mr. heads takes the stand
by Melissa Feuerstein
Mr. Heads just took the stand and the crowd holds itself in a kind of ceremonial stillness, like nobody wants to miss the second this hardens into history. I can’t believe he’s standing there with the knife still in him, something I could only see in profile as he walked unassisted to the podium. He may or may not live, and because he has been “King of the Borderlands,” and because the cosmos decided to spare him some last words, the spectators regard him like a dying saint.
He pulls the mic to his mouth and says, “The Bible is dirty,” like it’s our fault, apparently assuming any of us have read it. He wavers at the mic, and the audience leans toward him—his followers and fans. I’m pretty sure the ambulance won’t make it on time; we’re so far out in this stinking desert that the concept of emergency response feels like a myth.
It’s eerie how silent things got after the mayhem, after Mr. Heads took a knife in the back. Whoever did it ran off in a blur. Maybe he’s standing right next to me, just another normal-looking statue. Not a single person tried to help: they just stopped yelling and fistfighting, everything suspended as if the stabbing meant mission aborted—or perhaps just intermission, depending on which version of the story would carry more charge.
Nobody seems to know how to respond like a human being. Intervention is too risky, and whether they lack the skills or just don’t trust themselves to use them, nobody wants to be the one who steps in. Being a spectator is the safer role, and for some of them the more thrilling one too.
The better bet, of course, is to get the best footage from the best angle—the most humiliating and awful moments, the stuff that travels. Failing that, they can stand by, watch, and wait for the official version to arrive on tomorrow’s news.
Cuts and slabs from the charcuterie lie either strewn on the ground or arrested mid-air: chopped meats and cheeses, chunks of melon, broken chicken bones, and what look like horse teeth. They form solar systems and constellations above us, their own little order.
I swear I can hear his heartbeat faltering through the speakers; it’s so damn quiet, the whole place held in the devotion of a death watch. It’s like I’m standing in a staged reality, among the undead. I think I’m the only one moving, and it’s only because I’m writing this down before I forget it. Even now, I can feel the story splitting into versions.
Mr. Heads pulls the mic to his mouth again and says loudly, urgently, “DON’T SPREAD THE SEEDS!!!” And as if they knew exactly when it was coming, the Godmothers step onto the stage with a big net that Mr. Heads collapses into.
The ambulance still isn’t here, and I’m sure he’s dead. He was old, sick, and halfway gone already. I don’t know why he got that square inch of revival to take the stand and deliver those two messages, which sounded like a mix of internet sludge and the sort of vague warning people spend years pretending to understand.
The Godmothers are putting him in a box now, all wrapped up in gauze. The moths from earlier have turned to ash. The flowers I’d seen in vases before now have no petals, and I think I’m getting a rash on my neck. The whole scene feels eager to become aftermath.
I’ve got to find a bathroom, so I make my way through the crowd, which is quietly dispersing. My right foot hurts from standing on a rock or some buried scrap.
The one building with a bathroom is also a gift shop. After I do my business, I walk through carousels stocked with small envelopes filled with thousands of tiny seeds, labeled with scientific names I do not understand. There are also PopSockets, tumblers, coffee bean grinders.
I dig through my pockets for some cash and hand it over to a clerk with spiky hair in exchange for some postcards. I just need to get out of here, get to the railroad station, and catch the next train back to Albuquerque. If the station is still there.
Only after I buy the postcards do I notice that every one of them shows a picture from the scene I just witnessed: the silhouettes of the motionless crowd, food and skeletal material stuck mid-air, Mr. Heads walking up to the stand with a knife in his back, and then yelling into the mic with final conviction. It turns out a man can still be dying and already halfway converted into memorabilia.
And on the address side, in the lower right corner, each one contains the same small print: DO NOT SPREAD THE SEEDS!!!
Photo of Melissa Feuerstein
BIO: Melissa Feuerstein is a writer based in Tucson, Arizona. Her work has appeared in Maudlin House, Oddball Magazine, and Argyle Lit, with work forthcoming in BULL. She manages the project @headsetting on Instagram, where she pairs words with images.