Surrounded by beautiful heads, begging heads, heads that she hadn't worn in forever, heads that would perfectly match the outfit she was wearing, and heads that she knew the perfect outfit to pair with, The Collector was suffering from a serious case of overchoice. She'd built up such a stash over the decades that actually finding the time for all of them was all but impossible, yet she didn't want to make any of the heads feel bad by not choosing them. She grappled with herself for nearly an hour, examining just about every head in her collection, until eventually she managed to build up a sizable headache. An impressive if annoying feat, considering her lack of a head. She needed air, despite her lack of any way to breath it in, and when the head lines walls began to feel like they were closing in on her, she made her choice.
She wouldn't choose.
Yes, The Collector would spend the day clearing her head by not having a head to clear. Quickly, The Collector threw on a coat and fled her suddenly claustrophobic cabin, the cool morning breeze tickling her bare neck stump. In spite of her thick coat, long sleeved shirt, jeans tucked into tall boots, and a comfortable set of undergarments including a thick woolly pair of socks, The Collector felt naked. She'd been out headless before, of course, but it was usually in the dead of night, and it was usually done when she knew she'd be collecting a new head to wear soon enough. Being headless in broad daylight was extremely rare, and the thrill of breaking her routine had her arms breaking out in goosebumps already. Yes, this was the exact change of pace she needed.
The Collector considered taking her dirtbike into the nearest city, but decided that a long walk through the woods to civilization would do her more good. It was a long walk, made longer by the fact that The Collector had changed her mind halfway through her walk and went to the second nearest city, and intentionally overshot it so that she would be coming in from the side opposite her cabin (so that if anyone recognized her, they'd think her hideout was in the opposite direction), but after nearly half a day of walking she found herself peeking from a thick patch of bushes beside a bus stop on the outskirts of town. Making sure that there was no one around to see where exactly she'd come from, The Collector emerged from the bushes and stood soldier stiff at the bus stop. A few minutes passed, and a half full bus rolled up. **BEEP BEEP BEEP**, the bus' speakers blared. The Collector, moving with a mechanically stiff gait that she had learned from long hours of observation, entered the bus and lumbered to the back, barely turning a head.
This wasn't too surprising, seeing as how half a dozen other occupants had no head! Yes, all those bodies that The Collector hadn't just disappeared. Well, most of them had, and The Collector was still a little worried about just wear the hell most of the bodies had wandered off to since she never heard reports of their being found and she had never seen an animal attack them, but some of the bodies had found their way into the cities surrounding The Collector's woods. Bodies freed from their heads by The Collector usually became autonomous and moved on their own, however it was evident to even a casual observer that the bodies that found themselves in the cities were NOT sentient. They could move around, could perceive basic information about their surroundings, and they understand some simple words in whatever their native language was prior to head-snatching, but there was no intelligence behind any of it. Opening doors was about the height of their intelligence and even that pushed the bodies' non-minds to their limits, they moved in unnatural lockstep and if they fell over they would not even try to get up unless explicitly instructed to, didn't retain any knowledge about who they were before beheading or what they did after it, and would blindly obey any instructions given to them (in their native language) by anyone who gave said instructions, assuming said instructions were incredibly simple and involved no reading, writing, complex motor skills, understanding of idioms and figures of speech, decision making, or anything else that would involve an actual intelligence.
Unidentified bodies or ones from other countries that had found themselves in the cities were placed in what were functionally just storage lockers, the police keeping them locked up and safe until their heads were recovered. Many, however, were given back to their families once identified, and the families that lived in these cities would often have the headless bodies of their relatives run simple errands, perform menial labor, or just send them out on walks. Some did it for the sense of normalcy it provided to see their relatives moving around and doing things, some did it to try and job their memory, some did it for money, and some did it because they couldn't handle the grief of seeing their headless family member all day. Whatever their individual reasons, the cities nearest the woods had grown accustomed to the sight of headless bodies wandering around unsupervised, and had made accommodations for them.
**BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP**
Take the buses, for example. Headless bodies were allowed to get on and leave without paying, got reserved seating in the back so that they always had a place to sit and knew where it would be (there was obviously some backlash about the implications of making a particular class of citizens sit at the back of the buses, but after weeks of bodies toppling over at every stop trying to keep their balance standing in the isle and trying to sit in other customers' laps the seating arrangements were pushed through). And, instead of listing the stops (since bodies would often take the word "stop" as a command and would stay on the bus indefinitely) the buses would beep a specific number of times at specific stops, allowing the body's caretakers to "program" what stops to get on and off at by telling them to exit the bus after hearing a certain number of beeps.
Looking around the bus from her designated seat in the back, her posture rigid and identical to the posture of the other six bodies surrounding her, The Collector eventually noticed...
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