"Oh my head, what the bloody hell did I do?"

A very strange man was lying, spread-eagled on his back, in the middle of a field of magenta grasses. A hundred meters away from him stood a willow tree clothed in the same vibrant hue, a color that was somehow red and pink at the same time. The man didn't see this of course; all he could see was the pale blue sky.

"What happened…" He tried to sit up, but apparently his body decided that he needed another few moments because he couldn't manage to push himself up at all. "Well that's just the icing on the cake now isn't it," he grumbled to absolutely no one. He felt weird, especially in his stomach and his head, but he supposed that he might be sick. Still, that didn't explain his technicolor surroundings.

He lifted one hand into his line of sight and saw too-long black sleeves and a white glove covering his hand. Huh. Had he been wearing gloves before? "Interesting development…"

And then his sleeve fell down. And there was… Nothing there. Nothing to see. A seemingly empty glove floating before an equally empty sleeve. His breath hitched. And he remembered. He remember clearly that he had died, and nothing more. But that… That was terrifying enough. Definitely enough to start a panic.

His breath stuck in his throat. For the moment he didn't realize exactly how weird that felt, but his other hand came up to touch his invisible wrist and found it solid. He just… He didn't know how. It didn't really feel like skin, either, no texture or wrinkles or the fine hairs that tended to grow on arms. Just a sort of solid warmth, almost like a wax mold that was still warm and slightly malleable.

This only served to freak him out further. Adrenaline seemed to lend him the strength he was lacking before, and he finally sat up into a dazed, slouched heap. Now that he was sitting, the man saw fancy white wingtipped shoes with black spats on what he felt to be his feet. Like his wrists, he could see no ankle.

He decided to ignore that for now.

Patting his chest and looking down at himself, and found that, as his pants and shoes had suggested, yes, he was in formalwear. Some sort of black blazer with a starched white shirt underneath, coupled with some suspenders attached to his pants. Well, he had always been a fashionable man, so this sat rather well with him. He just had to find out why he was invisible, who he remembered that he was dead and not how it happened, and be on his merry way.

By far, this was one of his stranger days. Finally looking up, the man took stock of his very plain and boring surroundings. He noted the single tree that he could see. Deciding that this was the best direction to head to, he attempted to gather one knee under himself.

He was met with a brief flicker in his vision, and he immediately sank back down to support himself with both hands pressed to the dirt. He went to rub a temple, or maybe pinch the bridge of his nose, but his hand instead bumped into warm glass.

"Ow!"

After the initial outburst, he had frozen, hand right in front of his eyes. Was his head in some sort of helmet or something? How would that make sense? Did he remember wearing one before?

He didn't actually need to answer any of these questions. He supposed they were the product of a panicking mind, because he knew they were untrue. When he had accidentally rapped his fingertips against the strange surface, not only had he felt it in his fingers, but he felt it on what he perceived to be his face.

Was this all some kind of lucid dream? He'd had those before, lots of them lately, especially. He'd become adept at changing the scenes at his leisure, flicking through options like TV channels.

This felt different, somehow. He couldn't put his finger on why, exactly… But what he could do was place a single finger on that glassy surface where his nose should have been. Like he had discovered in the previous split-second contact, it was warm. But now he could also tell it was buzzing, almost, like some sort of electrical wire. And it would have made his hairs stand on end had he had any, and not just from shock. The whatever-it-was seemed to have a high static charge for some reason.

His stomach dropped. Did he want to continue exploring this… This thing he had on his head? Or did he want to ignore it? Curiosity, even if it was the morbid sort, won out. He pressed a hand to his face and found the solid glass again, charged with some type of strange energy.

His clothed palm covered his vision almost completely, and he didn't blink, though. He didn't even feel his hand come in contact with whatever he was using to see, like he would have if he'd poked his eye. Somehow his face did register that the hand was there, though. The glass had feeling alright. "O-oh bother," he whimpered, starting to feel rather afraid. He pulled his hand away, flinching as if that could get him away from his own head.

His heart launched its way up his throat when he hand came away covered in rainbows. Yellow, cyan, green, magenta, red… Some ink-like substance in those colors coated his palm. With a yelp he flailed his hand and the colors splattered onto the vibrant grass, leaving his glove freakishly clean. No sign of the lukewarm ink.

That was it. He patted the sides of his head and found boxy plastic. Same with the back of his head. There were tiny slits through which warm air hissed. What… What… What?!

He was gasping, fingers scrabbling for purchase on the smooth plastic.

"Ah.. Oh… God oh… Oh… AhhhhhhHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHhhhhhhhHHHHhhHhHHhHhHH!"

His voice glitched several times in the middle, almost like an electrical voice crack. His fingers curled over the top of what he'd finally recognized as a television set where his head should have been.

"WHAT HAPPENED TO ME?!" The shriek that no one heard was almost heartbreaking in how scared he sounded. The man must have sat there, breathing heavily for at least twenty minutes before he moved again.

"Right. Okay. Okay. Whatever it is I am now, I need to figure out how all… This… Works. Simple. Should be simple."

And so he did. Before continuing with his head, he first looked at the rest of himself. (Stalling? Most likely, he wasn't know for his fortitude.) Peering down his shirt, he discovered that, yes, his body was fully invisible. At least it hasn't been turned into wires, he'd muttered. Oh, and he also had a red bowtie. The only thing of color that he was wearing, it seemed. And his collar was turned up strangely.

The man tugged at it, laying it flat like any respectable shirt collar should be. But not a second after he did there was a little shhwip of moving fabric and it stood up again. After five more tries during which he got increasingly more frustrated, the man finally threw up his hands.

"Fine you damnable thing, I give up. But if my bowtie rebels I am putting my foot down."

Somehow, the incident had given him time for more of his fear to drain away. Somehow, he gained a little more calm and confidence enough to continue discovering what the bloody hell he was now.

"So okay… I seem to have misplaced my body, or it disappeared. And now I appear to have an actual television for a head. How… How is that possible? Did I wake up in a place that said 'biology be damned let's give this poor man a telly for his head, that's good for a laugh'?" Now, instead of scared, he sounded merely grumpy.

It was definitely weird as he ran his fingers over his new head; how could wires and plastic and glass have feeling? But it did, and he was thoroughly confused. He did suppose it was a good thing. Not being able to feel his own head would be rather… Torturous, he thought.

"Are these peculiar little vent doo-dads for breathing?" he muttered aloud. "Or to keep me from overheating?" He didn't know and there was no one to ask. "Ah, well, let's get to some shade anyways." And finally, at long last, he heaved himself to his unsteady legs.

"Up we go, there, now to get to that tree." He did wonder, as he walked, why he kept speaking to himself, but he brushed it off as a side-effect of being nervous, alone, and melded with an electrical appliance. It wasn't harming anyone for the moment, he supposed, and as soon as he found civilization (if he found civilization; the afterlife could be dead empty, he wasn't sure) it would stop.

"That's the ticket," he said as he sat, leaning back against the tree trunk. He also had no idea how he got so tired simply from walking about a hundred meters. Instead of dwelling on it or worrying for the moment, he glumly accepted that he'd have to get used to having no idea about a great many things from now on.

He rubbed the top of his TV set with a hand as a human would wearily run a hand through their hair, and made a new discovery. Well, two new discoveries, really, but he found the hat first. At first, he didn't know what the floating object was. He plucked it out of thin air and realized it was a straw boater hat.

"Well that's in good taste," he said, running a finger over the black ribbon on the brim. Replacing it on his head, he made his second discovery. A rather painful one.

"What in the blazes?" He snatched his hand away. Whatever his fingers had come into contact with had given him a very nasty electric shock, and as he metaphorically gaped, his gloved hand twitched and flickered with static before settling back to its original color.

Warily, he reached back up and found a metal rod… Two metal rods sticking out of the top of his television head. "Oh bloody hell I have antennas." As he ran his hand along one, he was met with a strange sensation, like when a person with extremely cold fingers puts them on the back of your neck; it was slightly tickly and slightly hair-raising.

"Ugh," he muttered with a slight shiver. "All I need, one more sensitive bit to bang on doorjambs." One of the antennas seemed to twitch in protest and he released them. Then he found a panel near the left side of the screen. Flicking it open, the man found a series of toggles inside. Do I dare?

To hell with it. He moved one of them. And he watched as his clothing flickered and changed. One switch made the colors brighter, one made his light dimmer, and all in all it was extremely confusing.

"What's THIS ONE DO…" And he's discovered volume control. It was strange, hearing your own voice get louder without adjusting his throat or meaning to do so. Even if he didn't really have a throat any more, though he shoved that thought away. Quickly though, he dialed the knob back to its original position so his voice went back to normal.

"Well." He felt a little frazzled, and though he couldn't see them, his crinkled antennas reflected that. "That's that one sorted."

His hand found the topmost dial, wondering what this next one did and hoping it wouldn't end up as rattling as the first. "Hm I woNdeR––"

Fwip.

"Hmmm, perhaps if I try this…"

The man had been trapped in a deep sleep for some time, snippets of television programs, some known and others unknown, flickering occasionally across his mind. But now, by degrees, he was starting to wake up as he gradually became more aware of a hand on the dial on his face. And a voice, a voice with an American accent but very refined.

Vnnnnnnn fwip

"Ah, that seems to have done the trick!" said the voice happily, and with a small rush of static, the man's vision returned.

The first thing he noticed was that he wasn't outside any more. And the second, slightly more alarming thing, was the prism-headed man bending over and, he guessed, scrutinizing him closely.

"ARGH!" he yelped, scooting backwards into… A pile of pillows? Oh, he was laid out on a couch in some extremely fancy house… "Ah?" continued questioningly. "And how in god's name did I get here?" He squinted up at the man.

(At least he got the sense he was a man from the voice, anyways.)

"I brought you here," the prism-man said simply. "Not too easy, either, you're heavier than you look."

He raised an eyebrow. "Why? Why did you bleeding kidnap me?"

The other looked taken aback. "In case you didn't notice, I actually saved you." His voice had a cool edge, like, fittingly, frost-splintered glass. "You would have been under that tree forever. But where are my manners, I'm Magnus." He held out a long-fingered hand.

The man took it, and there was a squinty air about the television set as he took in the words.

"What do you mean, saved me? Sit down and tell this whole story presently." He swung his legs off the couch and tapped the toe of one wingtip impatiently.

Magnus folded his much longer body into a sitting position next to him, lacing his fingers together. "Very well, I'll start with why I was in the Savannah of Procrastination, then. As the name suggests, only those dodging their work find themselves there with no reason. And apparently new monsters." His prism nodded at the man in an acknowledging gesture.

"Oi wait a minute––"

"You wanted this story, so don't interrupt." He once again got the feeling that Magnus was giving him a hard stare. "Anyways, I haven't been here much longer than you, maybe a few days or so more. I was doing some paperwork, rather dull stuff, and I decided that I'd go on a walk and finish it later. And then I ended up there, rather confused. But I'd found out as much as I could when I first got here, so I at least knew where I was and what to do.

"But first I found you. I assumed you were hurt, all flopped over as you were, but you just seemed to be deeply unconscious. So I decided to take you back here to see if I could do anything for you; that's how you get off the Savannah, you see; you have to have the intent to do something. But anyways, you remained out of it. Until I flipped that dial and you woke up and began accusing me of crimes, that is." Magnus folded his arms over his chest.

The other man seemed slightly grumpy about the last sentence. "Okay fine, thank you. I can be a good sport, see?"

"Evidently." Magnus's voice had switched to dry amusement. "But yes, you were broadcasting a Beethoven symphony when I found you. Seems you can function as a normal television when put to the right settings. Apparently it knocks you out, though."

"Oh goodie."

"At least it's reversible."

"You wouldn't be so nonchalant if bending light sent you halfway into a bloody coma!"

He drew back, noticing he'd moved forward with the bickering. "Ugh… Anyways, do you have a place where I can tidy up, by any chance?" Magnus pointed down a hallway, and he stood, stalking to the door and the end and shutting it behind him.

He found himself in a small bathroom with a gilded mirror. "Fancy pants," he muttered sullenly, thinking of his host. "I'd bet the lot that he doesn't even need a bathroom!"

But like he had observed, there was a mirror here, and maybe he could finally figure out what he looked like. With a slight twitch of apprehension, he stared at his reflection. A slightly off-white TV set had taken the place of his head, which he knew, but was still a little taken aback to actually see. The screen that he supposed served as a face was mostly white, but the source of the rainbow ink was revealed to be a flat band of test color bars in yellow, cyan, green, magenta, and red. And somehow they appeared to be leaking.

He wondered why he hadn't noticed sooner, because now that he knew he could feel it and found it impossible to ignore. At least it didn't stain his handsome outfit, he supposed. The colors dripped at different rates, he saw; currently there was mostly magenta and yellow. He wondered what exactly that meant, and made a mental note to ask later. He was going to take a leaf from Magnus's book and go find out all he could as soon as he left.

He leaned closer, trying to ignore how his antennas twitched. He got a good look at the black and white dials and buttons, noticing one he hadn't pushed. Big and black, the curious button was set directly above the color control panel.

"... Nope." He wasn't taking any more risks.

… Huh was it him or had the test pattern bars changed? The line separating them from the white portion of the screen had grown more jagged. Could he… Control that? He squinted. No, no change there. Obviously it didn't reflect what his eyes were doing, then.

He tried to remember what he had done to grin as a human, and while he didn't know how to do so without muscles, some part of his mind must have willed his screen to change, because it did, and the test bars curled into a Cheshire cat-esque smile.

"Oh. Well, I guess that settles that, then," he said feebly, and the fake smile fell a little, settling into an exhausted looking expression. "That's something to be pleased about, hm?" He straightened his hat, his coat, and his bowtie, stepping away from the mirror.

"And I suppose… I don't look that bad. A bit more interesting than usual, though, I must admit." But he was so sure he could still come across as charming that relief gripped him and he let out a more relaxed breath than he had all day.

"I can do this." Yes, he could do this. "New life, here I––"

Snap.

"OW!"

He rubbed the corner of his television set, swiping his fallen hat from the floor and wondering what in the world had hit him in the head and knocked him over. He had only snapped at his reflection!

What he found was a bamboo cane sitting innocently on the floor, looking as if it had laid there for hours, not gone around smacking people in their brand-new heads. Tentatively, he picked it up, and was glad he did. Something about it simply felt right.

"I suppose I'll keep you, even if you did just nearly do me in." He hooked the end over his arm when a soft knock came at the door.

"I heard a thump and some shouting," called Magnus. "Are you okay in there?"

"Ah, er, yes, fine as ever!" he called back, once again adjusting his outfit, reaching up to try and unbend his antennas before they did that on their own. "Just took a little bump to the head is all!"

"Oh well that's good, I don't want anyone dying in my care," Magnus said, sounding relieved. "Well, feel free to come out whenever you feel up to it… Oh I didn't ever catch your name, did I?" he continued, sound apologetic. "Pretty rude of me, hm?"

But the man in the bathroom had frozen, not moving, not breathing, nothing.

His name. His name. It was gone.

He couldn't remember his name.

Staggering to the sink, grateful for the timely appearance of the cane, he bent over the basin, hands gripping either side. He noticed more yellow ink dribbling into the basin, along with some blue, and some disconnected part of his mind grimaced and thought oh that's just peachy, I'm drooling.

But the rest of his mind was awash in the whitenoise of oh god I don't know who I am, what is my name, what happened to me, who am I? WHO AM I?!

But as a whiteness that blinds your vision when you stand too quickly will gradually fade, so did his blinding panic. He was still shivering, though, and he focused on controlling that next.

And then… He needed a name. An alias, at least, something, anything to go by. He moved his screen closer to the mirror, staring at the tiny, tiny boxes that made up the technicolor display. The same colors, repeating and repeating, somehow coming together to make up something entirely new...

"–– in there! Hello! Are you okay!"

He started, leaping back from the sink. But he was composed enough and, fixing his coat and lapels one last time, pulled it open.

"There you are, dear god I thought you'd died in there, never mind what you told me." He could hear the scowl on Magnus's face, and simply grinned in response and initiated his own handshake.

"RGB."

"I beg your pardon?"

"My name. You can call me RGB." A slight chuckle from a test pattern mouth. "Rather catchy, isn't it?"

AN: One interesting thing I learned while writing this is that the plural of 'antenna' changes with the meaning. Bugs have antennae. Radios and TVs have antennas.

Another TPOH fic coming soon, as well at updates to my GF stuff!