Six months ago, Margo had died. And in a fraction of a second, she had been reincarnated. When she regained consciousness, she woke up in a whole new world.
As Margo entered the beauty salon, she tried not to notice the Pekingese squatting next to the manicure chair. The dog had a harness strapped around his shoulders, and the other end was looped loosely to the armrest of the chair, like an afterthought.
In the chair sat a stranger, a lady—someone Margo had never seen before. Gloria, the podiatrist, sat on her specialized, adjustable stool opposite the stranger, making small talk in her usual cheerful, sing-song voice. Gloria was big—big in size, big in charm, and big in heart. She wore her confidence like a subtle perfume: invisible, but lingering in every room she entered.
Right now, she was massaging the lady’s foot, which dripped soapy water into a plastic basin, while murmuring soothing nonsense about fashion trends and tight shoes, vanity, and the eternal war between fashion and function and common sense.
Margo looked around, but all the chairs in front of the mirrors were taken. No open seats. She sighed, but not out of impatience. These days, she rarely had any agenda for the day, nor any place where she needed to be, urgently. She settled down in one of the visitor chairs near the door,
She looked at the Pekingese again. It was no longer squatting. It had risen on stubby legs, its round, snub-nosed face locked in her direction. It stared at her, tail still, ears twitching, eyes narrowed like a bouncer at an exclusive club.
Margo had always hated dogs. Especially small ones. And this one—with its tan and brown coat fluffed like a rug, reeking of anti-flea spray, decorated with pink ribbons and shimmering plastic butterflies on its harness—was particularly revolting.
The Pekingese let out a short, sharp bark that sliced through the salon’s soft ambient chatter. Gloria looked up from her scrubbing, startled.
“Hey! What’s with you, baby?” she cooed.
The lady in the chair clicked her tongue indulgently. “Chai, darling, sit. Sit, sit, sit!”
But Chai darling did not sit. Instead, he erupted into a barking fit—high-pitched, breathless yelps, yappy and incessant. He bounced with each bark like a squeaky toy on springs.
Margo stood up slowly, her eyes fixed on the dog.
Chai snarled, his upper lip curling back to reveal a set of tiny, yellowing teeth. He leapt towards her. The leash slipped off the armrest. The woman in the chair lunged to catch it, but her fingers closed found nothing but air. Her chair tilted backwards—first hesitating, then teetering, tottering, and finally crashing sideways with a loud crack. The basin of soapy water toppled, spilling its contents in a gluggy wave across the floor.
Gloria jumped up, eyes wide. A ripping sound followed—her skirt, far too tight, had finally surrendered.
She landed feet-first in the foamy puddle. For one frozen second, she flailed for balance—and then her feet slid out from under her. She soared up into the air in a surprisingly graceful arc, and in desperation, grabbed the counter top as she fell.
The counter didn’t hold. Neither did the counter next to it.
On both counters were bottles of alcohol-based lotions, sprays, make-up removers, fixers, and gels. In the corner, nestled next to soft acrylic curtains, scented candles burned quietly for ambience.
And below the counters ran a tangle of electrical wires, plugs, and sockets. All live. All connected to appliances.
As the counters crashed to the floor, bottles of lotions, sprays, and gels went flying. Several slammed to the floor. One clattered across the tiles, another exploded on impact.
A spark leapt from a loose hairdryer socket. It kissed a puddle of nail polish remover—pure acetone—and the flame leapt joyfully up like a genie released after eons of confinement.
The flame found new friends in astringents, aerosol cans, hair ‘fixer’ gels, wet-wipes, cotton balls.
The acrylic curtains joined the game, and in a fiery round of passing the parcel, spread the flames gleefully to wigs, hair extensions, wooden furniture, and magazine racks, with glossy but well-thumbed, issues of Vogue, Elle, Cosmo, W, and Harper's .
Flames swirled and whooshed in every direction.
The salon filled with pungent smoke and screams of hysterical women. Someone knocked over a wax heater.
There was a mad rush for the entrance to the salon. The feng shui chime above the door went berserk. A couple of quick-thinking—or probably just plain lucky—clients, still slathered in green mud masks, managed to tumble out onto the pavement, their smocks and clothes smouldering.
Inside the salon, the loyal sprinklers on the ceiling worked in vain, hissing and sputtering.
Gloria didn’t make it. The lady in the chair didn’t make it. The Pekingese didn’t make it.
Margo—singed, stunned, suffocated—just barely made it, crawling through the chaos, more dead than alive.
But this time, thankfully, Margo had eight more lives to live.
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