DOP #13 - After Ida Set Her Face on Fire

After Ida Set Her Face on Fire
By Rena Sherwood

Ida blamed Hitler for her eyebrow dandruff. If she hadn’t been worrying about the war, she would have known her face was too near the lit candle. The burns healed by the end of the war, but not the eyebrows because damn Hitler burned them all off.  

Perhaps it was a sneaky new weapon Hitler set off in the Philadelphia night, a bomb that took away just eyebrows. Every morning when Ida drew in her eyebrows, she hoped Hitler was getting a pitchfork stuck up his ass.

When the war ended, she hoped the Allies would uncover plots about the anti-eyebrow bomb. But, they never did. They did uncover those horrible camps. She saw the films. Many corpses still had eyebrows. It did not shake her belief.

Decades later, when the War on Terror started, Ida’s brows itched and flaked. She wondered if Hitler’s ghost gave the terrorists the anti-eyebrow bomb. The beautician said she had to exfoliate her eyebrows and that would get rid of the dandruff. Ida scrubbed with a loofah until her face bled, but still the eyebrow dandruff remained. Of course it would. Eyebrow dandruff let the terrorists know who to attack. Instead of a Star of David, they had to wear eyebrow dandruff.

She grabbed an Ouija board from the Goodwill and decided to have it out with Hitler. "How come you can have eyebrows but no one else can?"

Hitler, with shadowy eyebrows, replied, "They are the window frames of the soul. No eyebrows, and the soul shatters to pieces. Control the eyebrows, control the world."

After that advice, Ida felt great about sending him back to hell.

Ida took to wearing her bangs long after that. Hitler must be behind the eyebrow pencil makers. She mailed all of her eyebrow pencils back to the company protesting their pro-Hitler stance. They sent her a coupon for a free eyebrow pencil. She drew a swastika on it and used it for toilet paper, but it wasn’t very absorbent.

She would never let the bastard win. Her eyebrow dandruff always reminded her. If they ever came for her, she would be ready for them with tweezers.

Rena Sherwood is a freelance writer and has a blog here . She hopes to be a white horse when she grows up.