A Thinkers Bottom

When I first opened my eyes, I thought I was dreaming for sure. Or that it was war time. The only thing my eyes could see were heads - a lot of heads, piles of heads - all lying around, on the ground. Not bleeding, just lying. No eyes were open, and for some reason I knew that they were just asleep, not dead. I could almost see the throbbing pulse coming from their acti e brains! I could almost see them thinking. In that moment, it became so clear to me that it was only logical I was a head, too. I tried to feel the rest of myself, to mo e, to break free from the stillness and numbness by which I had been confined, I tried to shout, but I just felt the desperate lack of feedback in my ner e endings, I could just keep imagining the contraction of the muscles in my arms and the sound of the oiceless shifting of the tongue inside my mouth.

"o, I was a head. # head, lying in the fields of heads. I was thinking of what could ha e happened to me, to us. The field of the $eheaded. The field of the Thinkers. The field of the %al es. $ut it was not fair to think of myself and of us as of hal es - we were merely the tenth part of the body, if that much. $ut the field of the Thinkers could be an appropriate name.

"omething mo ed below... my left ear& and I rolled o er se eral heads, rushing forward until I bumped my forehead against a big, strong neck of what it seemed to be an #sian man. I bounced se eral centimeters on right and finally settled. None of my e errunning cogniti e processes could ha e prepared me for the iew which was before my eyes. I was se eral meters from an edge of the land mass we, the Thinkers, were lying on - the only thing separating myself and my fellow Thinkers from the long, free fall into the unknown was the fragile, completely random construction, the strange combination of our current physical positions on this land mass. "o, it must ha e been a Thinker who had rolled down from this land mass into the abyss, getting smashed to pieces, who pro oked the shift.

'y eyes finally agreed on lea ing the scrutiny of the blurry uncertainty lurking from o er the edge, as they wandered towards what should be the hori(on. Instead of the sublime image of the bloody sunset that would make me )uestion my position in this uni erse, I was surprised by an e)ually incredible, but much more detestable image - an image that stopped the ain breathing for a moment and caused the tingling in my numb ner e endings in my neck. Not so far away, about *+ meters from my position and about ,+ from the edge of the island of the Thinkers, there was another land mass, a kind of an island floating in the air. On it - a big pile of skin and hair. #fter a moment or so, the signal sent from my eyes to my brain became a picture, so i idly presented in

my mind-s eye - there was lying a big, dirty, abhorrent pile of the .est - some arms, some legs, some torsos, some bellies, some muscles, all twitching, mo ing, sa agely trying to balance that incontrollable pile and pre ent it from falling o er the edge.

I could think of e erything that was going on o er there, and now I had the right to call us the Thinkers without ha ing to think of arrogance or egoism, because they must ha e been all like/ 0Twitch 'o e "tretch the arm %old the hands together 'o e your toes 1ngage the bowel mo ement 2ump the blood 3on-t stop the heart "weat Inhale 14hale Twitch Twitch Twitch0 There could not be much more to them.

%ours went by, and I was counting different parts of the body that could be found in the pile across myself. "ome of my fellow Thinkers woke up and I was assured that they were dedicated to a similar cause. What else could we do& Of course, we would ne er stoop as low as the .est did, only twitching, ne er gi ing a second of thought to their e4istence. That is for sure. #nd I firmly belie e that I would ha e e en completed my mental catalogue of 0$odily 2arts - The .est Without The %ead0, as I named it. $ut the ground started shaking, distracting me, and what is more, gra ely worrying me that our fragile, perfect construction might be ra aged.

It took me a second to process the change of the en ironment and to regulate the air pressure in my ears which terribly distracted me from some more important matters at hand - to be e4act, from the rain of limbs falling upon us, Thinkers, as we were falling just as well, into the abyss. The limbs, the torsos, the intestines all being considerably hea ier than us, Thinkers, were falling faster, and I hoped to land on a soft belly, or something similar, which would lessen the effects of my impact when we reach the end of the abyss and meet the unknown. This second, which I used for processing, turned out to be ery precious, as only a moment later e erything went completely black. If it hadn-t been for that second, I would ha e been probably left without any recollection of what had happened to me, to us, before the 5all.

01nough bottom0

Itching

Itching

'o e the arm

"cratch the

"cratch the bottom&

0"cratch the bottom, please? 0

That is more like it. I will ha e to finish this short history of the 5all. 'y body is pestered by uncontrollable itching.

6Itching

Itching

Itching0

Itching.