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Larry kicked at the pile of leaves despondently. He hated this period. Halloween, or the sorry excuse the British made for Halloween, was over for another year, bonfire night had flown by in a flurry of bright lights, whizzes and bangs, and it was yooooooonks till Thanksgiving. Would they even celebrate it here? All he had now was the dragging dreary run-up to Christmas in this silly town with far too many syllables. Why couldn’t the English keep things simple? He wished he was back on Long Island, fall was much more fun there. Yeah it was cold and damp in November, just like Gloucester, but at least his friends were there to play with, and there was definitely a higher caliber of leaf in which to stomp out his prepubescent sulks. Urgh! Poop! All over his shoe! Larry was about to wipe it clean, when he had an idea….

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It was Christmas Eve and Larry was again kicking his feet. This time, though, the leaves had all rotted away. The trees were bare, skeletal silhouettes against the slate grey winter sky. His mother cast a similarly dramatic outline in her black outfit and her fancy feathered fascinator, black lace concealing her tear stained face. His father stood straight and silent, his Vietnam general’s uniform almost bright amongst the black of the mourners. Only little Sammy was smiling, his dimples raising watery smiles which didn’t reach the eyes and faded as fast as the wintry afternoon speeding towards dusk.

Larry wasn’t listening to the priest, instead gazing out across the huge graveyard and wondering about all the bodies now interned there. He bet none of them had died of a rare breed of giant alien tapeworm crawling in their brain. He’d thought it would be a bit of a joke, haha - Casey ate Doo-doo stew! It was Mum’s fault really for trying to be a British housewife - where would you hide pooh in pizza, after all! He hadn’t expected this! A week later Casey had been gaunt and weak, and two days after that the migraines had started. A trip to the doctor and the reassurance that both the weight loss and headaches were probably hormonal. The next day though, Casey hadn’t woken up. The worm had worked fast, having pinched her breakfast, lunch and dinner for a week, the post mortem revealed that it had wriggled up into her cerebellum and eaten the bits of her brain necessary for movement and replaced them with its eggs. When they hatched, just a couple of days later, that was it. They found her in her hospital bed, maggoty worms working their way out of her eyes. The experts had advised incineration, of her, the sheets, and the bed. They had no precedent for this, and after emptying the ward, quarantining the other inhabitants, staff, and family for 10 days observation, and taking away a dozen or so hatchlings for analysis, the body had been burnt.

Larry’s attention returned to the scene, as Casey’s empty coffin was lowered into the hole, and he wondered if he might get away with dispatching Sammy so easily. Life might be much more interesting as an only child...

His back itched, dead centre in a little dimple on his back. He wriggled and twisted but there just wasn’t enough room to reach it. Great he thought, another 360 days of this. It just didn’t seem fair, it had been so good to be out in the air, wandering the streets. Taking, laughing and most importantly she was there. He could see her, touch her, talk to her. And they had done just that this year. Everything had gone almost to plan, if he’d found her a bit quicker who knows.

This time she’d been at the Romero party on 9th street, by the time he’d brushed the dirt off and fixed himself up, there hadn’t been much time left. But he’d done it, made himself talk to her. A simple hi Rose, how are things? She’d smiled and said she’d hoped he’d say hello this time.

They’d talked all night with partygoers stumbling around them commenting on how great their costumes were, how did she get her cloak to be so black, my dad had a leg like that after ‘nam, where did she get her nose? But he hadn’t heard a thing, only her finally talking, to him! Eventually they had to go, she had to get back to the cats, one of them had a tapeworm. She’d laughed when he’d asked really cats? It was a cliche she’d always enjoyed sticking to. Before they left she had turned to him and said she’d been thinking about him, how she’d watched him for years, nervously trying to approach her, she’d almost done it herself but had always shied away. She had looked at him in a way that made him feel alive. That had made his century.

It had been so much easier in the old days he thought, darker places to meet people, no photos, no police, you could pretty much roam the UK as long as you kept your wits about you and a good cloak. Sure there was the occasional burning or the odd attack but then it was just put down to hearsay and Mythology. He remembered the first time he saw her, there were three of them wandering the moor, a pale blue moon smiling down. But to him only one mattered. Her whirling, dancing, frenzied body. Her raw power and energy transfixing him. He had seen nothing like it before and had watched them for hours until the sun chased away their freedom, no friend to him or any of their kind.

These days you goto climb out on one day at best he grumbled. But he knew it was worth it and he had learnt to be very patient. He wandered what she did the rest of the year. If she had a day job? I’ll ask her next year he thought smiling and making a mental note. And now from their talks he knew she was a keen gardener, and if there was one thing he knew about it was soil, well, that and waiting. He wriggled again trying to get the itch. 360 days to go he thought and smiled to himself. To a man who had forever, that was just a blink of an eye.

Halloween at last, thank the Big Giant Head. Thank you Biggie, you magnificent deity! Because, and let’s face it head on - life is shit for the differently headed. The snorts of derision when you try to buy a hat, for one thing.

There was no rhyme or reason, but Lesliebody’s head complete with its beautiful dimples and formerly sensuous lips was currently sitting in a cooler box in a pathologist’s lab. As they say in the TSH (torso-sans-head) community, life finds a way. Usually it’s a stumbly sort of trippy way, but life does go on.

What’s the worst thing of living as a human being without a head? Perhaps the discrimination. Say you put out a job ad that says “no fat birds” and true enough, right on your case is the RSPC-bloody-B telling you it’s out of order, any avian, no matter their bird-mass-index is eligible, but without a head and you turn up for a job interview? You’d do better turning up with a dead tapeworm as a scarf.

Get the hell out, you headless freak, that’s a common one.

Also, fuck, fuck, fuck, that guy’s got no head, you get that a lot.

Or the the thumps as the fainting bodies hit the floor. And then you face your own personal ‘Nam, you get your foot in the door, you shake hands with the interviewer, you sit yourself down and then they say, Leslie, tell me, how do you see yourself fitting into this role as a helicopter salesman?

Halloween is the promised land for those with TSH. Freaks no longer, out into the open, arms a-waving, neck wounds a-weeping, it’s bloody great fun - highlight of the year.

Only...there wasn’t quite so much shock turned to laughter that Lesliebody was expecting. More like, shock followed by horror following vomiting. He was pretty good by this point at sensing sounds - much as the blind man can hear a sparrow fart, or the deaf old sod can spot a fiver from a mile away, so it was the same with Lesliebody. His arse was now a radar, and so he turned and hunch and pointed it this way and that.

Sure enough, children crying. They were weeping sugar tears from over-candied eyes, bowels were loosening, urinary tracts flexing. This wasn’t how it was supposed to be. Halloween was the time for those lacking a head to shine, a chance to-

So distracted was Lesliebody that he quite failed to pick up on the sharp tang of blue flashing light dancing across his skin. He couldn’t fail to notice the tang of quite a different kind as they twisted his arms behind his back and told him he was nicked, sunshine, in their best seventies cop show bellow.

Riding in the police car they told him he had the sallow grey skin look done to a T, but the gaping neck wound? Seen better on Casualty, mate.

Young people today, always trying to push it too far. Fair enough, one night a year for spooky japes, but mate, Halloween was last bloody week.

It was one of those damp, brown autumnal evenings, where the leaves had fallen and begun to turn to beige mush underfoot and the drizzle-blurred street-lights tinged everything sepia and indistinct.

I walked home along the railway, the tall fence still decked with last week’s Halloween detritus. Half a gnawed pumpkin grinned macabrely at me from the kerbside, its innards gushing obscenely from the gash in the side of its carved face.

I pulled up my hood against the drizzle. It wasn’t half-past five, but it felt later. No-one else was around and my shoes thudded softly as I trudged the last miserable stretch to my door.

The house across the road still had their halloween decorations up. I rolled my eyes as I fumbled for my keys. That’s what you get, I thought, if you live in student-ville. Their Halloween party had driven Ken up the wall - he’d nearly gone over to tell them to stop their bloody screaming but I’d convinced him to leave it. He only ever made a fool out of himself with those lads.

Like last Christmas when he’d complained about the blow-up doll in their window wearing a sexy santa outfit, her dimpled cheeks and astonished ‘O’ mouth hidden behind a Santa beard.

It’s indecent he’d bellowed, juvenile. Dean apologised shamefacedly and then Mike had poured bubble bath mixed with glitter on him from the upstairs window.

I let myself into the dark hallway. Ken wasn’t back yet, so I picked up the mail: a postcard from Jill in Vietnam, a flyer for a play about a tapeworm, bills, more bills, adverts. Then a letter for the boys across the road.

It looked official. I should run it over. Perhaps I could mention the decorations - maybe they’d take them down before Ken got home. I scurried over, hunching against the rain.

The decorations were morbid. Plastic bats dangled, the sinister silhouette of the blow up doll pressed against the window through the curtain, as if trying to escape, spatters of fake blood smeared on the glass, trickling, coagulating on the windowsill. It was nearly a full week since Halloween, Ken was right, it was high time this lot came down.

I knocked for ages before giving up, then wedged it into the letterbox among the reams of junk mail. Students are disgusting I thought. And the house stank. It was vile

Then I stepped back and fell into the stack of rubbish bags that had been building up since before the party, flailing among the rotting food and empty booze bottles. I screamed with disgust and humiliation - how could they live like this?

When I saw the astonished face of the blow-up doll gaping through a translucent binbag I screamed again. This was beyond, I finally understood Ken’s rage.

I stood up, stinking, dishevelled and banged hard on the window, demanding they answer immediately.

Then the shape pressed against the window shunted sideways and toppled towards me with a thud. I saw the greying flesh of the dead boy’s cheek distorted against the glass, a single, terrified eye staring from his blood-spattered face, silently begging for someone to come and complain about the noise.