Skull Collection
By Rob Bliss
The boy found a sun-bleached sheep’s skull in a farmer’s field. He turned it over in his hands and gazed at it in awe. A revelation. He had seen skulls on television, but never really understood where they came from.
He began seeing the skulls beneath the skin when he looked at his parents and friends, everyone. It was all he could see. Saw it too in the mirror. He loved skulls, wanted to collect them.
He wandered the country roads on his bicycle, eyes on the ditches for anything that gleamed white. Took excursions through fields and forest, was often late for dinner.
By the time he finished high school, he had collected the skulls of racoons, skunks, cats, dogs, mice and rats. His parents dismissed the strange collection, called it curiosity. Maybe he would become a paleontologist, reassembling dinosaur bones.
He studied taxidermy. Loved the animals he had reassembled for his clients. Life-like, but not alive. He preferred the dead to the living.
He once picked up a hitchhiker along one of his country drives. An old man, grey beard, smelled of body odour and whiskey. The man had a heart attack before he had reached his destination.
The boy, now a man, dragged the old man into a copse of trees at the side of the road. Some taxidermy tools in the trunk of the car severed the man’s head from his shoulders. The head came home with the boy, its flesh scraped off, hairs burned, acid used to clean the skull to shining white.
The boy stared at the skull, a rarity, his first human. Sat it on the shelf next to the sheep. Admired the perfect contours that only nature could form with bone. Made the boy feel ancient, tribal, a man lost in primeval jungles.
He worked and waited, and no reports in the paper detailed a rotting corpse missing a head. It gave him ideas. He still had so much shelf space left. His collection comprised of so many species. And now he had the greatest species of all. It empowered him.
Every weekend he went for a country drive. His car slowed when he saw a rarity of rarities. A young girl by the side of the road, her thumb out. Early 20s, cute. He never thought he would ever see the day when one of them would need a ride.
He slowed beside her, a heavy pack bending her body forward. She got in, slumped the pack to the floor between her sunburned knees, her muscular legs. They barely started off down the road when she asked him to go back, she had forgotten something in the ditch.
As he looked over his shoulder to reverse, a Bowie knife plunged into his neck. The girl grabbed the wheel with her free hand and stomped a hiking boot onto the brake. She waited for the driver to bleed out.
Her feet were padded with burst blisters and old callouses, legs sore from so much walking. She saw the tools in the trunk, didn’t understand them, so she threw them into the ditch on top of the body.
The police eventually connected one thing to another, and stood in horrified awe at the collection arranged along the shelves.
Many skulls, five of them human. Serial killer status.
- - -
I have a degree in English and Writing. I have been, or will be, published in Schlock Webzine, 69 Flavours of Paranoia, microhorror, and SNM Magazine.
By Rob Bliss
The boy found a sun-bleached sheep’s skull in a farmer’s field. He turned it over in his hands and gazed at it in awe. A revelation. He had seen skulls on television, but never really understood where they came from.
He began seeing the skulls beneath the skin when he looked at his parents and friends, everyone. It was all he could see. Saw it too in the mirror. He loved skulls, wanted to collect them.
He wandered the country roads on his bicycle, eyes on the ditches for anything that gleamed white. Took excursions through fields and forest, was often late for dinner.
By the time he finished high school, he had collected the skulls of racoons, skunks, cats, dogs, mice and rats. His parents dismissed the strange collection, called it curiosity. Maybe he would become a paleontologist, reassembling dinosaur bones.
He studied taxidermy. Loved the animals he had reassembled for his clients. Life-like, but not alive. He preferred the dead to the living.
He once picked up a hitchhiker along one of his country drives. An old man, grey beard, smelled of body odour and whiskey. The man had a heart attack before he had reached his destination.
The boy, now a man, dragged the old man into a copse of trees at the side of the road. Some taxidermy tools in the trunk of the car severed the man’s head from his shoulders. The head came home with the boy, its flesh scraped off, hairs burned, acid used to clean the skull to shining white.
The boy stared at the skull, a rarity, his first human. Sat it on the shelf next to the sheep. Admired the perfect contours that only nature could form with bone. Made the boy feel ancient, tribal, a man lost in primeval jungles.
He worked and waited, and no reports in the paper detailed a rotting corpse missing a head. It gave him ideas. He still had so much shelf space left. His collection comprised of so many species. And now he had the greatest species of all. It empowered him.
Every weekend he went for a country drive. His car slowed when he saw a rarity of rarities. A young girl by the side of the road, her thumb out. Early 20s, cute. He never thought he would ever see the day when one of them would need a ride.
He slowed beside her, a heavy pack bending her body forward. She got in, slumped the pack to the floor between her sunburned knees, her muscular legs. They barely started off down the road when she asked him to go back, she had forgotten something in the ditch.
As he looked over his shoulder to reverse, a Bowie knife plunged into his neck. The girl grabbed the wheel with her free hand and stomped a hiking boot onto the brake. She waited for the driver to bleed out.
Her feet were padded with burst blisters and old callouses, legs sore from so much walking. She saw the tools in the trunk, didn’t understand them, so she threw them into the ditch on top of the body.
The police eventually connected one thing to another, and stood in horrified awe at the collection arranged along the shelves.
Many skulls, five of them human. Serial killer status.
- - -
I have a degree in English and Writing. I have been, or will be, published in Schlock Webzine, 69 Flavours of Paranoia, microhorror, and SNM Magazine.
0 Responses
Post a Comment
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
