Hirsute Village   by Denise Cassino

    Tommy stared in horror at the dark, bristly hair sprouting from the back of his hands and quickly opened the tube of his mother's depilatory cream, spreading it evenly over the hairy area. He held his hand stiff as he peered closely into the medicine cabinet mirror searching frantically for any stray hairs that may have popped up since last night when he shaved the newest ones off with his father's razor. He pulled up his T-shirt and examined his back in the mirror, dreading the sight of a few long, black hairs that had appeared during the night. Tommy panicked, grabbing the tweezers and straining hard to reach all the way around and pluck them out. This wasn't normal. He was only thirteen. "Ouch!" Tommy moaned.
    "What going on in there, Tommy, you're not growing hair, are you?" his mother called out with concern.
    "N-n-n-no, Mom, no hairs here," Tommy lied. He hated lying, but he was afraid.
    "There better not be, we don't want you taken away to Hirsute Village," she warned sternly. Tommy was an only child.
    Before first light, he stuffed his newspaper delivery bag and loaded it onto his Schwinn bike and pushed off down the street now bathed in the amber glow of early morning. As he passed, he almost hit Mr. Baxter with the newspaper as he was dragging little Bobby Baxter out the front door, kicking and screaming. Tommy's stomach lurched - another kid going to Hirsute Village! Tommy thought nervously of the hair sprouting in odd places all over his body. There had been an epidemic of this strange hair growth on children in the little town of Smootheville for the last year and the town elders were frightened. So far, it was only children who had been afflicted with the strange condition - the adults seemed immune. As the condition progressed, the children's arms seemed to grow longer and their fingers curled under. That was the dead giveaway and the last step before Hirsute Village. No one knew what was causing it, though some suspected it was the tremendous consumption of black licorice strings by the children. That was only a wild guess, but what they did know for sure was that such a strange affliction had to be segregated from normal society. The town elders became afraid of what the neighboring townspeople might think, and worried that they might stop doing business in Smootheville. So they fenced off a large plot outside of town and built bunkhouses and a mess hall and sent all of the hairy kids to live there under the watchful eyes of guards armed only with cans of shaving cream. Tommy had to ride near Hirsute Village as he delivered his papers and could hear the sounds and voices of the children who were held captive there. It gave him chills.
    When Tommy arrived at school, he took his place in line behind the other kids waiting to walk through the hair detector, a strange contraption rigged up by an old, eccentric man that was once a rocket scientist for NASA. If the hair detector found any stray hairs on the children, they were jerked out of line by old Miss Toadle, the meanest teacher in school. She'd grab them by the ears with her gnarled, wrinkly hands and drag them off for a more thorough examination. If hairiness was detected, the children were loaded onto a bus with the other hairy kids and taken off to Hirsute Village. Sadly, most of Tommy's best friends, including Billy, Jason and Seth, had already been spirited away.
    No one knew what would happen when the kids grew up and had the power to overthrow the guards with the shaving cream and, frankly, nobody wanted to think about it. The only thing the town elders knew for sure was that these peculiar children must be isolated from normal society - they were just too weird to be allowed to mix and mingle with the general population.
    Each day Tommy anxiously examined himself in the mirror and each day he had to shave and pluck more and more hair. He was becoming really frightened. He wore only long pants and long-sleeved shirts even though the weather was getting hotter as summer approached. How long could he conceal his horrifying condition? He knew his parents needed him at home, but if they found out he was hairy, they would be forced to turn him in to the authorities for fear of being punished themselves. Those parents who had tried to hide their children were forced to wear fur coats in summer and sleep in doghouses. Tommy just couldn't bear the thought of his mother wrapped in a hot, fur coat sleeping with Bowser his St. Bernard. Each day Tommy approached the hair detector with growing trepidation, lingering until the last possible minute. Would today be the day they would discover his increasing hairiness?
    On the day before school ended for the summer, Tommy finished his paper route early because it seemed easier to handle and throw the papers a long distance. Oh no! Were his arms growing? When he got to school, he pulled his Yankee's baseball cap low on his forehead and scrunched his shoulders up, sticking his long fingers into his jeans pockets, hoping no one would notice. If he could just make it through these last two trips through the hair detector he'd likely be safe for the entire summer. But old Miss Toadle peered closely through her thick glasses, so close, in fact, that he could smell her breath, which reeked of spearmint chewing tobacco. She tugged Tommy by his ears and dragged him off to a tiny room where a thorough examination could be made. When Miss Toadle saw the tremendous growth of hair that had been breeding on Tommy's back, she shuffled angrily from the room calling, "Help, help, we've a very hairy boy."
    Tommy sensed this was his chance to escape, so he crept to the door and peered through the crack. Not a soul was guarding the room. He scurried down the empty hall and out the back door of the school toward the bicycle rack. He leapt onto his bike and took off as fast as he could toward the edge of town, planning to run away. The playing cards he had stuck in his spokes made a loud whirring sound. He rode and rode until his legs, which were pretty strong from his paper route, could peddle no more and found himself near the fence that enclosed Hirsute Village. He'd never actually seen what was going on in there.
    He stowed his bike in the trees and crawled through the tall grass on his knees and elbows until he reached the tall wooden fence. There he found a knothole he could peek through. What he saw was absolutely astonishing. The beautiful grassy courtyard was overflowing with playground equipment and all of the children were covered completely with hair. If they were blonde, they were covered with blonde hair, if they were redheads, their bodies were covered with red hair. They were mostly dressed in shorts and tennis shoes and their long arms ended in fingers that had become long, nimble claws allowing them to swing and climb like monkeys. They were laughing and shouting and hanging by their knees from the monkey bars. Others dived nimbly off the diving board into blue water of the deep end of the huge swimming pool. When they climbed back out of the pool, they just shook themselves like doggies and the water flew off in huge droplets until they were dry again. Some kids were eating bananas and peaches. Other children were high in the tall trees swinging from limbs and lounging in the leafy treetops. He saw Billy, Jason and Seth. They were building an awesome tree house. The children's faces looked just the same as always, but their bodies bore a fine fuzz from tip to toe. There was a shady visiting area where kids could see their parents, and they were all hugging and eating candy under colorful umbrellas.
    Tommy realized he'd been scared for no reason. What he had feared most turned out to be nothing to fear at all. This looked like a great place to live. He hated the thought of leaving his parents, but it was sure to happen soon anyway, and these kids were doing all of the things Tommy loved to do.
    He mounted his bike and peddled at top speed back to school and took a place in line for the amazing hair detector. As he approached the huge metal apparatus, he proudly pulled up his shirt and the entire crowd gasped! So much hair on one young man! Maggie, the little redheaded girl who sat next to him in English class gasped and fainted as two buxom lady teachers wearing big awful dresses hauled him off by his armpits to the overcrowded bus.
    When Tommy arrived at Hirsute Village, he was assigned a bunk in the wooden bunkhouse where all of the kids lived together. There were lots of games and toys under the bunks and dartboards on the walls. He even spotted a poster of Spiderman just like the one on the wall in his own room. Tommy took off his shirt and ran gleefully out into the playground area to the tree house. He called up to his friends. "Hey, guys, can I come up?"
    "Wow, it's Tommy! Yeah, climb on up! It's about time you got here. We were wondering when you'd finally show up!"          Tommy pulled himself up to the first branch with his long arms and swung his legs up to the next limb. Soon, he was high up on the platform of the tree house. The boys jumped up and down and gave him the secret handshake, which was a little more difficult with such long fingers. He looked around and could see far into the distance - all the way to his house. Tommy had never been so happy.
    He was required to attend school some of the time each day, but most of his time was spent outdoors just doing what kids like to do.
    As time went on, fewer and fewer children lived in their parents' homes. More and more had arrived at Hirsute Village. Finally, the parents petitioned the Mayor to allow the whole town to become one big Hirsute Village. The elders realized that being different was no big deal and certainly no reason to isolate people, so the children were returned to their homes and the old Hirsute Village became Hirsute Holiday Camp where the kids could go a couple times a year for a month at a time to play and learn sports and earn medals. The children were so happy, they didn't mind studying and their grades naturally improved until most were getting very high marks, indeed.
    The town was written up in National Geographic and hailed as one of the finest examples of contemporary life in America - a place where differences were embraced and even accepted. The children were so well educated that they were given scholarships and it was necessary to build a college in the town. It was called Hirsute University. The children who attended became famous authors, teachers and scientists, but they refused to leave the wonderful place where they had grown up - the famous Hirsute Village.

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