Flash Fiction inspired by Writober Prompt: ISOLATION
Photographer Unknown
Every year I carve a single pumpkin, a sugar pumpkin for Halloween and I leave it on my porch.
I like to carve sugar pumpkins because they do not yield easily to my carving knife. Sugar Pumpkins put up a fight. They make me work if I want to change them. If I want to put a scream on their mouth, terror in their eyes, if I want to give them a new hairline or fangs I have to use a mallet or a hammer.
Despite their light and fluffy name, Sugar Pumpkins are tough.
That’s ok in my book. I’m up for the challenge.
Jamie Wyeth
After I’ve completed my carving, after I’ve put a tealight in my Sugar Pumpkins empty shell I take my pumpkins out to my porch and as I stand on the top step deciding where to place my pumpkin, sometimes one of my neighbors who may be out walking their dog or ‘getting in their steps’ will call up to me and ask what I’ve got there in my hands.
Of course they don’t really care what I have in my hands. I could have the Mona Lisa in one hand and a still beating and bloody heart in the other. People only ask what I have in my hands because they think they should ask. I’m standing there. They’re standing there. It’s just a thing that neighbors who don’t really know or pay attention to do.
I hold my pumpkin up and I smile.
” This year’s victim.” I call back cheerily.
” What?” They will ask, like they do every year as they stroll by, ” What did you say?” they ask without really expecting an answer.
” My Halloween Pumpkin. ” I sing back.
They laugh.
I chuckle.
They smile without looking really looking at me or my sugar pumpkin and as they wish me a Happy Halloween and as they walk away, sometimes I put my sugar pumpkin on the bottom step and sometimes I stand there with my re-purposed Halloween decoration- by that I mean a severed head that I may have harvested from the old cemetery outside of town and I think to myself- decorating for Halloween is fun.
I enjoy it because I am at peace with the fact that I’m only ever doing it for myself.
It’s not like anyone ever notices.