Short and Long Stories Part 2

Lice

Amanda had always been a vain girl, which is what led the other children to hate her. Everyday she would sit in the front of english class and comb out her long brown hair that made all the other girls envious of her, but none more than Molly.

Molly was a poor girl and there were rumors going around that she had lice; rumors that had been started by Amanda. Each day she would laugh and snicker behind her back when she saw Molly scratching her head. It had gotten so bad that even Molly's mom had to take a doctor's notice to convince the children that she didn't have lice. Of course, it didn't deter them, and Molly got called the new class crybaby because of this.

Everyone noticed that Molly was missing more and more recesses and would spend the day reading a book with a strange cover as she scratched her head. "What a weirdo," Amanda thought to herself. She liked telling her few friends that she had seen her summoning demons in the bathroom, which wasn't really true, but all of them believed her.

One day, Molly went up to Amanda and whispered something before saying "What you thought I had will become yours instead." Amanda laughed and said it was the stupidest, cheesiest thing she had ever heard and shoved her away before leaving.

Later that night, Amanda was taking a bath when she felt it: a feeling of crawling in her head. She ignored it, but it persisted. She started scratching and felt it go away for a while, but it came back again. She spent the whole night and the next school day scratching, unsure of what to do. Her parents bought her lice poison, shampoo, creams and everything else but it didn't help. In fact, it got even worse with each product they bought her. The crawling turned from a light itch to millions of little legs running up and down her hairline, things crawling and writhing in her scalp as they buried themselves further.

Amanda couldn't take it anymore. She went to the bathroom and grabbed the scissors and her dad's razor. She got to work on cutting her luscious beloved hair off and shaving it off, leaving herself bald.

When she finally saw what was underneath, she screamed and passed out.

There were no lice outside her head.