Bonnie woke up to a globe covered in hair.
It wasn’t originally furry, it must have
happened over night, she didn’t remember
it being that way before she went to sleep.
It was a gift from her grandfather
who wanted to encourage an interest
in geography — but it wasn’t covered in fur
when he gave it to her, was this a dream?
It felt real — she stroked it. It purred
and spun. Bonnie sat for a while stroking
and watching her new hairy world spin.

Then she got her comb and smoothed out
its waves and tresses. The world shuddered,
began to spin melodically, purring. More hair
cascaded from the still spinning world. Bonnie
played with it, braided, knotted, twined, tangled it,
causing fountains of more and more hair to appear.

So much hair erupted from the globe,
it spun so rapidly, a mass of hair forced
Bonnie out of her room, out of her home, outside
to discover her neighborhood street flooded with
an explosion of hair. Hair hung from rooftops,
tree tops, telephone poles, flagpoles, rose into the air
until clouds began to rain hair. Bonnie held her
breath waiting for a hair rainbow. She imagined
it would look beautiful at sunset. Then she thought
of raindrops each with their own little hair attached,
wriggling behind them, falling to the ground, wrapping
themselves around grass and rocks, binding them like
a barrette of hairy love holding the world together,
bringing everyone a little closer, no matter how hard they struggle.

Except it wouldn’t be like that.
It would be badly knit like
all those sweaters her grandmother tried
to teach her to make
that just didn’t work out.

Bonnie ran back to her room to see if her globe was still
spinning and growing hair, but it had stopped
and was mewling, like a frightened kitten.
Bonnie stepped up to stroke it again, but it hissed.
She felt her hand scratched as tiny sharp
hairs whipped out at her. Bonnie cried, “Please
stop, you’re scaring me,” but the world only wept
harder and harder, and more and more sharp hairs
scratched Bonnie, forcing her to run from her room.
Bonnie ran outside, sat down and thought,
“Now, where will I sleep?” She started to cry.

A big ball of hair came up to her and said “Don’t cry.”
Bonnie said, “Daddy, is that you?” Her father replied,
“You should get yourself some hair, it’s really nice and
warm in here and you won’t need to cry.” But Bonnie
said, “Daddy, the hair cut me and I think it tried
to attack me; let me inside your hair and maybe
I’ll be safe.” But Bonnie’s father said, “That would be
Inappropriate,” and shuffled away. Bonnie cried some more.

Another mound of hair shuffled up, “Don’t cry sweety.”
“Is that you Mom?” “Of course it is! I have to tell you
honey bunch you really need to do something about your hair
people are going to notice.” “But you told me I have pretty hair!”
“That was before honey, things are different now.” “Mom!”
Bonnie cried, but the mound only shuffled away.

Bonnie ran into her house and found all her mother’s cans of hairspray.
She put on her heaviest coat, gloves and boots, a toque her mother gave her
that said Maple Leafs, so she never wore it, and a scuba mask. She found a belt
to wrap around her waist, hung a plastic bag from it and she put all the
cans of hairspray into it. She was as ready as she was ever going to be.
Everyone, everything was depending on her to take care of a hairy little world.
Bonnie went to her room. Standing outside the door, she took a deep breath.

Bonnie kicked in the door to her room and rolled along the floor keeping her bed
between her and the globe. The world responded by spinning madly, flinging
hair splinters in a frenzied whirlwind of malevolence. Bonnie crawled beneath her bed
until she was directly beneath the globe on her chest of drawers. She reached
a hand out from under the bed and began to spray hairspray at the globe.

Clots of razor hair fell on the floor. Bonnie thrust out another arm
and let go with a double barreled blaze of hair spray. More hair fell. She thought
she heard a whining she hadn’t heard before. Bonnie pushed herself out
from beneath the bed and directed a double blast of hairspray at the spinning mad
hairy world. The toy globe’s rotation slowed, there was less hair. Bonnie found
a new can of hairspray, jumped to her feet and directed a blast at the equator.

The globe began to stop spinning. Keeping two hairspray
cans firing on the hairy world, Bonnie stood, arms apart
tossing can by can as they emptied, grabbing another,
spraying the hair in her room, making sure, once down,
it didn’t get back up. It took a few more cans
of concentrated hairspray firepower but in the end
the hair stopped fighting and
the globe of hair ground to a halt.

Bonnie fell back on her bed exhausted.
It was over. The threat to all life on Earth
was ended. There was her mother
in the doorway, looking like her old familiar self.
Bonnie knew everything was back to normal
when her mother screamed,
“Bonnie, why is this room covered in hairspray?
“Have you gone mad?
“What do you think you’re doing?”

“Saving the world Mom, just saving the world.”