I cold-clocked his cranium with a piece of bone and took a saw to his neck. Other headhunters around me fell upon them with a graceful confidence. There's nothing that brings grace to a fight more than confidence.

The bones we used to make broth. We chanted our songs as they cooked alive, and stayed alive till we ate them, and perhaps remained alive as we finally passed them (but who really knows?). I found one in particular I liked. "You like him, don't you?" asked a fellow headhunter. "Yes," I said, "I like the look of his head." "Well," he said, "you are a headhunter."

As I sliced my third, he suddenly became aware it was his head I was after. What was it about his head, he asked me, as opposed to his various other appendages? He was an anthropologist, he told me, and therefore very interested. I replied that the head was the seat of the soul, at which point he tore out his heart and cursed me to hell.

I have quite a collection of heads. They deteriorate quickly, but keep me company while their flesh is still around. I like the feeling of having many heads of many types of people to keep me company. "Oh, why did you have to cut off our heads?" they ask me. "Well, just think: if I hadn't cut off your heads, you wouldn't be here now, making friends with my other heads, making friends with me, having all these interesting exotic experiences."

The heads on my walls constantly jabber and make comments about my appearance all day long. It gets very nerve wracking, but I can stand it.

I shrink the heads that complain too much. It doesn't kill them, but it reduces their whining to a volume I can tolerate, which sounds like the squeaking of a mouse.

One day I went headhunting with my son. " You see," I said, "first you must make your victim immobile by cutting off his arms and legs, after you have beaten him into submission." "Wouldn't it be easier to tie up his arms and legs with rope?" he asked. Smart boy, my son. "And then," I said, "you gut him so that you can cook his meat. You remember how to smoke-dry meat?" "Of course," he said. "Now, you take his head just so, with the saw at an angle to his neck, and saw nice long strokes." My son tried it on our victim. His stokes with the saw were much too short. "No," I said, taking the saw, "nice long strokes, like so." I sliced the neck with my nice long strokes, as our victim complained that he kept inhaling blood.

The heads on my walls often move their eyes about such that they follow my every move. As I walk down my halls, I can see their eyeballs, head after head, tracking me as I go past, not saying a word. I've told them to stop it, that I will sell them to the sausage factory if they keep it up; but they deny everything, as dismembered heads will, helpless as they are.

When a head falls to the floor, it uses its jaws to move about, looking like an inchworm, biting its way along. They move very slowly. One time I came home to find at least a dozen of them slowly moving toward the door. There had been a small earthquake, and they had all fallen from their mountings. It was a hilarious sight.

But now the heads disgust me. They always ask for food. Eating is the only way for them to occupy themselves, I suppose.

What are you painting now?

Eyes, noses, and mouths.

No head? Nothing else?

I'm trying to see how much of an expression I can bring out with simple eyes, noses, and mouths; nothing else but a white backdrop.

You're wasting canvas.