A colorful spectrum of lights sprang and sprinted across the dance floor. Swinging bodies and smiling faces shown with every flash of bright light. Katie, the Senso-Hair, was dancing in the middle of the crowd, her eight-foot, black locks swirling above their heads like it had a life of its own, moving to the beat of the music, mimicking the shape of her body. Senso-Hairs are people with long hair that behaves like a muscle. Their hair can take infinite shapes, squeeze, pick things up, caress someone’s skin and even stand up straight above the person’s head. Her hair glistened under the hot bulbs of the club. From behind the bar, I could see her hair clearly hovering a few feet above everyone else, not touching a single body but her own. Then I heard a scream. People in the corner of the room stopped dancing and started chatting. Slowly a crowd formed around something I couldn’t see. Gradually, the entire club halted. I had the manager turn up the lights. There was no point in keeping the music on—the people in the club were all distracted. I pushed through the crowd and made my way over to the center of it. I considered using my Imprinting to get everyone out of the way, my psychic powers to relay messages and read minds, but it’s a misdemeanor if I use it for anything other than self-defense, and it wasn’t worth it. When I got to the middle of the crowd, I found a young woman lying on the floor.
“Back away, back away,” I said.
I crouched down and checked her pulse. Nothing.
Billy, the sous-chef who was helping me clear the scene said, “Sam, you want me to carry her somewhere?”
“No, let’s not touch the body.”
I hollered to the manager, “Close all the doors, don’t let anyone in or out.”
The club-goers started whispering to each other, sending the news out from the center of the circle of onlookers. The manager came over and helped me get everyone to step back far enough. We knew we couldn’t touch the body, because now it was a crime scene. I had seen murder scenes before, in passing on my way to work or school in this neighborhood. My aunt was murdered when I was eleven and since then, I’ve had a special hate in my heart for murderers. I took out my cell phone and called the police.
*
Two hours later, and we had all been cleared out of the club, which looked ominous in the swirling red and blue lights of the cop cars. They look so strange when their lights are on but not the sirens. Like a movie on mute. Luckily it was a warm night with little wind, so no one was cold out there. Half the club was gathered on the corner, being held for questioning. The other half had their statements taken already. It was looking like a Senso-Hair had strangled the woman. I knew it wasn’t Katie—when it happened I saw where all of her hair was: up in the air not touching a soul. But I didn’t know there was another Senso-Hair in the club.
I told the police, “I saw Katie. Her hair was floating above everyone when the murder happened, I was watching her for five minutes before that. She covered it right back up with her yellow silk shawl when the lights went on. But the back door was open because Billy was getting fries, because we ran out. Another Senso-Hair could have come in that way, even though Billy is usually careful. They could’ve run away right after.”
I would get a ticket for allowing a Senso-Hair to be uncovered in my establishment, and another one for not having my CCTV cameras on while the club was open. Katie was being detained and brought into the station for questioning. She would certainly be charged for having her hair uncovered in public, if nothing else.
When the reporters came looking for me, I declined to comment and hid my face from the cameras. They weren’t allowed past the crime scene line, so I had that advantage. I didn’t want to garner hate with the public, I knew how temperamental the non-Fractured could be about us.
The lead detective, Auburndale told me, “All the evidence points to your friend there. This young woman was certainly strangled by a Senso-Hair and she was the only one in the club. We’ll have to detain her for questioning.”
I didn’t believe it though.
Detective Auburndale was tall and intimidating, her black hair gelled to her scalp so tightly it made me wonder if it ever bounced back. She carried tension in her shoulders and a scowl on her face. She had that thousand-yard stare that some people have when they’ve seen tragedy or spent long stretches of time alone. She told me the young woman’s name was Giselle.
*
Three days later and the club was still closed off as a crime scene. They had let me in, to the kitchen only, the first morning after the murder to throw away the food that was left out and put the rest into the freezer. The room looked like a ghost town, haunted not only by the murder the night before, but also by the cooks who had left their work in the middle. Chicken wings sat soaking in the fryer, salads wilted in bowls, and the frozen fries that sweet, chubby Billy brought in had thawed and started to sag on the counter.
Since then, I had been twiddling my thumbs, worried about Katie, worried about the club’s finances if it stayed closed much longer, about all the food that had gone bad in the club’s kitchen, about who this nefarious Senso-Hair was who had killed Giselle and what they would do next. Why had they targeted her? She was just a nursing student at the local college, the police said.
That’s when I heard a knock on my door. It was Billy, the sous-chef who I had sent out to get fries that night.
He looked nervous and he stuttered as he said, “Hi”.
He was wearing a light gray sweatsuit that was tight on his chubby body, with stains on the pants, probably from ketchup. His black leather jacket squeaked as he walked in. He carried his blue baseball cap in his hands, plain with no logo.
“What’s on your mind Billy?”
“I’m afraid to tell you.”
“You’re better just getting it off your chest.”
After a few minutes and a glass of water, he finally admitted to what was bothering him.
“The night of the murder I got an Imprint impression that I should keep the back door open while I was bringing in the fries. I thought it was you, Sam. I thought that you might’a been letting someone in or out who didn’t want to be seen in front, maybe someone famous. I didn’t realize at the time what might happen if I did. I feel horrible. It’s my fault the woman got murdered. I know it wasn’t Katie. We’re friends, I trust her. The other Senso-Hair must’a gotten in the back door… Should I tell the police? I don’t want to get you in trouble, or me.”
I said, “It was a total accident. You should contact Detective Auburndale immediately and share what you know.” I said this, knowing full well that the police might not do anything about it. I find them to be incompetent at best, but perhaps lazy. They never found my aunt’s murderer and they barely questioned anyone who was there that night. They rarely catch the culprit who did a horrible thing. I knew I might have to take the case into my own hands, if it came to that.
I took out the dirty white business card she had given me and handed it to him. It was a simple card with dark blue lettering and the NYPD symbol printed in blue and white in the top left corner. Billy took out his phone and jaggedly dialed the number. He retold this whole story to the detective. When he got off the phone I asked what she said.
He said, “She needs me to come down to the station and put it on the record. I’m not in trouble… I agreed.”
“I’ll take you down there myself.”
As I gathered my things to take the ride, I thought about what this meant. On the one hand, I felt vindicated that I was right, it wasn’t Katie, it could have been any other Senso-Hair. On the other hand, it meant I was right, there was a Senso-Hair out there I needed to worry about—someone who had completely evaded the law.
*
Three more days and finally we could open the club again. Our first night, we had half the crowd we usually have. The energy in the room wasn’t as high. People meandered across the dance floor in their short skirts and crisp suit shirts. It was quieter in the club, as if the party had been muffled by water. Word had gotten out about what happened and people felt spooked. They didn’t want it to happen to them. It was known around town that I let Senso-Hairs uncovered into the club, and I guess people didn’t trust it was safe anymore. When I talked to locals and the people that came into the club, I got a sense of the public mood. Fear and prejudice against Senso-Hairs and other Mentally Fractured people had been swelling. Mentally Fractured is what normal people call us, but I’ve never liked the name. It’s the name for people with special talents who started showing themselves or evolving into that in the last few decades. There are Imprinters and Senso-Hairs. That’s how we got the label Fractured in the first place – non-Fractured people being afraid of us, thinking we’re less than them somehow. Not only did people worry about a Senso-Hair on the loose in my club, they didn’t trust me as an Imprinter. I didn’t know what I could do to restore their trust.
I decided to advertise on the college campus, since the younger folks tended not to be as frightened of us. Even so, Giselle had come from that college, so word would have spread there too. But that was all I could do about it. I also hadn’t shaken my own fear, of what this Senso-Hair on the loose could and would do next.
The last time I had checked in with Detective Auburndale, she said, “We want to move forward with charging Katie with murder, if we can garner the evidence. Her hair was uncovered and she was the only Senso-Hair in the club. We’re looking into all possibilities.” But that was before Billy gave his testimony.
I felt deep down they just wanted the case closed, for the hate seething through the community to be quelled, to restore peace. But then Detective Auburndale said something to me that made me second guess my misgivings.
She said, “I don’t like what this news is doing to the community, and I wish I didn’t have to make it about the Fractured. I have a sister who was a Senso-Hair and she was a great person. It breaks my heart every day what people do to the Fractured. After our parents died when I was nine and she was five, there was no one to take us in. Her foster home let her stay in contact with me, but they mistreated her. They abused her by cutting her hair.”
When a Senso-Hair’s hair gets cut, it’s a traumatizing and painful thing.
*
After a few days of the club being half empty, I wondered if there was something more I could do about this mystery. Maybe I could exonerate Katie on my own, since the police department wasn’t making any moves towards finding out the true murderer. Poor Katie, with her soft gaze and rosy cheeks. Poor Katie, who has always been well-meaning. She was embracing her freedom that night, a freedom she rarely had. She told me years ago that she had grown up as an orphan in a foster home where her foster mother would cut off her hair if it got any longer than her shoulders. Cutting a Senso-Hair’s hair is horridly painful, because they have nerve endings braided through their locks. It was like cutting off a limb, Katie said. I always wondered why her foster mother took her in if she was so afraid of Katie. She had gone through so much, and I wanted her to be free. What we experience as the Fractured is so unfair, and I’ve always felt a strong sense of purpose in trying to protect us.
So I started asking questions on the campus, investigating Giselle, asking if she was involved with any seedy characters. I found out she lived in a bad neighborhood, but she was a pretty strait-laced nursing student. Her friends all said she was a straight-A student, barely even went out to party, that it was rare she went to a club like that. They said she spent most of her time at home studying. Finally I got to one of her friends who told me Giselle had a habit of providing nursing care to locals who couldn’t or wouldn’t go to the hospital. I realized she could have easily gotten on the bad side of some back-alley Senso-Hair that way. Maybe someone who had caused one of the injuries she was treating. I decided I would work up the gumption to go see her parents.
The next day, I went to see Giselle’s parents. I walked through a bent chain-link gate, across a yard filled with old children’s toys and a dirty couch, and knocked on the weathered, cracked wooden door.
They asked who I was: “Someone who was there the night Giselle died. I have a few questions.”
“We didn’t want to talk to the police and we definitely won’t talk to you.”
Then they slammed the door in my face.
On my way out of their yard, a little boy came up to me. He was wearing shiny basketball shorts and an age-softened t-shirt. He told me, “There’s no point in asking them questions. They’re afraid of The Mistake.”
I asked who or what this Mistake was, and the kid was surprised I didn’t know.
He said, “It’s a who, a chick.”
I asked if she was a Senso-Hair. The kid just ran away from me. It would have made a scene if I chased after him, and besides, I didn’t want to get him in trouble too. I decided to ask my contacts underground: people I had previously only tolerated, since they brought in a lot of business at the club. People I had used my Imprinting against to stop them from dealing to my customers on my property. At the very least they would have to leave the club to do it. I wanted to know if any of them had heard of this Mistake, if she was a Senso-Hair, and if they ever heard of Giselle.
I waited for those regulars to show up at the club that night. I started asking around, once they were situated and had a few drinks in them. Most of them said they didn’t know who that was and to stop asking questions. One of the youngest ones of them was pretty wasted, so I decided to take a chance on him. When I asked him about The Mistake, he laughed.
“You don’t want to get on her bad side. She’s a Senso-Hair and a powerful Imprinter and you can’t escape her.”
I asked him if he knew why The Mistake would want to go after Giselle. He harrumphed and said he didn’t know, to stop asking questions.
*
Two days later and I hadn’t told the police yet. If they did believe me, or already know about her, what could they do about it? What could I do about it if she’s a hybrid? I was thinking through the possible outcomes. I started to doubt my own Imprinting abilities. How many Imprinters would it take, sending the same signal, to contain her? There were very few in the police department. After all the bad press the Fractured got since we came out, very few wanted to be put in a position of responsibility like that. But maybe what number there were would help.
I decided to call a few my Imprinter friends to a meeting. I held it in the club during the day when no one was around. I made sure the doors were all locked and the windows sealed shut. I turned off the CCTV. There were six of us there. It’s a beautiful thing, when a group of Imprinters are in a place to hold a conversation just to ourselves. We transmit everything telepathically through a cascade of images and feelings. Thoughts are shared not in complete sentences, but in the intuitive, flowing experience of consciousness. We become aware of each other’s intentions and opinions. You can’t hide what you mean to say beneath some snarky phrasing when two Imprinters are communicating that way. You can lie through your Imprinting to a non-Fractured person, but not to each other. It’s clear and it’s true. If only everyone could communicate that way, the world might be a better place. On the other hand, could most people handle it? Would most people develop compassion through experiencing that kind of discourse, and feel what others feel? Would they stop resenting the Fractured? Or would most people become scared of each other and the more selfish intentions most people harbor? I couldn’t tell you, but I could hope.
Anyway, there’s a sense of trust and openness between Imprinters because we’re able to communicate this way. I transmitted to everyone what I had learned, what we were up against. Two of them gave the impression that they didn’t want to know any more and that I should just stay out of it like I was told. They started walking towards the door and I knew what they wanted to do. When the club was closed back up, the four of us who remained brainstormed about what to do next. We decided we didn’t want to take a chance that we couldn’t handle it alone. We decided we would reach out to the police and see if they were willing to help.
*
The next day, I called Detective Auburndale. I told her what I had heard about The Mistake.
I told her, “The only way to overpower her would be with enough Imprinters, and I don’t know if me and three other people could handle it.”
She said, “It is ill-advised to attempt to contain a criminal like that. We already know about this person of interest, we just don’t want to worry the public. I wouldn’t be surprised if this person was the one who killed Giselle, but we have no motive to go on and no evidence pointing in that direction. Billy’s testimony didn’t lead to much, but it helped with Katie’s case. Since this person of interest is already under surveillance, we may consider her as a potential suspect in Giselle’s murder. But right now, it isn’t looking like we’ll find anything.”
I could tell Detective Auburndale was protecting this person for some reason. But I couldn’t tell why. She seemed sympathetic towards the Fractured, but that couldn’t be enough reason to protect a murderer. I proposed an idea, “Maybe Giselle was providing nursing care to someone The Mistake had come after and witnessed something she shouldn’t have seen?”
“That is one possibility, but we’ll never know now that Giselle has been silenced. I interrogated Katie myself and at this point I don’t think your friend did it. You know I have a soft-spot for the Fractured, because of my sister. I know what it’s like for someone to be scared of you when you don’t mean any harm. And the other detectives agreed.”
At least there was that. But what could we do about The Mistake? Spreading the news about her would only make me a target, and scare people more than they were already scared of the Fractured.
*
That night I had a dream. It was more like a memory, haunting me. It was when I first opened the club and started noticing some of the sleek dealers posting up in the corners of the room. In the dream I walk up to one of them in the shadows of the intermittent, colorful lights. I use my Imprinting to tell them to go do that down the street. In real life, it worked. I did this to every dealer, over and over again until they got the idea and stopped making me Imprint them. But in the dream, it didn’t work. I tried to force them out but they just laughed in my face. Then, suddenly, the dealer grew to ten feet tall and grew long blonde Senso-Hair and started strangling me with it. I couldn’t breathe.
Then I woke up.
*
I decided I had to face my demons and keep investigating The Mistake. I started walking up to known dealers in the club who I thought might know about her. I would give them the Imprint impression that they had to tell me what they knew or I would call the police on them. It’s not like they would ever go to the authorities about my threat. Most didn’t believe the Imprint impression. One of them finally caved.
“Tell me,” I said.
“Fine… She’s a little girl. Like 12 or something. You wouldn’t think to be scared of her if you met her outright, but I’ve seen her put a cop in a sleeper hold with her hair like it was nothing. Rumor is that someone cut her hair when she was little and she’s been a terror ever since. She can’t keep a foster home. She ran away from her last one and has been living on the streets. She made her foster family forget who she was so they never went looking for her. When CPS asked where she was they said they had no idea who they were talking about and got arrested for child endangerment or some shit. Then the cops started hunting her down, ‘cus ya know, she’s Fractured. But every time they try to get close to her, she strangles one of them or makes them forget what they’re doing and stumble all over themselves. It’s hilarious to watch. You can’t get within 50 feet of her without her wrath coming down on you—if you’re with them. She probably lives off swiping stuff from the market, makes the people forget her. She always has food, and she sleeps in all the usual spots. She doesn’t mess with street people, just, ya know, people who chase her.”
“Why do you think she was in my club that night?”
“How the fuck should I know?”
“What do you think though?”
“Maybe she was looking for someone. Maybe she was swiping food. I don’t fuckin’ know. I told you enough.”
I let him go after that. I decided I needed to find this little girl, figure out if she killed Giselle even though Giselle wasn’t police or anything like that. And why was she in my club that night?
*
I was standing in my warm apartment waiting for the tea kettle to boil. My place was messy, with paperwork strewn about and clothes in every room. For all the effort I put into making the club look excellent, I don’t put much into my apartment. My paints are usually left open and my easel falls over once in a while when I pass it on my way to the kitchen. My mind wandered back to the problem at hand. I decided I needed my Imprinter friends to come with me, whatever the plan was. I figured the easiest way to get close to her would be to pretend to be living on the streets too. Maybe find her at a food kitchen or a hot meal place. I didn’t know what I would say to her once I got close enough.
On my way to the club that night, I heard a bunch of shouting and screaming down one of the side streets. A group of teenage boys were gathered in a circle around someone. They were kicking them and calling them “murderer” and “abomination” and “plague”. I knew the person in the middle must have been Fractured so I walked up behind them and Imprinted them into backing away and running down the street. I gave them the impression that a group of police were right around the corner, with siren sounds and everything, coming for them. When there was room for her to breathe, I saw it was Katie laying broken and bloody on the ground. Her jet black Senso-Hair was caked in grime and her yellow silk head covering had been stomped on too.
Her hair was cut off and splayed out around her. Her face was cut and bruised. She was holding her knees to her chest in fetal position and crying. I knelt down to touch her and she shivered. I gave her the impression that it was just me, no one else, that she should feel safe and protected. I gave her the feeling I felt when my mother would put me to bed at night as a kid. She slowly uncurled herself, started to lean on her hands and knees, and reached for me. I helped her up and we hobbled the three more blocks to the club. The whole way, as we walked, I worried that the same rough kids would come after us and attack us both. I didn’t have much of defense besides my gifts, so I didn’t know if I could scare them a second time with the same impression.
Katie has always held a soft spot in my heart. Her story of growing up oppressed moved me when I heard it. On top of that, she was a regular at the club and I felt responsible for her because of that. She was also Fractured, so I felt kinship with her, and a sense of trust. She needed me, and I like to be needed.
When we got to the club, I dressed her wounds. She needed a sling for her arm and her ribs were bruised. I asked if she wanted to go to the hospital and she said, “not yet”. I guess she felt safer in the locked club office. She worried that the police would sooner ticket her for not having her head covered rather than go after those guys. I let her use the cot next to my desk. She fell asleep to the soothing sound of the sweetest version of Ave Maria I’ve ever heard Imprinted on her mind. I didn’t stop Imprinting until I knew she was asleep.
*
Two days later, and Katie could walk on her own again. She was limping, and wearing a fresh set of clothes I had brought for her—a bright pink tank top, soft pink knitted sweater and a pair of black yoga pants. They were a little big for her, since I’m a big woman, but she was comfortable. I wished she would’ve let me take her to the emergency room, but she insisted on remaining hidden. She didn’t want to attract the police. I told her she could stay on the cot for as long as she liked. She slept during the day and stayed up watching television at night, flinching whenever I came through the door. It was morning now, and everyone had left for the day.
I invited my Imprinter friends over to form a plan to find The Mistake. I figured the group of us could try to Imprint her into telling us if she knew Giselle and if she killed her that night. There’s no way she would just tell me if I started asking questions about it. She’d know immediately that I was out for Giselle’s interests and not hers. Our best hope was that we were strong enough as a group to handle her level of power. So we got dressed in dirty clothes from the lost and found, and dirtied them up a bit more. We changed into shoes we got from goodwill and headed down to the only free hot meal in town on Friday afternoon, hoping she would be there. I let Joe cover for me at the club that night, so we could look for her.
When we got there, we were waiting on line to get in. We didn’t know how we would recognize her, we figured she would have an Imprinting signature plus Senso-Hair, which together would give her away. We took turns walking up and down the line looking for someone about her age. No one. So we went inside and kept up our game and sat down for a hot meal. I kept my eye on the door the entire time. She never showed up. So we asked around where we could find The Mistake.
Eventually someone pointed to a little girl just down the block from the hot meal place. I could’ve sworn I had seen her before. She didn’t stick out to me, she didn’t have an Imprinting signature any different from anyone else. She was just walking the street like any other kid. Her hair was tucked up, hiding in the comforting darkness of her hood. That’s how she gets by, unnoticed.
We walked by her and asked if she knew where we could get another hot meal that night. Then, we sprang it on her. All three of us simultaneously gave her the same impression: The image of Giselle dead on the floor and the feeling of guilt that makes a person confess. For a second she started looking confused. She started stuttering, “I, I, I—” but then she ran. She ran faster than us. Since we were forcing an Imprint, we didn’t forget what we were doing like she might want us to. Clearly, in theory, it could work. If we had enough Imprinters we could get her to confess if she did it and why. We just needed more of us.
*
The next day I decided to put an anonymous ad out in the paper. “Imprinters Needed for an Experiment” it said. “Testing how powerful collective Imprinting can be. We seek to protect the Fractured from hate. Only the brave need apply.” It wasn’t strictly true, but it was close enough and wouldn’t look too devious to most observers. And the Imprinters needed to be brave, because we would almost certainly experience backlash from the community for organizing Fractured like we were.
*
Three days later I had seventy-eight replies. Some of them were junk, asking what I was planning, with no mention of whether they were Fractured and without asking how to meet up. Some of them were threats, saying we better not assemble or they’d come after us. I have to admit, it did get to me a little. But a lot of them were legitimate. People asking how we would achieve that goal, asking where to meet, asking who we were going to test it on. I wrote back with as little information as I could possibly give. I was afraid of infiltrators, so I met each one at a different place around the city. For each one, I tested if they could send an Imprint impression. I told them that they should Imprint on a person to walk out the door. If they passed the test, I Imprinted on them where to meet in a few days—the image of a phone with the date and time, and an image of the front of a coffee shop across town, with the address under its awning. If they didn’t pass the test, I carefully watched them for about half an hour before leaving, that way they wouldn’t connect the cause and effect of their failing the test and me leaving. Some of them left immediately, having been found out as non-Fractured. Some of them hung around, looking around the room to see if they could figure out who I was. I was relieved that I hadn’t agreed to be interviewed the night of the murder. I was also glad that Imprinters could hide who we are—a benefit Senso-Hairs could never have, since the only way to hide was under head coverings, which made the prejudiced non-Fractured suspicious of us all.
*
Four days after I started the testing, I met all the Imprinters at a coffee shop downtown. If it all worked according to plan, only the Imprinters knew me from the previous meeting place, and no one knew where to find them when we first met up, or who to follow. We had the entire conversation through Imprinting. I told them the truth, that there was this little girl who may have murdered a young woman in the club. I said that when three of us tried to get the truth out of her, she started to speak but then ran away. I Imprinted on them that a large enough group of us could get her to confess and maybe even convince her to take herself in to the police. A lot of them left the coffee shop, but eleven of them stayed. Plus the original four of us made it fifteen. I figured that could be enough, almost four times as many as before. So I Imprinted on them where to meet, all dressed like homeless people, the following night. We would all show up with knives so we could cut off her hair if we needed to escape it.
*
The next night, we all met up on a corner down the street from the hot meal that was offered. I figured she must be going to this one, since it was in the same area where I found her last time, and there was only one other in the city the same day. This part of town is covered in litter—napkins, fast food paraphernalia, soda bottles, needles, all scattered across the gutters in the street. The buildings hadn’t been power washed in many years, which was clear from the streaks of black muck along the bricks and signs. One of the buildings was boarded up with old wood, softening from the rain, so it must have been that way for a long time. Some of the window boards in that building had been taken down. I figured somewhere in the back of the building someone had opened up a door and there were squatters inside. It was nothing like the nice neighborhood where I had my club. But I grew up in a neighborhood like this one. My family never had much money growing up — I suppose that’s one reason the police didn’t investigate my aunt’s murder thoroughly — who cares about broke people?
The fifteen of us gathered together. I didn’t want to scare The Mistake away, so I figured we’d wait outside in a few smaller groups and one of us would go in and check for her. I Imprinted the image of her on everyone’s mind, and one of my friends went in to look for her. A few moments later, he came out and gave us the signal that The Mistake was inside.
When she left the building, a small group of us followed her at first, with the others not far behind. They caught up gradually, and only close enough so that they could Imprint her. I Imprinted on the first group to walk past her down the block and stop and talk to each other, to distract her. I Imprinted on another group that they should be ready to head her off in the street if we needed them to. Then the group I was with came up behind her and cornered her into the others. Just as she seemed to realize what we were doing, we Imprinted her altogether. We Imprinted on her the image of her killing Giselle in the club. We gave her the Imprint of all of us saying in unison that she needs to tell us why she did it. We gave her the impression that we would cut off her Senso-Hair if she didn’t tell us. Some of us had our knives out, ready for the worst. She seemed terrified of what we could do to her, and it didn’t seem like a new emotion for her. Her Senso-Hair whipped itself around in a circle. But we were ready for it. When it tried to strangle one of us, a few of us went after it with our knives. It quickly scrambled and swirled back into her hoodie and curled up in a ball. Now she could tell that we wouldn’t hesitate to cut it. We would do what we resented all those bullies for doing, if we had to. Then she finally answered us.
“I didn’t do it on purpose. I can’t help what my hair does sometimes. I get scared and it defends me.”
“Why Giselle though? What did she do to you? Why did you follow her?”
“Sometimes I make myself forget things. I thought I knew her. I wanted to see if she could jog my memory.”
“So did you remember something that made you want to kill her?”
“I remembered doing something horrible in front of her. She fixed the kid up, but I got to him again later.”
“Why did you kill her?”
“I told you, I can’t help what my hair does. She was threatening to turn me over to the police.”
“Then what’d you do? Make everyone forget you?”
“Yeah, it just happens like that.”
We all looked at each other. We were giving very similar Imprints: she’s just a little girl, she’s scared, she doesn’t know what she’s doing. But we can’t let her keep killing like this. We decided we weren’t going to get a better answer out of her.
We told the little girl to follow us. It was three miles to the police station, so anything could happen along the way. She might get someone to let her out later. But we had to try. I couldn’t help but think this would be a perfect situation for restorative justice—a time when we needed to find a way to rehabilitate her instead of just punish her for her mistakes.
We surrounded her, knives out, as we guided her down the street. We moved as quickly as we could, because we were worried about being interfered with along the way. Once we got out of that neighborhood, we started to worry what people would think of us being at the ready like that. Someone must have called the police, because when we were about halfway to the station, the police pulled up and surrounded us. They created a barricade on both ends of the block. Their lights were flashing blue and red, but no sirens. They took their guns out and aimed them at all of us. They looked scared and ready to kill.
One of them announced through a megaphone, “What’s your plan with those knives? Where are you headed?”
I shouted back, “We were coming to you. We captured The Mistake. We were defending ourselves against her hair.”
He announced back, “I’m going to have to ask you to put your knives down.”
I shouted back. “Someone needs to be ready to cut her hair off, or we’ll never get her into a cell.”
He announced back, “We have her at gunpoint. You have to trust us to handle the situation. What you’re doing is assault.”
I shouted back, “What we’re doing is a citizen’s arrest”
A few of them were talking to Detective Auburndale. She took the megaphone and shouted.
“Sam, you have to put the knives down. You’ve cornered her. She knows we’ll shoot her if she tries to run or takes her hair out to attack us. Put the knives down and back away from her.”
I shouted back, “We can’t do that until we’re clear of her hair’s reach, you know that.”
She announced back, “You can’t approach the police with your knives. You’re going to have to trust us that we’ll stop her if she tries to kill again.”
At that moment, they were too far for her to Imprint them, and we were too strong-minded to succumb to it.
I shouted back, “But you don’t need to kill her. She just a little girl, she doesn’t know what she’s doing. She needs help.”
Detective Auburndale announced back, “We know that already. What you’re doing is causing more damage than help.”
“We can help you get her somewhere where she can’t hurt anyone. We can Imprint together.”
“And then what? What were you going to do next?”
“We were going to bring her down to the station and keep her at knife-point until we got her locked in a cell. Then stay there until you got an Imprinting cop to stand watch, ready to cut her if they need to.”
“That’s a good idea, but you should have been working with us and we wouldn’t be against you now. Besides, we don’t have any evidence that she’s committed a crime.”
“She confessed to us that she killed Giselle.”
Now Detective Auburndale addressed The Mistake directly. “Delilah is that true?”
The Mistake, Delilah, didn’t answer.
Detective Auburndale announced to all of us, “We don’t have anything on her, there’s nothing we can do about it. We need you to back away from her now… De, don’t attack the young woman when she backs away, okay?”
We all started to back away from her and dropped our knives. We didn’t have any other choice, or the cops might shoot us too. All of a sudden, her hair came out of her hoodie and went for my neck. I reached for my knife but I didn’t get there in time. One of the cops shot at her and hit her in the chest. Her Senso-Hair clung to my neck as she fell to the ground and started to bleed out. It was a slow bleed, as a puddle gradually formed around her body. It wasn’t until her last gasp for air that her hair let me go. I was definitely going to have bruises.
Detective Auburndale pushed past the barricade and ran to the little girl’s side, ignoring the guns pointed in her direction and the Imprinters with knives at the ready. She knew it was too late, but she rushed to Delilah anyway. She started to cry over her, sobbing her name. “Delilah…Delilah…Delilah…my sister…”