You weren't exactly sure how one is SUPPOSED to react to receiving the decapitated yet still living body of their mother in the mail, then getting felt up by said headless matron. How you DID react, as you discovered when your conscious stream of thought caught up with your body's natural instincts, was to run as far away as possible. That seemed quite reasonable, given the unreasonable circumstances. You were already at the front door scrambling for the knob which had miraculously become orders of magnitude more complex to operate than it had been when you last had to turn it. Eventually, however, you managed to solve the riddle of the brass doorknob and throw the door wide open just before throwing yourself through the doorframe.
The air on your porch seemed a lot more solid than usual. "GAH!" Came a high pitched cry, one not belonging to you, as you and another object found themselves attempting to occupy the same space at the same time. You and the mystery object were carried by inertia to the ground, and on landing you hear an "OOF!" coming from the mystery object.
Blinking thrice, you discover that the mystery object is, in fact, a person. A delivery woman. A very unhappy looking delivery woman. "What." She squeezes a hand between your chests. "THE HELL?!" She demands, shoving you with enough force to throw you clean off of her body and flat onto your ass. Before you can even rub your sore bottom and try to come up with something to say, the delivery woman rises from the ground like The Terminator and demands, more specifically this time, "What the hell is your problem, guy?!"
"I'm sorry!" You say, rubbing the back of your head with one hand, your ass with the other, and leaving no hand to assist you in getting back up. "I just-..." you just what? What exactly were you supposed to say to someone in these circumstances? 'Sorry, I didn't see you there. I was fleeing for my life because my mom's headless zombie was getting frisky'? Was that the sort of information you shared with a stranger? "I... wasn't expecting you to be there." You settled on, realizing that the delivery woman had risen to her feet by now and was towering over you with a look of 'I'm gonna stomp on your balls unless you give me a very good reason not to' on her face. Seeing the medium sized and slightly crumpled box clutched held to her hip, you quickly add "I, uh, already got my mail delivered today. Wasn't expecting another delivery until tomorrow."
"Well, lucky you." She said, ice falling from her words as the box fell from her side. She had turned to walk away and let go of the box in the same motion, causing it to tumble directly into your lap with a thud heavy enough to knock some of the wind out of you. "I'll be sure to arrive ON TIME next time." She sarcastically spat over her shoulder, before... wait, was she wearing rollerblades?
Wait, was your package breathing?!
Pressing your ear to the suspiciously heavy box, the muffled sound of a woman's breathing could be clearly heard. Given what was currently lurking inside your home, it took you all of half a millisecond to figure out what was inside this second package.
Frantically tearing open the box, hoping to get at your mother's head and ask her what in the hell her goddamn problem was, the first thing you found was a large envelope atop a slightly smushed mass of red rose petals. Brushing the envelope aside and tossing a fistful of petals to the wind, a familiar looking long but thin bridged nose with a large bulbous base pokes through the petals, a slow breath rustling some of the petals beneath its nostrils. "WHAT THE SHIT, MOM?!" You hiss into the box, doing your best to keep your voice down while not daring to go back inside and face her body.
No response. Not even a change in her breathing, which you noticed was both unusually even in tempo and also completely pointless what with her being a magically living severed head. And how had it been breathing in a box with no air holes anyway? Brushing some more of the petals away, you see a pair of big blue eyes staring up at the sky. There was something wrong with the eyes, something missing from them. You watched and waited, and eventually picked up on an odd pattern. She blinked EXACTLY every 3 seconds, inhaled every 3 seconds, and exhaled every 3 seconds, cycling mechanically through the actions like 'inhale, wait one second, blink, wait one second, exhale, wait one second, repeat.' Waving your hand in front of her eyes, you saw no movement indicating that she was tracing your movements. Tilting the box a little so that the sun would be shining directly into her eyes didn't change her blinking rhythm in the slightest, and you noticed absolutely no change in the dilation of her pupils. Finally, reaching down and lightly poking her left eye, her head gave the most robotic wink you could imagine, slowly shutting the eyelid with no change in the other eye's routine, and after you removed your finger it waited a moment then snapped open automatically after the next mechanical blink. "What the shit, mom..." you whispered, staring into the empty eyes of a woman once so full of life.
Remembering the note you had hastily discarded, you set the box aside and quickly scramble across your dew speckled lawn to where the envelope had landed and tear it open. Inside, a slightly damp but thankfully unsmuged letter read:
Hello Sweetheart,
By now, I'm sure you're aware of some of the "peculiarities" of my body. Don't worry, I'm not controlling it, nor can I feel it. In fact, "I'm" not really around right now. You see, part of this magical ability that allows the women of this family to get split up into pieces also allows us to choose how a detached part reacts to detachment. We can have both parts controlled by the same consciousness, make a detached part numb, or even give it a will of its own! To demonstrate these powers, I sent you a body that has its own will and my head was sent numb, only able to respond with really basic actions. As you could probably tell, any part not attached to the brain is a lot less reserved than parts that are attached to it. Don't worry, whatever you do, I won't judge you. And, if this whole thing is too freaky, just put this head back on the body's neck and I, the real me, will return.
Love, mom
Well, that was a lot to unpack. The philosophical implications about the transient nature of consciousness and what it truly is to be alive were certainly something to ponder, but on top of that your previous question of "WHAT THE SHIT, MOM?!" had only become more pressing. What the hell was her problem, why was she ok with you doing this, you hadn't even been away from home a month yet and THIS is how she reacted? She had clearly gone insane! Luckily, you now knew that you could talk some sense into her. All you had to do was re-attach her head and everything would go back to... as normal as they could go back to given all that had already happened.
Re-entering your house, your body attempted to gasp and shriek at the same time, resulting in a violent coughing fit that caused you to drop your most recent package, a flurry of wrinkled rose petals spilling all over the floor as your mother's non-sentient head hit the floor hard and rolled across the floor. Its rolling was stopped when your mother's bare foot planted itself on top of her forehead, her long pink toes curling as they ran through her thick brown hair. The body had been wearing stocking and a pair of slippers before, but had ditched those garments along with every other stitch of clothing it had come with while you were outside assaulting that delivery girl, hence your surprised gasp/shriek/choke.
"H-hey." You said, trying to avert your gaze from the hot and bothered hot body that was currently shifting its knee side to side invitingly. "Listen, I... I'm not sure what... uh... this is all about. But, I... want to talk to mom about it. Like, MOM mom, not... whatever you are. Would you please... you know... put that on?"
The body's shoulders twitched, its best approximation of cocking its head to the side in confusion. It reached down, as slowly and breast presenting-ly as possible, and grabbed a fistful of the head's long brown hair. It brushed its foot and aside and hoisted the head up, turning it so that its expressionless gaze watched you as the head traveled up her thick thighs, past her well groomed womanhood, over her slightly chubby belly, in front of her well endowed chest, and finally hovering over her empty shoulders. The body held the head just above the stump, and stuck out a thumb, as though double checking that that is what you REALLY wanted to do.
"Yes. Uh, thanks." You said.
The body...
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