"Hurry up, they're almost here!"

Tonight was the night I planned to host a dinner party for a few of my friends. This was the first time I ever did such a thing, and I was looking forward to this for a few weeks.

Last week, I invited three good friends whom I knew since elementary school. Rachel and Rebekah were twins, though you could tell who was who most of the time. Both of them had brown hair, but Rachel had longer hair while Rebekah always kept her hair short, and Rebekah had a slightly rounder face along with a pair of glasses she almost always wore. Both of them were fresh out of college too; Rachel got an environmental science degree from the University of Tennessee, while Rebekah attended a Christian college over in Lancaster. I forget what her major was, but I digress.

I also invited Rebekah's new husband Raymond, also a school friend of mine who also attended the Christian college Rebekah went to. I don't know what his major was but he got in because they were the only school that would accept him on a soccer scholarship.

Either way, Shannon was as excited as I was, although I'm not sure if she met any of them. She was a few grades behind them in high school and thus didn't have a great shot at befriending them.

Despite this being a dinner party, neither of us had great cooking skills and we had no idea what exactly to cook. Only yesterday, Shannon suggested making ham and I agreed with her, knowing that wasting more time was not an option.

Fortunately, and somewhat surprisingly, cooking the ham went off without a hitch. Shannon pulled it out of the oven and it looked almost perfect.

"Damn, this looks like the best ham I've ever seen!" Her mouth was watering at the thought. She seemed ready to devour the whole thing before our guests even arrived.

"Please, try to control yourself. These people and I go way back and this is the first time they've seen me in a while, so I want to make a good impression."

Regrettably, I did not have a whole lot of contact with my former classmates after I graduated. I hoped this would change that.

"Take this tray out to the table awhile. I want to try something out," Shannon told me. Although she loves experimenting, and I admire her for that, I felt a little off about this.

I went out, sat the ham tray on the living room table, and walked back toward the kitchen. Once I got there, I stood and stared at what Shannon had done, mostly in shock but with a slight bit of anger too.

She had cut off her own head and set it on a plate, which she carried on her right hand like a waitress.

"Dinner is served," Shannon said with a chuckle.

Looking at her in this position gave me a PTSD-esque flashback to last month's tornado. The one that destroyed her house and left her living with me. The one that revealed to us Shannon's unique abilities for the first time. The one that should've taken her life but didn't. The image of her sitting on the ground, with the wooden board sticking out of her stomach and her head sitting behind her, severed from her own body, has never left me.

Nor did it have an opportunity to leave. Ever since then, I've seen Shannon sever her own limbs multiple times. Admittedly, some of those times were to pull pranks on me, but still. She seems so intrigued by this strange power to be cut and not draw blood at all.

But now was not really the best time to do such a thing.

"Seriously?  What did I say about controlling yourself? Our guests will be here any minute!"

Shannon's eyes widened at this. "I thought I'd throw in a little humor."

"I can't introduce you to my friends like this! You're gonna scare the living hell out of them! And that's not a great first impression!"

"But I really wanted to do this!!!" She started getting a little upset.

"Look, I know how much you love...this...but you can't just casually walk up to some random Joe Schmoe and rip your head off in front of him!"

"But I've read stories online about people doing things like this and they're always casual about it! I thought why couldn't I try something like that!"

"Sorry to burst your bubble here, but those are works of fiction. They can do whatever they want to there. This is different. I feel like people aren't gonna be as accepting."

Shannon gave me a disgruntled look as she picked her head up off the platter. It was then I heard a knock on the door. Our guests had arrived.

"Just a second!" I yelled, and I sighed as I looked at Shannon again. "Okay, if you really want to, you can do your little trick, but only after everyone else is done eating. I can't afford them losing their appetites or spewing up their meal."

Her mood brightened as she pressed her detached head against her neck stump, holding it there for a few seconds as they joined together again. Satisfied, she walked with me as I answered the door.

Standing opposite me was Rachel, wearing a dark blue sweatshirt and a lighter-blue pair of jeans. Behind her was Rebekah, also with blue jeans but with a maroon-colored sweatshirt and, of course, a pair of glasses. Raymond was standing next to her, also with a maroon-colored sweatshirt with our school name emblazoned in gold lettering on the front. All three of them looked relieved when I opened the door, suggesting they had been standing there for some time.

"Well don't just stand there, come on in!"

The three stepped in and were greeted by the scent of freshly-cooked ham, and Shannon sitting on the couch about ready to tear into that ham. Once she saw me, she looked rather embarrassed at what she was doing.

"And, uh, this is my good friend Shannon."

She got up and introduced herself to the group.

"Pleasure to meet you, Shannon!" said Rebekah, enthusiastically as she shook Shannon's hand.

"And I expected you to be living alone." Raymond was more or less correct on that statement, considering my personality during our high school years.

"Oh, I was, until the..." I paused as I tried to prevent another PTSD-style moment. "...the tornado hit."

Rachel chimed in. "I was about to ask about that. Was everything alright? Seeing the damage and all that made me really worried."

Shannon overheard this and joined in the conversation. "No, everything was not alright. I lost everything!"

"Yeah, poor Shannon here lost her house, and that's why she's living here."

"That's awful! But I'm really glad to hear you guys are okay," Rachel replied.

"We did make an amazing discovery afterwards and I would love to show you guys, but I feel it's something I should reveal after we eat."

"Oh really? Why can't you just tell us?" Raymond was really intrigued.

"You're not gonna believe me if I told you, and plus, it might spoil your appetite."

I leaned over toward Rebekah and whispered, "and the only reason I'm doing it is because Shannon really wants to. It involves her."

"I heard that!"

"The real question is, Shannon, what did you hear?"

"I...uhh...dammit you always get me with that!"

"I gotta say I love having her around. The chemistry between us is outstanding." I said to Rebekah again. She was giggling at our conversation.

"Can we eat already? I am starving." Shannon could barely hold herself back.

"Oh, of course you're the one to say that Shannon." We all laughed once I said this, and sat down to enjoy our delicious ham.

We spent the next hour catching up with each other, reminiscing about our greatest moments (me and Rachel especially had fun thinking back to the chaos of our AP Calculus class), and just chilling in general. This makes me wonder how all my other classmates are holding up.

The ham was almost gone when everyone finished eating, and, ironically, Shannon was the last one done. Rebekah was the first one to speak of the inevitable.

"So, what were you gonna show us?"

I froze for a moment. I dreaded this all night, but now the time had come. The time to reveal the truth.

"*ahem* Well, uh, how can I put this...brace yourself for what you are about to see, for it will test your perception of reality."

Shannon was under the guise of going to the bathroom, but what she was actually doing was getting her materials from her practice run before everyone else arrived. She walked in my direction holding a plate in one hand, with a large, presumably sharp kitchen knife sitting on it.

"Now, Shannon didn't just lose her house during the storm." I showed them a picture I took of Shannon's condition in the aftermath. The condition I previously described: head off, board through the stomach. They all gasped. "I assure you that this is not doctored, and to prove that to you, Shannon here wants to perform a little magic trick. After all, this was her idea."

Shannon shot me a subtle glare as I said that last part before she began her introductory speech, trying her best to act like a magician. "Ladies and gentlemen, or should I say gentleman..."

Raymond gave a weak laugh at her humor attempt.

"...as Colin said, this will test your perception of reality, and even if you've seen this before, you probably haven't seen it like this!" She set the plate on the table and lifted the kitchen knife to her neck.

I looked at our small crowd, and saw each one of them cringe as she did this. Rachel held her hand up towards her eyes to try and obscure her vision, and she looked at me in terror, expecting me to intervene.

I did almost the opposite. In a rather straightforward and calm manner, I told them, "Yeah, brace yourselves."

Shannon readied herself, and, holding the top of her head by her smooth brown hair, swiftly sliced through her neck in one clean swipe, severing her head once more.

Everyone jerked in fear, expecting to see blood spewing out along with Shannon's corpse falling to the floor after her supposed suicide.

Instead, they saw her holding her own head in her left hand and laughing as hard as she could. "You really thought I was gonna die there? You should've seen the looks on your faces!"

Now was my turn. "You see here, Shannon has an incredibly rare condition where her skin rapidly heals itself after being cut, torn open, or severed as seen here. This enables her to perform this remarkable feat when, if a normal person were to do it, it should be fatal. This is how she survived the storm in the condition I showed you."

The look of fear on everyone else's faces melted away into awe and amazement. And soon that, too, turned into applause. Raymond seemed the most skeptical, eyeing Shannon's headless body to try and find any flaw, but to no avail. He admitted defeat and started clapping as well.

To top it all off, she placed her head on the plate in the same manner that she showed me before the party, and set it back down on the table in the style of a waitress delivering food. "Dinner is served."

Rebekah was amused. "Again? But we just ate!" The rest erupted in laughter.

We spent another couple of minutes chatting about these developments before Rachel raised the question:

"How exactly do you reverse it? I mean, it's very cool and all, but I would lose my mind if I was like this and couldn't reattach my head."

Shannon, although she liked this position, admitted that she also didn't want to be like this for too long.

"Simple." She lifted her head off the plate and pressed it against her neck stump for a few seconds, before it sealed back together, good as new except for a faint white line across her neck. She then gave a little bow, acknowledging her "performance" was over.

"That was absolutely incredible! I really think you should consider showing this off in, like, a magic act! I think you'd get a lot of people that would pay to see this!" Rebekah turned toward Raymond. "Honey, would you still love me if I cut my head off like Shannon?"

"One, two, or even a hundred pieces, no matter what I'd still love you the same," he replied. The two shared a subtle kiss.

Rachel, on the other hand, was not as delighted with her sister's comments. "You do know that if you did something like this you'd probably die, right?"

"Of course you're one to ruin the fun, sis!" They continued bantering each other and it devolved into another laughing fit.

The clock chimed nine. The three decided now was a good time to head out and return to their daily lives.

"It was a pleasure having you guys over."

"Yeah, it was more than a pleasure to be here. Thanks for inviting us!" Rachel gave me a little hug as she turned to leave. (To my knowledge, she was still single.)

"My pleasure." I chuckled lightly at this. "You three take care, and you all are more than welcome to come back anytime!"

They waved goodbye and left. Shannon and I went back inside.

I carried the now empty ham tray (turns out Shannon was still hungry after her little show) back to the kitchen. After setting it in the sink, I turned around to find Shannon standing in the doorway, looking at me.

"I told you they were gonna accept it!"

"Well, technically you didn't tell me that, but I must say, I am impressed and very glad this didn't end the way I thought it would."

Shannon grabbed the kitchen knife and once again held it up to her neck. "Wanna see me do it again?"