Jack was a born happy as everyone is wont to be. But from then on it was an uphill battle. So much so, upon reaching the grand old age of twelve his countenance was so filled with misery and despair and some permanently fixed expression of unknown terror, that it roiled around in a tense mixture, completely transparent to anyone, like a fishbowl filled with water.
There came a day when Jack started killing things he came near- rabbits, bees, board games, hopes- flowers wilted when he walked by- but he couldn't do a thing about it. He refused to leave the house, no matter what anyone told him. He refused to believe that fresh air might cheer him up. A sparrow had dropped on him, quite injured, as he sat tentatively on the front porch yesterday, you see. It's will to fly had suddenly died an unnatural death. He'd rather haunt his house forever more, he thought, than put himself through the embarrassment and pain of his predicament.
For the trouble with Jack wasn't that he was the world's most miserable wretch- it was that he wasn't actually real at all. Jack was just a collection of oddments and curiosities put together by someone who had really wanted to build a scarecrow but made him instead.
