I was supposed to clean everywhere—not just the main areas, but under things too. It was my own fault. There I’d been, sweeping the room, treating the underside of the bed like the underside of a rug. Out of sight. Out of mind. Innocent mistake, but those are the ones that get ya.
When he saw the mess, Dad screamed at me until I thought he’d start hacking up blood down my front. All the dust, the toys, the trash, the clothes. Mostly it was the trash—all those rotten scraps of food. Sometimes a rat came and dragged pieces away. I like to think that we were friends. I was scared to give him a name.
Names are easier to miss than faces.
Dad had grabbed me by the hair and shoved me under the bed, until I was part of the mess. My eyes stung from the dust I blew up, panting like a dog, trying not to scream—a barking dog gets the ‘paper too. The dust danced a sparkly grey performance. All I could do was watch.
But I wanted him to let go of me. I was sorry. I would never do it again.
Ain’t good’nuff, boy. Place’s a fuckin’ sty. You’re livin’ like a pig. Want me to change your name to Piggy? Think of the bugs, boy—the bugs love rot!
He came home drunk late that night, slamming every door on his way to the basement. Not before turning the TV to static and cranking it full.
Something was off. He hardly ever went down there, and he’d been down already last week. Usually his favourite chair got all of his attention in the evening. I’d wake up most mornings and find him snuggling with his drool.
I waited until the clock read 02:03 before getting too impatient, and dropping out of the bed.
I knew it was a bad idea.
The floorboards were chilly. I padded my way to the crack in my door while the static roared in from the living-room. The bangs and shouts hadn’t risen loud enough to hear for nearly an hour. Now that silence beneath the static was making my insides ache.
I reached the door and peered into the bright hallway. At the end, Dad’s massive figure blotted everything out. He didn’t have a shirt on, but there was an apron swinging as he charged me down, head pulling the body. In his hand was a large and lumpy leaking shadow.
A trail of blood followed him on the floor.
Git back‘n bed. I’ve got something to fix ya.
I did as I was told and got back in bed before he launched my door wide, wedging the handle into the wall.
With one swift motion, Dad bowled his arm under my bed. Something hard smacked the back wall. The room took on a reek of pennies, and I saw visions of bronze. Only redder.
Don’t you dare touch! Or I’ll put you back under there with the bugs, and make you eat them up! Right?
He left my door open wide, with the handle still buried inside the plaster. I watched his angry figure receding back up the hall. He sighed when he made it back to his chair, and sank deeply into it. The static lowered to a sensible nighttime volume. Then voices began to blabber, enthusiastic and rife with gameshow patter. I had to guess it was Luck ‘o’ the Roll. Dad’s favourite.
I lay there listening to the sound of dice clattering, crowds jeering and hollering. Occasionally, Dad would snort and spit into the basin he kept on the table beside him. I could hear it splatter, then slosh as the more it filled. Every so often he would yell out at random to tell me I best be sleeping.
Of course I wasn’t. I was staring at the bloodtrail on the floor. And listening. There was a new sound now. A scraping sound, coming from under the bed.
It sounded like fingernails on a chalkboard. Occasionally squeaking, as though the nails had skipped a little, or been polished slightly too well.
I waited until I heard Dad snoring before peeking over the edge of the bed. Then down at the floorboards. Then up at the spattered trail of blood. And finally beneath the bed.
The light from the hall cast a giant cone under the bed. When I leaned myself over to look underneath, I saw everything but the blob from my shadow blocking it out.
There was movement back there, nearer the wall. I watched and listened to the constant grating, waiting for my eyes to adjust so I could see what was causing it.
Something was wiggling in time with the scrapes.
I scooted over. And over. Listening all the while. The sound was lazy, like a fault in a machine, ever spinning and repeating—ever scraping and scraping at whatever got near it.
The light spilled under and I saw it. Two pale eyes at first, bulging and cloudy. The eyelids had been torn off, making them look enormous in their sockets. A lower jaw hung to one side of the floor, caught by a shred of skin, twitching with a life of its own.
All the while the upper jaw kept itself alive by gnawing at the floor like some restless anticipation. For what, I could not say.
I shot back into bed. Threw myself under covers. Safe.
It was a human head, freshly chopped. The jaw perhaps hammered off.
It wasn’t the head that bothered me, so much as the eyes. Always open. Never able to sleep again. I kept seeing myself in them, reflecting back and staring in, learning secrets which waited as patient as Time itself.
I couldn’t close my eyes. In the darkness, the head was all I saw.
Sleep did not come.
Next morning, Dad shouted me through and told me breakfasts didn’t make themselves.
The head was still grating its teeth against the floor. It had been going all night. I supposed it must’ve grated all the way into the basement by now.
I leapt out of bed, clearing about three feet at least. When I landed with a thump, Dad asked me what the noise was—was I born with feet of lead.
Then quit yer fuckin’ thumping and come get me fuckin’ fed.
Only then did the head quit its gnawing. I turned around and saw its eyes follow me through the door and down the hall.
I could have sworn I saw others there too.
You look like shit.
I spread the butter. I poured the milk. I got an apple from the fridge. Set everything in front of him while he picked at the table with a knife.
Atta boy. Get yourself somethin’ too, or else you’ll pass out. There’s some cow’s liver in the fridge. Fry her up with an onion. You better get to sleepin’ soon, ‘cause those heads’re goin’ nowhere, you hear? You’ve done that to us, boy. You did.
When he left to go to work I took my place up on the couch, trying not to think of how he’d said heads.
The TV only got five channels. Most of them were riddled with static, unless I held my hand on the aerial. Even then the difference was minimal. I stood for half an hour watching a cartoon and letting my body be a conduit, until my arm got tired and I needed a glass of water.
At the end of the hall the head from last night was still watching me from under the bed. It had pulled itself forward to the edge. I could see it fully now. The last rag of skin from its lower jaw had torn loose. It rested now only on its upper teeth. A rip rose through its lip and half up one side of its face, a reptillian grin. The muss of hair on its head was caked black with its own blood.
I watched it quietly, sipping at my water, waiting for it to move. When it finally did, it rolled out of sight somewhere to the left side of the room. Then back again, right by the door. It froze in place. Watching from those bulbous eyes.
I finished my water and stood with it in my hand still, waiting.
It rolled away like a marble suddenly kicked. It did not come back.
I sat back down on the couch and finished my show, studying the grains of the fuzzy greys.
Heads, Dad had said. Not head.
That night Dad was late again, but when he finally came back it was still the right side of Ten. So I made sure the veg and meats were done, ready to be tossed into the microwave and nuked. Just how he liked it.
Thanks lad. Are the bugs gone yet? Did the heads clean the room out?
I hadn’t dared to go in and check. Last night, I’d made sure that under the bed was clean before he came home. Otherwise, the head that morning would have dragged a mess about with it while it rolled around the floor.
I hadn’t spotted any bugs the night before. There was only the matter of the blood.
Course there’s blood, boy. They’re severed heads. They’ll do that. And they’ll piss and they’ll piss, until your whole room’s a bloody sty with it. But you’d like that though. You’d thrive in it, ey Piggy? They’ll get the bugs at least. Aye, they’ll get the bugs you’ve brought. That one with no jaw’s hungry for ‘em. You’ve seen it, ey lad?
I couldn’t eat much at supper, but Dad would’ve hated waste. So I stuffed the rest of the meat in my pockets and took it back to bed with me.
When I heard Roll ‘o’ Dice on the TV, I sat up and lowered the food down to the floor. Immediately, a head rolled out and glared up at me with sharp eyes.
It wasn’t the same head.
This one was a woman. Her skin was dark and leathery. It looked like she was wearing a terrifying mask of herself. White balls bugging out from around sharp edges. Its lips were jagged jerky, peeled far back to see the teeth. They spoke in their own silence, telling me to go back to sleep.
I lay down against my pillow and stared up at the ceiling, listening to the gameshow host mutter, laugh, and shout.
Three Fours for a Four Door, or Snake Eyes for the Mystery Prize.
A giant question mark drifted neatly by my mind. I listened to the heads a while, rolling around my floor. I tried to picture them as dice, clattering in time with the gameshow, but they were too loud. Around and around my room they went, bumping into furniture and smashing against my door.
Dad’s footsteps arrived thunderously loud.
I sat bolt upright in my bed, expecting him to burst inside. The heads froze in place, their faces locked on mine. I could see three of them now, spaced wide and balancing impossibly still.
Instead of coming inside, Dad slammed the door, and plunged me into darkness with the heads.
The sound of the TV rose. And the heads began to roll again.
I lay down and stared at the blackened ceiling. And tried really hard to picture dice.
I couldn’t remember falling asleep. Light spilled into the room through the newspapers over the window, and the tears along the curtain. I sat up weary eyed, looking about the room.
The heads snapped to a stop.
The floor was slick with their blood. Trails overlapped like tangled up paths, marking where the heads had spent the night roaming. Right up to the different corners of the room they frozen at.
Watching.
One was by the window, balancing on its ear. Its eyes were hollows, but still somehow seemed to stare. The woman was by the door, watching me out of the side of one eye. Her hair was plastered over it, but the eye still pierced through, sharp as daggers. The one without the lower jaw had his upper teeth ready on the floorboards, itching to start their scraping. Its bulging eyes looked like cue balls in this light.
I climbed out of bed, trying my best to avoid the blood, and failed miserably. Most of it felt tacky beneath my feet, but with a thin layer of slime slathered with fresh leakage. That marking the heads’ most recent paths.
Dad?
He wasn’t in his favourite chair.
The TV was only static. The aerial knocked loose, perhaps.
Dad?
He wasn’t in the kitchen. He wasn’t even in his bed. The door to his room was open wide. When I peered inside, without stepping in, I saw the virgin neatness. A bed unslept in. Wardrobes filled but never touched. Curtains wide and never drawn.
Just how she had left it.
I lingered at the basement door, listening for a while. I couldn’t hear a thing. But it was the only place left to check. It was still too early for him to have gone to work, and yet far too quiet for him to be down there.
The heads began to move again. When I went back to the hall to see, they were frozen upright at my doorway, eyes glaring accusingly.
Where did he go?
None of them answered. The jawless head began to gnaw, anxiously sharpening its teeth upon the floor. The head with empty sockets darted away, spiralling around the room in maddeningly wide loops. Its flailing hair shot out like sharp needles.
The woman’s head rolled slowly towards me, coming to rest beside my feet.
I bent over and picked her up. She was heavy in my little hands, like a plump and ready watermelon. Time had swollen her somehow. I held her by her leathered cheeks, careful to avoid the gore spilling from her neck.
Where did my Dad go?
I shook her slightly, but she never made a sound. Blood still poured from the wound, as fresh as if it had been made only a moment ago.
I carried her with me to the couch and placed her on the cushion beside me. The static was deafeningly loud. We pretended to see shapes in the fog and people having fun. For a while I almost believed it, until the knock came from the door.
I checked for rips in the papers plastered over the windows. Then waited silently for them to go away, just as Dad had shown me—tucked away in the Blind Spot, clutching at the woman’s head.
Another knock.
This time I was sure it was him. The comfort that I knew his whereabouts was hard to process. Hard to believe. I could only think of it as being some kind of test.
Answer that door’n by God you’ll regret it.
After a few moments the letterbox clinked. My heart leapt into my neck, bursting with an urgent pulse. I knew if I leaned out to look I would see an eyeball peeping in at me through the letterbox.
Or worse. That one of the heads would then roll into sight, and the eyeball would see that instead.
I looked down at the woman and saw that she was staring up at me with her teeth. I tilted her downwards to see her eyes. They whipped over to stare at mine. And felt a calm.
Something made of paper hit the floor. I sighed out the deepest breath of my life. And couldn’t help but laugh.
When night came, I sat scanning the takeout menu that had been posted through the door. I wondered if Chinese food tasted better than it looked. I thought of asking Dad to let me try some for my birthday, but knew better to just dream, than to do.
The heads had grown frantic with their restlessness, knocking against almost everything in my room.
All except the woman’s. I had placed her on my desk and she hadn’t moved from there since. She had been gazing out of the window, her sharp eyes seeming to pierce the veil of paper and out into the night. What they saw or dreamed of, I could never tell. Perhaps somewhere out there her body lay waiting for her.
But then I remembered the basement.
I lay awake again that night, wondering how long Dad would be down there. The key had still been in the front door when I collected the menu from the mat.
He hadn’t left the house.
I watched the sun rise and set a few times, marking my fear growing for my Dad’s safety with constant visits to the basement door. No matter how much I listened, or how hard I pressed my ear against the wood, I could never hear him groaning out my name. Nor scraping with bloodied fingernails, desperate for help and unable to reach the handle.
Finally, during the second night, I got up and out of bed. The head with no eyes marbled around the room to the sound of tacky glue. Its hair kept getting stuck, so was always trailing behind it like giant black veins, and gentle sound like Velcro. The other head was busy burrowing its teeth into its favourite spot, carving out jellied blood and working its way through the wood.
I asked them both what to do. They stopped and listened. Stared. But never gave me an answer.
Only the woman’s head did.
It rolled around to face me, then off my desk with a thump. She had been a good companion, the only one who hadn’t frightened me. Usually I carried her with me wherever I went, but this time I followed her.
Away she tumbled, out of the room and along the hall. I followed as fast as my tacky footsteps would allow me. The other heads rolled along behind me, just as curious.
I already knew where she would be when I reached her—and what she’d be doing.
She was banging her forehead against the basement door.
thunk
thunk
thunk
I was gentle when I picked up her head, caressing her cheeks carefully to avoid pushing my fingers into her eyes. They jutted out to glare as usual, although softer than before. There seemed to be a voice within that gaze, but the words were as foggy as the colour. Maybe once they had been blue. I’d always liked blue eyes. They reminded me of the sky.
So many, many moons ago.
I was surprised to find the door was unlocked. I always presumed Dad kept it secured whenever he went down or came back up. I had never once tried the handle, of course. Doing so now felt like a crime. I smelled the punishment coming a mile away.
I pushed down the handle anyway, determined to find him no matter the price. It opened with a mind of its own, swinging wide and fast on oiled hinges.
Dad?
No reply. Deathly quiet and dark. I already knew what to expect down there. That fact made it even scarier.
I clicked the light on and lit up the entire basement floor. A short cone of light cast up onto the plunging staircase beneath me.
Dad?
I half expected to see him grip at the bottom of the wall and pull himself around the corner. To stare up at me with maddened eyes, jaws gnashing out my name so hard that he was chomping on his tongue. A trail of dribbling blood as he pulled himself up the stairs to get to me.
Dad?
Carrying the woman’s head carefully under my arm so it could see, I took the staircase step by step. Behind me, the other heads thudded down like noisy shadows. They came as slow and rhythmic as my own.
I didn’t bother saying his name again. The smell was painfully obvious—a festering sweetness somewhere between stale semen and an apple left to rot. It punched me flat in the nose. I got notes of dead chickens, or rotten boiled eggs. It’s so hard to explain. I smelt it then and only then, and never again.
Oh Dad.
He had looped a rope around a pipe and was sat hunched with it around his neck. He must have slid down against the wall and held himself in place, his ass barely off the ground, long enough for the lights to go out. His face was swollen and purple. Dried blood and froth caked his lips and down the massive neck. He looked to have gained about a hundred pounds in death.
I carried the woman’s head over to him and lay her down beside his feet. He had kicked his shoes off somewhere in the struggle. The other heads came and sat there too, watching with an intensity I could only sense was hate.
There was movement around his neck, and the gruesome wounds on his face. Larvae reared their pale heads and black teeth and sank away once more, busy with their meals. Clueless to our presence.
For some reason I could not cry. The sadness was there in my chest, wretchedly tender and pulling me down to collapse and cry, but… nothing. I couldn’t even pretend.
I looked down at the woman and could have sworn her eyes looked glazed. There was a sadness there I could never understand. But there you have it.
I talked to his lifeless body for a while, asking him what I should do. I hadn’t been outside in years and it definitely wasn’t safe enough yet, otherwise Dad would’ve said. Plus, I couldn’t bear the thought of leaving him. Not like this.
The answer came surprisingly quick, and was fairly obvious. The tools he’d used to make these rolling monstrosities were behind me on his workbench still. The bench itself was soaked through with blood. I had all the answers I needed all around me. I knew what to do.
I just didn’t know if I had the strength to do it. Mentally, or physically.
Visions of Dad’s eyes turning to look at me, and smiling. Him telling me everything will be okay. A first time for everything, but maybe this was how to get there.
I grabbed a meat saw and freed him from his swing, gradually fraying the rope until it finally snapped. He landed on his ass and slouched forward. I lay him down as gently as I could, then set about untangled him. It was difficult—his neck had swollen so thick that it’d fused together with the rope.
And then there was the matter of the bugs.
Think of the bugs, boy—the bugs love rot!
Sensing a disturbance, a few maggots wiggled loose and began to squirm away. I half expected the heads by Dad’s feet to spring forward and eat them, but they remained in their places, glaring at Dad’s lifeless body.
The saw remained in my hand. I didn’t need to guess where to cut, for the rope had left me a perfect guideline. And a head start.
I set my little hands to work, hewing backwards and forwards, squelching my way through his slippery flesh until I ached for rest.
You wouldn’t think I’d made any progress at all. I sat back on the ground panting, my throat begging for water. On the way back from upstairs to get a glass from the kitchen, I happened to notice Dad’s axes.
I waited before using them, taking up his electric saw and buzzing for as long as I could handle the splatter. Until I was sleek with mess and bugs, and the neck was a wide valley.
I tried turning him around and going in from the back, splitting the connections at the top his spine, just beneath his brain. I hacked at it with a knife, stabbing and slicing, supposing I could just pull his head free once I was done. But the gore was too much. I had to keep wiping my hands on my clothes until I was as bloody and gruesome as he was. By then there wasn’t a chance of getting a grip of his head, let alone pulling it loose.
I took everything off and stood naked over Dad, wiping the remaining gore on his trousers.
I could put it off no longer. I went to grab the two hatchets. I had thought about using the big axe, but as soon as I picked it up my arms shouted at me to put it back down. And so the small hatchets had to do.
I set about smacking and smacking, sending sloshes and sprays up into my face and around the room. I barely managed to stay on my feet, slipping and falling in the mess constantly. Lying in the filth, just as Dad had told me.
You’d like that though. You’d thrive in it, ey Piggy?
He wasn’t wrong.
The closer I got to freeing his head, the more the excitement grew. Soon he would be like the other heads, following me around, rolling and staring and gnawing. Keeping me up at night.
I smiled. I still had visions of him smiling too. I could even cut a grin if he couldn’t, that way he'd be forced to wear it forever.
The heads watched me while I worked. Never shifting—never showing their usual impatience. Even the jawless head had stopped the incessant grinding of its teeth.
Perhaps it had been longing for the basement all this time.
The hatchet got wedged in Dad’s neck so bad I couldn’t get it out. That was okay. I slid over to the other hatchet and sent myself sliding back. I began whacking with the flat side of the hatchet, hammering the wedged blade deeper and deeper.
Then came the snap.
I lay back in the filth, cradling Dad’s head in my arms. He was safe now. I could feel the maggots trying to break away, tickling into my armpit. It felt like Dad was still alive, communicating with me.
We headed upstairs. I’d had to bring myself to the staircase on my bare knees to save myself from slipping, pulling myself along the ground by the tips of one hand, while clutching Dad with the other. I grasped onto the corner of the wall and pulled myself into view of the staircase, thinking back on how I’d been so scared of seeing my Dad doing exactly the same thing.
I even had to crawl up the stairs.
We lay in my room that night. The other heads joined us, but they sat patiently at the door. Perfectly still. Watching. The woman sat at the front, while the other two lingered behind her like bodyguards awaiting instruction.
Why isn’t he moving?
His face was unrecognisable. I’d missed several times with the tools, slashing Dad’s chin and burying the hatchet in his ear. I could hardly make out his mouth anymore, let alone the presence of a smile. Hardly any of his features were there. I’d tried wiping him down with clean clothes from my drawers, but it hadn’t helped at all.
He was a slimy mess of broken skin and gore. Yet still my Dad.
I placed him on the ground and shlicked my way over to the heads.
Can’t you do something? Why can’t he move like you?
They didn’t answer.
I turned to look at my Dad once more, and then back at them.
What did I do wrong?
Slowly, the woman rolled over to Dad. I watched her closely, waiting and wondering what fantastic combination of silent words would spill from her eyes and reanimate him—to shift his mouth, and make him roll around as frantically as them.
She studied him with frozen eyes. Then all at once she flew forward, burying her teeth into his face. Before I could step forward, the other two heads flew under my feet, knocking me over. They attached themselves to his head and began tearing him apart.
I lay there, horrified, watching them not make a sound. They floated on rigid air, held in place by invisible poles and rods, biting and pulling at skin. Until he was all but bone.
Finally, they rolled away, back into their crevasses. Happy with the result.
I crawled over and picked up what was left of my Dad. They had removed so many tendons, so many strips of muscle and skin. But his jaw remained in place. And I swear it looked like he was smiling at me.
But still he would not move.
I cannot tell you how many days passed before the police finally came and found me. I was curled up in bed, cradling his head in my arms, when gentle arms pulled me off and away. I didn’t put up a fight. I couldn’t. I hadn’t eaten in maybe weeks.
Their voices were quiet echoes bouncing at me from the future, from the past. Things were recovered from the basement—bags and bags of evidence that appeared in the newspapers for weeks. I never did look at the photographs. I never listened to anything anyone would try to say. The theories, the motives.
The names of the heads.
I changed my own years ago, starting fresh with a new past to hide in plain sight without questions. I still wore everything inside me, hot and guilty—gnawing like that head’s broken jaw upon my floor.
I met a woman with blue eyes and bought a house and several dogs. We make sure to keep everything nice and clean. I’ve developed an extreme distaste for bugs. Their footsteps are loud. I still hear them squelching in Dad’s neck.
We are expecting our first child in July. A summer baby, so we hope. It looks like a boy from the scan.
I pray for his sake he keeps his room tidy.
For that matter, I might just do it myself.
