When my head landed in the gutter, I got water in my eye. At least I hope that it was water.

My body kept going without the head.

“Hey! Hey, come back! Come ba – aw, shit.”

My last finger fell off a few streets back and my sideburns were still laying on the bar counter where I laid down for a moment to collect myself. Now, I have to use my tongue to push myself onto my cheek, and that means sticking it into the wet, slimy yuck beneath me. I’ll taste it for weeks if I live that long. My nose slammed pretty hard when I landed, but hopefully it’ll fall off as well so I don’t have to endure the pain for too long.

The street is surprisingly clean of body parts. Usually there’s a finger joint or two rolling around. People drop them as they go, unaware until they get home and then they realise that something shitty that happened to them were bad enough to make them literally fall apart. Some manage to catch their limbs and superglue them back on. Others can go to a repo shop and buy a replacement slightly-used.

My shitty week built up too quickly for me to do anything about it. One day, I was working and living and watching my wobbly left thumb with suspicion, and the next everything went to hell and I started literally falling apart.

Before I can open my mouth to start complaining, since that’s the only thing I can do at this point, I feel light fingers on my cheeks – fingerpads scraping across the stubble that I still have even though I’ve lost literally everything else.

“Hey check it out! We’ve got a live one.” It’s nice to see that someone is getting a kick out of this.

“Aw, cool – usually they die before they lose their heads.”

Then a gentle pressure as someone digs into the skin on my temple and beneath my head. I strain my eyes to try and see whoever is picking me up.

I can just barely see two kids in the corner of my eye. Young boys, I think, and they’re completely intact, which must be nice. You’d think that people who like the idea of finding body parts in the gutter would have at least lost something big. No one with any kind of innocence would be completely intact. That’s how it works.

“Look, kids,” I mutter – can’t really emote when my diaphragm is already rounding the corner. “Could you either take me over to my body or do the decent thing and drown me in that puddle down there?”

“I thought they couldn’t talk without their voice boxes?” the kid holding me asks.

“No, stupid, that’s only if they lose their throats before they lose their heads.”

“How’s he s’posed to lose his throat without losing his head?”

“Duh, telepathically!”

I just want to die. Why won’t they let me die?

“Let’s take him home and use him as a football!”

Sweet Jesus.

PS – I love writing and I love eating! If you want to help with the latter (and ONLY if you want) you can maybe buy me a coffee?  🙂