When he was born, Pence raised his little sopping head, smiled, and said, "I thank you, mother, for the gift of your pain, and I shall repay as I might."
When Pence was a toddler, he was given to the women in the hedge to nurse, and their cracked voices whispered of storms, and their milk tasted of sphagnum, and when he could walk he stole their shared eye and offered it as he shook and wept before a cross of elm twigs.
When Pence began to go to school in his little tie and pressed slacks, the children would tease him, but he smiled and smiled and his small hands clasped upon his bosom, and he said, for he had been found worthy, "My pain is a prayer, and so shall yours be."
When Pence went to high school, in the locker room he beheld a naked form for the first time. Unembarrassed, he gazed and said, "One day, your beauty shall wither like the lilies, and it is I who shall wield the drought."
When Pence had his first kiss, he did not understand why the flesh was not warm, nor the reason for its curious inflexibility. "Mother," came the word unbidden to his lips, "mother, mother," and "mother!" again as he felt sharp teeth upon the inside of his wrist.
Upon Pence's wedding day, at the altar he saw tears in Karen's eyes, and he smiled comfortingly. "Why is this happening?" she said. "Why?" But the elm cross made no answer, and the eyeless women of the hedge did not speak, and Pence's smile was so wide, and so small.
When Pence's first child was born, he held the small body lightly, and said to Karen, "Now you are Mother." And Karen said, "Now I am Mother." And she smiled as he took that child and made recompense with it, and a year later their son Michael was born.
When Pence ran for the House, he made his children gather round the elm cross. They cried. His eyes were flint. "Pray," he said. "We don't know how!" they sobbed. "I will teach you," he said, and each of them felt upon their mouths the musty fingers of the hedge women.
When Pence served in Congress, after each vote there was a strange joy on his face. His colleagues learned not to speak to him, for they would feel a kind of pressure and static in their eyes, and visions of a small twiggy cross. And he took these visions home to Mother.
When Pence ran for governor, he knew there would be much demanded of him. It was a pity he only had three children: they could not be expended. But there were other children in the world, and they were not his, and the cross would have its fill.
When Pence was governor, his secretary came into the office early one morning. The windows were open. A breath of moss and standing water stirred the air. Upon the carpet Pence lay, a smile his only garment, and 3 weedy-leafy women raised their faces from him and hissed at her.
When Pence ran for his second term, he had not yet repaid his mother's pain, and the elm cross took as much as it gave, and he knew there was far, far more it would ask, and far more it would take, and for the first time he had no smile. But Karen did.
When Pence's campaign still ran, Karen came to him, her smile white as sepulchres, and she said, "There are other powers." Pence felt the rightness of this in his bones. And he called upon those powers, and ended his campaign, and smiled once more.
When Pence ran for vice-president, the elm cross with its small powers sat almost neglected. The hedge women moaned in their slow dance: what pain he might cause would no longer be theirs. And Pence looked upon his new master and said, "You are no mother. I am master now."
When Pence was running for vice-president, he looked upon the world's wealth of children, and sorted them like grain. "These are mine and these are Thine and these are mine and these are Thine," he sang as he worked. And those that were his smiled.
When Pence became vice-president, in his little tie and pressed slacks, many mocked him. But he smiled and smiled, and felt the prickling inside his jaws that he must soon release, and the same within Karen's. He was Master and Mother both, granter of agony.
When Pence was vice-president, he opened his mouth and his children came forth, of many descriptions, many voices, sleek of carapace and wide of smile. And he and Mother sat side by side on their throne of orange flesh, and in its niche the elm cross shuddered.
Now in Indiana the hedge women starve, and the bark of the elm cross withers, and Pence smiles and smiles, for his debt is paid, and what pain there still is for the world, he wreaks for himself and for his children.
And the rest of the world is Thine.
And the rest of the world is Thine.
Make sure to right click and "view image", because he's got some pretty extravagant campaign promises.
