Lined up on display, was row upon row of living, price-marked human heads.
I say living in the loosest sense of the word. They could not breathe, nor speak. They could barely move their mouths. Those that could move their mouths simply gasped for a breath that they never would take. Occasionally, a pair of lips would silently, desperately, form the shape of the word "HELP".
Each head had its own distinct style. Some sported a shocking mop of bright orange hair, while others were completely bald. A few wore handlebar moustaches on their helpless faces, and one even had a pair of thick rimmed spectacles glued to her lightly freckled face, and a brightly-coloured rainbow Mohawk.
The only thing they all had in common, was that each head remained connected to a spinal cord. Each cord was submerged in a large jar of light red liquid - a specially formulated solution that allowed oxygen to travel to the brain. Enough to keep each head alive for perhaps 4-5 days, providing customers did not take the head out of the solution for more than a few seconds.
Many of the smaller heads shared a jar, and cried silent tears. The larger heads mostly had their very own jar, and had been heavily decorated with typical "person" accessories.
The head of a young, black-haired man with a 5 o'clock shadow was plucked and lifted from his jar to be inspected. He gasped even more than before, until the inspection was complete, and he was placed back into the liquid that kept him suspended in a state of living hell.
The next time you visit the supermarket to buy flowers, remember that these, too, are merely heads, plucked from their bodies, and forced to live a shortened life, in an artificial state of existence.