Image: Ivan Bilibin

Beryl Necromancer had a perversion for heads on a stick. It was a compulsion she couldn’t get her mind away from. If she liked the look of you, your head that is, then she’d dream, fantasise about your said same head sitting upon a stick in her living room.

After a while the heads became skulls, and as with skulls, they all began to look the same.

Beryl besides having a thing for heads on sticks was also an ideas girl. She found if she inserted a small battery powered light inside the skull the light would shine through the skulls eyes, and she concluded there would be a market in such light fixtures or if you so wished you could carry it upon your person as she is doing in the above illustration.

So Beryl having accumulated a good supply of heads over the years set out to bring them to light. With her cart laden with skulls she set off to the local Sunday market and set up her stall.

She did a thriving business selling the skulls as novelty lighting for novelty people in novelty houses. Some folk remarked the skull they chose reminded them of a loved one since deceased. Beryl would always smile and acknowledge their remarks, but inside she knew there was every chance the skull was somebody they knew.

All went well until Penelope Watson happened by and noticed a particular marking on one of the skulls. It was the same as her late husband had had on his crown when alive.

She looked at the skull, was tempted to buy it if for no other reason than to remember her husband but remembered his headless body had been found in the woods not far from Beryl’s place. She alerted the authorities who said they would look into it and try and shed some light on her claim.

When questioned Beryl said she had found the head one day when she was out picking blackberries. The authorities found there was not enough evidence to charge Beryl with anything other than having a skull in her possession. They warned Beryl off, and she never again appeared at the Sunday Market.

But she had become aware of a market and a demand for her macabre wares. So like any modern day entrepreneur, she started up an online business – “Heads are YOU.com”.

Written for: https://janedougherty.wordpress.com/2017/02/26/sunday-strange-microfiction-challenge-3/