target="_blank" rel="nofollow" href="#fb3_img_img_8837e1f7-7de3-5150-869e-ac46332dbaf4.jpg" alt=""/>ife was simple, for a head in a jar.
Scapegrace didn’t need trousers, for one thing. Or shoes. Or shirts. In fact, clothes as a concept were now completely irrelevant to his wants and needs – with the possible exception of hats. He could wear hats. He could wear an assortment of hats of different shapes and styles. Boater hats, cowboy hats, bowler hats. The list went on. Pork-pie hats, bucket hats, trilbies and panamas. Top hats, straw hats, trapper hats. Wide brim, narrow brim, stingy brim. He could wear a fez. Fezzes were cool. Hadn’t someone once said that fezzes were cool? He was pretty sure they had. And they were. They were cool. And he could wear them. He could wear them all.
Not while he was in the jar, of course. It was far too narrow, and filled with a formaldehyde solution to stop what remained of his flesh from rotting away. He could wear a woolly hat, he supposed, or a beanie, if he didn’t mind getting it wet. He decided he wouldn’t wear baseball caps. Zombie Kings, he reckoned, should not wear baseball caps or trucker caps. Such hats were beneath them. As it were.
As a head, he would have also had the option of wearing sunglasses were it not for the fact that he only had one ear still attached, and his nose had fallen off. That had happened only recently, while Thrasher had been away, so Scapegrace had been forced to watch his nose drift around his head for three hours. It was unsettling, to say the least. No man should be forced to see his nose like that.
When Thrasher returned, he had been all apologies, of course. He wept with shame as he struggled to scoop the nose out of the jar with a little fishing net he’d picked up at a pet store. Every time he’d jabbed Scapegrace he’d let out a howl of anguish. Not for the first time, Scapegrace wished he’d chosen someone else to be the first zombie he’d ever turned.
To make matters worse the jar had been sitting on a table, which meant that Scapegrace was forced to look straight at Thrasher’s belly while all this was going on. Several months earlier, the idiot had somehow disembowelled himself with a can opener. The accident, while at first highly amusing, soon became hugely distressing to Scapegrace, as Thrasher’s guts kept falling out. In an attempt to keep himself in one piece, Thrasher had tied a sheet round his midsection, and now seemed completely oblivious to how stupid it made him look. Aside from anything else, it wasn’t even very effective, as a small piece of dried and shrivelled intestine had escaped its confines and swung merrily every time Thrasher made a move.
Walking up to the Sanctuary, therefore, made it swing with a rhythm that was almost hypnotic – a fact that Scapegrace could attest to as the idiot was carrying him the wrong way round. They stopped suddenly.
“What the hell are you?” asked a sorcerer.
“I’m a zombie,” said Thrasher, “and this is my master.”
“Your master’s a jar?”
“No, my master’s in the jar.”
Scapegrace tried to look up, but all he could see was Thrasher’s belly.
“Oh, God, that’s disgusting,” said the man. “What are you doing here? Why did you come? Do you want us to put you out of your misery?”
“No!” Thrasher said, startled. “No, sir, thank you, we’re quite happy with our misery. We just want to speak with Clarabelle. She works with Doctor Nye? She’s its assistant?”
“I know who she is. She’s that crazy one with the hair. She expecting you?”
“Not really,” said Thrasher, “but we’re old friends. She’ll be happy to see us.”
“I doubt that. You smell really bad. But fine, whatever, you can go in. But don’t cause any trouble and don’t try to eat anyone.”
“Thank you,” Thrasher said, and suddenly they were moving again, and that piece of intestine was swaying back and forth, back and forth…
They walked through a set of doors and then Scapegrace heard Clarabelle’s voice.
“Gerald!” she cried. There was the sound of running feet and then darkness loomed as Thrasher was wrapped up in a hug. It was a tense few moments of sloshing about, but at least the motion turned Scapegrace in his jar, his head lodging diagonally against the glass. Now he was looking at her belly instead of Thrasher’s, and that was a definite improvement. Her top had ridden up, and he could see the piercing in her navel. It was a little love-heart.
She released the hug and stepped back. “I thought you were dead! Well, you are dead, but I thought you were properly dead, the kind of dead where you don’t walk around afterwards. Valkyrie said you’d probably been eaten by monsters down in those caves. I’m really glad you weren’t.”
“Thank you,” said Thrasher, sounding pleased. Idiot. He eventually remembered his job, and put the jar on a table.
Scapegrace had to wait for the liquid to settle before he could talk. “Hello,” he said. His confines didn’t do him any favours as far as his voice went. Every word he spoke sounded like he was blowing bubbles.
Clarabelle looked around. “Who said that?”
“I did,” said Scapegrace. “Look down. No, too far. Look up. At the table. See the jar?”
Clarabelle peered through the glass, and a huge smile broke out. “Oh, wow! Scapey! You’re alive, too! Oh, I’m so happy!” She clapped her hands in delight. Scapegrace would have done the same if he’d had any hands.
Clarabelle hunkered down to eye level, and frowned. “There’s something different about you.”
“I’m in a jar.”
“That’s probably it. Did you get a haircut?”
“No. I’m in a jar, though.”
Clarabelle murmured, not entirely convinced. “I think you’re shorter than you were,” she said.
“Yes,” said Scapegrace, “because I’m in a jar. I’m just a head.”
Clarabelle shrugged. “We’re all just heads, when you think about it. The only difference between us is that we have arms and legs and bodies and we don’t live in jars like you do. It’s a nice jar, though. Where did you get it?”
“I got it,” Thrasher said. “It was filled with sweets, but I emptied them all out.”
“You’re very clever.”
Thrasher giggled. “Thank you.”
“Clarabelle,” said Scapegrace before the giggling grew too much, “we need your help.”
“Do you need another jar?” she asked. “I don’t think I have one that size. I have a flowerpot. Would you like to live in a flowerpot? It’s got a hole in the bottom but apart from that it’d be perfect.”
“Clarabelle, my situation is dire. I am a bodiless man. If my enemies were to attack, I’d be defenceless.”
“Do you have enemies?”
“All great men have enemies.”
“But do you have enemies?”
