Excerpt: Mosquito Bites

Greg lumbered over to me with a scowl on his face.
Great, someone who I wasn’t going to be able to make happy no matter how spectacular his hair cut turned out.
“You’re cutting my hair?”
Wow, Mister, don’t even bother to hide your distain. You go ahead and let it all hang out.
“Yes sir, I am.” I pasted a smile on my face, and a happy note in my voice, and ignored the inner one that was muttering: kill it, kill it, kill it.
“I want someone else.”
“Alright sir,” I backed away a step, and turned to the side a bit, looking less intimidating. I hope. “But it’s going to an hour or so before either one one of the other girls has an opening.”
“What about the one behind the counter.”
“That’s our manicurist, she only does nails.” I narrowed my eyes.
“I know what a manicurists. Don’t talk to me like I’m the stupid one. Well I need a cut, so I guess you’ll have to do.”
What a jerk.
I forced myself to relax my hands, which had curled themselves into fists of their own accord.
“Right this way.”
Over to my chair we went.
He stepped on the foot rest before seating himself, which made the chair tip up.
I heard him mutter something that sounded distinctly inappropriate for our salon under his breath.
I pushed the back of the chair down, setting it back onto the floor. He sat down with a whump.
“Just clean it up. I don’t want to have to get this fixed,” he said.
“Excuse me?”
“I guess it doesn’t take much to do hair. Would they not let you into real school?”
My fists clenched.
“It’s gotta be hard for a black woman to get into an actual college.”
My breath quickened, and my pulsed raced.
“Of course, what else is someone like you gonna do in Maine?”
“Someone. Like. Me.” I spat the words out slowly, my words coming about a bit muffled as my teeth started to grow.
My contacts split, revealing bits of amber between brown tatters.
He watched me in the mirror, his eyes growing wide. His brain wouldn’t acknowledge what he was witnessing, but the smell of his fear gave him away.
“Get out of my chair. Don’t ever come back.” I growled in a deeper voice than normal.
I heard felt bones snap. Audible.
I saw Toni’s head whip towards my direction.
I took a deep breath as my client stood, and grabbed my mug.
“I’ll be right back ladies. Make sure that man makes it out of here.” Safely, just in case.
“Alrighty,” Percy said as I passed by her.
I fled up to my room, and locked the door. I stalked to my closet, walked intside, and closed the door without turning on the light.
I curled up into the littlest ball I could manage, and focused on being a person. Really deep slow breaths.
I’d almost changed in front of Toni. She heard my bones snap. Hopefully Percy could give her a good enough explination that I wouldn’t have to say anything. I didn’t think the regular ‘siezure’ excuse would cut it.
I rocked back and forth, and finally my bones snapped down to normal size, and my pulsed steadied.
I ran to the bathroom, and made it just in time to toss my lunch.