This was for a contest in the English department at my college. The assignment was to bring two tabloid headlines to the office, and then we put all the headlines in a box and each of the contestants drew one. Then we had to go home and write a story from the perspective of the persons in the tabloid story. The goal was to make the unrealistic headline into a realistic and believable story. This was my headline, and this is what I did with it. I got first place. :)

Man's 175mph Sneeze Blows Wife's Hair Off!

Benny isn't my husband, not really. We say we're married, but that's just to keep the old ladies at the church picnics from looking at us like we're unfortunate hell-bents. If they knew Benny and I had been living in the same house for three years but the wedding rings on our fingers were fake, they would probably turn eight shades of red and refuse to ever speak to us again. Benny and I try to avoid that situation at all cost. Mrs. Dillensure, the leader of the ladies fellowship, is quite cemented into her faith and has made it known on several occasions that she believes sex out of wedlock is the most heinous of all sins. Not even murder or rape holds a candle to two people who willingly break one of God's most sacred commandments on a daily basis. "It's like slapping God in the face!" she says. I'm not really sure about all that. I don't really listen in church, I'm only there for the little sandwiches in the fellowship hall after service, but I do remember something about these ten commandments that God gave some old guy named Moses. I can't remember exactly what they all were, but I am sure that having sex before getting married wasn't on the list. Neither was smoking. So, since those two are the only bad things I do, I'm not too worried about my soul. Still, to be safe, Benny and I tell people that we're married. I know it's a lie, and lying was definitely on that list, but it's only a little lie. Mrs. Dillensure is generous to the "true believers" and she makes excellent apple pie. Benny would be really sad if he never got to eat that apple pie ever again, so I tell a little white lie to keep my husband happy. Jesus would understand that, don't you think?

After church on Sundays, Benny and I go out to lunch with a few other folks from the Twenty-Something's Ministry. Benny likes the guys in the band and has been taking guitar lessons for a couple months now. He's hoping to maybe play up there on stage sometime during communion. I think he's wonderful.

Two of the players that go with us, Kyle and Jane, are the bassist and drummer. They're boyfriend and girlfriend. They don't live together, but I'm sure they're having sex. No one seems to be bothered with that though and I wonder sometimes if that might be a loophole in Mrs. Dillensure's faith. Maybe Benny should get his own place and then we could have as much sex as we wanted and no one would care because we weren't living together and doing it. Kyle and Benny get along great, and Jane lets me borrow her clothes sometimes. She has about a hundred pairs of adorable shoes that look like they've never been worn.

There are two more in our group, Jerry and Mike. Mike plays the keyboard and Jerry sings like an angel. Not that I know what an angel sounds like when they sing, it's just an expression I've heard a few times and it sounded good. I'm pretty sure that Jerry and Mike are not having sex. It's not like I'd mind it if they were, I'm just saying that I'm pretty sure it's not happening. Good thing too. Living together or not, I'm sure Jerry and Mike having sex probably wouldn't work into that faith loophole I was talking about before.

The six of us always meet at a diner on Fifth. It's only a ten minute walk from the church and it's on the way home for not only me and Benny, but Mike too. We sometimes give him a ride since his car is in the shop more than it's out. This diner on Fifth is called Steelhead Diner and there's a big neon man with a sailor hat on standing above the door and waving. I looked up what a steelhead is on the internet a few weeks ago and found out it was a fish. Why the diner's named after a fish, I'll never know, and why there's a sailor waving at the front of the diner named after a fish will probably never be answered either. In any case, the food is cheap and it tastes good. The music on the overhead doesn't bother me, and the bathroom is clean. I'm easy to please.

The reason I'm telling you about this diner is because that's where the predicament I'm now in started. Last week Benny and I scooped up Jane and Kyle after church and the four of us drove over to the diner to meet Jerry and Mike. The afternoon started like any other: Benny and Mike started talking about chord progressions and Jane, Jerry and I ordered coffee for everyone. Kyle sat quietly in the booth, watching and listening like he always does. He's not a big talker. When the waitress came back and asked if we were ready, Jerry said yes and we all took turns ordering our sandwiches or soup or pancakes or whatever. It really was a normal Sunday afternoon; nothing out of the ordinary.

But then Mike had to dare Benny to snort salt. Mike was always thinking up stupid dares like that. Usually they involved eating or drinking something foul, but this time he said he had been inspired by Pastor John's sermon about teens and drugs. In honor of the pastor's powerful words, instead of eating something like chocolate shake mixed with ketchup and hamburger bun, Benny would be sniffing salt like a line of cocaine. I said nothing when Benny agreed.

There was a lot of giggling as Jerry opened the top of the shaker and poured a bit of salt on the table. Mike leaned in and made a line out of the small mound with his fingers. I was going to suggest using a credit card like I'd seen in the movies, but decided against it. I didn't want to look like I knew what I was doing. Stuff like that gets around in a small town like this one, and Benny and I were already pushing it by lying about being married. Jane took a pen out of her purse then and took it apart. She gave the tube to Benny and told him it would make the sniffing easier. Benny took it and thanked her, and without wasting another moment, sniffed up the line of salt in one smooth motion.

One of the things I like about Benny is that he never backs down from a challenge. I may have thought that sniffing the salt was a dumb idea, and I may have rolled my eyes while they were setting up the line, but when Benny leaned in and did the deed without the slightest hesitation, I felt a little bit of pride swell in my chest. It may seem stupid now, but I thought it was sexy that Benny just went for it. I still do actually.

When Benny sat back up straight, he blinked a few times and swallowed hard. He sniffed again and made a face like he had just bitten into an exceptionally sour lemon.

"Ah…" he sort of chuckled, "Holy shit…"

Everyone laughed, even me. The look on Benny's face was pretty priceless. I wished I had one of those fancy phones with a camera so I could take a picture, but then Benny's face returned to normal and he took a sip of his coffee.

Everything would have been fine, but then Mike dared Benny to do it again, but this time he had to snort pepper. This idea didn't go over so well with me. Benny and I had eaten at this Italian restaurant a few weeks back and Benny had ordered a dish that was heavy on the pepper. About halfway through the meal, Benny's eyes had started to water and we had to send the dish back. Now Mike wanted him to snort it? I was about to say no, but Benny, being the guy that never backs down, said he'd do it before I could say anything. They didn't do a line this time, Jerry just poured a little pile of pepper on the table and Benny leaned in.

"Baby, don't do it," I said softly.

Benny looked up at me and he smiled. That's really all it ever takes with me and he knows it. I shut up, and he snorted.

The whole thing kind of went down like the first time. He sat up, muttered something under his breath, and then everyone laughed. Only I noticed the way his eyes went a little out of focus, or that his cheeks were a little red. I decided it didn't matter though, he wanted to act stupid then he could handle a little discomfort. If he tried to get sympathy from me later that evening, I decided I wasn't going to give it to him.

If it all had stopped there, everything would have been fine, but for some reason Mike had it in for Benny that day. Mike's next idea was to have Benny snort the red pepper flakes in the little glass jar that was sitting between the syrup and the bottle of ketchup. I spoke up that time. Knowing what regular pepper did to Benny's nose and eyes, I couldn't just sit back and let him sniff the red. I felt like he was going to die and I said so.

Mike didn't seem to care that I was worried though, neither did anyone else. Benny reached across the table and put his hand over mine. "It'll be okay, Babe," he grinned at me and reached for the red pepper jar.

The third time was a lot like the first two. Benny leaned in, snorted, everyone laughed (except for me this time), and then he sat up straight and made an awful face. I felt a little better after he coughed a few times and took a sip of coffee, but that good feeling started to go away as I watched his face get redder and redder, like the way I knew Mrs. Dillensure's would if she ever found out Benny and I weren't married. Mike and the others didn't seem to notice what was happening to Benny's face and they started up another conversation as if nothing in the world was wrong.

But I knew something was wrong. I leaned across the table and whispered to Benny as he blinked slowly. "Babe? Honey? Are you okay?" He didn't seem to hear me. He made a peculiar smacking sound with his lips, and then I watched as his eyes started to water. He wasn't crying, but his eyes puffed up and his eyeballs got red where they were supposed to be white. I leaned back, worried enough to nudge Jane to try and get her attention. She turned to me and asked me in a whisper if I had to go to the bathroom. I said, "No, but would you please look at Benny? His face looks funny." My fear had attracted Kyle's attention too and now he was leaning in as well.

"I think he's gonna sneeze," Kyle said quietly.

Mike just laughed. Jerry was watching in anticipation on his other side.

It turned out Kyle was right. Benny started to make that funny, awkward face that most people make before they sneeze. You know, that one where your eyebrows go up but the rest of your face goes down? That's the one. I remember it distinctly because that was the last thing I saw before I woke up on the floor. Jane was over me, slapping my cheeks and Benny was at my side holding my hand. As I opened my eyes I was so confused—not because I was on the floor, or because I had obviously blacked out. No, I was confused because Benny was looking at me the way he does when he's forgotten to do the laundry or taken out the trash like I told him to. He had that "oh shit, I'm in so much trouble" kind of look and I couldn't think why. What had he done? I had passed out and fallen to the floor! He couldn't have stopped that.

Then Benny helped me sit up and I got a better look at the diner. The booth Jane, Kyle and I had been sitting in had moved, torn right out of the wall. Kyle was standing where the thing used to be connected, looking intently at the broken tile and molding. Jerry and Mike were crouched a few feet away from me, looks of shock and terror plastered to their faces. The waitress that had taken our orders earlier was bustling about, asking if I needed anything and assuring me that the ambulance would be here soon. At that time I wasn't sure why I needed an ambulance, I had just passed out. Not a big deal. But I kept my mouth shut, no sense in refusing someone's kind intentions.

"I'm so sorry," Benny said to me in his oh-please-don't-kill-me-because-I-forgot-to-put-the-toilet-seat-down voice. "I didn't mean to. If I'd a known…"

"Just help me up, Benny," I said.

He had an arm around my shoulders but he didn't make a move to help me up. "I think you should stay where you are. The paramedics will be here soon and they'll be able to tell if anything else is wrong."

I made a face and shook my head at him. "Come on, Benny. Can you please just help me up so I can sit in a chair? All I did was pass out for Christ's sake, what do I need paramedics for?"

Jane made a noise that made me look at her. She opened her purse and pulled out a compact and handed to me. I wasn't sure what I was supposed to do with it at first. I mean I was on the ground, just passed out, with a paranoid boyfriend holding me down like some car crash victim that needed to stay still until they checked for a broken neck. Was my makeup running? Was there something between my teeth? I couldn't for the life of me figure out why Jane had given me this compact.

Luckily, Jane took pity on me in my confused state and opened the compact for me. She held it up so I could see my reflection.

I gasped.

I was bald. Completely and totally bald like the professor from X-Men or that Airbender kid. I raised a hand to feel along the smooth skin, my fingers trembling a little as I tucked a phantom lock behind my ear.

Jane leaned in and whispered to me as I stared at my bald reflection. "Benny sneezed. The whole booth flew back. Kyle and I went with it, but you… and your hair…"

I looked at Benny and he looked like he was about to cry. He was probably thinking that there would be no sex in our sinful household for months. We could stop pretending we were married because we would be living together but sleeping in different rooms.

I was not thinking any of those things. I turned back to the compact and ran my palm over my new do and realized that I kind of liked it.

And then I couldn't stop laughing.