Eli S. Evans
Once upon a time, there was a man who couldn’t stop thinking about something. There were several other things this man preferred to be thinking about, but thinking about the thing he couldn’t stop thinking about prevented him from thinking about those things in much the same way a heavy curtain draped over a window prevents one from contemplating the vista beyond, however lovely that vista may be. It’s true that the man sometimes forgot what it was that he couldn’t stop thinking about, but in those cases, the absence of that thing from his mind operated more or less the same as its presence insofar as he couldn’t stop trying to remember what it was that he hadn’t been able to stop thinking about and this similarly prevented him from directing his thoughts elsewhere. If he’d had to compare the whole experience to something, it would have been a recurring dream he’d had as a youngster in which he was competing in a game of basketball and his hands were balled into tight fists, and no matter how hard he tried he couldn’t seem to pry them open. The reason it reminded him of this dream was that just as he could not succeed at thinking about the things he preferred to be thinking about while thinking about the thing he couldn’t stop thinking about, one cannot succeed at basketball with one’s hands balled into fists (and if you don’t believe me, give it a whirl for yourself and let me know how it goes).
In any event, the thing this man could not stop thinking about was neither basketball nor fists. Rather, it was his itchy head. His head was so itchy! He’d tried everything, from shampooing his hair to swallowing allergy pills to actually scratching it, without seeing any results. He’d even gone to the doctor, who checked him for head lice, seborrheic dermatitis, dry scalp, psoriasis, scabies, and cancer, but as every test came back negative determined the problem must have all been in the man’s head, a diagnosis with which the man could hardly disagree considering that no other part of his body itched. Well, to make a long story short, that was how the man decided that the only reasonable way forward would be to cut off the offending appendage once and for all. For the purposes, he employed a scythe, which he’d originally acquired for agrarian tasks, and it was far from perfect for the job: skin, muscle, tendon, and bone, after all, are a lot harder to cut through than dry grass. Still, the man was as dogged in his efforts as a bloodhound on a scent, and at last that pesky old noggin of his tumbled right off his neck like a turtle falling off a log, rolling across a pair of floorboards before coming to rest in a pool of blood and cerebrospinal fluid.
Now, thought the man, he would finally be able to think about something else; but in fact, he could no longer think of anything at all.
Eli S. Evans publishes his absurdist bits and bobs all about the internet. In addition, two books of small stories, Obscure & Irregular and Various Stories About Specific Individuals in Particular Situations, have been published by Moon Rabbit Books & Ephemera. Buy one!
Featured photo/artwork by Eli S. Evans
