Friday, October 30, 2015

October 31st

Tina slowly opened her eyes and found herself in a dark, stone lair. She lay in a circle of black candles in a round room with a circular fire pit radiating heat from the center. She thought she could see somebody standing in the shadows.
"Who's there?" she called out. There was no answer, so she stood to her feet and walked towards them. This was when she noticed more people. She scanned the wall surrounding her and realized she was in the center of a crowd encircling her, trapping her. She couldn't see any door to provide entrance or exit, and no windows of any kind. It was an impossible room, a hole inside a rock. "How did I get here? Somebody, answer me."
None of the people moved. She approached them, stepping over the circle of candles, and stopped in her tracks as she drew closer. The first person she saw was stiff, like a statue. She moved closer still, and saw the dried blood on his arms. He was dead. She reached out to touch him for her own personal confirmation, and found the flesh to be stiff, encased in some sort of thick material to preserve it and keep it from decaying. She looked to the left and right of the body, and saw a long line of deceased corpses, all of them different. This was when she noticed the pumpkins, sitting on a shelf well above each body. Every pumpkin sat above a different corpse, and each had a different carving in the pumpkin shell, but all had a candle inside, burning strong and shining brightly. 
The body in front of her had a burlap sack on its head like a scarecrow, with a pumpkin above it showing the face drawn on the sack.  The second showed lumps beneath the skin with some holes bored in the epidermis. The pumpkin associated with this one was the face of an insect. She walked around the circle, staring at the bodies, each with a pumpkin that seemed to indicate the manner of death. A number was placed above the head of each victim — the font was elegant and detailed, but the color was dark crimson, and she wondered if these were written in blood. When she reached number seven, she froze. She recognized the victim, although her memories were still cloudy. They had been hazy when she arrived at the hospital, when she was taken away to the psychiatric ward, and she had mere flashes in her memories of her life. The body was in pieces, but she believed she'd had sexual relations with him. When she arrived at number 12, she knew this was beyond mere coincidence. She knew this man — knew him very well and her amnesia faded at the sight of his face. It was her husband, a man named Dale, and he was clawed up by some wild animal. The pumpkin above him had the face of a howling wolf carved into the shell. She knew who she was now, and she knew if these bodies were related to her somehow, she might be in more trouble than she could have imagined. 
"They came back, finally, didn't they?" a voice said. "Your memories, I mean." She spun to face the center of the room and saw a man standing, wearing a black, long sleeved button-up shirt, a black tie, and black pants. . 
"Who are you?" she asked.
"It's been a fun month, wouldn't you say?" he asked.
"What… Why?"
"I would think you of all people would appreciate my work, after all, you helped with four of them."
"What do the men I killed have to do with you?" she asked.
"All death has to do with me," he said. "I am death, after all. I don't wear the cloak and carry the scythe these days, those are way out of fashion, but I still bring death, and every once in a while, I have some fun with my job."
"You killed all of these people?"
"Not directly," he said. "I carved the pumpkins according to different ideas I had, then I arranged for their deaths to follow my design. The job becomes more fun when you make games out of it. You know, some of these people saw the jack-o'-lantern engraving before they died. Had they known better, they could have seen them as a warning, as a sign. They didn't realize they should have feared the pumpkins, or at least should have feared what was on them.
She scrolled thought the numbers and found the last one – 30. Staring at the ceiling she saw one more – the number 31, this one without a body.
"I don't want to be number 31," she said.
"Then you better run," he said with a smile. The stone room disappeared, and she was outside in a forest. Death was gone, nowhere to be seen. She turned around in a circle, and realized she was alone. Suddenly she felt a tapping on her shoulder. Spinning around, she saw Death, this time wearing a robe and carrying a scythe. His hood was tossed back, and she saw it was the same man as before. She ran, and could hear his laughing growing quieter the further she went. Suddenly a cloud of smoke exploded in front of her, and he appeared in the mist as it dissipated. She turned and ran again. A tree cracked and fell in her direction, and she dove out of the way, dodging it just in time. On top of the log stood Death, a huge grin on his face. She sprinted through the woods, zig-zagging around trees and hoping, somehow, she could escape him. She felt something beneath her pushing her up, and before she knew it, she was flying into the air above the trees. She caught a glimpse of the moon as she fell and could see Death's face on it, laughing aloud. She grabbed a branch to one of the trees and managed to keep herself from falling to the ground. She tried pulling herself up onto the branch, but heard it crack. She looked and saw Death standing at the base of the branch. It bent downwards, breaking hallway through until it hung by a few wooden fibers. She lost her grip and plunged to the earth. She felt the wind knocked out of her, but she was still alive. Suddenly there was a weight on her chest. Death stood on top of her, his feet pressing on her rib cage, cracking the bones. 
"Fun's over," he said. She felt a cut across her shoulders, and watched the scythe drip with blood on the tip. The weapon must have been razor sharp, and the blood poured profusely from the wound. She felt another cut on her leg, and knew it was deep, penetrating skin and muscle, possibly reaching the bone. He slowly drew the point of the scythe down her cheek, making a slight scratch, but the weapon burned like fire. 
"Stop," she cried. "Please stop." Death raised the scythe over his head, and she squeezed her eyes shut as it whistled through the air and came down.
***
The pumpkin carver sat in his cushioned chair, his feet resting on a matching ottamon. He puffed on his cigar and read a short story by Edgar Allen Poe. The bodies for each day of the month surrounded him. Above him, beneath the number 31, a woman's body hung with cuts still dripping blood. Each droplet fell into a goblet resting on a small table beside the chair. The woman’s head was missing and replaced with a jack-o'-lantern. The face on the pumpkin had furrowed eyebrows, a long, thin nose, and a wide smile. It very much resembled the face of the man sitting in his chair beneath. He lifted up an object that had been sitting on the floor beside his chair. 
"Happy Halloween, Tina," he said to the head before tossing it into the fire.

Go to October 30th

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