Heads Up!

For a nanosecond, I wanted to scream when I stepped onto the subway on Tuesday morning. In a seat between two disinterested women lay a disembodied head, face down. Its black hair stood up at odd angles, and its brown neck was evenly sawed off from a torso.

I quickly realized that the reason that the women were so nonchalant about this horror was that it was a severed mannequin's head. Further inspection lead me to notice that the mannequin's little bud nose rested on a cosmetology magazine. The head seemed to belong to the woman on its right, who thoughtfully gave it its own seat so that actual humans had to stand.

At 42nd Street, the woman gathered her shopping bags, scooped up the head and magazine, and exited the train. I sat down in the seat formerly occupied by the lifeless head. I love living in New York City.