Rapunzel

They'd told me that the broad was waiting for me. They'd told me that I'd recognise her straight off by the length of her long, blonde hair. They'd told me that there were two suitcases stuffed with fifties in it for me if I got her back safely. They said, specifically, repeating it loudly several times, that not a hair on her head must be harmed.
She was sat in the restaurant at the top of the Tower, the tallest building in the city. The restaurant was owned by one of those faux-celebrity chefs that only ever appear on the Food Network; people who think they're famous because they've no idea that the rest of the world is still out there. The food was listed as being quasi-home-made, and I have no idea what that means, but the menu was insipid and unappetising. The waiter made me spit me out after five minutes and told me that I supposed to order off it, not eat it. I told him he had five minutes to quit his job and get out of the building or I'd hunt him down and kill him. I showed him my appendectomy scar and told him that I'd smuggled a gun into the building by sewing it inside myself and I would dig it out with a butter-knife if I had to. He looked at me as though I were mad, but I didn't see him come back into the restaurant again.
The broad sat down opposite me, her hair trailing back to her own seat over on the other side of the restaurant and gave me the once-over. I gave her the once-over back and realised how royally I'd been screwed on this case.
"My name's Rapunzel," she said, holding out a hand. I checked it carefully; it was hairy.
"I'm the sucker they hired to get you out," I said. "How long have you been here?"
"Six years," she said, and her voice had a weariness in it I'd last heard from the patients in the cancer ward where I was reading romance novels as part of a community service sentence. "You're not the first, you know."
"I did my research," I said, "although not enough, it would seem."
"You can research me?"
"I can research the people who hired me, though they'd probably be very upset if they knew about it. What I needed to know that no-one told me was how long your hair is."
"They can be very... physical when they're upset." Her voice was as cautious as her words.
"How long is your hair now?"
"Twenty-five metres."
"How far can you walk?"
"I can't carry it any more. I can get to the door of the restaurant, but that's about it. And most of the day I have to have it piled up at shoulder-height or its too heavy to keep my head up. I sometimes wake up and find it strangling me in my sleep."
"And you've not considered a hair-cut?"
"That's not allowed."
We both fell silent, and I don't know what she was thinking but I was wondering if there was a way out of this mess that would let me keep my job and my looks. I had doubts. Big, big doubts that stood there dressed in neon, flashing lights and strobed like an epileptic light-house operator.
"Fine," I said finally. "We'll have to do this the hard way then."
She raised an eyebrow, which was, I suddenly realised, ridiculously thick for a woman.
"Like I said, I did my research," I said. "This hair thing, no-one can grow that much hair naturally. And not letting it be cut – well, you're no Samson, are you? So it's not cut because of some property it has while it's still attached to you, not because of something it is or it can become. And it can't be invisibility, or you'd have walked out of here all by yourself some time ago, when you still could." She was nodding, and I thought I saw a spark in her eyes. Hope, perhaps?
"Trouble is, there's not much in the literature about you," I said. "A couple of references here and there, but it looks very much like someone's tried to eradicate you, or at least, things like you. And I can't help but think that you might be the last of your kind."
She was still nodding, but carefully now, looking about us for people trying to eavesdrop on our conversation. I wasn't surprised, it was obvious that my employers knew who she was, and that her imprisoners didn't. That did make the hard way that much harder though.
"You're an Hirsution," I said quietly. "If I cut a single hair on your head it'll burst into rampant growth and quickly fill this entire Tower, won't it? It'll strangle all the occupants, and then rot away in a matter of hours, until there's just dead bodies and no evidence of how the murder happened?"
She'd stopped nodding now, and the wideness of her eyes suggested that no-one had guessed right before. I took the package from my inside pocket and discovered that the blood had soaked through the butcher paper and it was now dripping. I hissed with disgust, but she was leaning forward and hissing with delight.
"I told you I did my research," I said, holding the package out. She seized it, tearing it from my hands and ripping it open to get at the meat. "Goat meat, exactly what you need to transform."
She bit frantically into the steak, more blood running from the holes she made as she pulled and tugged at it, devouring it as fast as she could. Already she seemed hazy as though she wasn't sure she wanted to be human shaped.
I sat back and waited. I'd not been able to find any pictures of what an Hirsution looked like in their natural form, and I was curious. Reports of their inhuman strength were easier to find though, and this was my plan for leaving the Tower: kick down the doors, walls and anything else that got in our way. I offered a small prayer to anyone who might be listening and waited for the transformation to complete.