The Weeping Pumpkin

(a story for Halloween, 2007)

Once Upon a Time there was a happy, fun-loving Pumpkin. He spent his days sitting in the sun watching the people as they passed by. He saw children playing in the fields and adults driving cars and talking on mobile phones.
One day, when October was nearly at an end, three kids came to his patch of land.
"I want that one!" The young girl shouted, pointing excitedly at the happy Pumpkin. Suddenly the Pumpkin was surrounded. Two other kids ripped him out of the ground and placed him into a brown paper bag.
"I've got him!" Shouted the younger of the two boys. The girl - who happened to be the two boys's sister - cheered, and all three made off with the Pumpkin.
When they got home they carved eyes and a mouth into the happy Pumpkin's orange skin, and placed him onto the windowsill. The pumpkin felt every cut of the knife and began to weep.
How can children be so cruel? He thought.
But, as he sat silently in the window, he thought about something else too...
He thought about Revenge.
Night fell and the Pumpkin looked all around himself. There were photographs on the walls and portraits on the mantle. He soon realised that he was in a family home and that it was Halloween.
He'd heard about Halloween. When he was younger the older pumpkins had told him scary stories about Giant People who came and took pumpkins from their homes to decorate with candles in celebration of All Hallow's Eve.
A long and terrible night passed and the Pumpkin felt and alone and afraid. He longed for the open air and for familiar surroundings.
The next morning the kids set out for school and their parents went to work. The happy Pumpkin wept for hours, wondering whether he would ever see his home again, and plotted his revenge.
He decided he needed to teach the children a lesson. A lesson they would never forget.
That night, as dusk fell and the darkness loomed like a bird of prey, he watched as the family played games and ate sweets. They bobbed for apples, the children dressed as ghosts and vampires.
After dinner the young girl came into the living room, lit a candle, and placed it into the Pumpkin's hollow body.
"Little girl," the Pumpkin said as the girl was walking away. She turned uneasily toward the Pumpkin in the window.
"You... you spoke," she said, a little scared.
"Why did you take me away from my home?" The Pumpkin asked.
The girl stooped a little so that her face was level with the Pumpkin's.
"We needed a pumpkin for Halloween," she said. "This is your home now."
"But I was happy," said the Pumpkin, and a tear fell from his carved out triangular eye.
"You're crying," the girl said.
"I weep because I miss my home," said the Pumpkin. "I used to be able to watch the children flying kites and chasing each other, and even the adults as they drove past with music spilling out from their car windows. I used to be warm but then your father hollowed me out with a knife and now I see the same things all day long."
"But Pumpkins don't have eyes until Halloween," the girl said.
"I saw with my imagination," the Pumpkin answered. "All the beauty of the world is seen through imagination." Another tear fell nostalgically from his human-carved eyes.
"It's Halloween," the girl cried. "Please don't be sad." Tears formed in her blue eyes.
"I'll make a deal with you," said the Pumpkin. "Remember me in years to come. Remember that I was once a happy Pumpkin, full of life's many joys, and remember that Beauty and Happiness are the most important things in the world. Remember the Weeping Pumpkin and remember that being kind is the purest road to Happiness. If you remember these things my sadness will not be in vain."
"I'll remember," said the little girl.
"Deal?" The Pumpkin questioned, knowing that this, his cunning revenge, a tumultuous tragedy transformed not into terror but into teaching, would live on in the girl’s heart forever.
"Deal," she said.
The next morning the Pumpkin was dead. The young girl was sad and so she buried him in the garden with a sign that read:
Here lies the Happy Pumpkin. May he weep no more.