Jimmy Pumpkinhead

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

⤓ Whatever happened to the Scarecrow?
-The Masque of the Yellow King (album)

"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 poweder 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 whipped 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.

"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.

"Your all crunked up kid. Here let me pour you some more rum into that mug your drinking from. You getting to excited. You 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 The vollery of the birds and to the squirrel gangs on the west-side. Jimmy had married a black bird and