Just For Good Measure

Prompt: You wake up one day with an unusual super power that seems pretty worthless—until you are caught in a situation that requires that specific "talent."

Source: writersdigest.com

Response: Jamie had always had a ragged, beastly mop of hair. It was an un-nameable shade of blond-ish reddish brown. It tangled around things, almost as though attempting to suck the objects into a black hole of its own making. When the wind blew it reached out like Medusa's serpents. And when it was humid, the beast sprang into curls as thick as dreads. But it was not until the morning of her twenty-first birthday that Jamie's hair gained a mind of its own.

She might not have even noticed it her day had not begun with a dream. Jamie dreamed that she was out berry picking with Sean - dressed all in swirling yellow. She dreamed laying in a wide green field and letting Sean feed her berries. She dreamed that he touched her cheek ever-so-gently.

When she woke to find an animate lock of her own hair caressing her cheek, Jamie let out a shriek similar to that of an ancient woman who walks into a room to discover her toy poodle in the act of marking its territory all over her living room carpet. Wide-eyed Jamie watched the prehensile tangle wave at her reflection in th mirrored closet doors across from her bed.

Jamie rubbed her eyes, pounded her temples, and then looked in the mirror again. The strand was laying against her shoulder, but when she let out a sigh of relief the whole mass lifted and undulated - emenating an aura of abatement. Still disbelievng, Jamie carried out several hours of experimentation before resigning herself to two contradicting revelations - that she was sane and that her hair also happened to grow, shrink, and move both on its own and at her command.

And for the most part, Jamie learned to live with it. Though there was the occasional oddity - such as a strand of hair blowing against the wind in what almost seemed to be a wave in her Christmas card picture - Jamie found prehensile hair much easier to deal with than she could have expected. It was relatively harmless and pointless, though it was nice to be able to reach things from the top pantry shelf without getting a chair.

Jamie began working in a florists. She loved the bright colors and - when no one else was in the shop - she would let her hair float around her in a cloud, adjusting the flowers. Things did not work out with Sean, but Jamie soon met someone she was certain was better.

Chase had come into the florists for Mothers' Day flowers and walked out with a date. Jamie was so twitterpatted that her hair was practically blushing. After a whirlwind courtship, Chase proposed and Jamie was ecstatic to wear his rock on her finger . . . until she found out Chase was already married.

Feigning ignorance and calm, Jamie invited her very-very-soon-to-be-ex-finance to the florists and lured him into the backroom. She slapped him, broke up with him and - on her way out - poked him in the eye with her hair . . . Just for good measure.

Notes: Sorry this isn't longer and more in-depth. I am having various and sundry difficulties with various and sundry things including my internet, but I hope you smiled despite its shallow and brief nature . . . I sure did :D