Exercises
“I opened the package and a human head fell into my lap.”
I opened the package and a human head fell into my lap. I had never seen one before, and examined it with great interest. The mouth I had read about, and I saw that it had lips and a tongue. However, I had also expected lots of little ivory-style teeth, but there were only a couple at the back. I tapped them and they made a pleasant musical sound. The nose was firm and a bit rubbery to the touch, and inside it were hairs, which I hadn’t read about and hadn’t expected at all. Peeling back the upper flaps of skin I could see the eyeballs which moved slowly under pressure from my thumb, and then bounced back to their original position. But all this had been mere procrastination, teasing myself, before I looked at what I had always heard the most about — the human brain. I thrust my hand up the neck and as far into the cavity as I could reach. Pulling back, my hand came away filled with a spongy white substance that mystified me. I poked and prodded it, but if it contained the fabled dreams and mysteries I’d heard of, I was yet to identify them.
by Pil Lee
I opened the package and a human head fell into my lap. It had been dried and shrunken of course. I wouldn't have expected anything less from Farnsworth. He was a perfectionist.
Trouble is, it was the sixth one this week and it had gotten hard to move them on. They’d been quite popular at first, a great conversation starter at parties for the yuppie crowd, but sales had slowed considerably in the last two months. Farnsworth had mailed me that he’d come up with a new tilt on the whole thing, but I was skeptical.
I looked at the head. Looked pretty much like all the others, brown, shrivelled, still a scruff of hair. But wait a bit ... this one ... there was something ... I fished a pair of old spectacles from my bottom drawer. My God! He’d really hit on something this time. I sat for a moment in thought. But surely people would notice that John Howard was headless? Maybe not.
by Peter Miller
I opened the package and a human head fell into my lap. It was an express post parcel from my grandmother and to say I was shocked misses the point entirely, I was delighted. It was grandfather. That randy old bastard finally had his comeuppance and good on granma for taking things into her own hands.
I placed the head on the coffee table beside the opened parcel and took out a carefully folded letter. Pink scented paper with a doiley like die-cut edge surrounded my gran’s birthday message to me.
Dear Alison, happy birthday. By now you should know why grandad couldn’t wish you a happy birthday on the phone this morning. I grabbed the old bastard from behind and chopped his head off with the hedge trimmer. Anyway all the best for the year ahead, love and best wishes your gran. PS Look inside his mouth for one of my golden syrup brownies.
by Simon von Wolkenstein
“Traffic black spot.”
The heat in the crowded tent was intense. Arto poked his head from under the awning and winced. No matter how hot it was in there, the searing sun outside was worse. He was just shifting his tunic, trying to find a cooler patch of sand on which to rest his tortured thighs, when the whip came down hard and impersonal across his shoulders. ‘Everyone out’ was the unspoken message. “For the queen,” they intoned as the crowd of black bodies made their way out of the meagre shelter. Arto squinted towards the West as he joined the huge tide of humanity shuffling slowly away from the river. In the distance the monolith pierced through the heat haze. Arto fell into step with the shackled men heading towards the great slabs, dragging them inch by inch across the desert.
by Pil Lee
It was eerie. Every day for the last week when Ellen passed the Frog and Thistle there was some kind of accident. On Tuesday it was a fire engine, one wheel in the gutter and water leaking out into the pub’s rose garden, turning it into a swamp.
She couldn’t see anything that might be considered the cause of the mishap and wouldn’t have though much more about it until Wednesday when she turned the corner into Mallet street.
On the very spot where the fire engine had lain forlorn yesterday there was an overturned vee-dub, about a ton of porrige oats and a milk tanker. Then, Thursday morning, two Porsches and a gyro-copter. It was more than just a coincidence.
by Peter Miller
Larry knew this was it. The floral arrangements were piled four deep and the dates went back seven years. He began the slow task of searching through them. He paused and took a digital photo of each one for his records. The search took some time but after three hours he found the wreath with his name on it. Two years to the day that he had been run over and supposedly killed. He place it carefully in his backpack and then ...