“Run!” screamed the puppet. “Into the forest. Run.”

And so I did, leaving Blacktooth staring at the spot I’d just left. I snatched Jones up out of the dirt as I ran. Drool was wailing my name as I passed by but if I stopped now we’d both be killed. This way, perhaps a rescue.

“Don’t fight, lad,” I called over my shoulder. Then I vaulted a fallen tree nearly as thick as I was tall and landed in a pile. I climbed to my feet and glanced back over the tree at my pursuers. But there were none. All the watchmen, even those holding Drool, were looking at the spot where I had ducked under Blacktooth’s sword. Not even an eye turned my way.

“Bloody bumbling knobs,” I muttered to myself. “Can’t even give proper chase.”

“Well they wouldn’t chase, would they?” said the puppet Jones. “What with you being dead and all.”

I tossed the puppet stick away; it bounced and came to rest on a bed of moss.

“Don’t be such a wilted willy about it,” said the puppet. “You’d think you’re the only one ever had his head chopped off.”

“My head is not chopped off.” I tugged at my coxcomb to confirm my point as I am often unreliable.

“Fine, call to your mates.”

So I did. I shouted at Drool, at the Mechanicals, called to Blacktooth, “Over here, thou bee-brained cocksplat!” Not a head turned. Not an ear perked. No ire was sparked. Drool whimpered and wept as he was bound by the watchmen.

“Dead,” said the puppet.

“But I am here.”

“Talking to a puppet on a stick.”

“That does seem a bit out of order.”

“’Tis often said, there’s always a bloody ghost, you know?”

“And I am he?”

“Indeed.”

“Why can’t I see my dead body?”

“Rules, I reckon.”

“So I am slain.”

“Sharp as a rolling road-apple, you are.”

“Fuckstockings!”

*

Well, death was a darkling dollop of dog wank. Neither paradise nor perdition as promised. No shining gates to welcome me into the bosom of those I had loved, nor pit to pull me onto the pikes of mine enemies. No angels sang me into sweet slumber, nor did a thousand barb-dicked devils bugger me senseless. Even of peace was I deprived, for as my spirit wandered in that poxy wood, worry still wrinkled my bruised brow over Drool, sadness over lost love still weighed heavy in my heart, even hunger still dug at my gut. Had I known hunger would follow me into the undiscovered country I would have taken more time for lunch before shuffling off this mortal coil.

And what an ignominious death it was! Death by dunderheaded official? I grieved for myself, for despite the most minor snag in character or smudge of misdeed, in life I had been fucking lovely.

I thought to rend my clothes in grief but halted as I had only the one outfit to serve me for a death that might go on for a dogfuckingly long time; instead I leapt onto the fallen tree trunk from behind which I had watched Drool and the Mechanicals being led away by the watch, and I cried out to the empty forest: “Woe! Agony! And Despair! I am slain! I am slain and I grieve for a barren, broken world deprived of my delight.”

“Oh for fuck’s sake, shut your festering gob, you wanker!” cried the puppet Jones, who had persisted in chattering on without my help.

Oh, I had before lusted for the grave, years ago when my sweet queen was murdered, even for a moment when the wave overturned our boat and the briny deep pulled me down, I felt an instant of relief—surrender to sweet oblivion, only to be yanked back to a confusion of quick bright things. But if this were truth, even then there would have been no rest, but penance to wander sodden and sullen to the jabbering cadence of a self-possessed puppet. At least poor Drool might have been spared capture, and would now be licking berry juice from thorn-pricked paws while pert and nimble Cobweb stood by with eyes like harvest moons full in amazement. Poor dribbling giant, beyond my reach or rescue, but not my concern.

“Why not just let me drift in the dark!” I shouted to any gods who might have been listening. “Let me be to un-be!”

“So,” said a bloke’s voice, close enough behind to startle me. “Newly dead, are you then?”

I nearly fell off the log turning toward the voice. There, in the hollow of the broken, moss-covered stump from which my own tree had fallen, sat a nearly naked fellow, as pale as the moon, his head a mop of black curls that he shook out of his eyes as he grinned.

“It would seem,” said I.

“Won’t be needing that jaunty jester’s hat then, will you?”

I touched my hat, black and silver satin like my jerkin, three tentacles, each as long as my forearm, once tipped with gaily jingling bells, now denuded, bell-less, sad and silent. “I quite like this hat.”

“It’s smashing. And will be more so once it graces my melon.” He jumped onto my tree and scampered to me, held out his hand. “I’ll have it.”

“You will not have it, thou unctuous little hedgehog,” said I. He was shorter than me by a head but sturdy. He was barefoot and wore nothing but a loincloth belted at the waist with a vine. A doeskin pouch hung at his hip.

“Come on, hand it over. You can’t use it, you’re dead. No one can even see you.”