Before I stopped letting other people decide who I was supposed to be."

I handed her the cash.

As I turned to leave, she added with a smirk, "Next time, if you actually want to choose your haircut, show up with conviction. Otherwise… you’re mine".

Maybe she was right. Maybe sometimes, the thing you didn’t ask for is exactly what you needed.

⸻

---