Keller

I was wrongly arrested of a crime I didn’t commit. So was everybody, right? Sounds soooo familiar. Then I was quickly tried, convicted and sentenced to die by the crooked judge who set the whole thing up to cover up some illegal international dealings. That’s a little different, right? No? Well how about this part…I was strapped to the table and given a super induced drug meant to kill and erode my body so that there’d be nothing left in case a decent attorney or righteous judge saw my trial records. However things didn’t go quite as planned. After watching me get injected, the judge and his cronies left the building. A few minutes later things began to go awry. The chemical mixture had an unforeseen effect on my body and caused my head to explode. I know this because I felt it when it happened. It really sucked. Then the weird thing happened, well the first of soon to be many weird things happened. I’d read that after executions or violent deaths, sometimes the victims souls or spirits remain near the body to protect it or seek vengeance. It seems that this is what happened to me; the close part, not the vengeance. And I stayed really close. So close in fact that I never actually left the body. I realized this when the 2 fellows sent in to clean up the mess my medical anomaly had induced began to handle my body. At first I was a little disoriented as you could imagine; head exploding and all. Had kind of a migraine, but not your typical migraine, it kinda floated around my head (or where my head had been) like a Bootsy Collins afro. Anyway these fellas set my body up onto one of those cushioned benches u always see in medical facilities and began to clean. As I sat there I began to come out of this fog and it was as I was watching them. Not from the stereotypical movie-fied floating aboveit all method, but from where I was sitting on the bench. I kept wanting to tell them that they had missed some bits. For some reason, this thought (can you think with no head?) bothered me and I wanted them to collect all of everything. Well one guy went to grab one of my sneakers that had come off in the ordeal (yeah I called it an ordeal. It was my head) and decided that he was gonna just sit it on top of where my collarbone was protruding. I kinde felt disrespected and tried to knock the shoe out of his hand. And guess what?... I did. Hooooly (expletive)! Did he freak out. The other guy hadn’t seen this and was knocked down as the first guy scrambled back in his overwhelming freaked-out-ed-ness. So as the second guy…ya know what, I ended up communicating with these 2 guys so I know their names. The first guy (the recently freaked out one) is Harry and the 2nd (recently knocked down guy) is Joe. As I was saying. As Joe rolled over and grabbed Harry shaking him to try to get him to chill out, I realized that even tho I didn’t have a head, I could hear things just fine. I could think somewhat normally (although there was a mass of unchecked questions swarming around my ex-head like gnats during dessert at a late summer bar-b-que) and I had a small range of motion that I could feel improving. However, the only voice I could manage to generate was my internal dialog. Ya know, the one everyone has; what you’re reading here. Joe eventually turned around to see me trying to stand and just watched as if he’d seen similar things before. Harry asked him why he wasn’t freaked out as much as Harry felt he should’ve been and Joe simply replied, “I grew up in the French Quarter, I seen worse.” I got the feeling that Joe really wanted to help me out as he calmly returned my shoe to my outreached hand. It was more difficult than usual, but I did manage to get it on correctly. Joe was a swift thinker and mentioned that the next shift was gonna be coming on soon. I waved my arms trying to get Joe to hand me his clipboard and realized that I looked like every stupid zombie from almost every b-movie I’d ever seen. Then it occurred to me, even with no head, I could also see! I could see, in all of its gory glory, my ridiculous zombie arm movements. Maybe I should’ve been more understanding of their plight. I imagine I’ll see quite a few things differently now. I mean metaphorically speaking, not just because I had no real eyes anymore. Joe seemed to know what I was after (his clipboard) and handed it over. I tried to write a note communicating to them. What I tried to write was, “ Thank you for my shoe. My name is Keller.” But what actually came out was, “tHayoff mNSHeo` mAAnom si kElllrr.” Harry looked and said, “Great! A foreigner dead guy! S’all we need.” But as I said before, Joe was a swift thinker. He gave me back the clipboard and suggested that I try again. I did and I took more time this time. This time I kept it simple, “sHu. THanx. mE. KEllr.” Writing was more difficult that the shoe had been. Much more difficult. I was something I was going to have to practice. Joe read what I’d written and I could tell that he understood because he said, “You’re welcome for your shoe, Mr. Keller. Now we need to get you out of here before somebody else shows up. If you would please lay here on this gurney and I’ll sheet you up until we can get you someplace safer to talk...err…convers…ya know. I understood and did as he asked. Laying there under the sheet I could feel it against what would have been my upper shoulders and that felt weird to me that it wasn’t against something that was more face-level. I was sure I’d get used to it. I began to “figure” that I’d have to get used to a lot of things here in the near future. But for now, I just laid there listening to them finish up their cleaning of my ordeal (yes I’m going to continue to call it that, thank you very much) until I felt a bag being placed under the table on which I was laying. Then I felt a push on things. We were moving. Joe’s ever-calm voice detailed things. “We’re gonna run you down stairs Mr. Keller. Orders are to cremate you, but that don’t seem quite right after the last few, so I’m gonna augment some documentation and we’re all gonna take a ride in the company van. I don’t know about you but I could use a cold beer.”

I’d never drank before, but I think that right then if I could’ve, I may have taken one. Just to clear my head ya know…cept..well..ya know. As we rolled out of the room, Harry, still a little freaked out, (and not an Ivy League graduate) asked if everybody who was French could speak to the dead. I would’ve laughed out loud…ya know if I’d had a mouth. Joe paused his pushing and I could imagine him looking at Harry and placing a comforting hand on his shoulder as he said, “Yep, we learn it in grade school.



2

“Shore is weird; him not having a head.” This might have been the most in tuned statement Harry made the whole first night that I knew him. He’s right, I said. But it being only in ethereal was-head, it wasn’t really said at all. I looked around for something to try to express this thought; alas the company van (as Joe had called it) was neatly kept and held no errant scraps of paper. This could become a problem. But I had an idea. I made what I believed to be the universal symbol for ‘telephone’ and hoped Harry would understand even though I no longer had an ear nor mouth to complete the charade. Harry had a brief moment of clarity and said, “I think he wants to call somebody.” Then the spark vanished, “whoever he calls ain’t gonna recognize him tho with no face.”