The Pumpkin
c. 1984
I’ve always loved dreams.
Dreams transported me to a
wonderful place where I could drive KITT from Knight Rider to the Mall in My Dreams where I would
play in the arcades, play with the toys in the toy store, and eat candy with
reckless abandon... until he came. The
minds of children create the demons that haunt them at night, the product of an
overactive imagination trapped in a tired body.
My personal monster was the Pumpkin, a seemingly ordinary man dressed in
blue jeans and a red flannel shirt, with a jack-o’-lantern for a head.
This doesn’t sound like a very
frightening monster. He isn’t unless you
know him. His scariness lied in the way
he carried himself. Since he had a
jack-o’-lantern for a head, his facial expression never changed. He would gaze onward with dark, triangular
eyes, and no matter what, he would smile.
He would smile a great smile, revealing his pointed teeth. He would smile as he saw me. He would smile as he chased me. He smiled as he killed me. He smiled as he watched me die, as he rubbed
his hands with evil glee. All throughout
this, he made not a sound, save the occasional chuckle to himself.
Whenever I
saw him, I would run in terror. I didn’t
know why, I just knew I should. I found out one time when I stumbled on a stone made of caramel, allowing the
Pumpkin to catch up, raise me over his head, and throw me in the pond of
chocolate syrup.
Unable to swim, I sank beneath the
opaque depths, my mouth and lungs filling with sweet death. In a last ditch effort, I shot my hand out
from beneath the surface as I thrashed about in the sugary sludge, grabbing on
to a licorice cattail to pull myself out, but it could not hold my weight. A few air bubbles rose, and then all was still. The Pumpkin smiled, chuckled, and rubbed his
hands with evil glee. The McDonald Land
Fry Guy characters merely watched in silent horror, unable to intervene, for
they had no arms.
The more I thought about the
Pumpkin, the more and more frequent his attacks became. I was afraid to go to bed. I was having nightmares every night. There was but one solution.
The Pumpkin had to die.
KITT wanted
to help but since he was programmed to preserve life at all costs, he was
unable to do the Pumpkin in. However, I
was quick to enlist the Three Stooges because they could get beat up for
hours. They were tough as nails, dude!
Even today, if I got my eyes poked, kicked in the groin, and someone broke a
bottle over my head, I would drop to the ground and cry like a little
bitch. As luck would have it, they were
recently fired from their jobs as deliverymen, plumbers, and house painters,
and were eager to give bodyguarding a try.
When the Pumpkin appeared, I was quick to send my men after him.
“Hey... who’d-gya think you are,
picking on a little kid like that?”
Larry scolded.
“Yeah, what are you, some kind of a
wise guy?” shouted Moe.
“Yeah, a wise gu-iy!” shrieked Curly.
Larry and Moe rolled up their sleeves to set things right, armed only with the deadly art of Stoojutsu. The Pumpkin smiled on as they came in, and he grabbed the Stooges by the throats. They choked as the Pumpkin lifted them above his head, each with one arm. Then he bashed their heads together with a hollow “donk” noise. Curly just stood there in a catatonic shock paralyzed with fear, making a “Nya-nya-nya-nya” noise.
I ran to find a jack-in-the-box,
for I knew that turning the crank would play “Pop Goes the Weasel,” the sound
needed to turn Curly into a raging, Incredible Hulk-like pugilistic siege
engine, but it was a lost cause. The
Pumpkin threw Moe and Larry twenty feet in to Curly. They all lay in an unconscious heap
complimented by the digetic chirping bird noise. The Pumpkin chuckled to himself, and when he
turned around, he smiled, and lunged at me.
The shock
was enough to wake me up once more, and was enough to make me afraid to sleep
from then on. I spent the next day
trying to find a way to defeat the Pumpkin.
There was only one logical answer to my problem. I needed fabulous superpowers, which are hard
to come by if you aren’t from Krypton.
The answer came to me while watching Saturday morning cartoons. In an episode of Spider-Man and His
Amazing Friends, I learned that I can get fabulous super powers through a
radioactive spider bite. Spiders were
always crawling into the bathtub. So I
asked if any of them were radioactive.
Turns out they weren’t. But
that’s no biggie, I could just make them radioactive. I didn’t know what radioactivity was, but
everyone made it out to be something pretty bad. Therefore, whatever radioactive materials we
had laying about the house must have a “Mr. Yuk” sticker on it. I just went down the list.
“Mom, is Pledge™ radioactive?”
“No
Ryan...”
“Mom, is Comet™ radioactive?”
“No
Ryan...”
“Mom, is Windex™ radioactive?”
“No
Ryan...”
Something had to be radioactive,
damn it. I tried the garage.
“Dad, is motor oil radioactive?”
“No
Ryan...”
“Dad, is weed killer radioactive?”
“No
Ryan...”
“Dad, is old paint radioactive?”
“No Ryan...”
Many years later, when I was at
The next Saturday morning, while watching cartoons, I asked myself, how does the TV
work? I’ve always liked to know how thinks work, but rather than ask, I tried
to figure it out myself. It’s more of a
challenge that way. Unfortunately, this
has led me to many erroneous and bizarre conclusions. For example, televisions create something
akin to a wormhole, and we would gaze through this gateway, as a sort of a
window to the world. Television cameras
were just the other end of the wormhole, and were moved by cameramen very, very
quickly in order to create montage. I
didn’t know how to get super powers, but I knew how to get to a place where I
could find them. I just had to travel through the screen, into the wormhole, and then finding radioactive material.
Clonk! “Ow!”
That didn’t work. I must not be doing it right. I’ll have to try harder. I need a running start. This way, I’ll have enough energy to tunnel
through the barrier potential.
Clonk! “Ow!”
I need more room!
Clonk! “Ow!”
It was about this time that my dad
walked into the room. Fuck it, I was
going all out, balls to the walls. I
started in the dining room, through kitchen, across the family room and through
the screen, making me one step closer to the ultimate goal of fabulous super
powers... until my dad snatched me the second my feet left the ground.
As it turns out, the television does
not operate by means of a trans-dimensional rift, but rather by creating images
by using high-voltage electric fields in the form of an “electron gun” to
bombard charged particles onto the back of a phosphorescent screen. My dad also informed me that if I attempted
to use the TV as a gateway to another world, I would crack my head open. I would also break the TV, and since
television picture tubes behave as giant capacitors due to the build-up of
charge on both ends of the tube, I’d also electrocute my stupid ass. Seeing the error of my ways, I elected to
watch the TV, rather than using it to transcend space and time.
Once again, the answer to my
dilemma lay within an episode of Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends. A nerdy fellow, much like myself, clonked his
head while trying to leap into a television.
Unlike me, rather than running at it again, he shouted something, and
turned himself into a being of pure energy, which allowed him to successfully
leap into the screen.
I did some research on this, and as
best as I can tell, this was the third-season episode “The Education of a
Superhero.” This frightens me, because
that means the following actually happened, and wasn’t a dream or a
false memory.
That’s what I was missing! Whatever it was that he shouted. I was so enthralled by the prospect of my
cunning plan to follow through that I didn’t catch what it was that he had
said. No problem, I found a way around that.
By making random sounds, I figured that I was statistically bound to
stumble across an unholy incantation of some variety, quite possibly the one
that would give me the powers I sought.
It was a brilliant plan -- I didn’t know why no one had ever thought of
it before. So there I stood, shouting gibberish at my television before
throwing myself at it.
“Heebie-zashza-wababo!” I shouted before leaping headfirst into the
TV screen.
Clonk! “Ow!”
“Guggies-bebaloo-zheef!” I shouted before leaping headfirst into the
TV screen.
Clonk! “Ow!”
“Nyubnyub-wabba-latzoo!” I shouted before leaping headfirst into the
TV screen.
Clonk! “Ow!”
This went
on for hours -- days even. It would have
worked too if I had only found the right words.
I was at a loss. There was
nothing I could do. Then once more,
television proved to be my savior. One
night, while changing the channels for my dad (children were bred for this
purpose in the times before remote controls) I stopped by NBC, and heard:
“If you have a problem, if no
one else can help, and if you can find them...”
I was in
awe -- it’s as though the TV was speaking directly to me!
“...maybe you can hire...The
A-Team.”
The A-Team
could help! Who are they? Who cares!
They’re friends with Mr. T! Mr. T
was the baddest dude around, but the only thing he loved more than helping kids
was beating up the people who bully kids.
That night, when I started to
dream, I ran to the kitchen, and opened the phone book, and their number stared
me right in the face. Naturally it would be listed first, “A-Team” starts
with “A.” I pulled up a chair to climb
on, because I wasn’t tall enough to reach our old-school rotary phone, and
dialed away.
“Hello.”
“Mr. T! The Pumpkin is trying to eat me and...”
“No problem Ryan, I be there,”
assures Mr. T.
The trap was set. All I had to do was wait for a black GMC van
to pull into the driveway. But before my
plan could come together, there was sudden and all consuming darkness, and I
found myself running for my life once again.
I stumbled in the dark, until I literally ran into Mr. T; the impact
knocked me to the ground.
“Mr. T! Mr. T!
You gotta help me...”
I look up at Mr. T, and in a in a
wonderful, dramatically back-lit shot, Mr. T pointed down at me and said:
“No, little man, only you are
gonna help yourself.”
As quickly as he spoke those words,
he was gone. Vanished. I was all alone,
save the Pumpkin. As I looked around in
silent despair, I saw a Louisville Slugger leaned against a corner, a spotlight
shining down upon it. With the Pumpkin
walking across the room towards me, I bent down to pick up the bat. Suddenly it all made sense.
All this
time I searched for the easy way out.
All this time I looked for someone to solve my problems. No, only I
could help myself. Now here I stood,
with the Pumpkin looming overhead, grinning an insidious grin.
I spun around and cracked the
Pumpkin in what would be the temple on a normal-headed individual. It sent him staggering, as he rubbed the
newly formed indentation on his head. I
swung again, smashing his fingers and bashing a hole in his orange cranium.
Still he smiled, and dashed in to
grab me.
I raised the bat over my head and
swung straight down, as though I was going to split a log. The Pumpkin’s head exploded like one of
Gallagher’s watermelons. The decapitated
body swayed momentarily, before dropping to his knees and collapsing to the
floor. I dropped the bat and walked
away.