Snip, snap, snip, snap, snip, went the scissors in her shaking hands, making way for locks of dying hair to fall towards the old newspapers below. Years of dish soap and no conditioner were not treating the unruly strands well, for they were contaminated with a layer of snowy dandruff , as well as a not so nomadic family of lice and a multitude of breaking, split ends. As cautious as she was, her fear of something, anything inevitably going wrong would not dissolve in the thin air of her tiny apartment. Self employed and captivated by the prospect of capability, she was going to put her all into this endeavor. Each of her legs fell to the perpendicular sides of her dusty bed mattress, the sides meeting at a corner in between. The back of her feet touched the wrinkled newspaper layer below her, practically sticking to the cheap ink used to produce the countless political accounts and photos plaguing the front pages. Perhaps the most sumptuous piece of furniture in the house, a stained, full length mirror, faced her, directly parallel with her eyes. The mirror had her mesmerized. She would stare at her hairs’ ends, and with the dexterity of a tennis player attempting basketball, plan where she would make her next cut. Sometimes she would lean in to get a better look, causing her to slide down the corner of her mattress a little. When she finally finished contemplating on a lock of hair and went in with her big kitchen scissors, it was if all time and surrounding sounds stood still. For the duration of when the blades spread open to the moment that the last piece of hair floated to the ground, all that remained audible was the resounding, hundreds of strands snapping back as the two blades made contact. Snip. It was a beautiful noise. And several beautiful noises yielded, miraculously, a beautiful product. She took a look in the mirror. Indeed, her hair wasn’t in much better than before- only the issue of split ends had been partially solved. But to herself, she was a completely transformed queen, a saved lost girl. So she jumped up, feet dramatically detaching from the sticky newspaper, and sashayed out the door of her bedroom and then the apartment, leaving a trail of faint ink marks and cut hair. And she would let the wealthy, affording peoples of New York City know that she could do it and she did do it, all by herself.