Headless

Parvil was walking down a long dirt road humming to himself, on occasion saying a few lines of a song stuck in his head. Doing a little walking jig since nobody was around to see it. Not that he’d particularly care. People already looked at him with a side eye.

Any time the amulet around his neck chose to make its disgust at his singing he’d just sing or hum louder. But the sounds were added to when he heard soprano voice cut through the mostly silent afternoon air. “Run Faster!” The words break up with an odd sensation of the former being close and the latter distant.

Snapping his head towards the sound he saw a figure far enough away and up the hill to be obscured by the glare of the sun. Parvil flicked his hand into the inner coat pocket taking out a pair of glasses with black quartz lenses. The glare cut out he saw what looked like a woman chasing a ball down the hill. But she suddenly stumbled, crashing hard and rolling a few times landing on her back, head facing away from him as the ball continued its speedy descent down the hill.

As it got closer he could hear light clanging, pocketing the glasses again he saw it wasn’t a ball exactly, it looked a bit like a birdcage.

“A little help?” the soprano voice came again, causing Parvil a bit of confusion, since the woman was far enough away she’d have needed to shout for him to hear it and that sounded close. Not the first time someone had talked to him in his head, but it was always weird.

“Uh…” Parvil started. “Yeah… give me a minute you are kinda far up the hill.”

“I’m not up the hill.” the voice said. “Well I am but that’s not who needs help. I need help.”

“Oh…okay…can you…um…make me less lost on this…?” Parvil asked.

“See the cage.” she asked.

“I see the cage.” Parvil said, “Why?”

“I’m the cage…well I’m IN the cage.” She said.

“Are you…like a pixie or something?” Parvil asked as he walked closer.

“Oh! I might be getting ahead of myself but don’t freak out.” she said.

Parvil finally made it over to the tall grass that had stopped the rolling cage. “Why would I frea…!” Parvil jumped back.

“Hey, I said don’t freak out.” she said with a huff, “It's rude.”

“Sorry…sorry.” Parvil said stepping back up, and pulling the cage free. “So…I’m Parvil…” he said holding the cage and noticed that once lifted it was lighter then he would have expected from its size. Seeing a rather cute looking younger woman's head floating slightly inside.

“Hedy.” she said, without a hint of sarcasm.

“You…are a hea…” Parvil started but she cut him off.

“A head named Hedy. I know a bit of sick cosmic irony.” Hedy said her head bobbed a bit in a way that made Parvil think she meant to shrug. “Hey this is going to sound weird but can you keep me facing you? It makes getting around a little easier.” Hedy said.

“I suppose?” was used to the weird but this was getting close to the top ten. He was about to ask what she meant by ‘getting around’ when the woman who’d fallen down before burst from the tall grass, Parvil catching them in the corner of his eye at the last moment and nearly screamed, when he saw she had no head. “ZOMBIE!” Parvil tried to scream but his voice cracked, as the headless body reached both arms out towards him.

“I’m not a zombie, silly.” Hedy said. “That is me. This is also me but that’s mostly me. If you would please hand me, over to me we can talk a bit more normally.”

Parvil did as he was asked and took a step back as the woman named Hedy held her head about out chest level making Parvil still have to look down. He always had to look down but was still odd in this case. “So…you don’t want to eat my brains?”

Hedy stuck out her tongue and made a retching sound. “Ew. Gods no! Have you ever seen a brain?” she asked. “I have it was gross, when this…” she pointed to her neck in the cage then the neck on the body “happened. There was this guy who managed to pull out of the chopping block at the last second and…” she got a haunted look in her eyes for a moment. “Snickersnack, top of his head clean off, stuff fell out. You know brains, pinkish grey and gloopier than you’d expect. He wasn’t as lucky as me though, the whole not dying thing.”

Parvil had seen brains before but never heard them described as such and when you put it that way it was disgusting. “But how did you survive?” he asked, “Doesn’t really seem like something you can live through.”

“You’d think so.” she said. “Maybe I just got lucky, maybe a god was looking out for me, maybe the reaper is on a break and has just forgotten about me.” she said with a shrug.

Parvil didn’t know what to think. “It could be a curse.” He suggested, “I know a few things about curses.”

“I wasn’t going to say anything.” Hedy said, “But…I could tell.”

Parvil stopped in his tracks. “You can tell I’m cursed?” he said, “How?”

“It’s pretty obvious.” she said, waving a free hand at him. “Glowing eyes, weird clothes, creepy necklace. Kind of screams curse.”
“Ouch.” Parvil said in a fake gesture of sarcastic pain. Parvil looked at Hedy again. “If you aren’t a zombie…do you eat?” he asked.

“Yeah I eat, I can’t tell you how. Well I can tell you how. I eat like you would but it doesn’t fall out my neck, just somehow ends up in my stomach. It's weird but it works.” Hedy said with a shrug.

Parvil let out a long whistle. “Wow…” he said. “I can’t say I’ve read anything like this in books. Sure I’ve read about dullahan but nothing like this.” Parvil looked at her head again. “Why does your head float?” he asked.

“Well, my mom alway said I was a bit of an airhead.” Hedy said, with a laugh.

Parvil chuckled and shook his head. “I guess I sort of set that one up.”

“Yeah you sure did.” Hedy said, “But I think it’s just the last thing my head remembers before the axe was falling.” she shook her head slightly. “Probably not.

“Have you ever tried to reattach it?” Parvil asked.

Hedy gasped sarcastically “Oh why didn’t I think of that?” she said, like she’d never thought of it. “I’ve tried, it pushes away when it gets too close together, like magnates . And breaking the curse will probably kill me so…” Hedy trailed off.

“You’d rather be safe than sorry.” Parvil finished. “Makes sense. I’m in the same boat.”

“You seem healthy enough.” Hedy said. “Why would you die?”

“I think if I break the curse…” he paused. “I think when it breaks all my injuries will catch up with me.” he said.

Hedy blinked and swivelled in her head in the cage, “That bad?” she asked. “Well at least you still have your head.” Hedy said.

“In a manner of speaking I suppose I do.” Parvil said with a shrug, “Physically in any case.”

“Physical?” Hedy questioned.

“My curse is…let’s call it talkative.” Parvil said, pointing to the necklace. “It’s less a gemstone more…like a bug trapped in amber. Though the bug is actually something evil.”

Hedy stopped. “But you’re not evil…right?”

Parvil tilted his head. “Hmm…not unless you count taking the last piece of focaccia at dinner, “evil”.” he said.

“Focaccia?” Hedy asked.

“It's just like a garlicy flatbread.” Parvil explained.

“Rude maybe but not evil.” Hedy said.

The two walked and talked about mundane conversation topics for a few hours as the sun started to dip below the tree line.

“We are pretty close to town, do you want to keep walking or rest for the night?”

“I’d like to make it out of the woods and not sleep outside again.” Hedy said.

“Fair enough.” Parvil said stopping and slinging off his pack.

Hedy paused, “I thought we were going to keep going?”

Parvil started to rummage in his pack pulling out a few metallic objects. “We are, just getting something to light the way.” he told her before assembling a lantern with a small pole that fit into a notch in his pack. Before slinging the pack back on he held out his hand. Small green traces of lighting skipped across his wrist, then palm, spidering out to each finger tip before centering all the points of light onto his pointer finger, setting the wick inside to burn with a haunting green flame.

“Why’s it green? It's really creepy.” Hedy said.

“Keeps most things away, and not sure why it's green, just is.” he said.

They continued the trek to the next town. Every now and again they could hear animals get close to the outer reaches of the light, only to quickly back away when the light flickered. Birds cawed and took flight, larger predator mammals yipped and backed away.

Hedy looked around every time it happened. Eventually speaking in a whisper. “Whatever that thing is you got on your neck is really scaring them off.”

Parvil muttered something she could not understand before answering. “It's more the flame.” he said, “Though since its his doing, guess he’s partly responsible.”

After a few more hours it was closer to morning than night. They arrived in the next town. Arriving at the inn Hedy stopped at the door. “I’m going to get a room, do you need one?” she asked. “My treat for escorting me here.”

“No, thank you but I’ve got other business to attend to.” Parvil said, as the woman turned to leave he stopped her, taking out a small smooth stone, that looked like a pure white river rock, with a strange rune carved in the top. “A sending stone. If you ever need my help, just put your thumb on the symbol there. Make sure the pointy bit is pointed away from you and speak into the stone. I’ll hear it and get to you as fast as I can.” he told her.

“You don’t have to…” Hedy started but Parvil cut her off.

“Don’t have to. Want to.” he said. “Have a good rest. Hope to see you again.” he said putting the stone in her hand and began to walk away.

Hearing the door to the inn close. “I meet the strangest people.”

“And they’ll all di….” the necklace was cut off as Parvil tore it’s chain and hucked it off into the night.

“No they won’t.” he said to himself before the necklace could return.