“Why not?”
Erin didn’t answer him. Instead she said, “Maybe I can put a glamour on them to look like shark eyes.”
“You think so?” he asked excitedly.
“Maybe.”
Andrew’s face fell as she put out all of the food of the kitchen table.
“Nah, you’ll get in trouble. We’re both gonna get in trouble.”
“Yeah, eventually,” she replied as she laid out paper plates and silverware. “But it’s Tuesday, the 26th. The parents made their weekly call to check in on Sundays. I know, ‘cause I overheard once. That means I can still go to my party on Friday and you…”
“Can totally go trick or treating on Saturday! On Halloween!”
“Well, Halloween is on Sunday, but trick or treating hours are on Saturday this year, so yeah. Yeah. Fuck it, we’ll get in trouble next week.” Andrew and Erin, both smiling, ate in silence for a while. After a bit, however, their own thoughts began to consume them. The siblings had the same thoughts.
“Erin?” Andrew asked as he pushed his macaroni around on the plate.
“Yeah?”
“Why can’t we live with our real parents? With our own people like us and stuff?”
Andrew always asked the same question shortly after they had murdered their latest set of surrogate parents. Erin felt like she should be mad at him since he kept bringing it up, but she had the same feelings. The whole thing made her angry.
“I dunno, Andrew. The Aes Sidhe Elders want the youth to, like, integrate with the humans or something. They don’t want the Unseelie Court hiding in the shadows anymore, I guess.”
The young Goblin cast his eyes over at the dead body of their most recent Mom. “Um, I don’t think it’s working.”
“No, Andrew,” Erin said with a sad smile. “I don’t think so, either.” THE PERFECT PUMPKIN
John Claude Smith
John Claude Smith has had 50 dark fiction veering into horror veering into what-the-hell-was-that?, short stories, 3 poems, and over 1,100 music journalism pieces published. He is currently aligning the TOC for an ebook anthology entitled, The Dark Is Light Enough For Me, while his agent shops around two novels. A third novel is thisclose to first draft finished—really, if he wasn’t typing up this bio, it might be done! He is presently nomadic, living between Northern California and Rome, Italy, with intentions towards planting himself in the latter.
***
“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, Brainic! 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 kids 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 kids are up to, anyway?
Just like in the movies, if you’re a teenager and you have sex, the boogyman’s gonna get you—ooooOOOOOoooo, I’m soooo 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 boogymen 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, she thought, for her to carve a masterpiece. Her voice hit Danny with the force of a thunderclap; goosebumps 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 that he’d smeared blood all over the ragged stem. He assumed it was from his still bleeding fingers, not inclined to inspect it any further.
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.”