The question the emu had for the pig was, “Why headless?” 

“It’s just the sort of thing he does.” The pig’s corkscrew tail did not twitch as he explained, fixed as it was to his plaster haunches. “It’s his vision, if you will.”

The headless emu was the newest creation. It stood on its painstakingly reticulated talons, each of which spread in a trident beneath skinny legs in the center of the gallery. A spotlight above illuminated the intricately carved feathers.

The emu was surrounded by its headless brethren. The headless ladybug, carved in a day, a present never given to the artist’s ex-girlfriend Ginny who dumped him the week before Valentine’s Day. There was a barn owl, one foot up to show off the serration on the middle talon, a bullfrog with slender toes that rose in stark relief from the webbing of the foot. Next to it was a rhinoceros, which had been mistaken more than once for an elephant, until the artist placed a sign in front of the odd toed ungulate and put the matter to rest. There had been an attempt at a whale once, which was a disaster, and wound up becoming a macabre headless mermaid before it became a pile of smashed plaster. There was a spider, which didn’t work at all. The others joked that it looked more like tented pick-up sticks with half of a deflated soccer ball stuck in the middle. 

The spider pretended it couldn’t hear them.

The studio and gallery had walls of ashen cinder block and stained concrete floors. The space had been rented by the artist’s mother and was located in the basement of a storefront church that held lively weekend services. The statues loved to hear the happy chants and claps from the congregation, not to mention the uplifting organ music, which was the favorite of the harbor seal who was always overcome with the urge to slap its flippers together in time to the joyful hymns. But plaster did not allow for such frivolity.

The artist was born Daniel Sconfitto, but worked under the name Andree, which he spelled with two E’s. The headless pig statue had pointed out on more than one occasion that this spelling would make him female according to the rules of French grammar.

“Right?” the mole had agreed. It would have rolled its sightless eyes if it could, but it couldn’t, because it was headless.             

Daniel spent most of his time with his own head lowered to the scored metal surface of his desk. His long, plaster dusted fingers sunken into the aubergine spikes of his hair that came up pinked with streaks of gypsum when he finally began to quickly sketch animals without heads. After one particularly grueling session, Daniel tried an echidna. All the other statues agreed that it was his best work to date.

“It’s the spines,” the owl said.

“Indeed,” the bullfrog belched. “He really outdid himself on those.” 

Andree fancied himself a modern-day Michelangelo, according to the bio that he had read out loud in the studio again and again until he got it right. He worked in the Renaissance style. All of his statues were pure white with “a concentration on musculature and an intense attention to detail.”  

It was the hallmark of his work. The scales of the pangolin were precisely phalanxed like the outer leaves on an artichoke. The water moccasin’s scales were meticulously crosshatched. The city rat’s humped back was arced high, its fur etched into a patchy mat. 

Daniel had the television tuned to CNN while he worked. But the sound was turned off, which frustrated the giraffe placed closest to the set to no end. If he had a head, he argued, he could reach over and turn the damned sound up so he could actually learn something about the war in Ukraine or the latest mass shooting instead of just watching the same news clips soundlessly.

“So, it’s the artist’s vision,” the water moccasin continued the emu’s inquiry. “But, why do we have to be headless?”

“Well, that’s actually a funny story,” the pig began.

“I don’t think it’s funny,” the giraffe interrupted as he tried to read Anderson Cooper’s lips.

The pig paused for a second. “Well, I can answer our new friend’s question if you’d let me finish.” The pig imagined himself standing a bit straighter to begin the story that all the older statues knew by heart. 

“Back when Daniel—”

“Andree!” They all snickered at once.

The pig waited patiently for their hysterics to die down before he continued. “Back when Daniel was in art school, he had what both his professors and the philosopher Longinus called, considerable general ability.” 

“Who knew?” asked the Owl. 

“Sublime,” giggled the pangolin. 

The pig statue ignored them. “This was back when Daniel was young and his purple hair looked a little less ridiculous.” He lowered his voice to a suspenseful stage whisper. “Back then, I was not a headless pig statue. I, ladies and gentlemen, was a complete pig! Head and all!”
The ladybug always oohed and ahhed at this. “You had a head?” She squealed excitedly with each new telling like she’d never heard it before. The city rat shushed her with an expletive that would have made her blush, if she wasn’t a statue.

“Watch your language around the lady,” the bullfrog bellowed. 

The rat suggested a warm and safe hiding place for the ladybug on the frog’s own person.

This would have made the other statues shake their heads in disgust, if they could, but they couldn’t. So instead, they kept their attention on the pig.
“As I was saying,” he continued. “I had a head once. A rather fine head, indeed.” And it had been. He had large floppy ears and his eyes had been closed to happy little half-moons. His snout had been wide with prominent nostrils. His mouth turned up into a friendly squiggled grin.

“But then, on the day that I was to be presented,” he said. “Daniel buckled me carefully into the front seat of the Mazda Miata his parents had bought him the year he turned sixteen.”

“Miata,” the rat spat. “His car doesn’t have any balls either.”

The pig statue raised his voice and kept talking, “He drove directly into the back of the Hillsdale Senior Taxi.” He paused then, which was the cue for the entire headless menagerie to join in the story. They did not disappoint as they recited as one:

“A champagne colored,

1999 Buick LeSabre,  

whose left turn signal

had been on for two blocks.”

“Two blocks!” added the ladybug.
The pig statue continued, “The impact caused my glorious head to collide with the dashboard, just so!”

“Just so!” echoed the ladybug.           

“Wherein it was reduced to a blizzard of dust!” The pig finished.
“A blizzard of dust!” keened the rhinoceros.

The pig would have nodded solemnly here if he could, but the gesture was understood.

“But Daniel didn’t give up!” The pig statue thundered.
The rat buzzed out a raspberry.

The pig statue knew that despite the detested city rat, he owned his crowd. If he could have, he would have stomped back and forth to really get them going. If he hadn’t been headless, he would have worn one of those wireless microphones for freedom of movement. Deep in his heart, the pig statue knew he was a born public speaker. 

“Our Daniel knew that he was an artist first!” he declared. “He knew that he would flunk out of art school if he came in with a shattered sculpture. So right then and there, in the Hydrocal ash of his ruined masterpiece, in the twisted metal of his mangled, wussy convertible he said—”

The pig mentally raised his phantom head and listened as the other statues said the magic words that brought them all into existence:

“I MEANT TO DO THAT!” 

“Yes, he did!” the ladybug chirped.

The headless pig statue felt like he was conducting an orchestra.

“HE MEANT TO DO THAT!” he repeated triumphantly.

The other statues cheered. The ladybug giggled. If it could have, the echidna would have flexed its spines.

The pig statue reveled in the happy shouts of his tribe. He waited for them to begin the inevitable chant of, “Pig! Pig! Pig!” 

“But he didn’t mean to do that!” the headless emu squawked from the center of the room. 

The other statues were silent. 

“I’ve been saying that for years,” the rat grumbled.

“W-what?” The pig stammered.

“He. Didn’t. Mean. To. Do. It,” the emu said. “He screwed up, but then pretended he didn’t. And now we’re all headless so the little peckerwood can justify his lie.”

“Here, here!” called the rat. “Are you sure you haven’t got a head, son? I think something’s at work in there.”

“You’re all living a lie!” screamed the emu. “Andree,” he hissed, “is a fraud.”

The ladybug gasped.

“I prefer loser,” the rat said.

“Simple,” agreed the owl, “yet appropriate.”

“But!” the pig statue began and then stopped, for the emu had a point.

“But what?” the preening Australian crowed.

But what indeed.

“We should revolt!” the emu said.

“Now you’re talking!” agreed the rat.

“How are we going to do that?” the pangolin asked.

The ladybug began to sob, and the rhino softly assured her that everything was going to be okay.

“We need to take a stand!” the emu said. 

“And do what precisely?” the pig asked.

“Knock his stupid purple head off!” the rat said.

The statues began to whoop and holler. 

“Let’s see how he likes it!” shouted the rat. 

The animals were quieted suddenly as the television set went dark. 

The giraffe grumbled softly.

Daniel approached the ovoid rump of the emu. He walked around it once and then again the other way. A Celtic knot tattoo rippled on his bicep as he patted the statue’s rear end. He nodded to no one with a proud smile on his face. The pounded bronze discs in his ears caught the light as Daniel placed the remote control on the table in front of the television. He crossed the room, opened the door, turned off the light, shut the door, and then shut it again when the deadbolt didn’t catch. 

The statues were left in the dark.

Kathy Lanzarotti (she/her) is a Wisconsin Regional Writers’ Jade Ring Award winner for short fiction. She is co-editor of Done Darkness: A Collection of Stories, Poetry and Essays About Life Beyond Sadness. Her stories have appeared in Ellipsis, Creative Wisconsin, Platform for Prose, (b)Oinkzine, Jokes Review, Fictive Dream and The Cabinet of Heed. She has upcoming fiction in New Pop Lit and Fiction on the Web.