I don't write many tales around holidays, but this is one and it usually gets...interesting responses...ahem. So, without further ado, let's get to "The Perfect Pumpkin," and you can let me know your take on it, too.
Enjoy!
***
The
Perfect Pumpkin
by
John Claude Smith
“If it wasn’t a week before Halloween, I’d be scared crazy. But I know you well enough, Danny, to know
that you like to tell stories, and I’ve already heard this one a dozen times
over the last two weeks.”
“But it’s true, Melinda. Cutter’s
farm is where old Dr. Ranier does abortions, or at least did them. Look, it’s perfect: it’s just far enough out
of town as to be kind of anon … anonymous.
He used to be a doctor, a…a baby doctor—”
“Obstetrician.”
“Yeah, yeah, an obstetrician. And
he was disbarred—”
“That’s for a lawyer.”
“Well, shit, Brainiac! He lost
his license and moved out here, about ten, maybe twelve-years-ago, and since
he’s not really a farmer, he has to have some income, so he—”
“So he sets up office as a country abortionist—”
“And the babies are supposed to come back to haunt anybody who
trespasses—”
“Stop! I’ve heard enough. He must be doing some farming now, otherwise,
where’d all these pumpkins come from?”
“I dunno, they must grow wild.
Creepy stuff, eh?”
“Just nightmares or rumors. Made-up
stories meant to scare teenagers from having sex, and in this case, ‘cause of
the abortionist slant, getting pregnant and all that. Kind of a gruesome safe sex message, don’t
you think? And isn’t that what all
horror stories made primarily for teenagers are up to, anyway? Just like in the movies, if you’re a teenager
and you have sex, the boogeyman’s gonna get you—ooooOOOOOoooo, I am so
frightened.”
With whiplash precision, she shifted her attitude from mockingly scared
to salaciously seductive, easily distracting him. “Danny, oh, Danny, bab-eeeee...” She purred
the last syllable, long and languid. She
grabbed his crotch, squeezing hard, whispering something nasty and oh-so-enticing
in his ear. As his penis turned to
steel, his brain turned to mush.
Having gotten his attention, she let go and backed away. “You gonna help me get a perfect pumpkin from
this patch or not?”
“What about my—”
“Later, big boy, when we’re out of range of any sexually oppressed
boogeymen disguised as abortionist farmers.”
Danny Cruise peered out at the
fog-mottled field, wispy tendrils like plumes of thickening smoke eerily
weaving through the pumpkins, looking like a congregation of ghosts…or a herd
of monstrous beasts lashing the pumpkins with writhing tentacles. His imagination sprang back to life with a
potency that unnerved him while coinciding with the deflation of his
penis. Melinda Harner, his girlfriend,
folded her arms across her burgeoning bosom, trying to fend off the October
chill. She peered at him, obstinate in
her quest to obtain the perfect pumpkin.
Now that she had spotted what she claimed was the most perfect pumpkin for
miles around, in which she would carve the winner in the school contest,
something that brought a wee bit of fame in a small town like Bloomfield, she
was dead set on obtaining this pumpkin, and only this pumpkin. No other pumpkin would suffice.
Danny hopped over the barbed-wire fence, ragged metal tips ripping two
fingers. He winced, put the stinging
fingers in his mouth, and sprinted toward the fog-embraced pumpkin patch.
“Which one did you want?” His
voice seemed not to carry, trapped in the puffy white shroud of fog. But it did carry, and she responded
“There,” Melinda harrumphed, pointing to his right at the perfect
pumpkin for her to carve a masterpiece.
Her voice hit Danny with the force of a thunderclap; goose bumps tickled
his flesh.
After having heard about the fat, perfect pumpkins in this patch, as
well as the sordid recent history of the farm via whispers in the hallways at
Lincoln High, anxiously retold by Danny mere minutes ago, Melinda knew she had
to check it out. Her nature was
competitive and she was always looking for that special edge. If this patch actually had the perfect
pumpkin she coveted, she knew the edge would be hers. No horror stories were going to stand in her
way.
“Here?” he said, pointing at one of the dozen or so seemingly perfect,
unblemished pumpkins in the direction she had pointed. How could she even tell the difference?
“No, there,” she bellowed, the
volume almost knocking him over again.
It was cold and he was tired and if he didn’t really love her, he’d
already be anywhere but here with a space heater melting his icy flesh and
thawing out his freezing blood.
Without speaking, he pointed, and she shook her head, yes--thank
God! He pulled out his switchblade and
cut the coarse vine, trying to disengage the pumpkin. After a brief struggle he was victorious, but
noticed he’d smeared blood all over the ragged stem.
He plucked it from its roost, amazed by its weight. It was about as big as a slightly super-sized
basketball. Not huge, but its heft made
his arms ache. She better be really
appreciative for this, he thought, and ran back to the fence. He handed the pumpkin to her so he could hop
over the fence again.
“Careful, it’s heavy,” he said, as he put it in her eager hands. She grunted and agreed.
“Damn! For its size, that’s gotta
be the heaviest pumpkin I’ve ever felt.”
Danny braced himself and leaped, this time with even less grace,
catching his foot and plopping down hard on his butt. Melinda laughed at his awkward
predicament. He frowned at her.
“What? I do this favor for you
and you laugh at me now, ‘cause I’m cold and tired and…”
She leaned over and kissed him on the forehead as he brushed the weeds
out of his hair and clothes.
“Carry this, would ya?” More
insistent than requesting, already handing him the pumpkin.
“I’m just your slave—”
“Slave to my beguiling charms.”
She put on the act, puppy dog eyes and pouting lips on full
display.
They started the two-mile trek back into town, their pace brisk, trying
to keep warm.
“It’s probably cursed. Probably
why I tripped up going over the fence.”
“You’re just clumsy. There’s no
curse for takin’ a pumpkin. No dead
babies gonna haunt you. I’m just gonna
carve a winner out of this one.”
“That stuff is true. I mean, all
that about Dr. Ranier doing abortions and stuff.” He put his fingers in his mouth again,
balancing the pumpkin against his chest.
Apparently the cuts were deeper than he’d thought, and continued to
bleed profusely.
They both fell silent for a handful of minutes, purposeful strides
taking over as the night grew even colder.
The overcast skies portended rain and they just wanted to make it home
before it started.
And then Danny stumbled, dropping the pumpkin. Not hard, catching it before it really hit
the ground, but enough to have it land with a leaden thump on the dirt.
“Damn it, klutz! Do you need
walking lessons or what?” Melinda was
beside herself with anger, squatting to inspect the pumpkin. All this for naught, she thought; all this
for naught.
“Shit, Melinda. It’s not like I
meant to—”
“You bleedin’ on it?”
“Yeah, cut my finger on the fence, bled on the stem.”
Melinda scooted away from the pumpkin, inexplicably alarmed. “How can that be? The pumpkin’s got blood comin’ from inside.”
They both watched as a thin line of blood trickled from a miniscule
crack at the bottom, where it had hit the ground. The red liquid pooled in the dirt.
“T-That’s impossible,” she said.
“Can’t be any blood comin’ from inside a pumpkin, only pumpkin, seeds
and all. You must have bled a lot more
than you thought.”
She forced a smile, obviously in denial of what she was witnessing. More blood seeped from the crack.
Danny pulled out his switchblade and approached the pumpkin. He knelt before it, not really sure what he
was going to do, but feeling safer with the knife in his hand.
“Danny?”
With suddenness, curiosity took over, and he plunged the knife into the
thick hide of the pumpkin. Blood gushed
out, mixed with another unknown fluid that diluted the crimson tide, along with
stringy pumpkin guts and pumpkin seeds, spattering the dirt and his shoes. He pried with the knife and his fingers,
pulling the pumpkin apart.
“Oh, Christ!” He moaned in
revulsion at what he saw.
Melinda squealed, “What is it, Danny? What is it?”
The pumpkin had split wide open like a cracked egg. Danny jumped to his feet, hands dripping wet.
An intolerable stench was belched from
within the split pumpkin, forcing him to cover his face with his sleeve, while
Melinda openly retched, dry and empty.
She was on her feet as well, fingers digging crescents into Danny’s
arms. He didn’t feel a thing. They both just stared in horror and disgust.
Within the womb of the
pumpkin, entwined within a network of ripped veins, a ruptured clear sac, and
pumpkin guts and seeds, two large yellow eyes, like jaundiced moons devoid of
pupils, attempted to blindly seek out the source of intrusion. It probably did not see them, thought Danny,
as his stomach roiled like a fist-sized hurricane, battering his insides.
It was a fetus, a mutation of inconceivable ugliness borne of nightmares
and rumors and curses made real.
“Oh my God, Danny…Danny!” Melinda cringed, teetering on hysterical.
The obscenity, skin stained with blood but otherwise as orange as a
healthy pumpkin, turned itself in the direction of Melinda’s voice, the tiny
holes where ears should be steering it in their direction. Gurgling noises emanated from its throat, wet
sounds and orange spittle passing by its lipless slit of a mouth.
“We need to go--now!” Melinda,
beside herself, doing a nervous dance of desperation. She wanted away from here posthaste…or
sooner!
“Wait,” Danny said. “I think it’s
trying to…say something.”
Melinda pulled harder on Danny’s arm, afraid to leave without him, the
night and clouds and vast darkened landscape uninviting despite her urgency to
run as far away from here as possible.
“C’mon! Let’s go!”
The sound that rose from the baby’s mouth unhinged the muscles in
Danny’s legs. He slumped to the ground,
transfixed by the fetal abomination squirming and convulsing and hideously alive within the pumpkin. Melinda tumbled with him, but not for
long. He scrambled to his feet and
dragged her to hers, his feet pounding the dirt like a chorus of hammers,
matching the freight train rhythm of his heart.
His swiftness almost lifted Melinda into the air as one would a
kite. The utterance, repeated again and
again, insistent, scarred the night with its cawing message, resonant and
haunting, cursing both of their ears forever.
One word, only one, but Danny and Melinda would remember it until the
day they died.
“Daddy,” it screeched, it begged.
“Daddy!”
***
There ya go! Did you like that? Icky enough for ya? Heheh...
Shameless Self-Promotion:
There's three books by yours truly ready for your perusal this Halloween. Check the blurbs and reviews and rock 'n' roll, folks. Buy one, buy all. Riding the Centipede is my latest, a true wild ride, the best thing I've as yet had published, though The Dark is Light Enough for Me and Autumn in the Abyss bring the weird/horror/or-just-plain-Dark goods, too. Just click on the titles and check 'em out! Thank you!
The Dark is Light Enough for Me
Autumn in the Abyss
Riding the Centipede
Anyway, enjoy your Halloween, everybody!
:-)
Perhaps this Great Pumpkin creature is a relative of the pumpkin baby in my story, eh? Well...
Art courtesy of Phill-art.
