The field was quiet that night, under the half-moon's gaze, a shroud of silver mist hovering just above the earth. We, the pumpkins, sat in rows, plump and heavy, our skins taut and glossy, saturated with the deep orange of late October. The chill of the air seeped into us, and the earth, our cradle, was beginning to harden with the promise of frost. We could sense it—the impending end of our time in this peaceful place.

There was a tension in the soil, a quiet horror brewing in the whisper of wind through brittle corn stalks. We didn’t talk about it, but we all felt it. The others around me—fat, round, and ripe—shifted slightly as the air became thick with anticipation. We had heard stories about those who had been carried off before us. The ones who never came back.

One night, the humans arrived, dragging their shadows with them, long and thin under the crescent moonlight. The vibrations of their boots shook the ground as they moved closer. We felt the reverberations, our roots instinctively tightening as though we could hold ourselves back, anchor ourselves to the safety of the soil. But it was no use. One by one, they began to pull us from the ground, ripping our tethered vines and snapping them like fragile bones.

I was the next to be taken.

The world tipped violently as they lifted me. I could feel the pull of my stem, sharp and brutal, yanked like a vital organ from my body. The cold air struck me in full force now that I was free from the earth's embrace. My skin prickled in response, sensitive to every touch, every scrape, as they tossed me into a wooden cart with others. We bounced against each other in silence, each of us too terrified to speak, to share our fear.

The ride was jarring, the world rushing by in a blur of muted twilight. The smell of wet earth lingered on me, and I clung to it, trying to remember what safety felt like. But it was fading fast.

We were brought into a house, the warmth inside false and menacing. Their fingers grabbed at us, the humans, their voices cheerful as they inspected us, turning us this way and that, looking for perfection. My skin crawled under their touch, their hands rough and unfeeling. And then, the worst began.

A blade, cold and sharp, pressed against my crown, sinking in with a sickening, wet sound. Pain radiated through me as they twisted the knife, a slow, deliberate motion, severing my top from the rest of me. My world split open. I could feel the change in pressure as my insides, once protected and private, were suddenly exposed to the air. It was an obscene feeling—violating, horrifying.

The scraping came next. They dug into me with metal spoons, gouging and hollowing, tearing away the soft, stringy flesh within. My insides clung desperately, resisting the pull, but they were relentless. The sound of my own pulp being scooped out echoed in my hollowed cavity, every scrape a brutal reminder of how much was being taken from me. I was being gutted, carved out piece by piece until I felt utterly empty, a shell of who I once was.

Then, the smile.

I could feel the blade again, tracing lines along my face, deliberate, calculated. The metal pressed in, slicing through my skin with ease, cutting deep into my very being. They weren’t careful. Each cut burned, the cool air seeping into the open wounds. My flesh parted with a grotesque squelch as they carved out a jagged mouth, a set of triangular eyes. They weren’t giving me a face—they were giving me a mask. A mask to hide the horror of what I had become.

When it was over, I was carried outside into the biting cold. The wind cut through my newly carved openings, howling through the hollowed spaces inside me. I was set down among others who had already been transformed, their gaping mouths twisted into grotesque, eternal smiles. And then, the final horror.

The flame.

A candle was thrust into my empty belly, the heat of it immediate, searing. My insides, still raw from the scraping, were scorched by the fire’s breath. I could feel it, the slow burn of my flesh beginning to roast from the inside out. The heat pulsed through me, spreading outward, until I could barely distinguish between the cold bite of the wind on my skin and the fire smoldering within. The candle flickered, its light casting monstrous shadows through the grotesque smile they had carved into me.

I was no longer a pumpkin. I was something else—something twisted, hollow, a vessel for their amusement. My purpose now was to burn, to smile in the night while my insides smoldered, slowly cooking under the cruel flame. The others, placed beside me, glowed with the same unnatural light, our collective suffering silent but palpable in the frigid air.

The wind howled around us, carrying the smell of our singed flesh. We were no longer the pumpkins we had once been, whole and full, nestled in the comforting earth. We had been transformed, perverted into something grotesque and unnatural. The candle flickered, and the shadows of our carved faces danced on the ground—mocking, leering, eternal.

And so we sat, night after night, watching the world through eyes not our own, our grins wide and empty, the flame inside us slowly consuming us from within.

The horror of it was, we knew the fire would die eventually. But by then, there would be nothing left of us to save.