#wait for the queue

The guy was moving, trying to gurgle something through what was left of his jaw. He was reaching for the gun, Daisy leapt for it but it was right next to him and she missed. The man who should have been a corpse already, raised the gun and pointed it into the mass of flesh that was his head. Daisy grabbed the gun before he could pull the trigger again and managed to wrestle the gun away from him. Then he, then he made a noise. Just a really horrible sound. I think he was trying to cry.

It was only when I was many years into my medical training that I finally accepted that scientifically such things were not possible. The mouth cannot function if it’s located anywhere other than the face. The limbs cannot bend like rubber. A man cannot walk and talk and stare without a head.

My hand closed instead around cold metal, and I drew out a fist-sized lump of… I think it must have been copper or bronze, and had been roughly carved into the shape of a heart, but like a real heart, not like a Valentine's one. It was cold to the touch, like it had just come out of a freezer, and it almost stuck to my skin. Engraved on the side was the name “Alan Parfitt”, the letters carved in with machine-like precision. That was the last sign of Alan I ever found. As far as I’m aware he’s never been seen since.

It moved its head, it was the strangest thing to watch. It seemed to shift its position slowly, like a doll having its joints twisted but its face remained completely still. The mouth stayed curled to reveal its teeth, the ears stayed alert and pointed forward and the eyes still stared out though, where they had at first seemed brilliant, they now had an almost glassy look to them. Without warning it roared the same powerful cry of violence that I had heard before. But as it did so I fell back in surprise. The tiger’s mouth had not moved.

As I was cuffing him, there was this sudden intense pain in my hand. It was just as I touched the metal to close them, it was incredibly hot. I once took a welding class ages back, just to kind of live on a whim, and made the mistake that just cause metal isn’t glowing red, that doesn’t mean it isn’t scorching hot. It was that same burn. Too intense for your mind to process for a second. Then all your nerves fire at once.