The Knack of Pumpkin Jack

"Get away from my pumpkin patch"-Jack

It was more persistent than a dense fog but more eerie than airy. The glare of the morning horizon caught on his brightly white chompers. His jaw cartoonishly swayed from left to right, and its drooping caused his face to elongate and mimic a pampered horse. His hat could pierce the heavens and sat, quaintly upon his balding scalp. The man of smiles, seemingly finished with the stupefied face of Jack and his unwillingness to cooperate, rose his arm up to Jack's moistened forehead, pointed his index finger and kissed the skin, softly with the furthermost tip of his finger. Jack froze, wholly. But, the man of smiles grinned widely, still.

The village of Hurtsbrow, small, but bustling with rumors, grievances, and wrongdoings, stood upon a hill, dead and quiet. The land seemed to grow more desolate as each season came and went like a common passerby. The innskeeper knew most, if not all of Hurtsbrow's ills. It seemed that these grievances, rumors, and wrongdoings multiplied with each soft landing of a single snowflake, often melting quickly. Aunt Feme of an insecure and poor family, induced her own form of contraception with a sharded window pane; irrefutably preventing further poverty. A small, but curious boy, lurked on the balcony of the 2nd landing of the tart house, gandering a glance of the curves and bosom of its beauties. He must've been careless because the dogs swarmed around his strown brains amongst the ground, greedily curling it with their tongues and into their mouths. Most recent with infamous popularity, it is said that a passerby, most unknown and mysterious, had his way with the prized hog. With the weight of five grown men and a smell of soured milk and defeated feces, it's almost too hard to believe. However, this as Cecelia, the innskeeper would say, "is just the way it is around here".

My body felt hot, sticky, scorched beyond measure. "WAKE UP! WAKE UP! NOO, FOR THE GREAT GODS ABOVE, I CONDEMN YOU TO OBEYY!", I graciously exclaimed upon another restless night of pain. Finally, as if answered, my leg jerked from under the covers and hovered, limply over the bed post. The rest of my body followed suit, followed by my other leg and then my hips, chest, neck, and head. My bones felt hollow, and as I glanced across the quaint room and into my own reflection, presented with honors by the Sun off the window, I wrinkled my forehead in disgust, "You look like an a*s, Jack". But before I could self-loathe any further, a loud knock reverberated from the entry door and up the beaten staircase into my room. "KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK". And without a fleeting second, "KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK". With urgency, I stepped off the bed, hastily snatched my wooden cane, resting upon my nightstand, and wriggled into an unflattering night gown. I haphazardly hobbled down the staircase and rounded the corner to where the entry corridor greeted my ill-tempered frow. Upon opening and the swaying of the door, a waft of sweated milk and leather caught my attention, abruptly. But blinded by the appetizer, the full-course of a silhouetted man came into view. With a top hat and a smile that went on forever, he smirked, "The Pumpkin Patch, please, caretaker". "You know how it goes".

"NO, NOT TODAY, SMILEY!", Jack screams and pouts, defiantly.

With Jack being frozen and absent of time's flow, the man of smiles calmly turns to trot back down the few steps to the cottage of Jack. With a poise of vigor and arrogance, he makes way to the Pumpkin Patch as a half circle to the rear. Rows upon rows of pumpkins, some gnarly and warty and others smooth and plainly, tatter the ground and multiply with each step, as he makes his way closer to the patch. Wooden poles, gates, and wired spool sprawl around the perimeter of the patch, protecting the bounty from the perversion of Hurtsbrow and its teeming vermin. The man of smiles lifts the wooden gate closest to the cottage, and continues his stride into a straight line, disregarding the pumpkins he does not seek. Nearing the middle of the patch, a pumpkin in average size, shape, and luster lay. It seemed almost too perfect, a specimen worthy of no gaze or remarks.

The man of smiles reaches down to the spout of the average pumpkin, grips it tightly, and uncorks it like a sealed wine bottle. And with the popped spout, a powerful build-up of red mist shot out and covered the vicinity. It thickly engrossed the nearby pumpkins with a reddish coagulated sludge. Ghastly dripping remains of tentacled and tattered arterie-like strands attached to the bottom of the fleshy pumpkin's husk and spout. Upon the settling of the red mist, the contents of the pumpkin revealed itself. A mangled infant in the fetal position. The same blood-dripped fleshy strands attached to the spawn like grossly and complex intertwined spider webs on all sides of its skinless body. The hideous creature let out an animal-like cry and writhed in pain. It seemed to show a natural knack for manipulation, as it so desperately tried to mimic a human infant's cry. The stale air of the morning's horizon reacted with its flesh and started to boil it slowly, but deeply, like a thickened pot of stew. "Yes, aren't you growing quite nicely indeed", the man of smiles whispered affectionately to the spawn. "In just two full moons, you shall be ready".

It seems the perversion of Hurtsbrow has given birth to an evil that not even Cecelia, the innskeeper, knows. That's just the way it is around here, however.