KT

HEADED

The Audience hollerboos and bawls for this – the start of The Brain Repair. Three green light beams showcase each of The Contestants unblind folding onstage. When The Host lurches from beyond the curtains, The Audience peeks at his clear music box of keys, each cut fresh like a lumbar puncture. With a rusted shriek, the lid lifts by The Host’s flicked wrists and the theme for The Brain Repair begins electronic. The Contestants perspire, struggling to rewire everything they had learned from phrenologists before they quest phenomenologic. The Host notices The Contestants eyeing their keys, which glow cerebrospinal.

The Host: Welcome, Nonebody! [fumbling with his earpiece, he turns his loudspeaker on, turns it
off] Contestants, your keys will work for eons and then one day they’ll change. Your key won’t work
the same and you must (re)quest for a new one. [realizing his speaker was off, presses the earpiece
again] Them’s the rules. Now, are we ready to begin?

The Audience [lifting their protest signs, adjusting their demonstration t-shirts for the camera
angle, chanting]:

This is what
                        lo

                            bo
                                  tomy
                                            looks like!

This is what
                        lo

                            bo
                                  tomy
                                            looks like!

 

This is what
                        lo

                            bo
                                  tomy
                                            looks like–



The Contestants [nodding their heads, emptying their bowels as their pants grow heavy and stained]

The Host: Alright, come on up to receive your keys. And good luck out there – you’ll need it.

Excrement beslimed, The Contestants mind their legs toward The Host and their green light beams
pursue them. After the last of the three has handled their key, a portal wombs open on stage right,
exposing the same scene as every other episode: the zygote constructing it’s corpus callosum.

The Contestants [preparing to jump into the portal, linking arms like new neural pathways,
synapsing rapidly]

The Host [walking behind The Contestants, turning to address The Audience]: And one more thing!
[whispering in The Contestants ears] Nonebody is your phren.


The Host shoves The Contestants where they are headed.

KT studied poetry and narrative medicine in the Creative Writing and Writing for Performing Arts MFA at the University of California, Riverside where she served as poetry editor for Santa Anna River Review. She is currently a doctoral candidate and former Kingsbury Fellow at Florida State University where she served as book reviews editor for Southeast Review. Her work is included or forthcoming in New York Quarterly, Harpur Palate, Washington Square Review, The Spectacle, Peripheries, Foothill Journal, New Limestone Review, Peacock Journal, Southern Women's Review, The McNeese Review, Turtle Island Quarterly, and White Stag Journal... Full Profile