So yesterday I was on my way to work, when I found out I had a magic watch. Quite a bit of luck. I’d gone from single to two girlfriends in one day, and on top of that, the indulgence of every little kink I ever wanted, plus I few I didn’t…
Did I say every one? That’s a lie. I was just getting started.
But after a night spent satisfying a composite girl with the combined sex drive and allure of two girls put together, you wake up a little fuzzy wondering if any of it was in fact, real. You check your new magic watch and realize it’s not ticking. You set the time against your cell phone and turn over to the two headless girls lying next to you and you think, “Yea, I guess that really happened,” as you drift back to sleep again.

Let’s jump ahead to breakfast. Toast in the toaster, coffee doing its thing. The girls were still headless, and I guess I’ll just say it’d been a quiet morning so far. Emma had gone out to get the paper when Amy came up to me, rubbing her stomach. She pointed to where her head should have been.
“What,” I said, “Like I can just give you your head back?”
If you’ve never witnessed a headless girl roll her eyes at you, I’ll just say it’s very subtle.
“I mean,” I went on, “if I give you back your head, Emma’s gonna want one too.”
As I was talking, Emma came back inside. Amy turned to her and waved her hands where Emma’s head should have been. Then, she surprised me a bit - she made a gesture of taking off Emma’s (imaginary) head and putting it on her own shoulders.
“Share a head?” I said, playing along. “There’s an idea.”
Both girls made a thumbs up. And Emma smiled.
“I have to share? What did I just agree to?” said Emma. Amy suddenly took a hold of her by the cheeks and popped her head free, then set it on her own shoulders.
“I’ll give it back as soon as I eat, okay?” she said, walking over and tossing her arms around my waist. Emma shrugged and turned to find the crossword in the paper.
“So what do you think?” she asked me.
“Of what?”
“Of me with Emma’s head.”
“You look a lot like Emma.”
She smirked. “Uh-huh. No, I mean… well, I like how this works, I can just put on a new head and look different, you know? It’s like trying on clothes. Do you think Emma and I can trade for a wh—”
She was cut short by Emma yanking her head off and restoring it to her own body.
“Or you could ask me politely if I could lend you my head for a bit…” said Emma.
“I was gonna talk it over with you!” said Amy. Now I know what you’re gonna say - a moment ago Amy didn’t have a head. That was why she took mine.
The toast dinged. I took it out.
“Well, I just wanna have some input here.”
“And I just want a new head.”
“Well, if you’re gonna get a new one, I want a new one too.”
“New heads for everyone! Or maybe not Joey. I don’t know. Joey do you want a new head?”
Both girls turned to face me. I yanked off Emma’s head and set it on my own.
“I just want some breakfast I said,” taking a bite of toast.

After a brief kerfuffle with who was going to eat with what head, we finally set out towards the only place I knew that we might properly go head shopping - Marlowe & Co, the place my friend Cary had been to have her head replaced with some kind of camera-computer-speaker thing. Emma and I had restored ourselves, meaning Amy once again ended at the shoulders.
It was only a few blocks. I can’t really say that we didn’t draw a few looks. I mean, a headless girl walking down the sidewalk with two other people. Kind of a sight to see, right? But yesterday, everyone hadn’t even noticed that—
Oh yea.
“I think I left the watch back at Emma’s.”
“You what?” said Emma.
Amy put her hands on her hips.
“I don’t have it. You didn’t bring it did you?”
“Are you sure?”
“Do you still have a lower half?”
She looked down. “Aha. Well, we’re almost there anyhow. Looks like you’ll just owe Amy a head.”
Amy made a slashing motion across the throat she didn’t have.
Well, I thought, if we were headed anywhere else, this might be a problem.
The final block or so, I was much more aware of what a minor scene we were causing - cell phone cameras coming out, cars slowing down, double takes from mostly anyone who passed by. I heard the words, “Another headless girl,” float past me from somewhere, and the realities of yesterday occurred to me. It was a spectacle, I reassured myself, and a temporary one at that. Still, I might have to be more careful…
We were there. Emma pulled the heavy wooden door open, and the musty arcane smell of Marlowe & Co wafted out to greet us. Inside was - well, it was dim. We went in.
“Hello,” said a clerk from the far corner of the room. My eyes still adjusting, I couldn’t quite see him.
It was, in some ways, just the kind of store you’d expect it to be. Wooden shelves and display cases with aged and dusty glass were arranged haphazardly around the shop. You could easily walk in and assume it was a prop store. Crystal balls, stone figures, stone tablets with runic writing, not to mention a rack of period clothing in the corner.
“Something I can help you with,” said the same man as before, appearing from behind a shelf. He was short, maybe five feet tall at best, and at that walked with a bit of a stoop. He had a kindly look to him, gold-rimmed glasses perched on a big nose, wild and thin gray hair sticking straight up, resembling almost a halo.
“I uh… heard that this was…”
“We deal in Arcane and Unconventional Items, yes.”
“Well, my friend Amy here is in need of a um, head.”
He squinted, apparently having trouble making out the two girls behind me. Amy took a step forward and tentatively waved. I wondered if the walk in the street had left her a bit self-conscious. But that didn’t seem too much like her.
His eyes widened.
“Well, yes, your head is missing a bit isn’t it? You’d better just go in the back and have a look around. My assistant Wendy should be able to help with anything you’d need.”
I turned to follow Amy, when the clerk caught my elbow in between two surprisingly strong fingers.
“Son,” he said in a low voice, “I’d like a word with you if you don’t mind.”
I followed him back to the desk at the corner where he’d first been.
“It’s your first time here,” he said, matter of fact-ly.
“Yes,” I said slowly.
“But you brought in a girl with no head. In broad daylight. So you’re not just new to the store, you’re new to this kind of thing entirely. I’ll just be blunt about it then — how’d this happen.”
I summarized the story up to this point. There were certain things I left out. The gist of it, the watch, the girls, meeting Cary, forgetting to bring the watch along.
“I would — well, I better not start that way. Firstly, I should say what you’ve done is beyond irresponsible, and flies in the face of years of magical research and development. That device you have is not a toy. It’s one of the most advanced and yes, dangerous magical devices yet invented. Have you thought about it, much? The ability to directly affect reality through mere thought alone? There are implications, but you look like you realize that. And yes, you’ve only used it for your — well, your flirtations, I might say, though you managed to avoid saying anything so explicit, and what have you to be ashamed of really. Oh what was I saying?”
“That it was not a toy.”
“Ah yes. Not a toy, and your grandfather gave it to you. Do you have any idea why?”
“Well, I just kind of got it from his estate.”
“Don’t be daft. Do you think your grandfather had no idea what it was? That he used it only to tell the time?”
“You’re saying this would be in his will? I guess that’d make sense, but why me?”
“I’m hardly the one you should be asking about that. I’m just helping you see the obvious. You must be careful with that sort of thing. As with all magical devices. It’s not that we’re worried about the public “knowing” or some such nonsense, although real exposure would lead to the intrusion of government which is an inconvenience none of us much want. But in flouting this kind of reality-changing technology, you’re making yourself a target for those types who’d abuse such a power if they had it. And that’s something that none of us arcanists can allow. As such, we have one rule - that the knowledge of magic should be kept within the community itself.
“But I was also going to say, that I should very much like to see this watch you have. If I’m not mistaken, I’d speculate it’s a Higgsworth brand watch, and that your grandfather worked for a company called Ythica Solutions.”
“He did something with plastics, that’s all I know.”
“It was a cover. Ythica was a group of researchers who worked from 1950 to the late 80s finding potential ways to reintroduce magic to the general population, being that it’s practice had been quite successfully banned in the 17th century. Their conclusion was that scientific research and progress had come to better suit the needs of the public. Still, there was quite a bit of research done into something called Dvertytas Fields, which has a short-range calming effect, allowing the seamless integration of the “possible” and the “impossible” in the mind. See, part of the difficulty with the past couple centuries has always been the denial of magic as a possibility, strongly defining a reality which magic has no effect at all. When in fact, reality is actually very relative, and is determined through a shared perception of events. Much of it, day to day, is very static. There are universals, but they are only so because everyone agrees upon them. But sometimes, even in regular life, realities can split open, apart, fragment and shift. Do you ever wonder how two people can witness the same event but remember different stories? The modern answer through psychology and such is that one or the other will observe and assume based on one or other set of preconceptions and expectations.
“And that’s largely true, but the part we’re concerned with, that’s to say, the metaphysical, that’s where these disagreements become something. And within the Dvertytas field, which I’ll admit I’m a bit fuzzy on, the ‘impossible’ becomes ‘possible’ in the minds of those observing, hence magic can take the place of a non-magical particle-based reality.”
“I guess I understand.”
“Now, you’d better go help that girl you brought here find a head. And do bring the Higgsworth by when you get a chance.”
“Uh-huh. Okay.”
I went towards the back, trying to sort out everything the clerk - whose name I still didn’t know - had just told me. Of course, I’d been careening through yesterday without any repercussions or explanations, and having just been given a healthy dose of each, I was struggling to remember everything.
But let’s get back to Amy. I went through the door that led to a back room, as big as the front one really, and now I began to wish I’d been here before. Display cases of hands, feet, eyes, mouths, all different shapes and so on. Racks of arms and legs, racks of well, racks for that matter, not to mention seven or eight highly-technological looking machines with purposes I could only guess at.
Amy was leaning on a case at the far end of the room, Emma standing behind her and peering over her empty shoulders. A young woman with spiky brown hair was walking out from a storeroom with what looked like a hat box. Well, guess what was in it.
“Oh… she’s pretty,” said Emma, as the woman took out a head with a doe-eyed face and long brown hair.
“You wanna try it on?” asked the woman, holding out the head. The head’s eyes caught mine as I came up from behind and winked at me.
Amy turned around, setting the head onto her shoulders firmly. She grinned into the mirror, running her fingers through her hair.
“Well?” said Emma.
“Well,” said Amy, “what else is back there?”
“You don’t like it?” asked the girl at the counter.
“No I do — but I just wanna see what else you have, that’s all.”
“Well, why don’t you take a look around for a while. See anything you like, you’re welcome to try it out and just ask if you have any questions.”
Emma was looking skeptically into the mirror, massaging her neck. “What was that other thing you mentioned…” she asked.
“About modified parts?”
“Yea.”
“Well, there’s lots of pieces here that improve upon regular body parts - some of them are extra strong for example, or have hardened skin. But the most popular items we sell are the storage modifications. Here, check it out.”
The woman pulled up her shirt to show us her stomach. Then, she reached down below her waistline and, just as if she was pulling off another layer, easily pulled up the skin from her stomach. Inside, she was hollow, save for a spine and the edges of her ribcage. She reached one her hands deep into her hips and pulled out a pocketbook.
“Oh wow,” said Emma. “Alright, how do I do that?”
“Well, there’s two ways - we can either hollow out your existing body or you can switch out for pieces that are already assembled.”
“And how does - do I get hollowed out?”
“Well, it’s fairly time consuming, but that machine right there—” she pointed at a large cylinder at the corner of the room “—well, it does that, but also a lot of other things too actually. For this, and this is my original torso, actually, I had to be completely disassembled. We always remove your brain first just to make sure nothing happens to it. Then we took off my skin, then had to disconnect all of my muscles and tissues, finally leaving me as a skeleton. My skin then had to be given the properties of my real body, and then finally re-fitted to my skeleton.”
“And they put your brain back in?”
“Actually,” she laughed and picked up a jar from behind the counter. “I never bothered.”
Emma looked from the jarred brain to the girl at the counter and then to Amy.
“I’ll think about it,” she said.
“Oh c’mon,” I poked her in the side. “Get your brain taken out.”
“Yea. Um… Maybe.”
“It’s not like you ever use it or—ow!”
We were interrupted then, by Amy. Maybe interrupted is too weak of a word. Well, I’ll just say this: Amy walked up with a new head. First of all, it was a blonde, with a pretty and well defined face. The thing was, well, it was about three feet across. A human-sized bobble-head.
“What do you think?” she said, smiling.
“It’s cute,” I said, pulling down on her chin. Her head started bouncing around until she steadied it.
“It’s huge,” said Emma. “Your nose is like, the size of a hand.”
Amy reached up to touch her nose and found it was, in fact, just a little bit bigger.
“Hey wait,” said Emma. “Try and touch your forehead.”
Amy tried, but found her arms weren’t long enough.
“Wow, that’s… funny.”
“No wait, I can—” Amy took hold of her chin with both hands and lifted off the huge head, which fit almost like a helmet over a head-sized spring now attached to her neck. Setting the head on the ground, she bent down slightly and touched her forehead.
Emma broke down laughing. “Okay,” she said. “Stick our your tongue. Oh my god. Wow.”
Amy’s tongue was easily two feet long. She licked her lips slowly, then picked her head up and set it back on her shoulders.
“Alright,” she said. “Yes or no.”
“Definitely yes,” I told her. I started imagining what that mouth could do when we got back.
“Okay,” said Amy, “But you and Emma have to get something too.”
“Then let’s look around.”
We took some time to wander around and get a good look at everything. The back of the store was devoted to body part replacement, while the front focused more on magical items. There was a big selection of knives and such, with a large sign reading “Treated with Enchantium.”
“Enchantium,” repeated Emma. She picked up one of the display models, a small cutlas with a bronze and silver hilt. Without warning she swung it at me. Instinctively I threw up my hand. The blade seem to whip past cutting only air. Then, just like it was some kind of samurai movie, my hand fell clean off. I looked at the stump of my wrist - it was bleeding, but there was a rather gory looking cross-section of bone and flesh.
“Oh wow,” she said. I bent over to pick up my hand. Looking back, I think that was kind of a mistake.
Moments later, Emma was running through the aisles to find Amy. In one hand she had my just-severed head tucked up like a football. In the other, she had the cutlas.
You know how they tell you you should never run with knives?
Well, there’s a bit of truth to that.
I wish I could have seen exactly what happened. She tripped, over something. My vision spun as I hit the floor and went rolling. My head came to rest on its side, facing back at Emma. I could see her own head, rolling across the floor towards me. Her body lay behind it slumped over.
Her head stopped on the flat of her neck a few inches from my face. As luck would have it, she was facing me.
“What?” she said. “What just…”
“Karma, it would seem.”
“I uh…”
We were just realizing our dilemma. The knives did not, it seemed, leave you as two separate personas like the watch had done.
“Can you move?” she asked, raising an eyebrow.
“A little.” I opened and closed my jaw, moving maybe a millimeter. “You?”
She looked down skeptically. She still had a bit of her neck attached. She rocked her head back and forth a little bit, inching forwards just— and then fell over sideways and forwards just a bit. Our lips were nearly touching.
“So Joey,” she said.
“Yea.”
“I’m kinda sorry I cut your head off.”
“You know strangely enough, I think we’ll survive.”
She reached out her tongue and hooked the end of it against my teeth, pulling our heads together into a kiss.