High Notes and Hair Crimes

"I thought you said I earned a break," I mumbled, face-down in a pillow.

Queen Seraphina clapped once. "And you did! A full thirty minutes between your last nightmare job and this one. That's practically a sabbatical."

Lilith leaned in through the doorway. "I already packed your 'You Might Get Possessed Again' bag."

"You have a bag for that?"

"I have several."

And so, off we went to the Crestfallen Opera House, an ancient, crumbling monstrosity nestled in a fog-covered ravine so cursed the local squirrels sang in minor key.

Apparently, it had once been a bastion of art and culture until the wigs used in the costume department gained sentience and declared themselves the true divas.

"The ghost isn't the problem," said the tour guide, a hollow-eyed man named Gregor. "The wigs are. They… demand solos."

"You're telling me," I said, "that I came all the way here to negotiate with theatrical hairpieces?"

"Last week they strangled a tenor for upstaging them," Gregor said flatly.

I looked at Lilith.

She looked way too excited.

Mister Fog was already humming an overture.

Galrik held out a wooden stake.

"That's for vampires," I said.

"I don't trust anything with a pompadour," he muttered.

Inside, the opera house groaned like it had swallowed a ghost and regretted it.

Gold-plated balconies loomed like judging grandmas. The chandeliers dripped with wax and trauma. And in the center of the stage stood a pile of wigs arranged like a royal court.

One rolled forward.

It had ribbons for arms.

"I am Madame Tressé, Empress of Elegance, Sovereign of Scalps," it said in a smoky French accent.

I bowed. "Cecil, Royal Emissary of Bullsh—uh, Bureaucracy."

The wig glided in a perfect pirouette. "We demand recognition as a performing guild."

"Performing… wigs."

"We have art in our fibers, darling."

"You strangled someone for singing off-key."

"He insulted Puccini."

Galrik raised a hand. "What if we just, like… burned them?"

The wigs hissed in unison.

Lilith unsheathed her dagger, eyes locked on a wig with suspicious bangs. "No lie, I kind of wanna see what happens."

I held up a hand. "Let's not start a war with killer headwear."

Mister Fog nodded sagely. "Wise. Hair today, gone tomorrow."

I stared at him.

He shrugged.

We were then invited—read: forced—to attend their midnight opera.

The audience? Empty. The performers? Fifty wigs stacked on mannequin heads, each belting high notes with unsettling precision.

"It's actually not bad," I whispered.

"Wait for it," Gregor muttered.

On the third act, a wig leapt offstage and wrapped itself around my neck.

"Encore or DIE," it screamed.

That was when I realized…

This wasn't just a show.

It was a hostage situation with lighting cues.

I slapped the wig off my neck with the grace of a man swatting away a demonic toupee.

It hit the floor, bounced, and hissed like I'd insulted its great-grandmother's curls. Three more wigs launched themselves from the mezzanine like synchronized aerial assassins, aiming straight for my scalp.

"They're going for dominance!" Mister Fog shouted. "Protect your follicles!"

Lilith was already on the move. She caught one mid-air, stuffed it into a lantern, and lit the damn thing on fire.

"IT'S HAIRSPRAYED," she screamed, now engulfed in a cloud of flaming floral-scented smoke. "WHY IS IT HAIRSPRAYED."

"They're stage wigs!" Gregor cried from behind a curtain. "They need volume!"

Galrik ripped the stage curtain down and started using it like a butterfly net, catching one, two, five screaming wigs. "This is the most exercise I've had since I was born!!"

A wig on a mannequin head stood in the center of the stage, arms out like Jesus mid-finale.

It boomed: "You mock us—but we are artists! We suffer for our craft!"

"You committed wigslaughter," I yelled. "This isn't art, this is hair-based terrorism!"

But the wigs weren't listening. One of them had attached itself to Mister Fog's face and was now screeching an off-key rendition of "Ave Maria."

He calmly pulled out his flute, played a high note, and shattered the damn thing into glitter.

"Oh my gods," I said. "You can kill them with music?"

"I can kill most things with music," he said serenely.

Lilith landed beside me, smoldering, wild-eyed, and holding a wig she'd tied into a noose. "Permission to escalate?"

"Escalate to what?"

"Mass conditioner."

I turned to Madame Tressé, who stood perched atop the piano, her fibers frayed and her crown crooked. "This can still end peacefully!"

"You denied us center stage, darling," she growled. "You denied us our audience!"

"I am the audience," I snapped, "and this show sucked!"

That did it.

The wigs shrieked like a pack of banshees who'd just found out split ends were terminal. They flew toward me in a mass, a swirling cyclone of color and death.

"GALRIK!"

He stepped forward, holding a makeshift torch in one hand and a large bottle labeled 'Anti-Frizz Serum: Lethal Edition' in the other.

"For the Empire," he whispered, and threw it.

The bottle burst across the wigs like holy water on a vampire orgy. They sizzled, screamed, and exploded in showers of bobby pins and regret.

The opera house fell silent.

Madame Tressé lay in a puddle of mousse, her once-proud form now limp and curl-less.

"You could've been great," I said.

She coughed once. "I was fabulous."

And then she died. Dramatically. Like a diva. Mid-key change.

We returned to the capital two days later.

The Queen looked at us. Then at the charred remains of a lace-front wig in my hand. Then back at us.

She opened her mouth, but Mister Fog beat her to it.

"The wigs are dead. Long live the wigs."

I collapsed into the throne room floor.

"Please," I begged. "Let that be the last cursed assignment."

Queen Seraphina checked a scroll. "Oh. Hmm. There's a haunted mime college that just declared war on sound."

I screamed into my hands.

And somewhere far away… a cow laughed.