This piece is an autofictional seed for the Autofiction x Worldbuilding submissions call. It inspired this other piece.

Yagan’s Head

‘There was a severed head buried in here,’ I say. ‘Over there I think.’

We’re taking the short walk from the limousine to the hole in which they’re about to bury Dave. Nobody seems interested in what I’ve got to say, but it’s true. It was the head of an indigenous-Australian warrior called Yagan, a nineteenth century leader of the Noongar people. He was sort of like their Braveheart. A pain in the arse to the Brits, they shot him, then chopped his head off. It ended up in a Liverpool Museum, where it was displayed till the 60s, which is when people started getting squeamish about things like that.

The museum also buried a Peruvian mummy in the same plot. Then the local hospital, the hospital Dave and I were born in, buried stillborn babies in the same hole. 22 stillborn babies, buried with a Peruvian mummy and the severed head of an indigenous-Australian warrior.

Fat grey clouds gather above. I’ve been drunk most days for about four months. I was drunk when I got the call to say that Dave had died; well over three weeks ago. It takes a long time to repatriate a dead body.

Karl, Ritchie and Stone came with me in the Limo, but we quickly become separated in the crowd that gathers around the grave. Stone stands a few mourners away from me, at least a foot bigger than everyone else. He’s had a haircut for the occasion, shaven close at the sides, in an almost military style, like the haircut equivalent of a stiff upper lip. There’s about a hundred people who’ve come all the way from the church, to get as close as possible to this hole in the ground. Karl, lost in a grey suit too big for him, looks up at the sky, like he wants the tears to roll back into his eyes. Two girls I haven’t seen since we were kids stand either side of him; one them has her arm round him, like she’s keeping him safe.

On the other side of the hole, Ritchie’s confused face peers out from beneath his unruly afro.

The undertakers lower Dave into the hole and something powerful pushes up through me; a cry that rattles through my body like an underground train. For as long as I can remember, I’ve had this feeling of dislocation, like the thinking bit of me isn’t here properly, like I’m incomplete. But now it’s like I’m reunited with myself. Then, as quickly as it started, the crying stops and it all breaks apart again.

A kid must be buried close because there’s a wet teddy bear hanging in a nearby tree. I push this thought away quickly, but Dave is there, down in the hole, and so instead I look out to where I think Yagan’s head was buried. Close to the gates. Where the little old woman sells flowers.

I met Dave in September, 1989. We were eleven and they took headshots of us all on the first day of school. Dave said the headshots were in case we went missing. These would be the images used on the news if we were kidnapped, or if we were murdered and they needed information on our last movements. Where are those photos now? Probably flung onto a school-caretaker’s fire; the captured images curled in the heat of the crackling flames.

We take turns throwing soil onto the coffin, but I’m thinking of Yagan, his severed head, shown around the world as a colonialist trophy. His head, separated from its body, from its homeland, soon to become an embarrassing relic, something to be hidden from sight.

I say, ‘Seeya later, mate,’ as I remember a story I wrote, in which Yagan’s severed head floats around modern-day Liverpool, seeking revenge, firing death rays from its eyes.

As we shuffle away from Dave’s coffin, Big Kev and little Sean come over. They touch my shoulder and I touch their shoulders and we all take turns saying, ‘Mad, innit?’ Stone, Ritchie and Karl are already waiting by the black limo that took us here.

‘Can you stop at an offy?’ Karl, in his Talking Heads suit, is up front with the driver. It’s warm in the limo. I wish the journey was going to be longer, wish I could sleep in this safe little box.

As the car crawls along the stony path, I picture the Noongar representatives, back in the 1990s, dressed in ill-fitting suits, with silver hair and stressed-out faces, marching through the cemetery to reclaim the macabre, missing piece of their heritage. Taking Yagan from a hole in Liverpool and putting him in another hole, 9000 miles away, beside the Swan River.

And I picture Dave coming home from Italy, as cargo on a Boeing 777.

The limo parks up outside an off-licence on Stopgate Lane. Stone and Ritchie are smiling about something Dave once said, but I’m off in my own world. I’m lost, not really with the others.

Karl lets in cold air as he gets back in the limo. He takes a swig out of a bottle of vodka then passes it back. Stone and Ritchie take turns, then me. It makes me hot inside but it’s not real heat, it’s a sting from the poison. Somehow, the vodka brings me back into my body and for the second time that day I’m complete. I laugh and sigh and cry a little bit all at once, and the others join in the hysteria.

When we’re finished cry-laughing, Karl turns to the driver and says, ‘Is this a good firm to work for?’

‘Yeah,’ the driver says.

Then Karl says, ‘When you die, d’you reckon you’ll get them to do your funeral?’