The Pumpkin

The Pumpkin

Ron Koppelberger

Restoring the shattered remnants of the pumpkin would be difficult. Crew Frisk Took a long narrow piece of solder from the roll and heated it with acetylene torch. The Pumpkin was a tarnished tin and it had been smashed and broken by some of the local hoodlums. He heated the surface of the first edge and smeared the melting solder into place careful to connect the seams of the two edges. The pumpkin smiled in half at Crew as he turned it in his gloved hands. A bright orange light lit his living room and he sighed with the ghosts of a thousand Halloweens. The solder slid easily across the next piece as the metal glowed red, almost too hot for the solder. He blew on the tin and it cooled rapidly accepting the new seam.
The last piece was the top, but first………but first. He went to the body on the living room floor and removed one of it’s eyes, plop and squish as he pushed it into the tin pumpkin. “Very nice!” he whispered as he licked the blood from his sticky fingers, “Very nice indeed!” The pumpkin was almost complete. He fixed the final seam with the solder and torch as the eye looked from within the confines of the tin pumpkin.
He finished and took the pumpkin to the front porch with the others, a long row of metal pumpkins all soldered and fixed with the stares of all the local hoodlums and trespassers. He giggled and lit a candle, the first trick or treaters would be arriving soon and he had a surprise for them.
An hour later the doorbell rang and he raced to answer it, “Trick or Treat!” they sang on the other side of the door. He grabbed the bowl and opened the door.
The trick or treaters staggered backward and screamed as he pushed the bowl toward them; it was full of the fingers and toes of the hoodlums. The children ran away screaming as he laughed after them.
Crew Frisk made the news the next day and as they lead him away he waved at the cameras and pointed to his eyes, there were bandages there and empty eye sockets beneath. “I’ll be seeing ya!” he laughed as the police pushed him into the back of a patrol car. They would discover the tin pumpkins secret weeks later after the first winter snows and the end of fall.