Hairy Priest

   

It all began with a single hair, on his knee, gently swaying in solitary contentment as the bath water lapped at Father Peter’s legs. The good priest carelessly pulled the hair from his damp skin, and raised himself out of the old tin tub, completely unaware that he had opened the dam to a flood of future torment and misery.

  By next Sunday bath-time, the hair was back, and this time it had brought an evil ally. The priest didn’t even notice, so lost in higher thoughts was he, and not until he looked in the bathroom mirror did he return from thoughts of next week’s sermon, to the realisation that his eyebrows joined in the middle. The problem wasn’t catastrophic, even for a man in such a publicly orientated position, but the three hairs directly above the priest’s nose had somehow intertwined to provide a link between one eyebrow and the other. They had to go; so, reaching for a pair of rusty tweezers, the priest vanquished the unsightly facial invaders one by one.

   Next week, back in front of the mirror, the priest gasped in horror. He had a single eyebrow – a thick, black line spreading from one side of his face to the other! The priest reached for his tweezers and was overcoming all pain and suffering to return his face to its old benevolent self when he realised that the backs of his hands were unacceptably hairy. With the priest’s mind in its usual state of Sunday hyperactivity, visions appeared of children reeling back in horror as beastly paws passed them their communion bread, babies crying uncontrollably as hairy hands tickled their baptismal noses. It would take an eternity to cast out every single one of these follicles. Father Peter wanted to cry. 

   He entered the pharmacy wrapped in a large overcoat, his face hidden behind a woolly hat and a pair of sunglasses from lost and found. Nervously scanning the hair care aisle, he hurriedly reached for a pack of bikini wax and joined the queue.

   “Father Peter, is that you?”

   The good priest turned to see old Mrs. Rutdan, head of this year’s Christmas raffle, and notorious windbag. After a moment of silence, Father Peter broke from the frozen fear that Mrs. Rutdan’s expectant grey eyes imposed on him to shake his body in a negative motion. He dropped a handful of copper onto the counter and dashed home. 

   His screams echoed through the church. A pan of wax mockingly boiled on the stove, as Father Peter pulled himself up from the oak table at which he had momentarily lost consciousness. His hairy left hand was now distinguished by a rectangular strip of red, sore, but hairless skin.

   Father Peter dragged himself to the basin and splashed water to his face. His eyebrows were raised – mercifully still parted. His eyes were wide with shock, and his nostrils were inflamed – inflamed to reveal billowing tufts of heathen-black hair. Hair in his nostrils! Why? The good priest fell to the ground.

   The problem reached its zenith a month later when Father Peter emerged to give his Sunday service. The hairy priest waddled up to his alter, legs wide apart to relieve the pain of last night’s crack-waxing, to face his loyal congregation.

   “Ch, ch, ch…” The pressing concern of his follicle invasion had made Father Peter forget to get the church heating fixed. His teeth violently chattered at the audience, and if they weren’t already disturbed by the Father’s cowboy stance, the congregation were sent into despair as their poor leader began scratching uncontrollably at his armpits, plagued by stubs of shaven hair already bursting forth from the skin.

    Ravaged though he was, the good Father began his sermon. The hair on his hands had spread in recent weeks to his forearms. The hair on his knees hung over his hairy shins like an unkempt fringe. New hair sprouted from his nipples. Somehow, the hairs of his holy nostrils had found their way through the cavities of his priestly head, and had colonised his ears. Wondering why he had neglected to dim the lights, Father Peter had lost all sense of what he was saying.

   “Moses did find the Hebrews worshipping a goat; and he smashed the goat with the Ten Commandments, and, um, went to get some more…”

   The congregation looked on in confused silence.

   “Let us pray.”

   Unable to go to a professional at risk of being publicly derided for vanity, the priest had become an amateur hair removal expert. His library shelves now housed a full supply of tweezers, wax creams, electrolysis probes, epilators and razors, and yet still the problem was becoming worse. The first of his subscripted issues of “Men’s Health” offered the suggestion that sunlight prevented hair growth, hair being the body’s form of insulation. The hairy priest bound up the stairs of the bell tower, to the highest point of the church, the highest point of the village, and the closest he could reach to the sun. He tore open his gown and welcomed the sun’s rays to work its wondrous glory upon his carpeted chest.

   Taxi drivers were soon to point out the spectacle of the local priest, standing atop the church bell tower in all his glory. Gossip spread of the mysterious scratching emanating from the priest’s confessional booth, and of a local’s photograph of the sun basking Father that had come out blurred. Then, as suddenly as the day he emerged on the bell tower, the hairy priest ceased from such a peculiar routine, and was never to be seen in daylight again.

   Father Peter had heard on the radio that hair growth was a natural form of sun block, and opening up his church doors one day to welcome a wedding congregation, and reeling back in horror at the resultant flood of sunlight, the priest encouraged the best man’s theory of the mysterious Churchman being a tormented vampire.

   Like all his later speeches, the good father centralised his introduction to the wedding around the subject of the crucifixion. This would allow the father to strike a lingering crucifixion pose, thus revealing to all his last naturally hairless areas of the body, his palms. Misreading the awkwardness in his audience’s faces as admiration for the smoothness of his palm skin, the good father was snatched from his moment by the realisation that the best man was staring directly into his ears. He had forgotten to pluck! Quickly rounding off the speech, comparing marriage to an onion – something about layers – the priest darted through the marriage vows, threw the wedding book at the couple, and ran off.

   That’s why Father Peter now uses Mystique’s new K-13 Hair Removal Cream. The K-13 treats all unwanted hair in minutes. Just apply, remove, and you’ll be as soft and smooth as one of Father Peter’s baptised baby’s bottoms.

   One girl in Father Peter’s congregation is quoted as saying that since she started using Mystique’s K-13, she’s been able to get “boys.”

   So for all your hair removal needs, at a special price of £18.95 a box, make sure you convert to Mystique’s K-13.

   It’s God approved!