Bighead's Riddle

Jack was excited to read of the legend of the Big Head killer in the newspaper collection at his desk in the bedroom that evening. He studied the collection of Big Head news cuttings on his desk avidly. They told of the bloody history of that maniac in a grotesque green mask that caused murder and mayhem wherever he appeared. And he had so many forms. Bighead was not even always a man.

His attention was so absorbed by Big Head, that his girlfriend Nadine was feeling lonely. "Jack, come to bed."

"Can you believe this?" Jack held up a cutting with the lurid green face of Big Head leering out of the page as if it were about to jump out. "Big Head may have morphed - changed his body. Swollen to massive proportions."

Nadine pushed her thick dark brown hair away from her face and glanced over. She gave a little shudder at the sight of Big Head. "Jack... you keep talking about Big Head's body..." she flushed pink. "Um... do you fancy him?"

"What? No." That question caught him completely off guard.

He climbed back into bed with her. "You are the love of my life. Bighead is just an unhealthy fixation, like a bad habit." He looked at Nadine's freckled nose and cheeks, her soft brown eyes, her lush, thick dark hair and her pale, curvaceous form. How could he wish for anyone else? But even though they made sweet love that night, thoughts of Bighead still troubled him...

The next evening he pored over the newer clippings. They told of the green horror resurfacing and becoming bloated... Bighead kept resurfacing in different places. Jack thought about his own fantasies of great power. They had troubled him for a long, long time. How he wishes he had the power to right society's wrongs.

"All that power - why can't you do good with it?" he asked the picture of Bighead. "I want the power. I deserve it. I want it to come to me." He repeated that three times over before going to bed where Nadine waited. He owed it to her to tell her what was troubling him. "Listen Nadine, I have a confession to make..." he hesitated. She gazed at him with wide brown eyes.

But at that moment there came a terrible crash. A monstrous shape poured in through the broken window and solidified to become a shocking montrosity - Bighead in the flesh - and so much flesh. The monster not only had a huge, green head with distorted features, apparently made of a brightly coloured rubber, but his entire form was now bloated and distended to grotesque proportions. He must have weighed hundreds of pounds. Nadine screamed and Jack remained motionless, petrified.

"My power is wanted here," the ghastly apparition crowed, his voice cracked and hideous, "where there is a will there is a way." He glared at Jack, his eyes glowing red from within like burning coals. "A little incentive for you, true believer. I will take your girlfriend and you can only find her if you follow my trail." He gathered up Nadine who screamed at the top of her lungs until he conjured ropes and a gag. Jack gave a cry of protest, but was blasted backwards by an invisible force. "Follow the trail. Tell the police and the girl will pay. The beginning of the trail is this: Go to Chinatown: on the corner of Chang and Ching there you will find that the phone will ring. What then you might ask? Answer the phone to find your next task. You have one hour." Gloating at the top of his cracked voice, the Big Head killer was gone in a rush through the window again.

Nadine could not scream, she could not cry out. She was gagged and blindfolded - she had no idea where she was being taken. It had all happened so quickly. Where was Jack? Where were the police? And then a stifling blackness overcame her and she knew no more.

Nadine awoke feeling sick and groggy. She still couldn't see. Her whole head hurt. A lot. She sat up. She felt really dizzy. She touched her head. Her entire head was swathed in bandages. Some other form of restraint, probably. She stood up. She could stand, so she couldn't be too badly hurt. Her memories came flooding back. Well, if she were to escape, she couldn't do so blindfolded. She gingerly unwound the bandages from around her aching head. It took a long time, unwinding and unwinding as the mass of bandaging gradually decreased and she carefully picked them out of her thick hair. At last, the remaining bandages came away and she gave a little start at what she saw in front of her. A livid green face, framed with thick dark hair. The face was mask like, with a pointed nose and chin and angular and sharp cheeks. And it was so green. Bright green and smooth as if made of green rubber or latex. She took a step back and realised she was looking into a mirror! No, it couldn't be. She felt a sick feeling in the pit of her stomach and touched her cheek. The apparition in the mirror did the same. It had her hair, unmistakably. She glanced around her. She was stark naked in what appeared to be a gleaming sterile, surgical theater. She had just arisen from an operating table around which the bandages were strewn. She ran up to the mirror and grabbed at her livid, green face. It still hurt to touch. There was no seam or gap. She wasn't wearing a mask, but then it was her own face, surgically altered.

"Good to see you so well, after the surgery." The cracked voice of Bighead. His heavy footfalls made the floor shake. He was so grossly obese.

"What have you d-done to me?" she said weakly. "Am I permanently disfigured?"

"No, there is something magical about a mask. It conceals one face and makes another. You have a mask for a face. Why do you want your old one back?"

Nadine realised that this was her lot, and burst into tears that flowed freely down her freakishly altered visage.

Bighead's horrible grin widened. "Now we belong together and you and I will consummate our lust. I speak not of love, but pure lust."

"Never!" cried Nadine. "I wouldn't touch you to scratch you."

"I can surgically alter your entire head if you like, so your cascade of hair is gone," admonished Bighead.

Not the hair. Nadine's hair was her pride and joy. She had already lost her pretty face and without her hair she would be as much an ugly freak as this monster... She sagged with a sigh, the fight gone out of her.

"Alright, but this counts as rape."

Lying on a huge bed with a grotesque head piece shaped like the Bighead monster, Nadine lay back, filled with fear. Where was Jack? Would he do as Bighead ordered? What could she do? She had already been mutilated. Was she really about to be raped?