Literary Monster Mash(up): The Great Old Pumpkin

Gather ’round the Samhain fires, boys and girls, and shiver as you read one of the spoooOOOOOoookiest literary mashups I’ve ever read: “The Great Old Pumpkin,” by John Aegard!

As you are no doubt aware, I am the issue of solid Dutch stock—the prosperous Van Pelt family of St. Paul. Mine was a comfortable and happy childhood, and I spent much of it in the devoted service of the Great Old Pumpkin. For him, I cultivated an annual pumpkin patch—mostly Autumn Gold and Big Max, as I thought he would find the Atlantic Giants tacky. I also evangelized him in the community, relating the tale of how, every year on Hallowmas Eve, the day when the spiritual most strongly encroaches on the substantial, this mightiest of gourds would rise to revel across the world with the most sincere of his adorers. My neighbors were understandably skeptical; after all, not once had this superbeing ever chosen to grace my pumpkin patch or any other place in our town. I vowed that I would coax him into my backyard, and I set out in the manner of a learned man to discover how I might do this.

You shall experience, much as I did, a ghastly thrill when you come to the story’s thunderous climax! If you are not left shuddering in terror at the sight of those great orange squashes so common to porch-steps and doorsills at this time of the year, then you are more of a man than I, an advowed and unashamed “pussy,” shall ever be.

Spooooooky monster pumpkin pic by the inimitable Matt Sharp!

The Great Old Pumpkin [Strange Horizons] (Thanks, Ian!)