Nicholas to Jack: The Final Trial

Jack,

My head, hollow as pumpkins.

The skeleton comes and sits beside me. He talks in my ear with my same grin, but has nothing to say. I found your name at the top of his page. I am so much more vast than a skeleton, my hands not a Jack’s hands. And I am a rat, and have no name.

There are a great many voices, now. They come each skeleton to me and have nothing to say, but they bring with them the warm feelings of attrition. Must I lay down? This room is very strange. With it’s smoking corners and no tellings of an hour or a season or a world. My ears are rung. I must’ve been born motherless. I was spit out, I know.

I can almost remember a dark-haired man, and the tune of song played again and again. It trips over itself crossing the bones of my chest but does not fall. It gets to the middle and it what was I saying then?

No tea, I suppose. There’s never any tea. They had quite a time, didn’t they? We did. No, I don’t remember. I might be fingerless, how I reach out with my heart and receive nothing. We did. No, there is no one here.

Do I love myself? Do I love an egg? Do I love the way

I thought I heard something.

Clang of a pot. Scratch of the quill.

There has never been anyone but this sheet tells me it’s name and I tell it I have not. Oh, I am a fish. I feel nothing. The slime of my eyes.

-Slime