talking skull in a basement. abasement talking skull.

there is in my basement a talking skull. i am sure it can talk. and it’s not just i’m imagining it. i showed my partner and they agree. it’s real.

i also showed my friend. and they think it’s real too. so i’m certain. and i did tests on the room. no gas leak. it’s real.

the talking skull will tell me about how the king chopped off its head. and i’ll say, well you are all head now. and it’ll go. yeah i guess you’re right.

it really can’t do much. it doesn’t know any spells. or much modern language. i think it’s pretty old. but we communicate well enough. i feed it snacks. and it likes them.

sometimes the skull that can talk will ask questions like, how is this war or how is this king or queen. and i’ll tell it that the war ended, or that that country no longer exists or no longer has a monarchy. and if it does have a monarchy certainly the royals that they knew are deceased. it will say, oh yes of course. but it will always come up with a new question along those lines. testing its reality as it once knew it. perhaps there’s a limit on how much it can think. since there’s no brain in there.

i don’t take it out of the basement. it says to me that the source of the power it has is in the room here. it says it is buried here. and that hundreds of other skulls are waiting beneath the ground.

i don’t really feel up to the responsibility of dealing with this knowledge. of either the skull or its legion of similar beings. my partner says i shouldn’t have to be the one and that maybe we should just call in the secret government that deals with these things. but i’m concerned that there is no secret government, not really. and that we’d have to give up our house to some incompetent military science unit.

so i kind of just go down there each day to feed it and then come back out. my friend said that it was kind of ruining their life, knowing about the skull. i tried to console them but they haven’t spoken to me for a couple of weeks. i don’t know if their plan is to just ditch me or to get people involved of their own accord. i guess i thought i could trust them but it’s hard to know how people might react to something like the talking skull.

so now i get jumpy at the sound of sirens. and i don’t really know how to just switch off my knowledge, of the talking skull and its long dead world.

i think i probably take a hammer to it. and crush it. or throw it into the sea. or just leave it far away from its power source. but i don’t really know. it’s a pain and i wish i had never found this skull that can talk because life just makes it a drag. since you have to face up to so many things that make up this kind of social and governmental bureaucracy we have. when really it’s just a skull that talks and that’s not a big deal.

i tell this to the skull and it apologises for the inconvenience and says that if i’d just dig the other skulls up along with their power source, then it would probably be out of my hands. and i say that yeah, but, then i released a dark power. and it assures me, it is not a dark power.

i ask why it was killed by the king and it says it was for theft. theft of what. some jewellery and lace. execution seems excessive i say and it says that that’s what it said at the noose. got a chuckle out of the crowd. i ask if the other skulls were those of executed criminals and it says yeah. i ask if there’s just skulls down there and it honestly can’t remember. and i ask what will happen if i dig up the others and the power source. it says they’ll probably band together with the source as a core and kind of roll around like a ball.

which i suppose is fine. and so i start digging the hole. and find fifty human skulls down there in the basement. no other bones. as well as, inside a brown sack, dry with age, which crumbles and cracks as i try to manipulate, a glowing green gem.

the skull says i should place the gem in its mouth, and why not at this point. so i do and it rolls off of the dresser where it’s kept, and starts clumping together with the other skulls. and as it touches each one there’s a yelp or a yell. and they begin to chatter and ask where they are. and i run upstairs kind of scared of what i’ve done. and at some point, up the basement steps rolls a ball of human heads, with a chain of them attached and rolling. it passes through and with the extra space a few more roll up into the ball. i’ve opened the back door and it rolls out there into the garden, and the trail at the back is fully assumed into its structure. it doesn’t say thanks or au revoir, or give any kind of acknowledgement of my existence.

and now the basement is empty. and i fill in the hole. and i go back to whatever i was doing before. and throughout the town, the green rolling ball of skulls now roams. none of my business.