TWO HEADS
Later, after it was all over, he would tell them he saw it all as a movie, because he didn’t want them to know it had really happened to him. Of course, they might then want to know all the details, like some large impersonal audience hungry for aberrant drama, and he couldn’t tell them that, either. He would mutter and make things up, frequently getting caught by his contradictions.
He first noticed something wrong on a morning he stood at the closet door, looking at the boxes, boxes he had signed for but left unopened for months. “Open them,” he heard a voice say. It sort of sounded like his voice but far removed, tiny and tinny. He was frightened by the vibrations he felt in his throat as the voice spoke again. He heard more but couldn’t figure out all the words. “Open the boxes,” he distinctly heard again. This time, he heard it close, but still tiny and tinny. “What are you afraid of? It might be something nice,” then garbled syllables.
Though feeble, the voice sounded calm. For no reason other than intuition he reached up and touched his neck, below the right ear, just above his shoulder. There he found a lump, a lump a bit bigger than a peach pit. Jolted from his half-awake, early morning grogginess, he ran to the bathroom, switched on the light and stared horrified at the lump. Not quite smooth, there seemed to be irregular shapes in the lump that reminded him of human features. He couldn’t recognize the features on the ghoulish little lump, with its waxy skin showing veins and shading.
Aghast, he stared at it for a long time. Not quite real, it sort of looked like a tiny head, a head growing on the same neck as his head but much smaller. It seemed to have two small, cloudy eyes, barely distinct and still shrouded by a thin membrane. He could see movement in the lump and fantasized that it was a mouth trying to articulate speech but “No!” He said to hiself. He knew that couldn’t be happening. From within him as he watched without him, he saw it move and shift the cloudy eyes toward him and he could hear the voice again, coming from a place he couldn’t locate. He didn’t understand and couldn’t understand but he had to understand that something was talking to him in a voice he knew and he knew it wasn’t his. The little head talked most of the day. He found it too frightening to work in the main office and stayed home that day. He opened his laptop and spread papers on the dining room table, working remotely, trying to avoid seeing the small head alongside his neck in the screen reflection or anywhere that was shiny. “No video conferences today!” He said out loud in his own voice, or so he thought.
He tried to shut off his ears but that didn’t work. He tried to shut off his mind instead.
When the little head with the little voice kept talking he began to think he was losing his mind. “A mind is a terrible thing to lose,” the little voice said. He couldn’t think. He couldn’t sleep. He got into the liquor cabinet and tried to drink it away. It kept talking, slurring and occasionally giggling.
He carried on like this for nearly a week. The idea of going to a therapist or doctor about this was out of the question. Just too freakish. One night, in silent hysteria, he paced his kitchen like a hungry animal, never stopping for a minute's rest. "I'm here, you know," the voice from the tiny head said. "I'm not going away."
"The hell you aren't." The anger in his voice sounded so unfamiliar. He could hardly believe the words came out of his mouth. Of course, he could hardly believe he had a tiny head growing out of his neck. That night, like he had for the previous three, he sat at the bedroom window, looking out at the city lights. He never thought to talk decently with this thing, to seek explanations. It was all a nightmare, a horror. It couldn’t be real. He said nothing. His miniature said nothing, nothing except: "I'm here, you know. I'm not going away."
“You’re not here. You’re not me and I’m going away.” He said and he didn’t know the why or the meaning.
"No more!" he said to himself. Shaking and trembling, he stood before the mirror, holding a butcher knife, trembling with anxiety. He found some solace in making a decision, even though it was probably the wrong one. The little head was saying something, but he didn’t listen. In one quick motion, he grabbed it and using the large knife, cut it clean from his neck. Halfway through his butchery, he realized he would probably bleed to death, and nearly stopped. His determination finished the gruesome task and he stood with the head clenched in his fist. The expected onslaught of blood never came. The wound on his neck was slight, little more than a large shaving nick, surrounded by pink, raw skin, the kind you see under a blister. He hurried around the house, the head still clamped tightly in his fist and finding some rags, he wrapped it up. Holding an old t-shirt against his wounded neck, he fumbled his way out to the driveway, and threw the hideous lump into a garbage can. Within twenty minutes, the bleeding had completely stopped. The area was still very sore though, very sore and tender. He exhaled strongly and breathed normally, the first time in days. He slept soundly that night, and thought he could soon return to work. He slept in. He napped and watched tv, distracted, repeatedly feeling the tender spot on his neck. By nightfall, he only needed to cover the wound with a band-aid.
The following morning, as he got in his car to go to work, he heard it. Once again, he heard the small, tinny voice. He didn't know what it said. In terror, he sped out of the driveway, running over the neighbor's cat. "I always hated that damned animal," he said to himself, loudly. That night when he came home, he parked his car on the street and went in through the front door. As he cooked himself dinner and cleaned up, he turned the volume up, whatever volume he could find: tv, radio, stereo; everything. Eventually, as he lay sleepless in bed, he couldn't help but strain to hear the tiny voice. It was there, muffled and distant. He tossed and turned and never slept that night.
The next day his anxiety was doubled. Wearing a turtleneck to hide the new lump and hunkered down at his desk, he successfully avoided any human contact. When he got home, the lump had pushed past the fold of his turtleneck. His neighbor cornered him at the front door. He cupped his hand over the lump. His neighbor to say he’d called the police that day because of the voice he heard coming from the direction of the house, the bloody bandages beside the overturned trash cans, and—of course—how his missing cat was found twisted and fractured in the trash, beside the bandages. After the angry neighbor left, he didn't wait for a visit from the police department. He packed a suitcase and left, finding refuge at a motel on the outskirts of town.
Within a few days, after the repeated tiny head had grown out and he had cut it off, he left the motel. He dared not go home. Within weeks, he had depleted his bank account, and left a tiny head in the trash at most of the small town's motels. He took to living in his car. He had nowhere left to go. Everywhere he went, he could hear the small voices of the heads he left behind.
That night, after he had quit his job and headed out of town, he stared at the dark rings under his eyes. Alongside the small pink scars from the heads he had cut off, he saw another small lump forming. He stared at himself. He stared. He stared until the light of dawn came through the motel window. By this time, the new lump had formed features and spoke to him.
"I'm not your enemy, you know," the small tinny voice said. "Your enemy is the part of you that forced you to cut off your own head… …many times."
"Okay," he said, a quaver in his voice and tears in his eyes, reluctantly realizing the necessity of surrender. "What do I do? Walk around with a miniature head growing out of my neck."
"Better than a monster in your heart," spoke the little head.
"Then, what do I do now?" He stared meekly through his bleary eyes as he spoke.
He wasn’t sure where the next voice came from, within or without. “The butcher knife approach didn’t seem to do much good, did it.”