Another Facebook-inspired idea

From a status update: "Joe lost his beard."

It happened overnight. Joe had been working rather diligently at perfecting the look of his facial hair for months. He had trimmed the beard part and shaved the moustache bit, getting what he considered a perfect look. He had even gone so far as to dye it to match the purple tone that covered the hair on his head. But when he woke up on Sunday morning, it was gone.

He didn't notice right away. As he slowly opened his eyes, the first thing Joe noticed was how badly his head was throbbing. The next thing he noticed was that the light made it worse, so he closed his eyes again. With a heavy sigh, Joe reached up to rub his temples, hoping that might make his head feel better. It didn't. He ran his hands down his face to stroke his beard, a habit that he had picked up soon after he had started growing it. Something was wrong this morning.

Joe ran his hands over his beard again, trying to figure out what exactly it was that was not right. It took another moment to sink in - he was running his hands over something that was not there. A third pass over his chin, and Joe's hands finally registered that they were feeling skin that was almost as smooth as the day he was born.

With a yelp and a curse, Joe sat straight up, which prompted another yelp and curse as his head throbbed more vehemently. Forcing himself to crawl out of bed, he stumbled to the bathroom. In the mirror, his reflection confirmed what his hands had felt - Joe had lost his beard. Feeling absolutely miserable, Joe decided to go back to bed. Maybe it was all a bad dream. Laying down, he soon became unconscious.

A few hours later, he woke again, feeling somewhat less hung over. Remembering what he thought was a weird dream, he ran his hands over his face again. The beard was still gone. Shit. He struggled to remember the events of the previous night, but drew a blank. With a sad sigh, Joe got out of bed and looked around the room, as if hoping he would magically find his beard and just slip it back on. As his gaze swept over his chest of drawers, he stopped and frowned. There was a piece of paper laying there, one that did not look familiar. He reached over to pick it up, and lying beneath it was a pile of coarse, purple hair - his beard!

"Bastard," was all that was written on the piece of paper in a feminine hand. Joe stared at it, wondering what, or who, he had done the night before.