The Head Within

I woke with two heads. It’s happened before, though long ago.

I sat at the edge of my bed. A sad affair of sticks and wooden branches held together by whatever was handy. My hut is small, and a distance from any village and a lifetime away from a place called London. I heard that many of my ancestors died from a terrible disease when it struck that city.

I am alone, as I have been for most of my life. Few pass by this far away from the nearest village. The forest where I live has a reputation for not having a soul.

Towns, villages, they have souls. People have souls. I know that. I don’t believe that a forest, a place that can be dark and beautiful at the same time, can be soulless. I live in this small space every day, determined to hold on to the scraps of life.

The last time I had two heads, days passed before it sank back into my body and left me as one in terrible pain. I am not young, I am not old, and the promise of death is a shadow that follows me. That follows all of us.

I pulled out a dead worm and drank the rainwater I collected in a bowl. The bones of the rabbit I caught yesterday littered the dirt floor of my hut. It was cold and I was shivering. The animal skins that once protected me from the frigid winds and biting darkness were clinging shreds of their past.

Like most days, this day I was consumed by the injustice of the life I had been given. I craved revenge because I was forced to carry this curse out of no fault of my own.

I had to rebuild part of the walls and seal the top of my hut with more dried mud. I had to get myself warm. Yesterday I went out to hunt and spotted a pair of villagers in the distance. I held my position behind a rocky outcropping until they moved off. They had bows and arrows and were hunting too. They had venison skins cloaked around them. That would keep any man warm.

I am as tall and broad as any man I’ve seen these last years. Some day those fine skins would be mine and those men would die face down in the frost of the dirt on which they tread.

“I have two heads,” I said and tried to shake off my fright and the biting hunger in my center that never went away.

These lands were filled with stories and tales of strange creatures of which I am one. There is no place for a soul with two heads.

A slice of yellow from the sky slipped through the top of my hut and rained down on my face. It warmed me as I stood thirsting for more. More yellow, more warmth, and maybe the glow would scare off the head. I didn’t know where they went when they sank back into my body. And maybe that was best. I was a fright as it was. I didn’t want to know how I came to be such a fearful sight. I didn’t think of myself as a bad person, or maybe even a bad creature, for it was difficult to compare me to any other man.

Even in the reflection of my face in the water of a quiet stream I was different. Not evil I wanted to believe. Though in this part of the forest maybe I wasn’t the only one who had two heads. Was that even a possibility? What if I had kin out there and we were family?

I can’t turn my head to clearly see the twin to my left, and my twin never sees me.

“Can you hear me?” I said, barely in a whisper, uncertain if I wanted an answer.

The last time, and before that, there were no words. The heads did not speak and neither did I. I can’t recall details, but it wasn’t long before each receded back into the bloody opening in my neck as though they had found the wrong home for themselves and had to continue their search.

This time was different. Everything I was feeling was different. There was movement within, and it wasn’t mine.

“Who are you? Why are you in my body?” it answered.

The voice was loud. Threatening. I had never spoken that way. I didn’t think it was possible to speak that way. My body shook violently. My arms rose. My fingers stretched and clawed the air. Searching.

“You must go. I will not have it,” it said.

“You are in my land and in my body,” I seethed.

This time my insides were wrong. Unpredictable movement that wasn’t mine. I was quickly possessed of outrage. I am a violent creature by nature. I have never doubted myself, and the ease with which I turn brutal.

My body swelled. I was being pushed, and I was pushing back. This wasn’t the head of long ago. This was a different kind of possession. My left leg gave way. I fell against the wall of my hut and struggled to right myself.

My left hand turned and rose against me and clawed the air, searching for my throat. It came and with long powerful fingers, thrashing for prey. It was almost upon me and as quickly was met with an equal force as my right hand rose in my defense. My right hand clutched my left wrist and twisted it violently. An anguished howl sprang from the lips of my tormentor.

I held back the left hand and subdued it. “I will break it off if you don’t leave,” I said in a voice of anger and frustration, now a welcome kin from the depths of whoever I had become in order to survive.

There was a garbled response. As close as it was, I couldn’t make it out. My anger and outrage shook me. Deafened me to all else except my survival. I found myself a creature of power without thought. I twisted my left wrist until I heard the bones snap. The creature inhabiting my body gave out a terrible cry, trying to free itself of my grasp. I released his broken left hand and went for his throat as he had come for mine. There was no way to defend himself. He twisted and turned away from my right hand. It had come for him, and it would not be denied.

His head scraped violently against mine, trying to push me away, but I had found a strength within that I had to believe was mine from birth. It took the evil this creature was trying to impose upon me that allowed me to discover who I already was.

My fingers, part of my right hand that I had never known or understood, had a life of their own and a mission, rendering me a spectator.

My hand fisted and slammed into his throat, shaking my body. My hand opened, fingers stretched long until they wrapped around his throat and quickly exerted such a force that my body trembled out of control. We dropped to our knees. My hand clinched tighter and tighter as his broken left hand flailed mindlessly, trying to fend it off. I held and squeezed and fumed and spoke words I never heard and tightened long after his head slumped down, dead.

“There,” I said, angered and empowered as I had never been, before my world turned dark and uncertain.

I woke in a shaking chill sometime later. The battle had left the whole of my body in wrenching pain. I worked to get to my feet and steady myself. The left side of my face was smeared red. What little order there was of my hut was scattered and broken.

I was exhausted, spent, and trying to recognize myself and what I had done. My left shoulder was twisted, unrecognizable, as was the meager comfort of what remained of my world.

The rest of the day was a blur of foreign images. By the time the yellow from the sky returned, I knew that I would not be threatened again. I had killed the soul of the beast within and had become a greater beast myself. I was less a man and more of the forest. My right arm and hand were measurably larger than my left. It was the arm and hand of a hunter. A warrior. A killer.

Everything was different and the same. Why had I taken so long to fight for my own life? To rid myself of the curse?

The anguish would end as would my living in a world of uncertainty. I found myself, a soul with purpose.

“I’m alive,” I said breathlessly, finally turning back to see the remains of my dead self.

Splattered dry with my blood, its right eye twitched. Then, again.

I stepped away, startled in shock and heaved a fear that I had not rid myself of the beast. It was alive. There was no killing the monster. It would regain life and once again I would be both slave and host to its horror. The twitch quickened and wrenched the eye open, frantically searching, then blinked and blinked and blinked, and slowly faded.

“Die,” I screamed over and over, launching the heel of my foot into the remains of me. Cursing, fevered with a lifetime of fear and rage until the splatter of its existence covered much of the dirt of my shattered hovel.

I stumbled, caught my breath, and stepped from my hut for the first time, alone.

I lifted my gaze to the sky and screamed. A rageful howl echoed loud through the forest. I continued until my voice gave out as my anger exploded into a fearful determination. The air smelled rich. Fervent. The sky blossomed a deep, embracing blue as never before. I was free of my dark world. My devil was dead.

The world had cursed me. They made me an outcast. Now, free of my tormentor, retribution would be swift.

I had a world to explore and was determined to venture fearlessly. The hunters I avoided for so long were out there. Jealous of their freedom and my crushing lifetime of confinement, they would be the first of my prey.

Then others, unaware of who I am and the reality of what I am and the lifetime of grievances I have to exorcise from my spirit.

One good arm was all I would need to survive and find warmth in many heavy cloaks of stolen venison skins.

This part of me was always the me that was hidden.

Rageful, I always was, and remain a one-headed monster.

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Arthur Davis is a retired Wall Street trained management consultant. He has been quoted in The New York Times and in Crain’s New York Business, taught at The New School and interviewed on New York TV News Channel 1. He has advised The New York City Taxi & Limousine Commission, the Department of Homeland Security, Senator John McCain’s investigating committee on boxing reform, and testified as an expert witness before the New York State Commission on Corruption in Boxing. His work has been published in numerous journals as original and reprint fiction. He was featured in a single author anthology, nominated for a Pushcart Prize, received the 2018 Write Well Award for excellence in short fiction and, twice nominated, received Honorable Mention in The Best American Mystery Stories 2017. More at www.talesofourtime.com, Amazon Author Central and the Poets & Writers Organization.