Severed #6

Part Six, "Permanent Teeth"
written by Scott Snyder and Scott Tuft
art by Attila Futaki

In "Permanent Teeth," now that he's begun to see what Alan Fisher really is, Jack shows himself to be an unexpectedly resourceful survivor, planting lies and bear traps to facilitate his escape.  Jack has grown up.  No longer the naïve, green boy who ran away from home in search of his biological father, the experiences of his time on the road—his near-assault by the trainmen, rescue by hobos, growing friendship with Sam, thinly veiled threats of Mr. Fisher, Sam's perceived betrayal, the assault by underage Christy's brutal pimp, Mr. Fisher's scalping of the molestor, and the slow realization of Sam's innocence and Mr. Fisher's deceit—have all aged Jack into someone with mistrust and regret and not a little bitterness.

Snyder and Tuft structure "Permanent Teeth" as a series of chess moves, with Jack and the predator known as Mr. Fisher one-upping each other in a mortal game of cat-and-mouse.  Still playing along with Fisher's recording studio lie, Jack follows him warily to a remote cabin in the woods of Mississippi, but when Jack finally confronts the old man, he reveals himself to be the shark-toothed cannibal he is.  That he eats children is gruesome enough, but that he takes such pleasure in isolating and seducing them, that the chase is fun is truly macabre.  "I've played this game before and truth is... ...I always win" (Severed #6: 10).  But Jack turns the killer's arrogance and delight in the hunt to his advantage, setting a decoy shirt in the woods and laying the man's own bear trap to snare him before stealing the car, which Fisher taught him to drive no less, and making his escape.

After receiving a friendly lift from a half-blind carriage driver when his car breaks down, Jack makes his way to the solitary farm house listed for his father.  But is Mr. Fisher's final, devastating trick—the trap he's been setting before he even started writing to the adopted orphan—that cuts to the quick.  John Parker Brakeman has been dead since 1905, since Jack was one year old.  Instead, Fisher lies in ambush in the wardrobe, in an upstairs bedroom ominously decorated with "Welcome Home Jack" carved in the walls and ceiling.  If Jack had any delusions of a perfectly happy ending left after his travels, this final betrayal eradicated them.  If Severed is a horror story about losing one's innocence, Jack's is now gone, entirely.