You ever love someone so much that even after they shat on your face and desecrated your every possible value, you had to keep them around awhile? Ronnie was like that.  He told me at the end, which was also our new beginning: “I know you loved me more than that green felt hat kept on your bureau by the cuffs, but I'm done.  You're stupid and fat and too happy.  I don't like happy people.”

This pissed me off, so I hacked off his head.  He didn't make a fuss, even when the cutting was more of a general sawing. You might say he lay as quietly as possible, smiling whilst strewn across the couch, refusing the slightest hesitation or reaction other than the occasional involuntary shudder.  I assumed he was in ecstasy. 

“Admit it,” he said, after his spine was cut, just before the last bit of sinewy neck-flesh had been clipped, “You like it too.  Being a jerk.  Feels good!”

“I do not, you sick fucker,” I said.  “Don't put your damage on me. You're the one who made us get married then divorced the same day and then put all our rent money on the poker tournament.”

“You let me do it,” he replied.  “So you're equally at fault.”

"Whatever, Ronnie,” I said. “You’re so dramatic."  It was then I remembered how he had to jack everything up times ten, neurotic overblown stakes for his every ridiculous pleasure, but I felt calmer, remembering I was not him, and there was a point where the two of us split as beings, no matter how strung I'd gotten. “Don't forget I can end you with a spike,” I told his head, toting it none too gently to the sink.  “One of those Susan Koman knives would do.”

He whistled. Bugs Bunny or something. “End me. Go ahead: End me,” he said, chuckling.

When his head stopped bleeding, I tested the severed part with a towel to be sure it was clean enough to carry and tucked it under my arm before getting on a bus.  We were going to my mother's. His body, innocent almost, reclined on my couch. 

I wore a red jacket and a pair of cords.  On the bus, he got all involved in analyzing an old man with brown pants and bladder problems.   We spoke of school kids out for a field trip.  He smiled benevolently.

When we got to mom's for Lox, she already expected me, said, “Hi Angie, got a job yet?” 

I said, “No. No job.”

“She doesn't want a job,” Ronnie added.

“I do s—”

“Didn't think Ronnie was coming today,” my mother interjected. “I see he's not himself.”

“We broke up,” I said.  “He pissed me off. I cut off his head. Don't worry.  He doesn't expect to eat.”

“I might like to eat,” he argued.

“Well, you can't,” I said. “You've got no stomach. A person without—”

“So you took his head?” my mother replied. “Where's the body?"

“On the couch.  I'll get rid of it later. He said I was stupid and ugly and too happy,” I explained, a little pissy.  “So I had to have something! I took his head.”

“It's true,” he remarked.  “She took it, even carried it with her here.  Now look at us!  Reunited and it feels so goo-ood.”

My mother, very understanding, just shook her wet blue kitchen glove at him, fingers slimed with bubbles. She turned and asked, “You want a sack for that?”   

We stared at his head.  “No,” I replied.  “I just want to keep looking at it.” 

“It’s not a gazing ball,” she said. 

“I know.”

"Shows similar mistakes, with similar men, and a general lack of progress," she said.

Ronnie sulked.  I flicked his ear, whispered, “Yeah, whatever, fucker.”

“Pretty eyes, he had,” my mother said, sounding a bit morose.  “But you won't attract another boy carrying that thing around.  They'll see you carrying some ex's head, and bam, they'll walk! Just like that.”

In response, Ronnie wheedled with his normal petulance, “Don’t say that! She's mine.  It's a sign of true love she did this head-cutting, her willingness to hurt me and carry me around.  Best thing she's ever done!”  He paused before saying, in his academician's voice, “Love lies in causing others continuous excruciating pain.”

“That is not love, assface,” I told his head.  “Jesus.”

My mother looked at him.  She looked at me.  She tapped his head with a dripping wooden spoon before saying, “Hey. Is his hairline receding?”

Ronnie blinked, would have tilted his face in his cute I'm-a-dumbass way, but no neck remained.  I told him, “You're limited now. Face it.”

“He always was a stupid fucker,” my mother rejoined, wagging her free hand.  “Still, we do what we must.” Her voice took a nostalgic turn. “Hey, cookie, what happened to that sweet guy Julian you dated? I liked him.  He brought flowers.”

I fiddled with my purse. “Too much Prozac.”

“So you went for Death-Head?”

“Someone for everyone,” I replied. “Death-Head was immediately available.”

“That's Mr. Death-Head to you,” Ronnie insisted. "And I was Live-Boy before."

“I caused a transformation,” I agreed.

That night, because I couldn't leave him, I took Ronnie out with the girls.  We centerpieced his head on the table while they spoke about shopping and sex with their boyfriends, the conversation rotating endlessly at one point on the definite impossibility of truly reciprocal and simultaneous sixty-nine.

"I had one guy who thought he could," Ariel said.  "But he never found my clit, so I was like, okay, your disfunction makes it easier for my focus.  He was good at other things though."

This is when Ronnie interjected, as if to add, “I never pleased Angie.  Maybe if your boyfriends had never pleased you, you'd love them more.  You would cut off their heads.  There's something about complete rejection that turns women on.”  He blinked while he awaited their response. Twice. 

I slapped his cheek and covered his eyes before whispering, “You're a guest here, baby; don't forget.”

“I'm sorry,” he said.  “I’m crabby. I kind of miss my body.”

“Sure,” I agreed.  “You were better at running when full-bodied.”

Ariel touched his head. “Can I kick it?” she asked, tracing his temples and nose with her red acrylic nail, tossing back her ridiculous sweep of platinum blonde curls.  His face looked just like an infant's, one who was about to scream.  “Just once?" she went on. "I always wanted to kick a head, especially a man's head…. I don't have to do it twice.” 

She twirled the straw in her cocoa and stared at the crowd amassed in front of the Suds and Duds across the street. “Generous,” I said. “But he might bruise.”

“Come on,” she prodded.  “I didn't like the asshole before, but now he's just a bigger irritant."

"Technically, he’s smaller," I said. “No body.”

Miffed, she dug in her purse. Then she said, "If I can't kick him, please leave him in the car next time.”

“Right,” I said.  “I'm on that.” 

Later that night, Ronnie and I had a good talk.  He said, “I thought about what Ariel said, and I'm sorry I wasn't better to you.”

“No you're not,” I replied. “You just say shit like that.” We watched laundry spin round and round in the Suds and Duds machines because that's what you do when you can't afford dinner and a movie. 

“That's true,” he said.  "But what can I do now?  I'm just a head."

“You can tell me why you were ever sweet, if you hated me so much.” 

“If I were mean from the beginning, you would have never fallen for me," he said.

“Right,” I replied.  “Which would have been great.  But why would you want me to fall for you if you didn’t want me?”

He said, “So I could be mean to you later. It's like that. Of course.”  Staring at his stubborn look, I felt irked again, so I thought about gouging out his ears.

“You do this with everyone?" I asked.  "First you get all tender, then, blam, out comes Mr. Cruel and Evil?”

“Sort of,” he said, smiling.  “Except Mr. Nice Guy comes back intermittently.  And then I leave.”  He said these things, but he smiled again, in a sad kind of way.

I looked into his eyes.  I took his head and opened an empty dryer's door, digging for quarters.  “You'd look funny bouncing around in there,” I said.  “Wonder if it would hurt."

"Don't put my head in there," he said.  "My head does not go in there."

"You should know something, Ronnie," I replied, opening the dryer door wide, scanning the controls, "Before you were mean—I mean, when you said sweet things, you looked kind of humble and conflicted sometimes, like you didn't want to be a jerk. Okay, and I know you had girlfriends who hated you before, but you stitched my name onto your arm with purple thread.  You did stuff you don't normally.  Why?”

“I did love you once,” he said.  “Right before I didn't.”

I had no quarters, so I walked out of the Laundromat holding his head in front of me, looking into his face like it was a divining rod, asking, “Do you really believe all that shit you said about loving someone being about causing the other person pain?”

He blinked, cried a little.

It didn't take me long to figure out that silence was his new tactic, so I walked him to the cliffs above the desert.  “Cough up the answer before I get there,” I said, “or I’ll throw your head over Pike’s Peak.”

His silence went on.

“It's a long drop,” I warned.  “What the hell is wrong with you?"   

I threw his head in the air. “You never planning to talk to me again?" I asked. "I could put my fingers in your eyeballs. Pop your eardrums.  I deserve an explanation.”

He blinked. My temper flared hard. After no further response, I noticed this would just go on in the same pathetic way, so I lined up his head near the cliff’s edge.  I tested its placement with my toe, like this was erotic. He bit the lip of my sole, his eyes wide as plates, until I pulled my foot away.  “I'm going to get rid of your body,” I announced.  “Maybe rent it out to old ladies.”

I drew back my leg to kick him, then said softly, “One day, buddy, you'll wish you spilled your guts—because, after this, you're on your own:  No matter how much I love or loved you.” 

I ran back ten yards.  When next I advanced, sprinting like a fool, I gave him a stunning distance-goal kick and almost fell off the ledge. Wild, how his head spun as it cruised up in a half loop, then down from the zenith, dropping to the canyon where it bounced on a saguaro, and fell to the sand.  Maybe he talked the whole time he was airborne, but I just watched his mouth move frantically, silently each time his face spun my direction, and because it pleased me, I pretended he kept saying, "I love you," as his head rolled through the sky. 

Granted, he could have been saying, “You crazy bitch.  You crazy bitch,” but I thought about soccer.   I’d always been good at soccer. My foot had connected.

Ex-boyfriend’s head.  Soccer.  Soccer.  Soccer ball.

 

Heather Fowler received her M.A. in English and Creative Writing from Hollins University. She has taught composition, literature, and writing-related courses at UCSD, California State University at Stanislaus, and Modesto Junior College. Her work has been published online and in print in the US, England, Australia, and India, and appeared in such venues as Night Train, storyglossia, Surreal South, JMWW, Prick of the Spindle, Short Story America and others, as well as having been nominated for both the storySouth Million Writers Award and Sundress Publications Best of the Net. Her poetry has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, was recently featured at MiPOesias, The Nervous Breakdown, poeticdiversity, and The Medulla Review, and has been selected for a joint first place in the 2007 Faringdon Online Poetry Competition.

Her debut story collection SUSPENDED HEART was released by Aqueous  Books in December of 2010.  A portion of her author's proceeds will be donated to a local battered women's charity in San Diego, CA.