Pumpkin Patch
Pumpkin Patch
Their smiles and surprised expressions haunted him as he tried to crush them but never could he break their awful faces.
Their smiles and surprised expressions haunted him as he tried to crush them but never could he break their awful faces.
“Come on, punk,” Marcus said shoving the small kid. “Fight, weakling!”
But Lee didn’t want to fight. He tried to evade while the other kids, wanting a good show, blocked his way.
Marcus threw him down and stomped on his face ferociously.
“Whadya gonna do? Cry to Mommy?” The kids crowded around yelling loudly.
“Stop! Stop this!” Mrs. Jackson ran to the boys. “You stop it now. Quit it!” She pulled them away and broke up the crowd.
Mr. Frin joined her, “Alright, who did this, huh? Whose bright idea was it?”
“It was the new kid,” Marcus lied. “He started it.”
“Is that so, Lee?” Mrs. Jackson asked.
Lee embarrassed and timid nodded, “Yes, Mrs. Jackson.”
“I can’t believe you. Why would you do this?”
He shrugged looking downcast saying nothing. Marcus grinned slightly knowing he was going to get away with his lie.
“Is that true, kid?” Mr. Frin asked severely. “You know we’re gonna have to talk to your parents then.”
“I know,” Lee said weakly.
“OK, then,” Mrs. Jackson said clearing the way for Lee. “Alright, all of you to your classes. Let’s go!” The kids dispersed to their appropriate periods.
“Come on, you heard Mrs. Jackson, move it!” Frin said trying to execute his dominance.
Mrs. Jackson brought Lee to the main office. Marcus watched Lee from afar smiling and winking at him cunningly but Lee turned away from him fearful for his life.
Confident, Marcus smugly continued the day by drawing in his notebook for the last period.
After the bell rang his teacher yelled, “And remember, you all have a test on Monday, OK? Don’t forget!”
Marcus left in a flash and stole a girl’s cookies out of her lunchbox eating them on the way out of the building.
He chomped and walked home waddling down the street as his thick legs hurt and felt like gelatin. His obese body bumbled on down the road and as he walked past a treeline, he noticed a carved jack-o-lantern in the middle of the woods placed on top of a small tree stump.
This morning when he walked down this way, he didn’t notice the orange pumpkin smiling at him cruelly with a maddening grin. Now it haunted him. He shuddered and then suddenly was compelled to touch the lonely pumpkin.
“Hey, what’re you lookin’ at dummy?”
He grimaced at it and touched it feeling its rough and bumpy surface. Then he started to walk away, but as he turned quickly to look at it one last time, the expression changed.
It now frowned.
Shaking his head, he tried to decide if the pumpkin had made a frown or a smile before. He wasn’t sure.
“Hey, what the-”
Then he saw an opening in the forest a little ahead of him as the sun shined and revealed a field. Marcus decided to walk into the twisted and curled entrance hidden among the dead low-hanging tree branches not knowing where it led.
Coming out of the other end in an open grassy field while woods surrounded the little patch of grass, ten pumpkins were lined up in a row on tree stumps all staring at him eerily. Big pumpkins and small jack-o-lanterns all sat on the logs with terrible and twisted expressions.
“Stop staring at me, stupid!” He kicked the first jack-o-lantern and tried to stomp and smash it, but he slipped down on the hard ground instead.
Quickly, he got up and decided to pummel it again. This time he wouldn’t fall, the pumpkin would smash into many pieces but no matter how hard he tried stomping it to death, the solid pumpkin remained intact.
He tried kicking the other ones. Their smiles and surprised expressions haunted him as he tried to crush them but never could he break their awful faces.
Then he approached the fourth one, it had a terrifying visage that left him sensing that the pumpkin head might be alive. Afraid, he didn’t dare show it but kicked it endlessly.
Then he heard a cackling laugh.
He stopped kicking as he stood there in fear and a terrible chortle came out again from the inanimate orange head.
Marcus thought he must be imagining things then, he saw the other pumpkin heads turn in his direction, their faces all twisted and ugly. Some frowned and others seemed as if they wanted to kill him and the last one had a giggling expression as he heard laughter echo around him surrounding the border of the trees.
Backing away, he kept hearing the endless guffaw and tripped on a pumpkin. He started to flee but, the heads all rolled toward him, trapping him.
Falling down, the pumpkins started to crash into his body. He ran away and evaded their violence as he fled into the woods escaping them until he came out the other end of the wooded area.
But Marcus realized he wound up in the same open patch of grass as before, in the same forest will all the heads again displayed on the logs. Now they all looked straight at him as he walked forward.
“Awww, look at him,” a wicked voice mocked loudly.
Marcus stopped short and saw the middle one smiling cruelly. “What’s so funny?”
“He’s so scared!” the smiling one shouted. A sea of evil cackles roared.
“I-I’m not scared!” Marcus tried to save face.
Uproarious giggling started again.
“The boy is terrified!” Another one chuckled.
“He is frightened! Scare him some more!”
“Boo!” Laughter continued as nasty and deep voices bellowed. “How was that?!”
Marcus ran as fast as he could but all he heard was their endless howling and then found himself back where he was before with no escape. He was trapped.
“You’re stuck here with us, kid! And we’ll never letcha leave now!”
“You’re the worst. Stepping on the little guys, huh?” a high-pitched one accused. “Lying all the time!”
A wicked deep giggle, “Always trying to scare the vulnerable. Now, you’ll know what that’s like, wontcha?”
“You want Mommy?” They all mocked him.
“You need some food?! If only you could stomp on us and eat our insides! Would you like that, pal?”
“He can’t even stomp on a pumpkin! Who’s the weakling now?!”
Undenyingly long, the eternal howling continued as Marcus slunk to the floor falling almost unconscious from the terrible giggles and cold oppressive voices.
Misery was near and tortured his mind. He fell into the fetal position. Unceasingly their awful laughter kept on rolling.
Suddenly, their voices stopped short. He looked up and the tree stumps and jack-o-lanterns had vanished.
Only the grassy field and the trees surrounding the small patch were seen and Marcus rose and rushed back through the trees, back to where he was before the entire nightmare began.
He rushed home as he panted outside his house. Back to normalcy, he headed in as his face was rosy from the cold weather and breathed heavily tired from running.
“Hi, honey,” his Mom asked. “How was school today?”
“Good.”
He still shook from his awful vision but was relieved to be back home safely. The smells of his Mom’s cooking were heavenly as she was bent over pulling biscuits out of the oven smothered in butter. He loved the kitchen and her cooking.
Looking outside, he saw the colorful leaves falling down wondering where his nightmare had gone or what really happened and what he saw. But he was glad everything was back to what it was supposed to be.
“Did you make any friends today?” she asked sweetly taking the biscuits off and placing them gently on the cooling rack.
“Yeah,” he said lying. “There was this kid Lee today at school. I think we’ll be best friends.”
He smiled slyly at his cleverness. Taking a biscuit, his mother turned staring directly into his terrified eyes.
His mother’s head had turned into a pumpkin carved disgustingly into a terrifying crooked grin with bumps and cuts all over her orange face.
“Well, we both know that’s a LIE! Don’t we?!”
The evil pumpkin smiled cruelly exposing the truth and compelling Marcus to confess his ugly nasty lie.
Check out my other stories…
Soul Sucking
“Wait for the master, wait for him in the shadows by the light of the moon…”medium.com
Nightmare House
Dreams reflect reality…medium.com
Great antidote for a bully!
that was scary!!