You Haven’t Met the Survivors Yet

“Y’all. Step back. Please. It’s pretty gruesome,” the puffy-faced mistaken for leadership official shouts through the bullhorn.

“Wait. We want to meet them!”
“Nah. Their heads aren’t attached.”
A confused buzz stutters across the crowd around me.
I step forward. “Wait. How’re they surviving?”
I sense rather than see nods of attached heads in the congregation behind me.
“Their hearts beat, but they have nowhere to go.”
“What? Why?” comes from me and my fellow onlookers, craning connected necks.
“BECAUSE THEY CANNOT SEE,” shouts the sweat-stained, off-his-street-corner crossing guard in all caps through his new-found-power, state-of-the-art megaphone. He holds up his fat-fingered hand to keep us at bay. From behind him just below the ridge we hear sounds.

Bump.
Conk.
Splat.

Sh*t! Sh*t?
No words. Just the air thought from one of the survivors. Then more.

From around me I hear air thoughts like these.
“Pull me away.”
“Wait, I want to stay.”
And then some start to sway
As the odor of decay
Of the non-survivors wafts our way.
The thoughts of headless bodies want to have a say
Even if there’s no freaking getaway highway.
“Show us the way. Okay?”
“You can’t talk. NO MOUTH.”
“Forgot.”
Pause.
“But did we survive?”
“BULL***T, y’all. Have you got pine needles for brains?”

“I love the smell of pine needles,” say two headless humans in an unexpected happy union.
“The pine needles smell great,” say two other detached pre-corpses.
Even the crossing guard gets it. “You’ve got no noses.”
“Forgot. It’s hard to remember anything anymore,” one laments.
“Sh*t,” says another. “It’s a bitch working without a brain.”
“Yeah. No head. No brain.”

And that’s how my day is going. How’s yours??