By Rex Burrows
Robert first noticed the head in the pantry on a Tuesday morning. It sat on the second shelf down, nestled between the oatmeal container and a half empty box of cereal. The head appeared to have come from a middle-aged man, clean shaven and with close cropped brown hair. There were no distinguishing marks or scars, nothing in the way of earrings or other adornments. The eyes were closed, and the expression on its face was one of calm repose. If pressed to render an aesthetic judgement, Robert would have described the head as being neither attractive nor unattractive. It was just an average-looking head, typical of someone that you might walk past on the street without taking any special notice of them.
It was certainly not the head of anyone that Robert knew.
If you had asked him what he might do upon encountering a strange head in his pantry, Robert would have guessed—after pausing at the odd premise of the question—that he’d be most likely to scream, flee, and alert the authorities. Confronted with the actual situation though, he did none of these things. He just stood there, taking in the situation and wondering how the head had come to be in his home. As an experiment, he turned and walked out of the pantry. The coffee maker had just finished brewing a pot of French roast, so he poured himself a cup and mixed in a teaspoon of sugar. He then returned to the pantry, sipping his coffee, and found the head exactly where he’d left it. This did not surprise Robert, but on further consideration, he didn’t think it would have surprised him if it had vanished either.
Unable to reach any firm conclusions regarding what to do about the head, Robert left it where it sat and went about his normal morning routine. On his drive to work though, he did catch himself wondering if this was what it felt like to go insane.
* * *
Robert’s workday proceeded in a fairly normal fashion and he quickly lost himself in administrative paperwork. He was almost—but not quite—able to forget about the head in the pantry. When he returned home in the early evening, he hung his coat in the closet, deposited his keys in the small wooden bowl that sat on the side table for that exclusive purpose, and then proceeded directly to the pantry. After all, there was no point in delaying the inevitable.
Robert had been nursing some small hope that the problem would have solved itself while he was away, that he’d find his pantry in its normal state of order with nary a head in sight. However, the head stubbornly occupied the same spot that it had in the morning. The eyes remained closed, and the facial expression hadn’t changed in any noticeable way. Passive observation having reached its limits, Robert reached the distasteful conclusion that the only thing left to do was make a closer inspection.
Robert reached out with both hands and cautiously lifted the head off the shelf, holding it just below the ears. He kept it at arm’s length for a moment, not sure what kind of reaction he was expecting but wanting it as far away as possible if one came. Nothing happened; the head simply sat in his hands feeling comfortably heavy. Its temperature was neither warm nor cold and seemed roughly the same as Robert’s own hands. Turning it over, he found no signs of a violent decapitation. In fact, there was no evidence of any former point of connection to a body at all. In the place where the neck should have been attached, there was just a stretch of smooth pink skin. The head was otherwise perfectly normal, right down to the oily pores on its nose and the slightly receding hairline.
Robert took a deep breath and let out a long sigh. He didn’t know what he’d been expecting to find, but a tag with an if found, please call message and phone number had clearly been too much to hope for. Once again stymied in determining what further action might be needed, Robert returned the head to its original place on the shelf. Just as he set it down, it opened its eyes.
Robert regarded the head and the head regarded Robert in kind as he slowly pulled back his hands. For the second time, he wondered at his own lack of a visceral reaction—all he felt was a numbed sense of curiosity. The head opened its mouth as if to say something, but lacking a larynx, trachea, and most of the other anatomical apparatus associated with speech, all it could manage were a few odd, hitched noises. After a few moments of futile effort, it abandoned the attempt with an apologetic look. If the head had been attached to shoulders, Robert was sure it would have given him a resigned shrug as if to convey: Alas, what can one do? It then closed its eyes and resumed its former neutral attitude.
In the three years since Robert’s wife Clara had passed, he’d been alone in the house. They’d never had children, and he’d discontinued the weekly housekeeping service the week after the funeral. The comfortable routine of maintaining his home in a tidy and well-ordered state filled some of the hours that had previously been occupied by conversation and the various social obligations that inevitably attach themselves to coupledom. Friends periodically reached out to Robert with invitations to dinners and—more recently—thinly veiled attempts to set him up with their various unattached acquaintances. He accepted the occasional dinner invite, mostly just to avoid seeming impolite or standoffish, but steadfastly declined all attempted romantic interventions. The initial acute shock of grief had eroded down to a dull ache that would probably accommodate more of a social life, but Robert felt perfectly content with his quiet and self-contained status quo. So far, he hadn’t been able to think of any compelling reasons why it needed changing.
This meant, Robert realized, that he was under no particular pressure to resolve the issue of the head tonight or, for that matter, anytime in the immediate future. Since he was already in the pantry, he turned his attention to dinner and picked out the ingredients for a nice pasta dish. He watched the evening news while he ate and then settled into his recliner to read the next few chapters of a thick novel that he’d been enjoying. For the remainder of the evening, Robert barely thought about the head at all, and by the time he went to bed, he’d all but forgotten about it.
* * *
Over the next few weeks, Robert fell into a comfortable routine with the head in the pantry. Its most frequent state was one of inactivity—sleep, if such a term could be applied to a disembodied head. Sometimes though, Robert would enter the pantry to find the head awake and alert, the eyes tracking his movements as he went about his business. On these occasions, Robert would hold up each item that he’d selected from the shelves, presenting it for the head’s inspection. It seemed to appreciate these gestures and would give a Robert brief smile, the kind you’d give to someone who’d held open a door or provided some other small courtesy. Encouraged by these reactions, Robert began describing the meals that he was preparing. On one occasion, he even brought a thick slab of freshly baked lasagna into the pantry. The head seemed to enjoy the aroma of the food, but its expression shifted to one of intense discomfort when Robert cut off a forkful and held it before the closed lips. The faux pas became obvious almost immediately—what was the head supposed to do with a mouthful of food that it had no means of swallowing, much less digesting? He withdrew the offending morsel and apologized for his thick-headedness. The head, for its part, didn’t seem offended or to harbor any ill will over the incident, which had probably been equally embarrassing for both parties. Robert chalked it up as a lesson learned.
Aside from the presence of the head, Robert’s day-to-day activities went on in mostly the same fashion that they had previously. He went to work, then he came home. He made meals and he ate them. He read books, he listened to music, and he attended to his various domestic responsibilities. He would occasionally engage in one-sided conversations with the head in the pantry but tried to keep these limited. Its periods of wakefulness tended to be brief, and Robert didn’t want to overtax its capacities. He’d come to think of the head as a polite and undemanding member of his household, and his initial concerns regarding the state of his mental health faded into the background. If he was losing his mind, this seemed like a fairly innocuous way to do so.
This agreeable state of affairs was disrupted on a Friday night nearly three months after the head’s arrival. Robert was sitting in the living room, enjoying a glass of merlot while listening to Bartók’s Romanian Folk Dances. The first side of the record had just ended when Robert noticed a strange thumping noise just barely audible over the hiss of the needle. He followed the sound into the pantry where he found the head in a state of agitation. Its eyes were stretched wide, and the mouth snapped open in what could only be interpreted as a series of silent screams. The noise that Robert had heard came from the back of its skull repeatedly bumping against the wall behind it.
Robert searched the pantry, trying to locate the source of the head’s fright. Everything seemed to be in its regular order; there was no evidence of water leaks or fires or anything else that might be so upsetting it. It was only when he cleared the shelf space around the head that he found the appalling source of its distress. A mouse had invaded the pantry, somehow scaled the shelves, and was now greedily gnawing at the head’s left earlobe. Robert grabbed the creature by its tail and tried to pull it away, but it refused to release its hold. Fighting off repulsion, Robert worked his fingers past the scrabbling paws and up the body until he grasped the mouse firmly by the jaws. He pressed down firmly until he felt a delicate snap. The mouse finally came away and Robert hurled it to the floor as hard as he could, giving it two quick stomps for good measure.
The head had ceased its screaming, but tears ran down its cheeks and a thin trickle of blood leaked from its torn ear. Robert ran out to the kitchen and returned with a roll of paper towels and the first aid kit from under the sink. He applied pressure to the wound, muttering soft reassurances. Once the bleeding had stopped, he cleaned and bandaged the wound as best he could. That dealt with, he turned his attention to how the mouse had gained access. There were no obvious gaps or entry points to be found in the pantry, so it must have come from somewhere else in the house.
While all of this was occurring, the head had calmed and eventually settled into what looked to be an uneasy sleep. Robert, however, remained worried. It had never occurred to him to remove the head from the pantry, but it now seemed prudent to locate a safer resting spot for it. He picked up the head and carried it as far as the pantry doorway before it lurched back into awareness, snapping its jaw, and clacking its teeth, and startling Robert so badly that he nearly dropped it. When he held it up to determine the nature of the problem, the head could only give him a panicked look and dart its eyes back towards its shelf. His plans for relocation thus vetoed, Robert returned the head to its customary spot and left it in peace.
The remainder of the evening passed in an anxious funk. Robert had come to think of himself as the head’s caretaker, and tonight, he’d thoroughly failed in this task. It was unlikely that an exterminator would be willing to inspect the house until Monday at the earliest, so Robert would need to see to the head’s safety himself until then. He picked up the crushed mouse in a paper towel and threw it out the door at the back of the kitchen; a raccoon or some other passing nocturnal scavenger would dispose of it. The pantry lacked a door, making it difficult to secure the small room, but Robert erected a low barrier of stacked boxes across the doorway. That would have to hold for the night, but he resolved to visit the neighborhood hardware store first thing in the morning. They carried an extensive selection of pest deterrents, and Robert was sure that he could find a stopgap solution to his problem.
* * *
By ten o’clock the next morning, Robert stood in the kitchen and admiring his handiwork. He’d strategically positioned snap traps throughout the room, each baited with a liberal smear of peanut butter, and handfuls of poison pellets sat mounded in the corners. A dozen glue strips were scattered across the floor of the pantry; any rodent that made its way past the doorway would be confronted with a sticky, immobilizing gauntlet. As for the head itself, it had passed the night without further harm and had not stirred while its new set of defenses were being set in place. After the drama of the previous evening, Robert thought this was perfectly understandable and did his best not to disturb its rest.
Any peace of mind that Robert might have gleaned from his new set of countermeasures proved short lived. As the day wore on, Robert noticed a growing number of crows and somewhat larger birds that he assumed to be ravens were gathering around the house. They lined the porch railings, hopped across the lawn, and fluttered among the branches of the oaks lining the back of his property. There was little in the way of squawking or chatter, just a low undercurrent of avian muttering and the shuffling of feathers. By early evening, half a dozen hunched black shadows dotted the upper reaches of the trees—turkey vultures, their ragged outlines silhouetted against the setting sun.
That night, gusty winds set the house creaking and groaning. Beneath those noises, Robert thought he could make out odd skittering noises emanating from within the walls and beneath the floorboards. Stationed at the doorway to the darkened kitchen, he kept watch over the floors by the moonlight slanting in through the picture window above the table. Sure enough, a mouse darted out from beneath the stove and made a beeline for the pantry door, bypassing two of the traps that Robert had set earlier. He flicked on the overhead lights, startling the pest and sending it scurrying off in retreat. In the pantry, the head didn’t seem to be in any immediate danger, but the nervous expression on its face reaffirmed Robert’s glum certainty that this had only been the opening salvo in some broader assault. He sighed and prepared himself for a long night ahead.
A pot of coffee was set to brewing, and a large metal pot, a wooden spoon, and the contents of the silverware drawer were laid out on the kitchen table. It was only a short while before another mouse appeared—this time from beneath the refrigerator—and made for the pantry. Robert clanged the pot with the spoon and sent it sprinting back from where it came. This pattern repeated itself several more times over the next few hours, mice emerging from various corners of the kitchen only to be sent fleeing by loud noises or hurled flatware. The few mice that made it into the pantry fell victim to the glue traps. Robert tossed these unhappy specimens out the backdoor; hopefully the birds would make themselves useful and dispatch the struggling creatures.
Just after midnight, Robert noticed a quiet tapping noise coming from the window above the kitchen sink. He opened the drapes and found himself face to face with a crow. He and the bird eyed each other, and then the crow struck the glass with its beak—tap, tap, tap—as if politely requesting entry. For one long moment, Robert pondered this new development, and then he slowly drew the drapes shut. One problem at a time.
The hours ticked by and the incursions by the mice became less and less frequent. The head appeared to have dozed off, which Robert took as a hopeful sign that the danger had receded, at least for now. It was just after 4:00 AM; if he could make it til dawn, there might even be a chance to snatch a few hours sleep. He started another pot of coffee, retrieved a handful of what he’d begun to think of as his throwing spoons, and then resumed his post at the table.
It was the acrid odor of scorched coffee that first penetrated Robert’s sleep. He lifted his head away from the puddle of drool on the table and found the kitchen flooded with morning light. Lines of mice streamed into the pantry, bounding and clambering over the piles of their compatriots carpeting the glue traps. The vermin were so thick on the floor as to be unavoidable, so Robert simply ran across them, trying to ignore the crunch of tiny bones beneath his feet. The mice were rapidly ascending up through the stocked food but hadn’t yet reached the head, which had somehow managed to knock itself onto its side and now teetered precariously on the edge of the shelf. Robert snatched it to his chest and spun towards the doorway—the head would just have to make its peace with a change of scenery—but his feet shot out from under him, slipping in the smashed entrails and blood-soaked hides that clung to the soles of his shoes.
As Robert fell to the floor, the back of his head struck one of the lower shelves, rattling his teeth and sending intricate black patterns swirling in front of his eyes. He couldn’t see anything for several seconds, but he could feel hundreds of tiny paws sprinting up his legs and down over his shoulders and arms. By the time his vision had cleared, he found himself holding a writhing ball of furred flesh and dangling tails. The anguished spasms that filled his hands slowed and then came to a stop, replaced by the flow of a warm sticky fluid and the sounds of biting and tearing and satisfied chewing.
Unconsciousness reasserted itself, this time mercifully.
* * *
Robert woke some indeterminant time later to find a picked-bare skull still resting in his lap. This was all that remained of the head; whatever animating force it once held had been stripped away along with the flesh. It was just an object now, abstract and absent of presence. Robert himself was unharmed and the rodents had vanished, leaving only scattered pellet-like droppings in their wake.
He rose and, following some undefinable impulse, walked across the kitchen and out the back door. The mob of birds still occupied the back yard; if anything, their numbers had increased during the night. Hundreds of tiny black eyes followed Robert as he crossed the lawn with the skull and then, as though satisfied that some crucial task had been performed to adequate standards, they exploded up into the sky. The flock briefly wheeled above the house in a churning gyre and then dispersed in all directions, presumably en route to other more pressing matters.
Robert crossed the yard and, tucking the skull under one arm, opened the door to his garden shed and selected a spade from the neatly organized rack of garden tools. He then proceeded to a shady spot at the foot of one of the larger oak trees. It was simple enough to cut out a square of sod but excavating the hole in the underlying soil required cutting through a several thick roots. This proved difficult, but Robert didn’t mind. After the events of the past few weeks, the simple activity of digging a hole felt refreshingly ordinary. When he’d reached what seemed like an appropriate depth about two feet down, he gently placed the skull at the bottom. He then covered it over with earth, refilling the hole and setting sod back in to place on top, firmly tamping it down until it was flush with the surrounding grass.
Over the next few days, Robert settled back into his normal routines which, truth be told, had barely been altered by his strange visitor. No additional mice appeared in the house, and the only birds he noticed in the yard were sparrows, robins, and the quick flitting passage of a gold finch. Robert contemplated placing some type of memorial stone on the small gravesite but eventually discarded the idea. He suspected that wasn’t what his departed friend would have wanted, and he could picture it rolling its eyes at such a tacky and sentimental display. After all, Robert had known the head in the pantry for but a short time.
* * *
Rex Burrows (he/him) is a writer primarily working in the weird fiction, horror, and dark fantasy subgenres. He also has a background in biological research and holds a Ph.D. in Microbiology and Molecular Genetics. His stories are often informed by his interests in science, nature, and history. Rex’s short fiction has appeared in magazines and anthologies including Weird Horror Magazine, 34 Orchard, and Horror Library Volume 7. He’s lived in lots of different places but now seems somewhat settled in Washington, DC. He can be found online at rexburrows.com.
