" I consider it essential for you to know that Languille displayed an extraordinary sang-froid and even courage from the moment when he was told, that his last hour had come, until the moment when he walked firmly to the scaffold. It may well be, in fact, that the conditions for observation, and consequently the phenomena, differ greatly according to whether the condemned persons retain all their sang-froid and are fully in control of themselves, or whether they are in such state of physical and mental prostration that they have to be carried to the place of execution, and are already half-dead, and as though paralysed by the appalling anguish of the fatal instant."The head fell on the severed surface of the neck and I did not therefore have to take it up in my hands, as all the newspapers have vied with each other in repeating; I was not obliged even to touch it in order to set it upright. Chance served me well for the observation, which I wished to make.
"Here, then, is what I was able to note immediately after the decapitation: the eyelids and lips of the guillotined man worked in irregularly rhythmic contractions for about five or six seconds. This phenomenon has been remarked by all those finding themselves in the same conditions as myself for observing what happens after the severing of the neck...
"I waited for several seconds. The spasmodic movements ceased. The face relaxed, the lids half closed on the eyeballs, leaving only the white of the conjunctiva visible, exactly as in the dying whom we have occasion to see every day in the exercise of our profession, or as in those just dead. It was then that I called in a strong, sharp voice: "Languille!" I saw the eyelids slowly lift up, without any spasmodic contractions ? I insist advisedly on this peculiarity ? but with an even movement, quite distinct and normal, such as happens in everyday life, with people awakened or torn from their thoughts.
"Next Languille's eyes very definitely fixed themselves on mine and the pupils focused themselves. I was not, then, dealing with the sort of vague dull look without any expression, that can be observed any day in dying people to whom one speaks: I was dealing with undeniably living eyes which were looking at me. "After several seconds, the eyelids closed again, slowly and evenly, and the head took on the same appearance as it had had before I called out.
"It was at that point that I called out again and, once more, without any spasm, slowly, the eyelids lifted and undeniably living eyes fixed themselves on mine with perhaps even more penetration than the first time. The there was a further closing of the eyelids, but now less complete. I attempted the effect of a third call; there was no further movement ? and the eyes took on the glazed look which they have in the dead.
"I have just recounted to you with rigorous exactness what I was able to observe. The whole thing had lasted twenty-five to thirty seconds.
- Extract from the journals of Dr Beaurieux, who under perfect circumstances experimented with the head of Languille, guillotined at 5.30 a.m. on June 28th, 1905
"How about decapitation?" she asked. He thought for a moment, making a nearly inaudible humming noise as he did so.
"I must admit I've always wondered what that would be like. I used to joke that it'd be fun to be guillotined into a catapult and then launched into the air. Spend your last few moments watching the world recede below you as you slowly faded away. Plus then I'd know what it felt like to be a football."
"Very nice." Cammy smirked grimly.
"What does the book say?"
Cammy traced a dark blue fingernail down the page of the old book, a red-bound tome with thin gold lettering down the spine inscribing the words How Does It Feel To Die?
"It says beheading can be quick and painless ..." Her lips soundlessly moved for some moments as she skipped over some words. "... but that, assuming the cut is clean, the head may survive for up to seven seconds."
"Seven seconds of painlessness. That doesn't sound so bad." Anthony smiled, and Cammy was alarmed to note that the surreal, out-of-body feeling she experienced when thinking about what they were planning was by now so familiar that she barely even noticed it anymore. She looked at his smile for a moment, thinking about teeth, then returned her eyes to the page.
"Not so fast." she licked her forefinger and used it to turn the page, tasting the musty hint of aged paper as she did so. "That's only if it's a clean cut. If you screw it up it can be righteously painful." Her eyes flicked back and forth across the two pages before her. "It says it took an axe-man three swings to chop off the head of Mary Queen of Scots, and eventually he had to saw it off with his knife." Her imagination flickered darkly in the corners of her mind, screams and dungeons and blood. She suppressed a shiver.
Anthony grimaced. "Ugh. We'll just have to do it right, then."
"But whoever heard of an accidental decapitation?"
"I'm sure they happen."
"When, though?"
"We can uh ... what you do is ..." he thought for a moment. "Yes, right, what you do is you go to a Renaissance fair, right, and you sort of mess about around their guillotine and I'll sort of fall into the device while you sort of, you know, accidentally trigger it." His face contorted as he made a series of motions with his hands, trying to mimic whatever object it was that he was trying to make the sound of. "Swing, swoosh, slice, thump. Head off, job done." A blade, air, a head.
Cammy laughed and rolled backward on the plush red carpet, the book folding up in her hands as she did so. She swung her legs around herself and ended up with her belly on the floor as she reoriented herself to face him again. It was late afternoon, and the room had the shadowy, undefined look that comes with pre-dusk sunlight filtered through partially opened blinds. The sort that lets you see all the tiny motes of dust, the ones you wish you didn't know were there. It was not an old apartment, but neither was it new, and while Anthony had only recently taken occupancy of it, it did have a used feel. Nothing definable. The paint was uncracked. The carpet unstained. The furniture was not visibly worn, but still, there was the sense that, in maybe a week or so, it would be. Like a hotel room someone has smoked in; you can't see the difference, but still, you know somebody was there. Cammy continued to speak while Anthony looked at her, clicking his teeth together under his lips.
"That's a terrible plan! For one thing, we don't have Renaissance festivals around here, and for another thing, if we did, they wouldn't have operational guillotines lying about! And I'd be charged for manslaughter after accidentally knocking your block off. And..." she found herself flustered for a few moments as the sheer ridiculousness of Anthony's plan unfolded before her. "...and they didn't even have guillotines during the Renaissance! It was an age of enlightenment and culture, not chopping off people's heads! You're thinking about the French Revolution."
Anthony looked appropriately contrite. "Oh...do they have French Revolutionary festivals?"
"No."
"We could host one! And make our own guillotine, and I could be fooling around with it, and it goes off, and, well, more fool me eh?"
"That's tantamount to suicide. And you'd end up in the Darwin awards, and you'd get no insurance for such dying so stupidly. Besides," she said, hauling herself off of the floor and walking into the kitchen as she spoke, leaving the book on the floor behind her. "it's too gross. There'd be blood everywhere, and your spine would be sticking out, and oh!" She had to raise her voice to be heard from the kitchen. "Think about the funeral! Would you have a separate little box for your head?"
Anthony tittered nervously. "I suppose not."
Cammy laughed out loud, despite herself. "Did you ever see that thing, uhm, that thing on the internet, where like, if you want to kill yourself like a man, you superglue, well, uhm, first you get some cheese wire, and you make a noose out of that, then you stand on a stool and put the noose over your head, then you, uhm, superglue your hands to your head, then jump off the stool, so your head comes off your neck but it's still attached to your hands when you ah, when they find you, so when they find you it looks like you've torn your own head off in frustration?"
There was silence from the lounge. Then:
"Was this a video?"
She stopped laughing. "Well, like, an animation, yeah."
"Oh! Like, it was a joke."
"Yes."
"Oh. Wouldn't they see the stool and the bloody cheese wire and figure it out?"
Cammy sighed.
"Do you want some tea?"
"Yes, please."
Cammy started looking through the cupboards of Anthony's curiously sterile kitchen, all grey panels and steel handles. She pulled at them randomly, revealing neat rows of identical glasses, identical plates. After pulling open a few random doors she found some loose Orange Pekoe and a teapot with a sieve. She placed them on the counter and filled the clear kettle before setting it to boil. The little red light that illuminated inside the button of the jug reflected in the marble of the countertop. It was black, flecked with grey strips. She ran her fingers along the cool surface of the marble, absent-mindedly playing a tune with her fingers. She looked at the water through the transparent material of the jug. The water was still, cold. In a few moments it would be in motion, rolling with heat. Again she felt disconnected from herself, from the world. Something as simple as boiling water seemed alien to her, illogical. The coldness of the marble on her fingertips was like an alien sensation, a child seeing snow for the first time. She turned and put her head through the archway of the kitchen door.
Anthony was still sitting on the floor of his small lounge. He had taken up the red book and was moving the pages back and forth with his fingers, trying to find where she had left off. Her was engrossed in the words, did not see her watching him with curiosity.
"What about..." he started to shout, loud enough for her to be heard in the kitchen, but he looked up as he started to speak and seeing her in the doorway shocked him into silence. He started again at a more reasonable volume. "What about internal decapitation?"
Cammy cocked her head to one side. "What's that?"
He looked back down at the book, reading aloud as he ran one of his fingers along the words. "Atlantooccipital dislocation, the rare process by which the skull separates from the spinal column during severe head injury. This injury is nearly always fatal." He looked back up at her expectantly, his eyebrows raised brightly.
For a moment she didn't know what to say. She just looked at him, looking at her. There was a window behind him and the day outside was bright, so his face was in shadow, but she thought she could almost make out his eyes in the silhouette. A long silence passed.
"Are you alright?" he asked.
"Yeah." She paused, and thought about it some more. "Yeah."
"So what do you think?"
"About what?"
"Internal decapitation."
"I don't like it. Too many things to go wrong. You might survive. You might end up a vegetable."
"Not much difference there, then." His silhouette did not reveal it, but she was sure he was wearing his small, sad smile again.
Cammy did not smile back, just kept looking, her eyes distant. The kettle had boiled behind her, the sound of a thousand bubbles disturbing the water in the kettle fading as the button clicked off. She turned back into the kitchen, while his form remained frozen, cross-legged, Buddha-like. Whilst no longer in view, she still saw the shape of him, outlined in white, fading on her retinas. The tea packet was already open, so she unfolded the inner cellophane wrapper and the heady smell of loose tea leaves broke forth. She spooned two heaps of broken tea leaves into the sieve at the mouth of the pot, then slowly poured the hot water from the jug over them, watching them dance about as the hot water hit them, a snowglobe of grey and brown. Steam rose from mouth of the pot and flowed over her knuckles as they gripped the handle of the upended kettle. She held her hand still for a moment, until the heat of the steam started to hurt her. Then she held them a moment longer, before placing the kettle back down on the counter. The heat stayed on her fingers, pain penetrating into the bone. She held up her hand before her, watching the discoloration of the skin where the steam had passed over, feeling again the strange dissociative sensation that that the pain was in her mind, yet she experienced it as happening in her fingers. Then the pain and the discolouration quickly receded, leaving a strange absence in its place. She shook her hand in the air to try and shake the absence away, and also because she thought that might be the appropriate thing to do. Light from the kitchen blinds streamed through her fingers as she shook them, making them appear translucent, brown tending to red, the dark shadow of her bones hiding beneath the flesh. She stared at her fingers, flexing them. With a start she realized that Anthony was standing in the doorframe of the kitchen, watching her as she stared at her fingers. She laughed under her breath, self-consciously, and turned away from him, picked up the teapot and began to pour the first cup, which at that point in time she noticed had the words: 'Have a Merry Kiss My Ass' inscribed on one side, arranged in the shape of a Christmas tree.
"Everything alright?"
"For sure." she said into her chest, looking down at the brown liquid as it circled against the white of the mug. She could tell from the sound of his voice that he hadn't moved, was still standing in the doorway, watching her. She stopped pouring and listened for his breathing, but could not hear it. She listened to the silence, instead.
"So, strike decapitation off the list, then?"
"I don't like it. You want sugar?"
"I don't see why not."
This is a 
hey dan
it's good! and about time too.
only small things i noticed that seemed a bit out of place: the use of sang-froid sounds odd the second time as you've just used it in the previous sentence. same goes for 'alien' and 'random' later in the chapter, if you replace them with a synonym it'll read easier...
Hey Sarah,
Thanks for the kind comment, I appreciate it. You should become one of my editors, then you can make changes to the document directly! As for the 'sang-froid' double-use, I don't think I've ever used the word myself, that quotation really is a genuine ripoff of a real dude's journal (kind of cheating for nanowrimo but oh well!), so I can't change it for him, poor fella. You're totally right about reusing alien and random, that reads terribly. I wrote this whole chapter at work and often flicked between multiple documents, so it's a bit fragmented. I'll fix up the original- thanks! Keep reading! Chapter 2 is done, I'll post it real soon, like.