By Felix Morgan
It wasn't even so much that his head wasn't attached to his body, it was that he kept leaving it everywhere. At first she didn't even care. She didn't like the glassy look in its blue eyes anyway. The jagged severed neck bled all over the counter while she was trying to do the dishes. To help out. Since she was crashing here. But just for now, just until she figured out what to do next. Sometimes it talked, or tried to.
It sounded wheezy and dead. She wondered if it wanted a drink. She didn't want to touch it, though, and she couldn't figure out how she would do that without getting close to it. Ugh. She gave up on the dishes and wandered back to the bedroom to get stoned.
The headless body was super hot. All perfectly bad fitting plain clothes covering slim but muscular sun-brown limbs. It played guitar in a band called The Horseman.
When she met the band a few weeks ago, after all that shit went down with Kate, she had liked him right away. She reached out to shake hands but he bumped into her arm and just pulled her into a tight full frontal hug. She felt every line of him against her and stared into the space above the bloody neck stump. She smiled. She could feel everyone tense up. She knew what they were thinking, what they'd say later. Fuck them.
She ran her hands down the arms where they held her around the waist and decided to do it. She hooked a finger through his belt loop and pulled him to her MINI Cooper. Luckily she already knew where he lived. Everyone knew where he lived.
When he fucked her — when IT fucked her — it was everything and nothing. Nihilism with orgasms. A blank space where her feels should be. It was just what she wanted. To scrape the ugliest parts of herself against something else broken. It was all sweat and lust and faded tattoos. How old was it anyway? Not like it mattered.
In the morning, when she smoked a cigarette lying on dirty sheets, she decided to stay a while. She didn't really have a place to be. She explained to the naked, lean body that she'd help clean this place up. That it would be temporary. She looked over at the head. With its shaggy brown hair and dull blue eyes. It was laying sideways on an armchair looking at them. It didn't say no. It didn't say anything. It just stared at the bed.
Last night, when she was drunk, she thought this was hilarious. Last night, when she was drunk and high and he was behind her, she wanted it to see. She wanted to be in pieces, too. Maybe the body would break her. Tear her apart from her breasts to her seemingly insatiable pussy. She wondered what kind of hurt that would be. There weren't enough new hurts in the world anymore. But mornings were different, and she didn't want those dead eyes on her.
The following Saturday, the band had picked it up as usual, giving her suspicious looks while she ate a TV dinner off her knees in the living room. It felt its way down the hallway as they helped it into the van. It didn't play well. It didn't have to. The body didn't come home from the show that evening.
She sat in her ratty pink panties and a stained tank top in front of the ancient television. The head sat with her on the couch where he had left it. There were no mirrors in the house. There was no place she had to look at herself.
She was laughing at a game show. Somewhere around the fourth beer she looked over at the head. It was watching too. It looked at her from the corner of its eyes and opened its mouth.
She leaned over, impulsively, and poured beer into its open mouth. It drooled a little and its eyes widened in surprise. Where did the beer go? Who cared? It coughed and sputtered. She laughed. It rolled its eyes to the furthest parts of its sockets and looked at her. It grunted and she laughed. She poured more beer down its throat until it almost choked.
"Ugh. Thanks." It cleared its throat.
Oh Shit. It was talking. The head was a thing that could talk now.
"Uh. You're welcome?" This was bad. This was going to ruin everything.
"This show blows. Why don't we have cable?"
Well. Maybe it would be okay.
"I know right?" She flipped over to a black and white channel. Old cowboy movies in Spanish. They watched in silence for a while.
"I know it's weird, but could you move me over a little? It's hard to see from this angle. Gives me a headache." She burst out laughing and the head smiled. "Yeah, that's the only kind of ache I get anymore."
"You're lucky then." She stood up and adjusted the head, moving it closer to her and facing the old TV full-on, before grabbing two more beers from the fridge.
"Am I?"
"Sure. There's all sorts of things you don't have to feel."
"Like the ache in your belly when you know you're going to fuck someone but they don't quite know it yet? Yeah thank god I haven't experienced that lately." The head moaned dramatically and she laughed.
"What about the sinking feeling in your stomach you get when you realize you've done something awful?"
"Oh I still get that. It's not actually in the stomach. It's all in the neck. The part of your throat where you try not to cry. That part. You know."
"Oh. Yeah. That makes sense."
She thought about Kate. She thought about Kate's husband and how he panted his bad breath all over her in the back of the car. She hadn't even wanted him. She never really knew what she wanted, just that she did. She always did.
"Sorry. I can be sort of a downer. Can I have a drink?"
"No worries. Sure. So, what do you miss the most?"
"Sex. Duh."
She laughed again. She remembered the head watching them. She felt vaguely embarrassed, and so killed her beer in one big gulp and took his too.
"You are so hot, by the way. Sorry, but I have to say it. The way you whip your head around when you come. Ughhhh. Torture."
She grinned. "Sorry?"
"Don't apologize. It's hot as fuck. Best thing that's happened to me in a year. Usually the body just hooks up at the shows. I assume. Based on how its pants are never zipped. So embarrassing. I don’t think its kept someone around this long before”
"It is sort of clumsy. You mean you guys don't usually let girls stay over?”
The head gave her a quizzical look. It opened its mouth to say something, but shut it again.
“Uh, well clearly that was a mistake. Nothing brings a room together like a hot girl sitting around without pants on."
She laughed again. She couldn't remember the last time her face was in so many smiling shapes. The head was gross, sure. But also charming.
"Well there are some things you can still feel." She smiled and touched its hair.
"Oh God, you're such a tease."
Two more beers and they were making out. She put it on a couch cushion on her stomach so she didn't have to hold it. It was a good kisser, even if it couldn't move. It nipped at her tongue and whispered about how hot she was and the things it’d do to her. She wiggled under the cushion, panting.
"Give me your neck." It murmured and it ran its hot tongue along there and bit her. Kind of hard but in a hot way. She moaned. She needed more. She always did.
She pushed the head off and it moaned in complaint until it saw what she was doing. She sat next to the cushion where it rolled its eyes trying to see and took her tank top off. She grabbed it, right under its ears and above the jagged dripping wound. She pressed it to her naked chest.
"Oh fuck yes," it exclaimed, taking her nipple in its mouth enthusiastically.
It was good at that, too. She wished she had a free hand. She was hot as hell, but the head was heavy. She writhed against the dirty couch, wanting. They stayed that way for a while until the head finally, breathlessly, suggested the idea that had occurred to both of them some minutes earlier.
When the body stumbled in, she was holding its decapitated head between her legs and panting with pleasure. She froze for a second but of course the body couldn't hear her. It felt its way past them to the bedroom, she could hear it fumbling around. Probably looking for her. She smiled and brought the head up. Its eyes were glazed with pleasure.
"Thank you,” it mouthed and she giggled.
She carried it to the bedroom and put it on the chair by the bed. She grabbed the body by the arm, it groped her eagerly. She peeled off its sleeveless shirt and pressed it down on the bed so that she could climb on top, facing the head. She looked right in the head's blue eyes as she unzipped his body's pants. She stared at it while she took its dick inside her. If she squinted, if she got the angle just right, she could pretend they were both whole.
She rode the headless body like it was going out of style. She grabbed the neck stump as she came. She didn't care about the edges anymore. The jagged pieces of flesh and coagulated blood. The flap of some faded neck tattoo.
Wait.
She stopped. Cold sweat all over her all of a sudden. Her hand trembled as she pulled at the tattooed neck-flap skin, pulling it up again. Some sort of tribal heart. But that wasn't right. That wasn't possible.
"What's wrong, babe?" the head asked. The body was grabbing at her hips and she swatted its hands away. She climbed off it and walked over to the chair where she lifted the head. It licked its lips.
"You're so fucking hot. Kiss me. Let me kiss you."
She looked as closely as she could at the neck. It was a mess but there was definitely no tattoo on the neck. Her stomach clenched. Her throat, too. The part where you try not to cry. She turned and held the head up toward the body, which was getting to its feet now. Naked and lean. But there. The skin wasn't the same shade. How could she have not noticed that before?
She was frozen. Something in her mind was breaking. The body reached out and felt around. Touched her arms and felt the head there. It grabbed the head from her and threw it against the wall. She heard the head groan as it hit. And crunched. And slid to the floor.
Her brain started working again and she tried to run but the body grabbed her. One hand on her arm and one around her neck and it duck-walked her to the kitchen while she struggled. It was so strong. It pressed her against the counter and held her there with its legs. Oh God, she could feel its boner. Hard as hell against her ass as she yelled and fought. It kept an arm around her neck, choking the screams out of her while it opened drawers and cabinets. She caught a glimpse above the sink. Something on the self.
Heads. More heads. Some of them mostly skulls now, and some of them mangled and bleeding. A few wiggled or opened their mouths. Her terror grew until it was all of her. There was no part of her that wasn't this mortal fear. Its hands found a knife, finally, and the monster bent her over the sink.
From Lucky Dark's Halloween Anthology: The Monsters Who Loved Me.