From: gooley@netcom.com (Mark. Gooley)
Subject: girlhood personalities: contaminants in charcoal starter
Followup-To: alt.fan.gooley,alt.prose.d
Organization: Netcom Online Communications Services (408-241-9760 login: guest)
Date: Sun, 20 Dec 1992 03:52:30 GMT

	As I walked past the giant wind tunnel it began to laugh at me.
I put a whammy on it, then took a glass eye from my pocket and hurled it
at the sidewalk.  The concrete slab cracked into bite-sized pieces.  "You're
next!" I shouted at the eind tunnel, which fell silent.  I pocketed the eye,
given to me by a mighty wizard named Morris Hergesheimer before he cast
the spell on himself that changed him into one of the most successful
actresses in Hollywood, and whistled a tenor aria from a Bach cantata as
I proceeded to my office.
	A woman with the face of a girl hanging from her neck on a thick
polypropylene cord interrupted me.  She was perhaps forty, with a kindly
face and long, heavy dove-gray hair, and a short body with good curves.
"That should have been an F-sharp rather than an F in that last phrase,"
she said, or rather sang, in a polite monotone.
	"Artistic license," I said.
	"Bach wouldn't have approved," she said.  "Oh, and I'd like you
to meet my daughter's face."  She gestured towards the face that hung over
her breasts.
	"Hello," I said.  "You're a pretty face."
	"Thanks," it said.  It had eyes, but its teeth and tongue were
not to be seen.
	"Where's the rest of you?" I asked it.
	"At home," it said.  "It saves bus fare if my Mom takes only my
face along."
	"How do you hear?" I asked, and the woman smiled and took two
disembodied ears from the pockets of her blouse.  The parts that should
have been joined to a head were gray and indistinct, as I supposed the
reverse side of the girl's face would be.
	"Would you like to take my daughter's face on a date?" the woman
asked.
	"Sure," I said.  "I don't feel like working today anyhow."  I slipped
the ears into my shirt pocket and the woman unhooked the cord around her
neck and fastened it around mine.  I headed back the way I had come, and
when the wind tunnel started to snicker I took out the glass eye and pointed
it at it.  I heard a muffled explosion at the far end of the tunnel, and I
put the eye away.
	"That was impressive," said the face.
	"What's your name?" I asked it.
	"I don't have a name," it said.  "I'm just a face."
	"What's your body's name?" I asked.
	"Nostrilette," it said.
	"Let's go to lunch," I suggested.  It was half past seven in the
morning, and I had just eaten thirty large biscuits with anchovy gravy,
a specialty of the house at Max Fellatio's Illinoisan Cuisine and Quick
Oil Change Boutique, but I was hungry, and the face made no objection.
	I hailed a rickshaw by throwing pieces of hail at its proprietor
and motor, and we sped through heavy traffic to Stanislaw Kowalski's
Genuine Cantonese Cuisine, which I knew would already be open.  I inserted
two sardines up the motor's nostrils and he bowed and scurried off without
further payment.
	Inside Kowalski's we were met by his wife Mary.  A natural blonde
with gray Slavic eyes, she had had extensive plastic surgery to make her
face look Chinese.  She wore brown contact lenses in her almond-shaped
and -flavored eyes, and past the short yellow roots her hair was glossy
black.  Kowalski's daughter Christina, not only her face altered but
sections of bone taken out of her limbs to give her a stocky Oriental
look, smiled shyly and looked, covetously I thought, at the face hanging
from the cord around my neck.  As she showed me to a table, I recalled
that she was a fanatically loyal daughter, and wondered if she had put
up any resistance or capacitance to the operations that had given her
her looks.
	I looked over the menu and let the face see it as well.  "The
Thrice-Cooked Chicken Intestines are great," I told it, "though you
might prefer the Szechuan Kielbasa with Crispy Noodles."
	"I'm not hungry," it said.  "My body's sitting at home in front
of the TV after a stack of pancakes at breakfast."
	"How can it watch TV without eyes and ears?" I asked it.
	"It can't, but the TV's on anyway," it said.  "And really I'd
rather _be_ lunch."
	"You sure about that?" I asked, turning it to face me.
	"Positive!" it said, with a grin and a bit of a squeal in its
voice.
	When Christina arrived with urine-scented tea, I explained the
situation.  We went to the kitchen with the face, where Kowalski himself,
face partly covered in bandages after his last operation, popped a few
more carotene tablets in the hope of tinting his skin, and put the face
and ears on his chopping block.  With his Ginsu (tm) knife he cut them
into matchstick-sized pieces, the face giggling with pleasure as long as
it could.  I watched him make a delicious-looking stir-fry of it.

Mark.
gooley@netcom.com
Newsgroups: alt.non.sequitur,talk.bizarre