Content Warning: This section features discussions of gender discrimination, child abuse, and abortion.

“His words bounced against the tiles and chorused off the walls. Leave it alone. That’s nothing. Leave it alone. That’s nothing.”

The woman’s nightmare features the haunting refrain of her family’s reaction to the head. By dismissing the head as “nothing,” the family undermine the head’s impact on the woman, which has damaged her career and caused her years of anxiety, constipation, and inflammation. This drives the theme of Social Expectation as a Tool of Patriarchy because the woman’s family expect her to dismiss it as they do, repressing her experience of suffering for the sake of their convenience.

“What gratitude should I have for you? Did I ask you to give birth to me? Did you ever take care of me or even say a kind word to me, your indisputable offspring? You birthed me even when I didn’t want it, and did you not try at every turn to destroy me out of hatred and disgust? What have you given me besides your feces and trash? I had to bear all sorts of humiliations and degradations to get what I needed from you to complete a human-like body. But now, it’s complete. This is the day I’ve been waiting for in that dark hole all my life. Now that I have become you, I shall take your place and live a new life.”

During the final confrontation between the head and the woman, the head speaks to all the years of repulsion it endured from the woman. This adds another dimension of complexity to the story, building on its initial themes of unwanted pregnancy and abortion. After relaying its awareness of being unwanted, the head expresses its desire to live a life that isn’t as empty as the one the woman regrets living. Living as a younger version of the woman, the head resolves to change the narrative expected of her life.