Head Shrink
Warburton fingered the grisly trophy McMillan set before him. Matted hair felt coarse under his touch, the skin leathery like cured beef.
“The Waitiki Balumbi Chief gave me that, in New Guinea,” McMillan said. “Taught me the secret of making shrunken heads. Quite a complex process.”
Warburton peered closer, a shiver of revulsion running through him. He stared at the thing’s lips, sewn together, eternally silenced. “Can you show me?”
McMillan noted the eagerness in Warburton’s eyes: the same cocky enthusiasm from their days at the Sacramento Snitch. Warburton had challenged him for his scoop on the Deliverance-style ambush of extraterrestrials lost in backwoods Tennessee. The flip of a coin. Heads, Warburton; tails, McMillan. Two out of three fell in Warburton’s favor.
“Of course.” McMillan smiled. “Thought you’d never ask.”
Task complete, McMillan admired his new prize through its glass case. He grinned at the morning newspaper, Warburton’s picture gazing incrimination back at him from the front page.
“Two heads are better than one,” he said with relish.
