The Skull

I found the skull at the farmers market.

I’d gotten bored of vegetables and had instead wandered over to a stall selling an assortment of baked goods and various esoteric items. I had initially only intended to buy a brioche, but my eyes were quickly drawn elsewhere. I’ve never yet seen a skull that wasn’t grinning, but this one seemed to have a particular twinkle in its eye sockets that immediately drew me in. I wanted to know what caused that twinkle, and even then, a strange part of me wanted to prompt it myself.

The skull was bought without any issues - both the vendor and I seemed to gloss over the ethics of buying a real human skull, or maybe there was just a tacit understanding between us that we would act as though it was synthetic. And an hour or so later, I unpacked the skull and placed it front and centre on the kitchen windowsill.

Over the next few days, as I cooked I would exchange glances with the skull. It would wink at me, and I would smile briefly back before hurriedly turning to the stove. Eventually, it initiated conversation.

I was perfectly primed to fall in love. I was lonely, and full of things to say with no one to say them to. I could never predict what the skull would ask me or how it would respond to a question, and when it bestowed its gleaming grin on me I would feel prouder than I’d ever felt before.

Funnily enough, I never gave it a name, but then I’ve never really been one for naming things. Maybe I subscribe to the idea that to name something is to flatten it, to remove the mystery and fear and beauty and unknowableness from it. Or maybe I just lack creativity. Either way, the skull remained forever in my mind simply The Skull.

We built a bond, the skull and I. It knew me as much as I would allow anyone to know me and, I think, vice versa. It was a few months after our first conversation that it began to try to convince me to kill myself.

It didn’t start subtly as you might expect, gradually building the idea in my head until I was sure that I’d thought of it myself. No, it was straightforward about it. It knew that I loved that it was always straightforward.

“You know, we’d be on an even playing ground if you were dead. There wouldn’t be this imbalance in our relationship that I know you feel.”

I rolled my eyes at this and turned my back, doing my best to act as though this wasn’t something I’d already thought about.

“I know you’ve already thought about this, but I think you should think again. If you really analyse it, you’ll see the pros far outweigh the cons.”

I turned back to face it.

“I love you,” I said. “But I love other people too, and they love me. And they won’t have access to me if I’m dead.”

The skull considered this. “That’s true. But I can only stay here in this reality for so long. If you die, we’ll be together. If you live, eventually I’ll fade out of your life. And you may still have those other people that love you, but will that really be enough for you now?”

“You’re lying.”

“Entirely possible!” the skull said agreeably. “I do that often. But we do love each other, and is that really something you’ll risk?”

It took about a month before the skull got me to breaking point. It would take a few days off from the subject, talking to me about books and music and everything else I had come to value its opinion on. But inevitably, it would revert to the matter at hand.

One day, I grabbed the skull and set it opposite me as I sat down at the table. To one side of me were three packets of paracetamol, to the other was a hammer, and directly in front of me was a coin. I could tell from the look in its eye sockets that the skull already knew exactly what was going to happen, but the urge to monologue had come over me.

“I know what you’ve been saying, and a big part of me agrees with you. To be with you is what I want more than anything else in the world. But I have to say, I think that maybe that’s not what’s right for me.” I gestured to the hammer. “If I destroy you, it takes away the possibility of you leaving me, right? You’ll just be gone, and maybe that’s for the best. So, heads for the pills and tails for the hammer.”

I flipped the coin. Heads.

I looked at the skull and its eyes had never gleamed so brightly.