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’.