i.

The electric razor shorts out the moment it touches her scalp.

She suppresses the growl which builds unbidden behind her throat. All she wants is a goddamn haircut.

Hit the reset button on the outlet, she manages to spit. She struggles to suppress the sparks which dance along her fingertips.

He reaches out to click the button, hands trembling. The razor begins to buzz again. This time, he avoids contact with her scalp, and the razor doesn’t fizzle out overloaded. When he finishes, she looks in the mirror and scowls. Her hair ghosts her shoulders. Still there, still frizzled and staticky, unwelcome. She wanted it gone.

The metal scissors sit untouched on the cabinet next to her. This doesn’t escape her notice.

ii.

Someone used to sing her name at night. She can’t remember who; it’s a woman she can barely conjure with slate-dark hair that’s just as smooth, humming a song about the sea. She slips her name in where someone else’s was supposed to sit, but it’s just out of grasp, not the tip of her tongue but lodged somewhere south of her tonsils; what’s my name, what’s my name, what’s my name…she lays on the ground, dizzy. Her mouth seeps, rusty, bloody; not the good kind of metallic, though, not the zingful taste she gets when sparks dance along her spine and she can shock appliances into motion. Her fingers tingle but no electricity jumps forth. The stars are too close, and everything keeps spinning…the song loops in her head, her name just out of reach.

iii.

Mother used to comb her hair. It was frizzy even then, sticking up at all angles, but Mother never complained. Just pursed her lips and told her stories of magic and storms and women who could control the thunder as she carefully picked the knots apart and smoothed strands into a bun. The figures from her mother’s story danced in the smoke of the candle, so close and so real she could taste them, the whip-sharp swaying of free souls in front of her and the electricity of the storm tingling up her fingertips. She focused on keeping it locked there, stagnant, but no matter how often some slipped up her spine to her scalp and into her mother’s slim fingers, she never complained. Never stopped her gentle work at her daughter’s frizzled crown, carefully braiding the coarse hairs out into a tight knot. Once she’d asked whether it wouldn’t be easier just to cut it all off. Mother’s lips turned downwards. Sad. Maybe. Do what you like, darling, but do it after I’m gone. Your hair is beautiful, and you shouldn’t be ashamed of it. She would frown as her mother stood up, leaving the bathroom and her hair half-done. She wasn’t ashamed of it. She could just feel the static building there, catching, stillborn; power she couldn’t reach and reclaim. If it was gone, she could use the energy to make lightning like the women in the stories Mother told her. Women Mother thought about with starry eyes. Women Mother wished she was. Wished her child could be.

iv.

Some days she can’t summon the sparks to her fingers and she lays lackadaisical in bed as the shadow crawls slowly across her room. She feels as though she’s walking underwater, wave after wave bearing down, knotting her scalp and her synapses further until she gives up and lets the undertow sweep her out to sea. When the moon shows its face, she will pull herself out of bed, find a metal hairpin, and stick it in the socket—not the healthiest way, more like getting a shot of amphetamines than anything else—but it brings the sparks back crawling over her shoulder blades, even if it makes her tongue taste like her childhood suckling on batteries or sticking her once-pudgy fingers in the cigarette lighter of her father’s 1998 Dodge Neon. The buzz is worth the rush of memories, the confusing sounds and smells that blur together beautiful; an incomprehensible, sickening swirl, a whirlpool sucking her down, down, down, into the snap.

v.

Mother loved storms on the water. Father would bring the boat in as soon as he noticed clouds gathering, but Mother sat on the dock watching them dance over the horizon and stroke the waves. Pulled her close when the thunder echoed over the hammered-silver sea.

And then it comes.

The lightning cuts with a whip-crack of thunder across the horizon, and her spine burns with pent up electricity. Mother gasps, but her mouth is still curled upwards. Not afraid. Her eyes are wide and shining. Rain falls, drenching them both, but neither move. They have front row seats to a ballet, of sorts.

After the storm, she stands on the end of the dock long after the moon disappears, trying to emulate the clouds’ dance. Beside her, the electric lantern flickers. Her hair stands up on end. But her fingers stay empty.

vi.

Braids no longer hold her, braces shock her tongue with every pass. Nobody at school will kiss her, much less take her to the dance. Nobody wants to knock teeth with the electric girl. Fingernails burn sizzling deep into her own palm. Mother, I’m sorry.

vii.

She finally gets sick of trembling hairdressers and uses the sparks on her palms to burn her own hair back. She briefly wonders if it will just cauterize, seal itself like her father once did to the ropes on his sailboat. but as the flames grow and lick closer to her skull, her smile grows alongside it. The flames don’t hurt, they nip and caress. The river reflection shows her head finally free of the flyaway, straw-crisp wisps which once jetted out from her scalp. Her teeth glint in the starlight. She points her middle and forefinger to the moon, her clear face the same soft roundness as Mother’s. The lightning goes straight out in a diamond bolt and cleaves the night sky in two.

Shelby Rice is trying to contact you regarding your car’s extended warranty. They read for Oxford University Press and won the Montaine Award for Creative Nonfiction in 2020. They have been published or have work forthcoming in Rejection Letters, Longleaf Review, Okay Donkey and more. Originally from Dayton, Ohio, they recently acquired a cane with a sword inside, and will tell anyone who will listen. You can follow them on twitter at @orcmischief (if you dare).