Two Heads Pt. 4

And so we began to get to know each other. It was awkward at first – neither of us could forget those first trying months and the things we’d said to each other. But Timmy was willing, and I wanted to make a fresh start. As a peace offering, I said I’d take our body anywhere he wanted to go, giving him the control he had long craved. To my surprise he said he wanted to go to the beach. It was my favourite place to go too. It was a cold, blustery day and we faced out to the sea, with the salty air lashing against our faces. I closed my eyes and breathed deep, enjoying the fresh air in my lungs. I snuck a look at Timmy – He was imitating my expression, his own eyes closed, a relaxed expression on his face. As I took a deep breath, I felt him do the same and my lungs felt so full of life that I wanted to burst. I’d never felt so full of life as I did at that moment. The rush of oxygen made me feel slightly giddy and I had to ease my breathing for fear that I’d faint. Timmy said he wanted to go to an arcade, so I changed up some money and we spent the afternoon on the 2p machines and the dance mats. I’d never done better on the dance mats than I did that day – I gave total control of my lungs and heart to Timmy, and focussed my strength and mind on moving my legs to the images on the screen. Without the burden of breathing, I could go twice as long as I usually could, and found it easier to keep up with the challenging steps. We got the second highest score, and I put Timmy’s name as the tag, out of recognition of his help. I could feel it pleased him. We went home late in the evening, more relaxed than we’d been for months, and as I lay down to go to sleep, Timmy turned his head slightly to me and said ‘That wasn’t so bad, eh my boy?’ ‘No, no it wasn’t’.

I soon found out that Timmy could be quite funny. I think his years without saying anything were the cause, as he often said inappropriate things, which didn’t really abide by social niceties but were very amusing. It was quite refreshing really, to have someone around who just said whatever they were thinking. And he often voiced the things I was thinking but wasn’t brave enough to say. No one knew that he could read my thoughts, so I could get away with them being said and Timmy taking the blame. He didn’t mind; he never realised he’d said anything wrong anyway. It sometimes got a bit much at work; he once commented that the regional director had incredibly bad body odour, suggesting that whilst Mr Jefferies was possibly being considerate of the environment by saving water, he should also try being considerate of his fellow human’s noses and taking a shower once in a while. I almost spat out my sparkling water with laughter, but turned it into a disapproving cough before any of my superiors noticed.

Timmy could be moody though. Sometimes he’d spend days being entirely surly and making scathing remarks about everyone and every thing. Other days he’d just be silent, and spend hours looking at me with his unpleasant gaze. I tried to shake him out of it, but it was tough and his mind was virtually impenetrable. I had to trick him into talking by making him watch hours of daytime soaps. The downside was that I too had to watch hours of daytime soaps, but it was worth it when his mouth started twitching, and he became more and more agitated before finally breaking his silence and telling me to ‘Turn off this shit’. If that didn’t work then I’d just pop in my ear phones and listen to some tunes until he was ready to talk again.

We lived a happy life. It was hard and lonely without a female companion at times, but at the end of the day I always had someone to talk to. And Timmy always had something new and interesting to say; he gave a new perspective on things I’d long had a different opinion on. We grew old, as people do. I could feel it happening. Some days it became too much for Timmy to assist in breathing, and I had to do it for both of us. That really took it out of me. It took it out of Timmy too, who had to fight even harder to stay alive because of his abnormal, weak form. I could sense our time was coming to an end, and Timmy could too. ‘I can’t imagine my life without you, Timmy’ I sighed one day. ‘Nor I, boy’, he said in an old, rumbling voice. ‘You’ve made my days in this world so special’. His voice broke slightly, and I sensed his high emotions. ‘I think it’s going to be over soon though, don’t you?’ I asked him. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see him nodding his small, now wrinkled head. ‘Yes, boy. Death is near. You’re not scared are you?’ I was a bit. He sensed my fearful thoughts, ‘Now that’s ridiculous, boy. Death is just another adventure, no different from this one we’ve been having’. I wasn’t convinced, but Timmy didn’t give up. ‘And I’ll be there boy, don’t you worry. You won’t be alone. Let’s just face it as we did the spray of the sea on that sunny day at the beach. You remember?’ ‘Yes I remember, Timmy’. ‘Well then, let’s just face death as we did the sea spray’. And two weeks later, taking a deep, final breath, we closed our eyes and faced the spray of the sea.

Two Heads Pt. 3

I tested Timmy a few times, to work out his capabilities and control over my body. It seemed he could control my breathing and my heart (though it was exhausting for him) but couldn’t control my legs or arms or head. Usually he was fairly placid, content to just look at me as I walked around wherever I pleased. But every now and then he played up. If I was doing something he really didn’t want to do, he’d whine in my ear and if I put earphones in to block out his voice he’d start licking my face. It was disgusting. I had to start wearing a woollen hat with long ear flaps, so whenever he tried to lick my face all he got was a mouthful of fluff. On days where it was too warm to wear the hat, I just covered my cheek and ear in plasters. I knew I looked silly, but there was no one around to see.

Night time was awkward. I’d worked out that I had to sleep on my back as if I slept on either side, either my head fell onto his, or his onto mine, and touching him was unbearable. He may have been made of my skin and cells, but he still felt like an alien form. I couldn’t sleep on my front either, as Timmy’s neck didn’t have the leverage to turn fully to the side, and he started suffocating in the pillow, the pain of which I felt myself moments later. I still did it sometimes though, ‘carelessly’ forgetting that we had to be on our back, just for the satisfying choking sound he made. It was worth the discomfort, though not usually worth the backchat and seething glares I got the next day. He didn’t snore though, so that was lucky, and despite my initial fears that he wouldn’t (like some Gandalf character), he did sleep with his eyes closed. It was the one time I knew he wasn’t watching me and I felt such a relief knowing it. But morning always came round soon enough, and I was faced yet again with a day of his suspicious stares.

For three weeks, I didn’t leave the house. I ordered food online and had it delivered, and I called in sick to work saying I had a malignant growth which needed operating on. It was truthful, in part, though I knew they assumed it was cancer rather than a second head. My mother called several times to see where I was, and I could hear the hurt in her voice when I told her that I was too busy to pop round. Timmy didn’t like it - being cooped up indoors. ‘I’ve spent my entire life only seeing the world through your eyes, boy. Let me see it for myself!’ he’d say. But I wouldn’t let him; I was too ashamed of having two heads. It was only after I had a strange dream that I finally decided to bring an end to my reclusive behaviour. I dreamt that I was in a swimming pool. Timmy was attached to my shoulder, and I was trying to drown him but I couldn’t because he kept licking my face. Then Timmy started speaking, only it wasn’t Timmy’s voice it was David Tennant as Dr Who speaking to me. Timmy’s whole head suddenly turned into David Tennant as Dr Who’s head, and he said to me ‘I’ve got two hearts. Two’s better than one. Two heads are better than one’. And he giggled, and suddenly we were at the seaside, walking along the promenade, with the sun in our faces. ‘Two heads are better than one!’ David Tennant kept saying, giggling. I found myself giggling too. It wouldn’t be too bad having Dr Who’s head next to me all the time, I thought. ‘Two heads are better than one?’ I asked him. ‘Yes! Two heads are better than one,’ he said, excitedly ‘Two heads are better than one!’ It was a shame to wake up the next morning and find I didn’t have the head of David Tennant as Dr Who attached to my body, but a cranky, slightly shrunken head who called himself Timmy, but still, I thought, two heads are better than one. ‘Timmy?’ ‘Yes, boy?’ he answered, yawning. ‘Timmy, we’re going out!’

It wasn’t as bad as I’d feared. That first time we didn’t see anyone till we were someway along the street, and apart from a double take, the passer-by simply passed by. In the newsagent, a child pulled on his mother’s sleeve and pointed at us, but that didn’t bother me, as a second later he pointed to a group of teenage Goths who’d just walked in. In a way, I think I was lucky that I was in England when Timmy had grown. The English are so reserved and polite that they felt too rude to question why I had two heads, whereas I’d probably have been lynched in some countries for being a freak. I didn’t always experience such reserve, however; I once encountered a group of kids with a nasty attitude and little to no intelligence between them. They made some low-grade comment about Timmy. To give him his due, quick as a flash he screwed up his face, and fed me thoughts of what to say. With his small head, and wrinkled face, he looked like a shrunken head, and on his cue I mildly threatened the kids with a voodoo curse. Laughter. Timmy started chanting - in Latin - rocking his head from side to side, chanting louder and louder until he was shouting. The laughter had subsided. Timmy let out a high pitched scream, and viciously rocked his head back and forth, opening his eyelids to reveal the whites of his eyeballs. ‘Cast off the devils! Cast off the devils!’ I cried, and lunged toward the group, shaking my arms as if caught in a supernatural spasm. They ran for their lives; I think one child wet himself. Timmy and I walked on, chuckling to ourselves.

Work was tricky. The first day I went back, I walked in and went straight to my desk as I usually did, pretending nothing was wrong. I could see my colleagues looking at me, mouths gaping, but I ignored them. I picked up the phone, ‘Janet, can you send me status reports from the last three weeks?...Yes, great. Thanks, Janet’. People were still staring. ‘What are you looking at, bozos?’ Timmy sneered. ‘Get back to work before I have Sheila in HR slap an intolerance warning on your employment records’. Staff quickly got back to work, and I tried to ignore their eyes boring into the back of our heads for the rest of the day. The next day my boss was in. ‘Mornin-‘ he stopped dead in his tracks. He opened his mouth as if to say something, then shut it when he realised nothing was coming out. He turned and kept walking, only to stop again and look at me. ‘I-‘ still not able to finish his sentence, he walked off to his office and shut the door, though through the morning I could see him peering through the blinds at me every so often, quickly replacing them when I glanced his way. I received an email requesting a meeting that afternoon. ‘Now, about this…situation we have’ he said, grimacing slightly. ‘Actually, my name’s Timmy’, said Timmy. ‘Oh, you speak?’ He looked quite flustered. ‘Yes, of course I speak’, sneered my small head. The silence was awkward; I had some inspiration – ‘Two heads are better than one, right, Sir?’ ‘Yes, but…but…’. Timmy stepped in - ‘You’re not about to discriminate against us, are you Sir?’ ‘What? No, no of course not. It’s just quite an unusual situation, you see, and I’m not sure the company can cater for- I mean, there’s the security-‘. ‘I can’t see the problem, Sir’, I said. ‘And I’m sure my lawyer would support my claim that this won’t affect my work’. ‘Lawyer?’ my boss tapped his sweaty forehead with a hankie. ‘No, no, that won’t be necessary. We’ll just…work though it. Yes’. I stood up. ‘Glad to hear it, Sir. And thank you for your understanding’. I could sense that Timmy was about to make a sarcastic comment, so I walked out sharpish.

Before Timmy grew from my neck, I’d been dating this girl called Claire. She was a nice, pretty girl. She annoyed me a bit at times, because she always talked about really mundane things, like her hairdressing appointment, or about seeing a funny looking dog on her way to work, but I still quite liked her. She’d always been sweet and considerate and I thought perhaps she could live with me, despite Timmy’s presence. I called her and told her about the situation, and to my relief she agreed to see me. But when she first saw him, she gasped in horror. I’ll never forget that look on her face as her eyes took in Timmy’s small, bald head. She recovered her manners and apologised for her initial reaction but as we talked, I could see her eyes flicking back every few seconds to Timmy’s head. It didn’t help that he kept saying things like, ‘Mmm, come here, babe, and give me some of that sug-ah’. I asked her to try to ignore the head. ‘I’m sorry’, she cried. ‘But I don’t know where to look! It’s positively ridiculous that you have grown a new head!’ I didn’t see her again after that. She clearly couldn’t accept me if I came with Timmy. I don’t think any girl would. ‘Oh well, boy’, Timmy said. ‘At least you’ll always have me’. And I would always have Timmy; I could never get rid of him. I started crying. Really crying. Falling to my knees, I cried out of despair, out of anger, out of disgust, draining myself of all emotion. I cried for hours, a flood of tears soaking my clothes. I cried until I was utterly exhausted and my eyes and throat soar and until I could barely breathe. I lay down on my back on the carpet and tried to regain my breath. ‘There, there’, said Timmy. ‘Do you feel better now?’ I didn’t answer; my mind had gone blank and a calm had descended over my body. ‘You know the sooner you start accepting me, the better it’ll be for everyone’. Perhaps he was right. I’d been repelling him from the outset; never welcoming him into my life or trying to get to know him, always suspicious of his motives. I sighed then took a deep breath. ‘You’re right, Timmy. I’m sorry. Let’s start again’.

Two Heads Pt. 2

I came around a few minutes later. ‘Well, that was unnecessary’ said a voice in my right ear. ‘This can’t be happening’, I said to myself. ‘Well it is, my boy’, said the voice. ‘You ought to just get used to it’. ‘But how?’ I asked. ‘This doesn’t make sense. Where did you come from? Have you been in my body this entire time?’ ‘Yes, I’ve been there the entire time’, said the voice. My head was spinning; this was a scientific impossibility. It cannot possibly have just grown out of my own body. It must have been an alien; I must have been abducted, and something planted in my skin without me knowing. ‘Are you an alien?’ I asked. ‘Of course I’m not an Alien,’ he scoffed. ‘Then what are you? Who are you?’ ‘I’m you’, he said matter-of-factly. ‘Well, I’m me I suppose. Because whilst I’m you, I also have my own mind, my own thoughts, and my own head. I suppose we’re one body, and two minds. I’ve not yet been given a name though, if that’s what you mean by asking who I am. Call me Timmy’.

It was difficult giving this head an existence by giving it a name, so at first I just addressed him as head. But it became ridiculous when he started calling me head in return and so I relented and started calling him Timmy. The worst thing about Timmy was the way he stared at me. I could sense him looking at me all the time, but every time I glanced his way, his eyes quickly averted. Whilst his head was angled slightly toward mine, he still had to look quite far to his left to see me and with his dark, glittering eyes it made him look quite furtive. I became paranoid that he was plotting against me, and thought some dark intention lurked in his gaze. I’d ask him to quit with his staring. ‘I’m not staring, my boy’, he’d say. But if I walked us past a reflective surface, I could see him looking, staring, plotting away at me. I put dark sunglasses on him one day, ones he could barely see out of, but he bucked his head back and forward until they slid off, and I knew it was no good. I put a bag over his head another time, but he started screaming. I tried to blank it out, but he kept screaming and screaming; a scream so blood-curdling that I was worried the neighbours would hear and come to investigate. He was fuming when I took it off, almost foaming at the mouth. ‘Don’t you EVER do that again, boy’, he seethed, ‘I’ll make your life a living hell’.

One day I tried to pull the head off. Timmy gnawed and spat at me in earnest, useless really without any hands and with such a small, weak head. It hurt though. It was like I was pulling a limb off, and I collapsed on the carpet, exhausted both physically and emotionally. ‘Now, that wasn’t very nice, was it, boy?’ Timmy wheezed, out of breath himself. He never mentioned it again, but I could tell he didn’t forget it. His eyes gazed at me even more keenly after that time. I had worse thoughts; thoughts of murder, or surgery to remove him from my shoulder. My mind raced with the possibilities; I could have him shot, I could strangle him, I could go to- ‘I wouldn’t do any of those things if I were you, boy’ Timmy murmured. What? Could he hear my thoughts? ‘Of course I can hear your thoughts, boy. And I must say, I really don’t like the way they’ve been heading recently’. I tried to blank all thought. ‘Why shouldn’t I have you killed?’ I blurted. ‘You’re completely ruining my life!’ ‘Because I control you, boy’, he said and went silent. I risked a look at him. His eyes were open, but they were unfocussed, like he was concentrating internally. I was about to ask him what he was talking about when I felt it. My heart. It started beating faster; quicker and quicker until it was quite erratic. I bought my hand to my chest when I suddenly felt a fierce pain. Like someone had taken my heart in their fist and squeezed it tightly. I gasped, and the pressure released. ‘Yes’, said Timmy, clearing his throat. ‘I think we’ve got that sorted, don’t we boy? I want to live, and you want to live, so we’ll just have to live together. And if I think I'm about to die, I can make you die too’.

Two Heads Pt. 1

I’d just left the corner shop when I felt it happen; an odd, tingling sensation between my neck and my right shoulder. I instinctively scratched it away, only to feel the exact same feeling arise a few seconds later. By the time I had reached the traffic lights the tingling had changed to an ache in the muscle and I started rubbing it for some relief. However, the rubbing had completely the opposite affect and the ache turned into a slow burn, heating my skin. I rushed on, eager to get home to examine my neck, but as I turned up the alley way, just minutes from my house, the burn turned into a ripping pain. My right arm tensed involuntarily and a white-hot pain shot from my shoulder stopping me in my tracks; my face became distorted with the pain, and my mouth stretched open. I tried to cry out but another jolt of pain stunned the air from my lungs and I was unable to make a sound. It eased for a second, becoming a dull throb and I dropped to the floor, gasping; a film of sweat over my face. Then it hit again and I fell onto my back, twisting on the floor, trying to pull my head as far from my shoulder as possibly. I threw my hand to my neck, trying to knead away the pain but to my horror, my finger tips felt movement under the skin, an alien-like bubbling stretching the surface, pressing upwards. I tried to push it down, but it was too strong and the pain was too great and another wave forced my hand away in a spasm. Another wrenching stab of pain and I found myself screaming, my eyes locked wide open, my back arched away from the ground in agony as the alien-thing forced through. I could feel my skin stretching, a new form moulding, rising up beside my head, pushing and stretching, tearing at muscle ligaments, pushing bone aside. The pain was so great I felt I’d be burned up in its explosive heat. Another surge of pain so excruciating that blurry stars began to dance before my eyes and I felt I was going to die. Then suddenly it stopped. The pain vanished, all except for a dull ache to remind me of and the sting of grazes on my arms as I’d writhed against the gravel. Exhausted, my head dropped back against the ground and my eyes closed. My lungs opened again, gasping for much needed air. I lay for several minutes, perhaps longer, waiting for my heart to return to its normal speed and my muscles to relax from their contorted state. My mind was frozen to all thought except the feel of a pain-free body. Slowly the calls of the birds in the trees, the hum of the insects and the faint sounds of distant traffic returned to my ears. It was so calm, I almost cried at the beauty. But then I heard it; a rasping breath just next to my right ear. I fearfully turned my head slightly to face it, only to find an eye, inches away looking at me intently. I couldn’t turn my head more than a fraction it was so close. Not just one eye, but two, attached to a human head, small but fully formed. The head’s rasping breaths came out in moist gasps onto my mouth. I glanced to the base of the head out of the corner of my eye. The neck of the head protruded from my own body. I passed out with the shock.