pocra's Journal: Floating Head of Death (Strange Fragment)

Floating Head

"I am the floating head!"
"The Floating Head of Death?"
"No, the living one!"

The above dialogue took place today (10 December 2002) halfway down Dundas Street, Edinburgh, at approximately 12:52pm. People stared. I just laughed. So did my Imaginary Companian.

My Imaginary Companion provides endless amusement to me. I laugh to imagine how people would react if they could see the world as I see it, to see, everywhere they go, a grown man walking around with a disembodied head floating around him (though of course, as the head was never actually attached to a body, "disembodied" is a serious misnomer (there are some people who would have said "decapitated head", which makes no sense whatsoever (though I suppose, in some backwater, far from the Associated Press, there could have been some freak-child born consisting, as it were, of two heads sharing either end of one neck, which some poor soul in a fit of terror could have swiped at with a scythe, releasing each from the other's grip (and giving us two decapitated heads in the process))).

I'm sorry, that was a bit of a disgusting digression. Hypothetical! Not true! Just an explanation for a stupid phrase!

I had a birthday party, long ago, to which only I and my Imaginary Companion were invited - I never did find out who issued the invitations; the evidence seemed to point to my Imaginary Companian, but this evidence was obviously cleverly contrived by the real culprit to confuse and disturb me. I never knew him before this day. When first we saw one another, we screamed and screamed and screamed in a joyous feedback loop of terror. We had some jelly and ice cream. To be honest, I prefer them seperately rather than together, but I know that's unconventional so I keep it quiet.

People always avert their eyes from me when they see me in the street - and usually avert their eyes from my Imaginary Companion too.
"HAVE YOU MET MY FRIEND?" I scream at them, and they ignore me.
"HAVE YOU MET MY FRIEND?" my Imaginary Companion screams at them, and they look afraid and usually leave quite quickly. I think that, on some level, my Imaginary Companion gets through their perceptions.

I know that my Imaginary Companion is not real, for I have never seen him sleeping. I have seen him looking drowsy, but he never falls properly asleep. But strangely, he seems to have some control over me. I can't go places he can't go, and sometimes it seems I am acting without freewill.

Can something unreal be real enough in my mind to have power over me?

Sometimes I'm scared of my Imaginary Companion, especially when there's no-one else around. He usually stops laughing then, and just stares. At times like this I remember how he killed those people that they never found. They're still there, I expect, maybe they're just skeletons now, maybe the stagnant air has preserved them like those saints you see who haven't decomposed after death like normal people do. They screamed so much.

I'm sorry - I didn't mean to bring all this up, I was just trying to tell you about an amusing incident that happened earlier today, and it seems to have got out of hand.

  ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

"Are you the human or the head?"
"The h... I don't know..."
"Nor do I."

The above dialogue took place a few minutes ago. I'm not sure which I said, or which my Imaginary companion said. Some violence took place, on both sides. I killed my Imaginary Companion - or my Imaginary Companion killed me, I'm not sure. I don't know which I am. I don't know if I'm real. I don't know if he was real. I don't know. What is happening? Who am I?

I am floating.
I am the floating head.
I am the floating head of death.
I am the Floating Head of Death.
I Am The Floating Head of Death.
I AM THE FLOATING HEAD OF DEATH.