On a small wooden chair, next to an ochre table, a rag-doll had folded over at the waist, clad in rags from head to toe bar the straw hat upon his head and the green-tinted glasses resting on his nose. The doll’s patchy hair was made of straw and when it sat up, a nearby child jumped with shock. It was a scarecrow, decrepit with the years, his carrot nose snapped, left with only one button eye.

The brain was ruined, too full of straw to work much longer. A tumour had developed in the back of his head that caused his seams to fall out stitch by stitch. It had grown until all the sawdust that comprised his brain was gone, and now all that was left was the tumour, slowly eating at him.

The Scarecrow didn’t want this brain any more. In fact, he wanted someone else’s. The one brain in the whole land of Oz that could rule over everyone. His unraveling fingers brushed lightly over the revolver in his stretched pocket as he remade his plan once more.