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.