The Unseen Head

Splinter Stories from the Hardware Store

The Silicone was a little too life-like even more so than the wax figures in Madame Tussauds on West 42nd Street near the Port Authority Bus Terminal. Even down to the round Charlie Brown skull the head devoid of any cranial or facial hair gave the aspect of a John Doe murdered corpse or a recently discovered bog man released from millennia into time.

The beak like hooked nose overshadowed a somewhat weak chin with the beginnings of jowls but bolstered by a piercing gaze of false eyeballs. Eyes that kept blinking and rotating throwing its caretakers off balance with the morose intakes and outtakes. A side show freak from an abandoned carny encased in double Plexiglas.

The Original building Art Science Museum dates back to over 170 years. The building had many uses during that time period. Built by prisoners whose bones and bodies are rumored to be mixed in with the cement, concrete, masonry, stone, brick and mortar over time its been a Bordello, Playhouse Theater, a Civil War hospital, a prison for debtors, delinquents and those deemed Delirious, Sanatorium, mortuary, Theater, Speakeasy until finally deciding to become ASM just prior to World War Two.

Silicone headcase was housed in the section where Madames and courtesans once entertained morally staid upper class males. Workers in that area have complained of hearing raucous phantom music, dancing and laughter long after business hours. Given the century and a half existence and its various incarnations the building four city blocks or a quarter mile long is a Labyrinth of mazes series of interlocking tunnels connect both old and new museum sections.

Many township Villagers nicknamed it the Castle for the turrets plus other intricate architectural flourishes. The Townies though proud of their history gave this building a wide berth. Many suffered here and died under gruesome circumstances in the Castle. Specters of translucent doctors, nurses and rotting patients have been seen patrolling the hallways replaying a long past gone.

Max Headroom

Internally it was coursing with two gallons of human blood supplied by a network of pipes tubes and other external spaghetti carefully hidden from view. In order to keep the circulation going methodically the gauges always had to read 98.7 Fahrenheit normal human body temperature with no more than a five degree fluctuation up or down otherwise coagulation would begin.

Each time Victor had to babysit this horrendous sanguinary cranium he would break out in goosebumps along with the accompanying spinal chills. This horrid graveyard reject was twice the size of a normal human skull. Victor had to monitor all the external and internal equipment plus be ready to make adjustments when necessary. Just looking at the nasty disgusting thing gave his goosebumps, goosebumps. He quivered and shivered not only from the ice cold temperatures of the galleries but anxiety and nerves.

The “Whooshing” sound of the pipes and tubes each time he made the required visitations. When it was his turn for overnight guard duty, Midnight to 7 am the next day he always prepared himself with several Father, Son & Holy Ghosts plus a few Hail Mary’s thrown in for good measure.

For the last few times he sat beside the demented Max Headroom he had dozed off with a resulting weakness with each session. Victor could have sworn that Dawn came onto too early. Sometimes when Winkin’ Blinkin’ and Nod called his name he felt the creaks and groans. Noises he chalked up to an old house forever ever settling but never finding rest as he too struggled to find his place in a world gumbo Marsala mixture of Art and the dark halls of Science. Victor’s milk and coffee complexion got more milky and less coffee over time.

Dr. Elgin Elgore refused to allow the customary security knaves to guard or even enter the room. Only he, Victor and Ms. Elsa Gonner were allowed entrance. Nor would he allow the Janitors to clean that area or section of the building fearing the the clumsy wipes, mops and dusters would detach Max as he was called from its various umbilical cords that lined the surrounding floors and walls.

In an aquarium off to the far right was a mixture or Plant Growth and steroids that periodically mixed with the blood as a nutrition element.

The machines were the heart and nervous systems of the beast. Throbbing and pulsating with such a convoluted rhythm and pace causing the features to warp into Orgasmic Grimaces and contortions which only added to the Lewdness of its features. The features took on an even more sardonic, malevolent and lecherous tone when my Fem Bone ZyKaiLeiLani arrived on the scene. She was one of a hand full of outsiders sworn to secrecy and silence let in mainly because her father owned the building and contributed heavily to the dual causation and manipulations of science and art.

Honeysuckle. I always smelled Honeysuckle whenever ZyKai was near.

If ZyKai as we called her wore a particularly revealing frock the jibes and leers seemed to increase as those the blood, steroid and plant food combination gave its hellish soul an unnatural understanding of the female frame. ZyKai was luminous on her own radiating outward from an internal solar system. As for her father our Patron we had our lions and lines drawn up bowing, scraping plus all the courtesies to keep the money flowing

ZyKai sat in on board meetings where Dr. Elgin Elgore threw her furtive glances whilst her poker face betrayed nothing all while playing footsie with Victor under the massive oaken table. Often when he passed locked doors he could hear the clinking of champagne glasses, laughter, giggles along with intermittent pleasure groans and moans.

Dr. Elgore’s greatest fear was not the numerous couplings between Victor and ZyKai but that her father the major funding for the Art Science museum would discover them In flagrante delicto and gone would be the Number 1 Funder.

Loss all from disembodied voices in the throes of passion. Light footfalls followed by heavier ones on their way to rendezvous. Speak easy. Speak easy as we take our fill of passion and pleasure. A Smaller tiny tombstone mirrors the Large Grand One behind. Ponds washout to Rivers. Rivers washout to Oceans.

With each performance the head came closer and closer to bursting with frustrated desire and anger.

The evil face turned a purplish blue burgundy under our apt tutelage of what it could only imagine but never do. The pushing and shoving of serums within the Max Headroom’s tubes became too much to bear. Finally the double Plexiglas chamber seem to fill with a noxious Sulfuric acid ectoplasm.

A Great Symphonic Boom Erupted during our 1812 Overture.