Jimmy Pumpkinhead

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One April afternoon, I lay dreaming in the smoking-room, just as I had lain two years before, and mechanically I looked among the tawny Eastern rugs for the wolf-skin. At last I distinguished the pointed ears and flat cruel head, and I thought of my dream where I saw Geneviève lying beside it. The helmets still hung against the threadbare tapestry, among them the old Spanish morion which I remembered Geneviève had once put on when we were amusing ourselves with the ancient bits of mail.

The King in Yellow

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⤓

Whatever happened to the Scarecrow?

⤓

"Hey... sooo, Whatever happened to the Scarecrow?" Jimmy asks the old wizened man with red octagon lensed glasses. Jimmy tottered on his broom stick legs his orange pumpkin face contorted into a terrified grimace. The slightly moldy green and black eyes fixed firmly on the story teller.

Old Dr. Nikidik, his face as bald and expressionless as a bowling ball continued the tale, "Being ravaged and killed by the flying monkey motha fuckers, he was dead and left where he lay, straw here straw there,a little fabric, a little cloth, his painted face head all ripped to pieces"

"And Feathertop in the Hawthorne story became in the end a medley of straw and tattered garments, with some sticks protruding from the heap, and a shrivelled pumpkin in the midst. The eyeholes lustreless; with a rudely-carved gap, that just before had been a mouth twisted into a despairing grin? What is to become of me?" erupted Jimmy in an excited panic of terrible realization.

Old Dr. N, the crooked Mollkin magician from Moloch County held out his pepper box and tapped out a line of white powder onto the mirror that sat between him and Jimmy. "Dr. Pipt's Powders, son, will keep you wired for life. I will see to it that you stayed hooked up."

"But I don't like white powders, Doc! Why can't I smoke a pipe like old Feathertop?" whined Jimmy as he wiped his nose and shivered all over with a fresh wave of tension. He could feel his eye holes widen out and his heart, or what ever that served as a heart, race.

"Can't cop it kid! Mother Rigby died in the church and was buried along with her name. Nobody came. There is no more smoke to be had in this county," Dr. N snorts with a disapproving scowl. "Besides, kid, this is the same stuff your old granddaddy Jack used to get off."

"We could score some at Prospero's castle; his parties have everything."

"You gotta stay high kid, we don't have the connect. Besides you would not ever get into that party. You'd end up in the basement, your decaying face some freaks mushy moldy fuck-hole," Dr. N replies in a disinterested tone. "That's what I'm trying to tell you, Jimmy: you won't ever make it down the Yellow Sign Brick Road. You'll end up like the Scarecrow long before you even try to crash the party."

Furthermore, that the adventurer might lack no possible advantage towards a fair start in life, this excellent old dame gave him a token by which he was to introduce himself to a certain magistrate, member of the council, merchant, and elder of the church (the four capacities constituting but one man), who stood at the head of society in the neighboring metropolis. The token was neither more nor less than a single word, which Mother Rigby whispered to the scarecrow, and which the scarecrow was to whisper to the merchant.

"Gouty as the old fellow is, he'll run thy errands for thee, when once thou hast given him that word in his ear," said the old witch. "Mother Rigby knows the worshipful Justice Gookin, and the worshipful Justice knows Mother Rigby!"

Here the witch thrust her wrinkled face close to the puppet's, chuckling irrepressibly, and fidgeting all through her system, with delight at the idea which she meant to communicate.

Feathertop: A Moralized Legend

"But what about the Black Man's wardrobe that belonged to Feathertop and the special token? You told me that these were my inheritance as a gentleman. I feel just certain that I can gain admission to the Masque of the Yellow King!" Jimmy's eyes were wide and black with a luminescence that gave even Dr. N a shiver.

"You're all crunked up, kid. Here, let me pour you some more rum into that mug you're drinking from. You getting to excited. You've been drinking too much Meth cola to be doing Dr. Pipt's... you gotta come down some. Think clearly about this. I'm just trying to help you out kid. Crap, I got ya this job and a steady supply of what's going to keep you alive. Why do ya got to go and think about leaving now?"

Dr. Nikidik did, in fact, need Jimmy. He was one of the few persons who could deal to both the vollery of crows and to the squirrel gangs on the west-side. See, Jimmy had married a black bird, giving him a voice among the crow, and his famous granddad was killed by the Squirrel King ("Jack Pumpkinhead and the Sawhorse") before the said same old king was deposed by Wild Dagga, who now controls most of the Forest. As it went, when the Squirrel King shattered Jack's pumpkin head, old Jack was rescued by The Wizard of Oz hisself, and the Squirrel King suffered politically from this humiliation, shifting the balance of power. Jack came back around from his short death and worked underground to unite the crows and Wild Dagga in a decisive battle that toppled the monarchy and gave the gang bosses control of the forest.

What could have been great turned sour fast, and the truce only lasted for a little time before the Forest split along an East/West line. Gang war was taking a terrible toll on each side and was bad for business. That's where Jimmy Pumpkinhead came in: he was able to renegotiate the peace when he married a Black Bird— well, he didn't exactly marry her but did accidentally knock her up and this child was a prophesied King of the Forest that both gangs claimed to recognize. So the talk goes; I still wouldn't go walking alone in the West Side of the Forest.

---

Dig up this grave, the old lady said
The thing we need lies here dormant, sleeping with the dead
You understand what you ask of me
Not even death can set your soul free


I cast this curse and you will find
An evil darkness deep inside your vengeful mind
God damn you to hell (to hell) he could not restrain
He already has some, the witch did explain

-The Misfits
"Pumpkin Head"

Famous Monsters (1999)

Jimmy Pumpkinhead later that morning while trying to sleep has a disturbing dream... he was at the Masque of the Yellow King. He was wearing a clown face that he found in a jar by the door of Mother Rigby's old cabin. In the dream she had given him the face and gave him the secret pass word to access the Party at Prospero's. In the dream she gave him a pipe that he would need to smoke with, or rather told him where he could dig it up as it lay in an old grave.

He awoke and was about 8:00 and Dr. N was finally passed out. He headed to the grave site that Mother Rigby had revealed in his dream. Once he has this pipe he was certain that he could score the smoke and kick Dr. Nikidik's harsh "powder of life".

He picked his way though the forest avoiding the roads as much as possible. If anyone were to see him they might betray his plan to Dr. N if he were to inquire if they had seen him pass this way. Besides the dubious nature of this quest made it such that it would be best if no one knew that he had entered into the small village and was making his way to the cemetery grounds. As unsavory as the work was that was to be done he was desperate to obtain that which Mother Rigby had hinted to him in the dream.

He filled his belly on withered fallen apples outside a abandoned old cottage, stuffing some of the apples into his shirt to eat later on the road. He then made his way carefully into the graveyard to find the exact spot he would need to find. Oddly fortune favored him with finding an old rusted spade and an axe that were resting neatly on nails on the side of the cottage. It was as if they were placed there for him long ago. He stashed them just outside the graveyard and then making sure no one saw him began to examine the grave stones. It took him a while but just as the sun was setting it the west a orange ray of sunshine slipped though an old scraggly tree and shone on the spot of the very pretty carved stone. It was the headstone of Polly Gookin. He marked the area and then went to conceal himself until it was past midnight.

When Jimmy returned he carefully dug up the grave. Removing dirt until he hit the old wooden box that contained the remains of Polly. He smashes at the hinges and twisted open the coffin. He was surprised but not shocked to find moldering bones intertwined with a medley of straw and tattered garments, with some sticks protruding from the heap. He knew this to be Feathertop who has crawled into the grave with Polly Gookin his only love to rest with her for eternity. Jimmy Pumpkinhead stirred the rags and bones and was able to find an old pipe, just as he suspected. He slipped the pipe into his pocket. Then looking back decided that he would take the waistcoat tatters, the peruke, and gold-laced hat, set off with a scroungy dirty white feather. "Why not take it" he thought, and grabbed the scarlet breeches and peeled the white stockings off the brittle twigs that once were the legs of Feathertop.

With the pipe and the tattered rags balled up in a bundle he set out on the road to where he would find The Yellow Sign Brick Road. He was strangely weary, dizzy but the terrible anxiety kept him moving. As the moon came up very late casting a dim light on the road he knew he would have to stop and take a bump of the "Powder of Life". He twisted the small capsule and tapped it gently filling the chamber and took a quick snort. Beads of sweat rolled down his round orange face cutting a path through the grave dust that had settled there. He ambled as quickly as he could on his wooden legs and made a fair amount of progress until he decided to sleep in an old hollow log and wait out the day, travel at night and pick his path to the Masque of the Yellow King.

---

Little Miss Muffet
Sat on a tuffet,
Eating her curds and whey;
Along came a spider,
Who sat down beside her
And frightened Miss Muffet away.

-Roud Folk Song Index #20605

Jimmy Pumpkinhead was woken abruptly by the screams of a young woman who ran past the log where he was sleeping. It was around noon or so it seemed because the heat of the day was strong. The log was filled with a steamy dank smell of mold and decay all to similar to the open coffin of the night before. Not helping at all was the apples he had stuffed into his shirt. A sweet sick smell of rotting fruit that smelled faintly like his own musky scent but more fruity and sweet. He tried to ignore the smell and laid his head down only to become more and more aware of the buzzing sounds of flies. Flies swarming around the bundle of stolen grave clothes, the rotting apples and worse his own head that was becoming black and mushy in some spots. He needed more life powder but he shuddered at the thought of snorting another dose so soon. He pulled out the capsul and snorted a bump and then a quick second and felt the energy brace him. Exausted but wired he laid there until the sound of the flies in his head were driving him insane. He ate the apples to try to reduce the attraction of the flies. This did not really help. He decided to get up and wander a bit.

He came across a tuffet where a bowl of curds and whey were sitting on the ground spilling slightly onto the grass. He was still hungry and the cheesy gruel looked good so he looked around and then sat down on the tuffet and began to eat. Flies still buzzing around his head. He could tell they were laying eggs in the soft rotten pulp of his head. This was bad it would only accelerate the decay of his head and without Dr. N to do the repair work or replacement he would be in big trouble.

A large black spider, with furry mandibles and legs, descended on a strand of silk from the tree canopy overhead. Jimmy was too preoccupied to be alarmed of the spider. After all spiders can't harm a pumpkinhead.

"You stink of rotting fruit..." The spider said, eyeing him snobbishly. "I know it...and these flies are driving me nuts!" Jimmy admitted without shame of forethought. "Flies? I think I can help you out." The spider said climbing up a strand of web and then dropping back down on Jimmy's face crawling through his eye hole into the empty cavity of his head. Jimmy could feel the spider crawling around and suspected that he was spinning a web inside his head. Before long flies were going in and not coming out. Jimmy was full and the lack of flies gave his a tremendous amount of relief. "You can come out now." Jimmy spoke to the spider still in his dark hollow head. The spider simply said "It smells like rotten fruit but I think I will stay insider here for a while longer." Jimmy did not like the idea but what was he going to do. "I'm going on a journey up the Yellow Sign Brick Road so you probably want to get out now." "The Yellow Sign Brick Road, huh? Anythings gotta be better then this plague infested village.

They set out. It was not long that they came across the body of a young woman. She was covered in plague pox and had bled out her nose and eyes. Her body lay in some brambles and her arms were tore up with struggle. "There's the silly twat who was sitting on the tuffet underneath by old tree. She had been cast out of the village when they found out she had the Yellow Death." "That's awful," sighed Jimmy. "She was so young and beautiful."

---

He walked down the creaky, nowhere highway. Every mile there was a scarecrow being crucified. He found a yellow blanket along the road and he picked it up. He walked with it until he got tired then he slept in a ditch taking this must be the season of the witch.

23 Days in the life of Motley Howe

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With a faint buzzing in his head Jimmy picked his way along the Yellow Sign Brick Road careful not to look at the road. He had nearly smashed his soft pulpy head when he took a digger earlier that afternoon. He is almost glad to follow the path back into some dark woods as the miles of harvested corn fields, empty now but scattered with stubble and chaff. The abandoned scarecrows hanging tilted and decayed.

The air is noticeably cooler and more moist as he strides along the road as it sinks into the woods. A few flies buzz by his head attracted to the smell of the slightly rotten pulp. The fly into is nose and mouth only to be captured by the spider and spun into neat little packages that buzz quietly until they die. The trees look like they have long arms with jagged fingers and the bark makes them look like menacing sleeping figures with twisted faces of rage and indignation. For some reason he kept the axe he used to hew open the old casket in the grave yard. He is sort of using it like an arm which makes him feel more brave as his spindly stick arms were brittle and old. He takes a swipe at a tree branch and hews off a few fingers that stretch out into the path. Why he did not see it coming a mile off, as the rest of us did...the trees leap into animations and start to scream obscenities and wave their branch arms buffeting him about as he runs away down the path. He gets a few lucky hits in with his axe and splinters the branches that nearly tear off his head. The blows are so close that the spider, noticeable fatter, has dropped out and is floating on webs spun quickly in loops through the maddened swinging tree limbs.

"What the fuck were you thinking Jimmy, this was obviously a haunted forest" screams the spider. "Have you never read a book or seen a cartoon, you empty headed moron!"

Jimmy is not listening. He is hacking and running, running and hacking. He likes the hacking. As scared as he is its making him feel powerful. Winded he finally makes it to a clearing where the dead trees have ceased to dominate the path. There is a cottage set off the way with a cobble stone path.

He hears a woman scream. Not sure what he is thinking, and still sort of pumped with adrenaline he runs up the path to the cottage and looks in. He sees a huntsman struggling with a young woman trying to push her over the table in the kitchen. Her clothes are torn and her breasts are jiggling with the struggle. He sees the huntsman twist her arm hard flipping her on to her stomach and pushing her face into the table. The huntsman tears away her skirt and for the first time Jimmy sees that the huntsman has loosed his erection and is going to penetrate the woman in her now bare buttocks. Without thinking Jimmy smashes through the door and swings the axe into the huntsman head not realizing he is wearing a sort of Spanish morian helmet. The axe glaces off the steel and embeds in the dudes shoulder. The huntsman grabs his shoulder and the axe head and spins swinging a fist at Jimmy's face. It lands squarely with a hollow thud overpowering the slight squishy sound. Orange skin slips from the side of Jimmy's face leaving a slight impression of a fist and as Jimmy hurls back towards the door the axe arm is torn from his shoulder. He stumbles on his ass and puts up his hand in defense and closes his eyes in fear. As the huntsman goes to finish the smashing in of Jimmy's face with is fist Jimmy's outstretched splintered hands manage to find there way into his eyes. A scream of pain and disbelief from the huntsman are cut short by a hard solid thud and he falls to his knees then onto his face a small puddle of blood forming from his eyes and the smashed in skull at the back of his head. The woman is standing over him with a cast iron skillet in her hand, her eyes filled with rage, her bare breasts heaving with heavy breath.

Jimmy opens his eyes to find the place an utter mess of corpses. There is the almost nude body of an old woman torn to shreds by an animal. Throat torn open and blood drenched down her torso, making her look as if she was wearing wet red girdle and bra. Face badly mangled. Slumped at the foot of the bed is a wolf wearing the old lady's night clothes a large pool of blood having oozed out of a rather large gunshot wound in the chest. A large swath of blood and gore having been spattered against the wall above the bed. The huntsman with a flattened head. On second look its not actually a huntsman at all but a palace guard wearing the seal of Prince Prospero. Large plague poxs are noticeable on his neck and arms.

The spider is busy catching flies above the old woman and bundling them up in web.

The woman has thrown on a kitchen smock and is leaning towards jimmy to give him a hand up. "My name is Geneviève," She says. "Thank you for coming in when you did. That prick was going to ass fuck me for sure!"

"What hap-happened here?" Jimmy stutters out in shock. His eyes wide black triangles.

"Fucking Yellow Fever. I came out here to ride it out with my Grandma. No one comes out here cause of the haunted forest. Looks like the wolf killed her. Poor thing. Just as he was going to try to eat me that soldier came up and shot him. I was so grateful that he saved my life but within seconds I realized he was suffering from the Yellow Death. He must have seen the horror on my face cause it triggered a rage in him and he tried to rape me." Her eyes close as she finally realized the extent of the mayhem surrounding her. "Thank you for coming in when you did. That prick was going to ass fuck me for sure!"

Jimmy just blinks. Looks at the blood on his hands and over at the bloody axe. "I'm sorry." He says dumbly, noticing the spider gathering flies above the mangled corpse of her grandmother.

"You don't look so well. You don't have the Fever do you?" she says in a defeated weary tone.

"No. I'm a pumpkinhead. We don't get The Fever" Jimmy says consolingly in a slightly defensive tone. "I'm on my way to Prospero's party where I can score some Smoke so I don't have to rely on the Powder of Life."

"You will never get in that party." she scoffs. "It for the elite only."

"Oh, I'm getting in alright. I have the pass word and I have a costume as well. I'm going to get that smoke. I know they have it...tons of it." Jimmy quips with stifled rage.

"I hate white powders too. It's been ages since I was able to get high. You know ever since the Yellow Fever they have hoarded all the drugs in the castle and no one will risk swinging herb when everyone is infected. But I would be terrified to go to that party. Those pricks will ass fuck you for sure!"

"No one's going to ass fuck me Ginny, can I call you Ginny? besides it can't be that bad...its just a huge party."

"You ain't seen the pile of corpses that were fucked to death"

"Well I'm going. You can come along too if you want. Or you can hang out here until someone else comes out of that forest." Jimmy says tucking the axe handle back into his sleeve and moving it about to get the feeling back in his arm.

"I'll need a costume. Let me just skin this wolf really quick. I got a basket of cakes. Want some?" She opens a basket and gives Jimmy some cakes. He sits and eats them and soon she comes back with a bloody wolf skin draped over her shoulders. She puts on the morion which shoves the wolf face down over her forehead its fangs glistening white among the drying blood. She swings a red riding cape over the wolf skin and pulls the hood over the helmet."OK, lets go. You say you can get us in...we might as well party our asses off!"

---

A yellow fever is spreading across the land like jelly over a square of toast. Starts is vertigo, nausea vomiting. But the final stage is a couple weeks of yellow fever. Skin turns a unpleasant yellow tone. Brain over heats from wave after wave of fever. Into a delirium. Some people get up and act out hallucinations of a foul sick dangerous world they see. Many get violent. You are among the second wave of victims. You are sure it came from the sickly looking man in the movie theater row behind you who puked up this horrid smelling filth and splatters of it got on you and your friend who also turned sick in a couple days.

A yellow fever sickness sweeps across the land

---

They wander for two days though an empty land. The last of any survivors driven off..suspectedly. The rest dead and moldering away.

At last they make it to the Castle. A strange silence. It is almost deafening. Not at all what Jimmy and Ginny expected to hear as they approach the Party of Prospero. Corpses lay in heaps outside the gate...which lies open...

"The Puke is all dry." Observes Ginny. The spider drops from Jimmy's head and scurries over to the rotting corpses and starts putting together a quick web.

They climb over the corpses and get inside the giant gate. It is a scene of comic horror. Clown corpses, barnyard animal corpses, corpses in bear masks, corpses in jester masks, even corpses wearing paper Chris Titan masks...

"Oh no, we are too late. I will surly die without some Smoke." Jimmy whispers in panicked horror.

"Just relax, Jimmy. Look around. Over there is a full bar they died but the stash is around here somewhere. I just hope these corpses are not infectious..." She picks thorough the pockets of a long haired clown and finds a baggie of Kush nuggets. "Here Jimmy, try this out"

Jimmy loads up the pipe he got from Feather Tops grave and blazed up a huge toke. He coughs orange spittle and sighs with a huge rindy grin. His face growing brighter and fresher almost instantly.

"Oh shit, Jimmy. I did not realize how cute you were. Gimme a hit off that pipe." Ginny takes a toke. Her eyes instantly turn bloodshot red. "Let's find somewhere else to kick it. This scene is a bummer.

They start to climb up some stairs and they meet Dorthy and Alice who were on their way down to check up on why things had become so quite. They are afraid of Jimmy and Ginny at first but before long they realize that they are late comers, don't have the Yellow Fever and are friendly. Dorthy and Alice share their food stash and show Jimmy were he can find the main stash. A few pounds of OG Cush and a sack of good seeds.

The next year Jimmy is standing out in his crop with a huge grin.

They all live in the Castle happy for a long time with no one to bother them...cause most everyone is dead and gone.

The End... or is it?