"The Hat" by Vicki "Kiddalee" Nemeth

There was also a good, but misunderstood, hat. If anybody put it on, it would chomp down on their head affectionately. This really hurt the wearer, but the hat couldn't think of any better way to express its love for the wearer, so it was declared rather dangerous and locked up in some hiding place.

But that was a long time ago.

Now, there are lots of people stupid enough to practically destroy their skulls and get metal plates stuck on their heads through things like drunk driving and sports without helmets and getting really frustrated with office work (they used to just destroy their skulls and not get metal plates in their heads).

There was one guy who'd had to replace most of his skull (this was in a time or maybe place of higher medical technology than now) due to being an idiot in a mosh pit, and could now survive his head being bitten more than lots of people. This is very convenient to the story, but the hat had been forgotten about since very long ago, and the place where it had been locked up was now an historic site with lots of locked things that archaeologists hadn't been able to open yet, so it's not like anyone was really seeking the hat out.

The hat was pretty lonely, though, and sometimes it wailed from its dark, scary corner. You would, too, if you'd been locked up from a time when people didn't even psychoanalyse to a time when almost whole heads could be replaced. Luckily, wailing was enough to keep the hat from going completely insane. It wouldn't be for you.

But the hat had gone somewhat insane, so when someone finally got sick of hearing the wailing and decided to set off a bomb where it seemed to be coming from in hope of finding a new room by destroying the barrier to the noise, hopefully without destroying the wailing thing, and discovered it, it got really ticked and switched from wailing to screaming. Yep, it was pretty mad about having been locked up like that. Anger is a part of trauma.

Well, it's a good thing the person with the bomb had taken safety precautions like staying far away and wearing goggles and earplugs, because the hat screamed really loud. It screamed so loud, it made the guy's mostly metal skull vibrate and inspired him to write a song, though he couldn't because he was busy doing community service at the historic site. They let him take a break, though, because he had a headache due to unforeseen circumstances caused by the hat.

The lady with the bomb saw the hat and thought, Cool! It makes noises! So she put it on, but since the hat was somewhat insane it went into withdrawal and started acting like a normal hat. The lady was then worried about the hat's welfare, because people who can make noises don't suddenly fall silent like manikins when asked to put themselves to good use unless there's something wrong inside. So she wore it around the building until she saw the guy with the metal plate in his head, moping in the staff room.

"What's wrong?" she asked.

"My head hurts," he moaned.

"Oh," she answered. "Did you know that applying pressure around your head to slow the blood flow a bit will make you less sensitive to pain in that area? Here. Wear this hat."

She gave it to him, and he put it on.

"How is it?" she asked.

"It needs to be tighter," he answered. "Just enough to pinch a little, but not enough to leave a mark."

This idea reminded the hat of the time when it had been openly loving, and expressed it by biting peoples' crowns off whenever they wore it. This made the hat really want a hug, or to feel loved in some way. A really good way to get a hug is to give one, so the hat wanted to bite the guy, but since the guy said he didn't want there to be a mark, and the hat really wanted the guy to know it loved him, it decided to express it in the way that would be best understood.

It nibbled.

The guy said, "Whoa! This hat is squeezing me out of its own will! Pretty soon, it may squeeze my head veins just enough for me to ease my headache."

He turned out to be right.

So now the hat is recovering from its withdrawal and the guy has an easy way to get over the headaches that he is super vulnerable to due to all the metal in his head and he also has extra defense in case the hat forgets itself and bites too hard and the lady with the bomb decided to go work in a place with lots of rocks and not enough highways so she could keep blowing more stuff up and everybody's happy.