by Mark Jacobs
*****
Pence sat in a bog of brown goop in utter darkness inside a stiflingly silent bottle, itself concealed under an opaque top hat. The air in the bottle smelled of sulfur and hot sick. Pence pushed his nose into his head.
His sword, of course, was long gone, as was his moondaisy bonnet. Now the penny had been stripped from his hands and his velvetleaf cape–that morning the pride of his fashionable ensemble–was torn, tattered, and sopped in syrupy liquor. His brow stiff with resolve, he reached for the leaf’s stem, knotted at the back of his neck. At the slightest touch the knot dissolved and the cape slid off his shoulders and into the bog. With a sigh, Pence ducked his head under the strap of his grass sling and let it fall away, too.
His hands were gone. Each of his arms ended in a pinched-off, flattened wedge. His thumbs–which had not been cut off by the penny–had nonetheless been too small to survive on their own and had crumbled apart soon after he fell. He had nothing left from the garden but his head and his heart.
Knees to chest, back to the glass, he raised his wrists before his eyes. “This is what I get,” he said miserably, “for cutting my old brain in half; I’ve lost my sense for worldly games and gotten played like a pawn for it.” He sat and stared into nothingness like a man considering his next move in a match of wits. In this manner he was delivered through the woods in the night.
