The Headshrinker's Dilemma

Prologue

Dale tried not to stare. But he couldn’t help it. That was the thing with being a man: The eyes, they were dangerous, would get you in trouble every time if you let them. When Dale was younger, he remembered his pastor telling him about bouncing the eyes. It was a kind of catchy phrase, almost worth chanting in a mantra, and as the pastor had shared with all the young men on this particular youth trip, bouncing the eyes was about diversion. As a human being, specifically a man, it was almost impossible not to look and that looking could and would lead you to a potential problem, something that you would inevitably have to fix. So, let the eyes do what they were going to do, but then get control and bounce the eyes, divert them to something else…

Dale remembered that and he tried but the little shrunken head in his hand that was just cracked open slightly, like a watermelon that had dropped to the floor and on its way down you tried to grab it – you ultimately missed it – but just the travail of reaching for it, barely nicking it with your finger tips or a brush of your palm, slows the momentum down enough so that the impact splits the produce in twain instead of causing it to explode in a splattering mess. And what you end of with instead was a nice ripened crack. That is what had happened to the man’s head after Dale had touched it and caused it to shrivel down to the size of a melon. It was an extremely weird power to have, Dale knew this, and believe it or not, this wasn’t the first time he had shrunk a man’s head. It had happened several times now. And that’s why he was a wanted man.