The Slow Death

When Damian Wiggian was in fifth grade he learned that genetic traits are passed from parents to children.

A cacophony of anxiety and panic ricocheted hazardously inside his very haired head.

“I'm going to go bald.” he whispered to himself much louder than he would have liked.

The classroom turned into a zoo.

From that moment on Damian Wiggian dedicated his life to preventing this inevitability. How could his own genes betray him!? Baked into his DNA was a destiny no male Wiggian had ever escaped.

He scoured ancient texts of civilizations suffering from colonialism, imperialism and expansionist policies. He sampled extinctifying tree after extincitifying tree desperate for a miracle cure. He tried home remedies, trade secrets and products with fancy brand names.

All of this before he arrived in sixth grade.

Damian Wiggian was determined not to go bald.

Years passed and the clock ticked. How long did he have? His father? Bald at 33. His grandfather? 37. His other grandfather? 27.

Ten years!? Maybe less!

His search uncovered the shadow of a whisper of a rumor uttered in the dead of night in a smokey low lit back room that lay behind by a big metal door with a big human bouncer behind it.

“Money can solve your problem.”

Damian Wiggian launched himself haired-head first into a lifelong pursuit of money! Money would solve his problem and stop this genetic certainty. He had to fight this tragedy in the making. They would remember him for what he did. He had to keep his hair!

He begged, borrowed and stole, worked and worked, shut himself in as he grinded.

He scorned lovers and parents, both bald and maternal. He destroyed friendships and burned bridges, for insurance money and metaphorical ones. He ruined lives and ruined more lives.

He squeezed every dollar out of every employee he ever had. Overworked and underpaid. He fired and hired.

“The ends justify the means,” he muttered to himself rightly as he examined and examined and reexamined and reexamined his hairline.

His fortune grew and with it his fame. Though, his motivation remained shrouded in mystery.

Who ever would have guessed?

The media propped him up as a success story until he became so wealthy he bought the media and kept his name out of it.

Then he turned to other industries.

Motivated by his deep desire to stop the inevitability, the scientific prophecy of baldness, Damian Wiggian amassed a fortune never before seen. He owned big chunks of Black Rock, Citibank, Aetna, the New York Knicks, the New York Times, the New York Giants and the San Francisco Giants. He owned ten thousand coffee shops and ten different coffee chains. He owned retailers and online retailers that were cutting into the profits of his more traditional businesses. He owned Boeing and Monsanto and Facebook and CNN, Time Warner Cable and Netflix. He owned every single experimental drug company. He owned farms across the world and politicians in every country. He owned Big Ben, the Kremlin and the Statue of Liberty, the Pyramids and the Himalayas. He owned it all and squeezed out every last dime he could. Then he used all of those dimes to buy more and more and more until he really did own it all. Then he squeezed some more, just to be sure.

He would stop himself from going bald.

Each day, hair a little thinner. Each day, a little richer. He sat while his fortunes piled up. By now he was the only American success story. All others had gone out of business. He no longer needed to lift a finger. He was richer than old money and new money. He was a king. He was a god. He was the divine ruler of the universe and sole owner of every square inch of planet Earth.

And then he went bald anyway.