The Badlings

Chapter 10. The Missing Head

Ever find yourself rereading the same page over and over again? Over and over and over and over...how boring and repetitive. Envision the toil the characters have to go through to tirelessly act it out. They'd rather you turn the page, unless you're a badling, in which case you're prey for Mad Tome.

Grand loved morbid stories, the gorier the better, but there was one he couldn't bring himself to read. Each time he started, he shuddered in horror and set the book aside. How fortunate for him to drop exactly into it.

The moon shone on a prairie like the eye of a cyclops. The grasses chirruped and swished. The nocturnal rodents scurried on their nightly business. A stag grazed nearby, flicking its ears to and fro. All seemed peaceful, yet a sense of dread encircled Grand's throat with cold slimy fingers.

"Bells?" he said probingly.

No answer.

He cleared his throat and tried again. "Peacock?"

Unsettling silence.

Grand's stomach lurched and beads of sweat stood out on his nose. He sat still for some time, taking in his surroundings, then quietly said to himself, "I'm alone, I guess, but there is nothing to worry about. This is just a book. It's not real; it's the product of a writer's imagination."

The night around him appeared to have an opposite opinion.

The peaceful chirring was disturbed by a new noise: a clop of hooves against a rocky knoll. A horse with a rider approached at a steady gait.

Grand looked up and froze. His legs went soft, his lungs collapsed, and he promptly fell back into grass. The rider was a man wrapped in a long travel cloak. There was nothing wrong with him except for one small detail.

He had no head.

He did have it, but not on his shoulders, where one would expect it. He held it in his hands, and Grand thought that it was just his luck to come here on an empty stomach, because it shrunk to the size of a nut, and if there were anything in it, it would've surely escaped him.

The stag that grazed nearby flinched and dashed away, plunging though a shallow river. The rodents promptly hid in their holes. Whatever breeze there was, it hiccupped and died.

The horse snorted, trotting straight at Grand.

I won't look, I won't look, he thought, but as it clattered by, despite his best self-restraining effort, Grand glanced at the head, saw it wink, and fainted.

Time passed.

Some more time passed.

Then some more time passed.

The nightlife, spooked by the presence of an unusual guest, quietly resumed. Shrews dug holes. Mice escaped owls. A prairie dog cautiously sniffed at the warm, breathing shape unceremoniously splayed right over its burrow. The shape smelled like doughnuts, and the prairie dog followed its nose to Grand's pocket. It was about to steal the leftover crumbs when Grand groaned and sat up, clasping his head.

The prairie dog peeped its complaint and scuttled off.

Grand, oblivious to this minor disturbance, scrambled to stand. The night stretched around him, unperturbed. He was about to take a step when clopping ascended the same rocky hill, and Grand witnessed with horror the same horse and the same headless rider bypassing him in exactly the same fashion. This time he didn't faint, but merely stood nailed to the ground, watching them cross the river and gallop away, a stark silhouette against the flat moonlit prairie.

He winked at me, thought Grand.

A wolf's howl raised the hairs on the nape of his neck. He crawled into a cluster of grass and sat still, listening.