Fractured Fryday Hairy Tales - Howl-O-Ween Eve

Welcome to Fractured Fryday Hairy Tales where on the last Friday of the month we dust off our creative writing skills incorporating a special phrase - this month's phrase one related to pumpkins. There's lots of things happening in Blogville this week so check out the community calender on the sidebar.  And don't forgot to stop in at Dory's for a special fundraiser and blog hop.

With that I present this months Fryday Hairy Tail

 - Abby Lab

I love my stuffie toys, all soft and squishy.  Mom got me this one that was a different brand then my usual Kong durable stuffies that I love.  It was a hedgehog.  It's not the little one that's on her shelf that she says is "special" but a dog stuffie.  It doesn't really squeak, it makes a noise that's a cross between an asthmatic huff and a fart, but it is SO fat and squishy I just love to hold it in my mouth.
But first we had to go around the neighborhood to look at pumpkins. I accidentally dropped my stuffie by the neighbors porch.

Their pumpkin will watch over it.  Sad pumpkin  -  he is SO skinny.

We walked up and down the block while I left some pee-mail in the neighbors yards for their dogs. The neighborhood had an eerie feel. It's Halloween Eve and soon the sidewalks will fill with mysterious, shrouded figures, the fierce cries of mytical creams and the gusts of screams. As I approached, some clouds rolled in, trailing last nights cold front like groupies, the sky losing its vivid blueness, taking on a grayish hue, like ancient cotton.

The air stirred little, full of invisible particles of scent, that carried with it no sound, my form underneath the span, little more than a thumbprint of white on cold stone. Trees  stand there as if painted, windless candles that have watched over the dark here for a hundred years.  As a train passes by at the end of the road, the sidewalks and porches shudders with sound, as if alive.

The pumpkin though - suddenly he's all fat. His smile, normally cheery, looks almost evil,  The hairs raised on my back as I urged Mom towards home, but not before she bent down and picked something off the ground, some furred thing with open fixed eyes.

Shudder.  I just want to go home and play with my plump, playful little hedgehog, there inside where it's safe with Mom.

What is it about Halloween that gets people thinking of ghosts and ghoulies? Few people truly believe that headless ghosts haunt Celtic castles, that restless spirits chase the shadows in every abandoned old farmhouse. Most of us go through life, not observing what was not meant to be observed.

But sitting in a darkening room, a candle lit, the taste of smoke and the moors in the air, Mom said she can't help but summon up the genuine wonder for those things that are never truly explained. She believes that despite our outward desire for explanation and logic, most members of the public would rather tell stories of haunted places and mysterious creatures than listen to a litany of logic.

For despite our modern conveniences, our science and technology, Mom feels we should not be surprised that modern man still feels that shadowed belief in spirits, haunting those places in which they were once so affected, when we ourselves scarcely separate ourselves from past lives and past longing, ever hovering over bygone times and all their emotions, in late night, darkened hours, lingering in the past places in which we were loved. Hoping in the dark misty hills of our hearts, we will remember and be remembered.

For despite our technology, we are still dreamers. I know my Mom and I are.

I was dreaming of treats and thoughts not involving monsters and ghosts.  Then Mom laid something next to me on the couch.

Arghhh!

Mom, Mom, some vampire pumpkin sucked the stuffing out of my hedgehog.  He's ALL deaded and flat!

Mom says it's a different type of toy, made without stuffing but with fur a similar color to my other toy. Mr. Hedgehog was safely back in the toy bin. Thank goodness, I was afraid I was going to have to take a stake and pie plate and dispatch the vampire pumpkin.  But what if that pumpkin was really a stuffing-hungry ghoul and Mom was just trying to keep from scaring me?

That is why - after that I'll never turn my back on a pumpkin again.

Whether our dreams are that of coherent order and forensic logic or haunting memory of those places we wish we could revisit, we can't help but think just how small our being is. How infinitesimal within the world's workings, the grand chaotic design. As the wind picks up a howl, across open land, Mom lights a small lamp.  For suddenly, I feel very insignificant. Insignificant and small, as moonlight flits amongst the shroud of tree branches, the wind tapping on the window like a ghostly finger, the night but one last lamenting kiss.

Off in the distance, comes a keening howl.