SLEEPY HOLLOW, NY – The figure known colloquially as the ‘Headless Horseman’ is attempting to set the record straight about the status of his cranium and the hurt caused by hundreds of years of people intentionally ignoring his pumpkin head.
“There’s this frankly slanderous idea that I am a restless spirit who wanders the land, eternally searching for my lost head. BUT I CLEARLY HAVE A HEAD!” the horseman said. “Just because it’s not the kind of head you’re used to, just because it’s a pumpkin and it detaches and I can carry it around in my hands, it doesn’t rate mentioning? We have a word for that: prejudice.”
“Yes, I was briefly headless following an incident with a cannon-ball. But luckily it happened in a pumpkin patch, and they’ve been my preferred noggin ever since. Frankly, I wouldn’t go back to a meat head now even if I had the option. They’re horrible. Prone to ear infections, can’t be carved, no room for a candle. I don’t know how I managed before discovering pumpkin heads.”
The horseman, a veteran, refused to give his name during this interview because his immigration status is currently unclear. As a Hessian soldier who fought for the British in the American Revolutionary War, he’s worried about being deported yet still hopes one day the U.S. government will naturalize deceased yet animate human/vegetable hybrids like himself. But he doesn’t expect that to happen while society insists on ignoring his head.
“It’s unacceptable, is what it is. Who else do you know who’s referred to by the fact that they once lost a body part and use a certain type of transportation? ‘Oh, there goes the appendixless cyclist! And there’s the toeless bus passenger!’ See how ridiculous that sounds?” the horseman continued.
“You’d think in a culture so obsessed with pumpkin spice, a pumpkin head would be accepted and acknowledged, or even celebrated. But that’s end-stage capitalism for you. No profit in pumpkin heads, so we don’t exist unless a horror story needs a villain.”
“And I would just like to state, officially, that I have no problem with teachers. I am a big believer in public education. I know everyone thinks I’m prone to riding teachers down when they travel alone on dark autumn nights and then spiriting them away by supernatural means, but that’s a filthy lie created by Washington Irving and then spread by Walt Disney. Who, I’ll mention, is rumoured to have had his own head removed, which is rich, given how profoundly his cartoon slandered me in particular and headless men in general.”
“My buddy Rip Van Winkle has a bone to pick with Irving too, I might add. Man takes a long nap one time, ONE TIME, and because of Irving, the name Rip Van Winkle becomes synonymous with oversleep? How is that fair?”
At press time, the horseman was telling handsy members of a Halloween-themed tour group that no, they may not pet his flaming-eyed warhorse because she gets anxious around strangers.
