New Flash Fiction: George's Pillow

Time for more flash fiction, this time from Tennessee-based Gregory Marlow with an unsettling tale about what our bed pillows can get up to while we are asleep! Gregory's short fiction has been published or is forthcoming inThe Mockingbird 2002, Every Day Fiction, Suddenly Lost in Words, Kzine, One Forty Fiction, Robot and Raygun and Bartleby Snopes Literary Magazine.

George’s Pillow
by Gregory Marlow

George Ogle was going bald. His wife noticed it first and said gently that he might be getting a little thinner on top. George dismissed her with a condescending grunt. But as the months went by, the fact became increasingly undeniable.

Of course, this is common for middle aged men, but George’s hair loss was not due to stress or excessive testosterone. George was going bald because his pillow hated him.

Early in the pillow’s tenure on George’s bed, it determined that George was an ass. He often spoke briskly to his wife, insulting her and dismissing her opinions. She was a seemingly sweet and lovely woman, and George did not give her the respect she deserved. On top of that, George drooled in his sleep and was very harsh with his ceremonial fluffing of the pillow every night. The pillow decided that George was undeserving of the lush hair that clung to his scalp, and it slowly began plucking them at night as he slept.

At first the pillow was cautious, only extracting one or two hairs a night. But as the weeks went on and George’s asinine tendencies continued, the pillow became more brazen, plucking sometimes as many as twenty hairs a night. It was careful to choose hairs randomly while still clustering in the general male pattern baldness.

The pillow smiled inwardly as George eyeballed his thinning top in the mirror at night. “It must be the stress of the Wilson account,” he said.

“Honey, it is alright. A lot of men thin a little as they age. I think you look handsome,” his wife said.

“Oh, what would you know about stress? All you do is play solitaire all day at work,” he snapped at her. That night the pillow ripped a bold yet satisfying thirty-two hairs from George’s dome.

Over the weeks, the hair loss began to affect George’s daily demeanor. He became increasingly angry and snapped at people without provocation. He was passed over more than once for promotions, and his temper with his wife became even shorter. The pillow also noticed that George was sleeping fitfully, often stirring when the pillow would yank hairs from his head. Instead, the pillow would cling to the hairs so they would detach when George rolled over in his sleep.

Perhaps it was the lack of rest or maybe just fate that caused George to leave the coffee maker on one cold Wednesday morning as he left for work. Of course, George would later blame this on his wife, but the result was the same: a phone call informing him that his house had burned to the ground. 

The pillow never woke up.

“I believe my hair is coming back,” George told his wife two months later as they were getting ready for bed in the spare bathroom of his sister’s house. “Maybe now I can go out and get a woman who doesn’t nag me all the time.”

The pillow George’s balding sister lent him overheard the comment.