Short fiction: Witnessing his brother’s beheading transforms a boy into a deadly headhunter

The trail of my macabre memory floats with the heavy, steady flight of the oldest living eagle in our village. It stays hidden in the heart of the hollock grove beneath our village hills. The tattoos etched on my body are the cartography of my killings. The miniature brass heads adorned in my necklace are the totems of a prized warrior. A headhunter. I have decapitated living, breathing humans with throbbing hearts and desperate eyes. I have heard the shrieking throaty cries of men with gaunt faces dreaming of death and dark places. I am a man moulded out of vengeance, legs carved out of rugged hills, arms shaped by the need for survival and a membranous heart hollowed out by smoky evenings of indescribable longings. I am part of a disappearing history, so they made me into an archaeological specimen. A living artefact. A believable past. I have given my life, my morality and even my exhausted humanity to my village.

They ask me a question: “Why did you become a headhunter?” The question mocks me, mocks the spilled blood of my dead enemies, mocks the meaning of my entire existence. I look back at the interviewers, at their gloating eyes,...

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