“Okay,” said Sophie, when everything had died down a minute later, “Next game.”
“Alright, what are we doing?”
“Let’s play Buyers Market.”
“Oh wow, that’s an old one,” said Jenn, laughing, and resetting her head again. She removed the necklace and set it down on top of the microwave.
“Everyone, get yourselves back to normal!” said Sophie, loudly. Her arms gathered themselves back up into regular arms again, and her knees straightened then bent out the right way again. At the same moment, I felt Miles’ head come loose from my shoulders. I had the fuzzy feeling of handing him my head and mine being given back. It was a strange feeling - I wasn’t “seeing” from either head, but sort of “half-seeing” from where my head should have been. Only the only things I could even ‘see’ were Miles and myself, trading back our heads. I would later find out this is the standard “Restoration” phase of the aura put over the apartment.
“Okay,” said Sophie, “Here’s the rules. It’s like musical chairs, but for our heads. So we all leave our heads in the middle of the table, and walk around in a circle with your hands on the next person’s back so you don’t cheat. You won’t be able to see, except from the head you last wore. And every round, there’s a mannikin head on the table. If you put that on, you’re out.”
Just as she was talking, the door opened and another three people came in. I already knew them — there was Jesse and Maya, a couple, and Maya’s best friend Hannah. Things were delayed for a few moments while everyone made their greetings and Jenn convinced Maya to try the jack-in-the-box necklace.
“Alright, let’s play this,” said Sophie, finally. “Oh, and obviously the last person to have a head is the winner, and there’s a special prize for being the winner…”
“Okay ready?” said Jenn. “Presto! Your heads off.”
I wasn’t exactly ready, but I managed to catch my head before it fell. Mary wasn’t so lucky as to catch it as she was to only drop it on the couch.
“That would’ve hurt,” I said.
“Nope!” Corrected Jenn, swinging her head around by the ponytail to face mine. “Rule number two - nobody gets hurt. So her head would just break open and spill brains all over the floor and we’d make her clean it up, but it wouldn’t hurt.”
“Oh,” was all I said.
Jenn swung her head and pecked me on the cheek as she pulled it back and raised it up above everyone. She seemed very comfortably tossing her severed head around, but, I reflected, she must do this more than I did.
“Okay,” she said, from her vantage point up above everyone. “We got the mannikin head?”
Sophie set it on the round table in the middle, along with her own.
“Good. Alright, let’s play this.”
We all set down our heads and backed up a step, as directed by Jenn. The music started playing and we all began walking. What I didn’t count on was the constant giggling that comes from the table. I had to admit it - all I could see was a bunch of other severed heads set down on the table. I was able to make eye contact with either Miles or Sophie, but I had a good view of a few of the others as well.
Another possibility I suppose I’d never had time to think of. Severed heads, as it turns out, aren’t completely stationary. Especially with those more experienced. Sophie had set herself on her cheek so that, with a bit of a jaw motion, she was able to turn her head a few degrees. It proved to make all the difference, I guess, because when I was trying to use my chin to scoot a few inches toward the edge, the music suddenly stopped and I found myself lunging towards, what I hoped was the table. I caught the edge only barely, and managed to avoid falling. Fumbling around on the table, I grabbed the first head I could feel, and just a moment later, my own was being picked up and raised to — once again I was in a kind of ‘limbo’ as far as sight went. That is, I couldn’t see anything, not even darkness, but I had a pretty good “visualized’ imagination of where things were, and I was carrying a head. I raised it to my shoulders and set it down, blinking my eyes open again.
I was able, then, to look around the room. It seemed I’d picked up Jenn’s head, and spotted my own on what looked like either Hannah or Sophie’s body. Still on the table was Mary’s and the Mannikin’s head, with Maya’s and Alex’s body still stumbling around looking for the table. Maya found it first, but grabbed the wrong head. So she was out.
Everyone put their heads back into the center, except for Maya’s original head, which suddenly looked … plastic.
“So wait, I asked Miles’ head, whoever it was, we don’t get our head’s back?”
“Nope, only the winner gets to keep their head.”
“That’s brutal.”
“It’s not as bad as it sounds.”
I was going to contest that, but the music started again. This time I upended my head, incidentally Sophie’s again, as I’d seen her do, trying to rotate to keep an eye on my body. I wasn’t very good at it, and soon I just started giggling with all the other again - My original head, directly across from me, kept sticking her tongue out at me, and I had to return it.
“Can you stand up on your tongue?” she asked, and I was almost about to try, and the music stopped.
I would up with Miles’ head this time. Everyone made it to the table, but Mary grabbed the fake head, and was disqualified. We kept going. I completely lost track of who had what head what round, so every time on the table, I’d be looking at the severed heads of my friends but have no real idea who any of them actually were. Hannah’s body lost out, then Alex. I actually picked up my original head for a round. Sophie couldn’t get Jenn’s head on right and had it snatched away by Miles, so she was out.
At one point, there were a couple more people - another two guys and two girls - who walked in, friends of Sophie’s, and another two girls coming only for Jenn’s birthday.
“Alice and Rena! Shouted well, me, as Jenn ran over to hug the girls who’d walked in. Not quite piecing things together, the two of them responded tentatively, before noticing that Jenn was now on Miles’ body and didn’t even seem to recognize them.
The final round, I’m not sure how, but it came down to Miles and I. And wouldn’t you know it, he picked the mannikin, even though he beat me to the table. I could’ve sworn he did it on purpose, but I was quite happy to be the winner, and what’s more, still with my original head.
I turned to face all of the other, headless members of the party, “Haha, losers. I have a head!”
“Yep,” said Jenn’s voice, disembodied, seeming to come from the ceiling. “You do.”
“And the winner gets to keep her head!” said Sophie.
“But, that’s all she gets.”
“What do you mean,” I said, getting an uneasy feeling. I put my hand up to my neck.
“We mean exactly that. You keep your head. And we may be a bunch of headless losers, but we still have bodies.”
“I…” And it occurred to me that maybe this is why it seemed so easy to win. I was about to say then, that I still had a body, because that had been the truth. But then, in a moment, it wasn’t. My head dropped and hit the floor, rolling on the carpet until Mary’s body bent and picked it up.
She stuck it to her her neck.
“I’m going to take a shot,” I said, without meaning to. “Anyone else?”
A few bodies raised their hands.
And that was all I could do. For the next little while, I was either a detached head, being passed around by a bunch of headless bodies, or one of them was using me to drink, or eat, or just to make fun of me.
“I’m Lydia!” Jenn had me shouting, “If you need any head, you should ask for me!”
But I can’t say it wasn’t fun. I was the center of attention, pretty much, being the only way for anyone to talk to any of the “normal” folks who just showed up. By the way, I learned their names real well, since I met them each like five or six times from every different body. The guys were Terrence and Rick, their girlfriends Macy and Anne, and Jenn’s friends Alice and Rena from upstate. Alice, like me, had never even seen real magic before, so her and I had a bit of a “Yea, isn’t this weird” conversation, albeit with her holding me up to her eye level with a squeamish expression.
At the same time, I could see something of the appeal in “losing” — everyone else who’d been playing, had something of a charades way of communicating, even though none of them could talk (save for Jenn or Sophie’s voice occasionally emanating from nowhere). All in all, it was a great thing to have at a party, and an impractical idea anywhere else.
Finally, it seemed like everyone else was ready to move on and try something else.