My 2nd entry to halloween-contest :-) 𝓦𝓱𝓮𝓷 𝓽𝓱𝓮 𝓟𝓾𝓶𝓹𝓴𝓲𝓷 𝓔𝔁𝓱𝓪𝓵𝓮𝓼🎃 When the pumpkin exhales, it gives birth to evil. It was one of those nights when the sky could smell the sins of the earth and sent rain as if to baptize what was about to be born—just to be safe. In the marsh stood the giant pumpkin, its light like rotten gold, its blazing grin sharp enough to cut the dark. I kept my distance. The girl did not. She came bareheaded in a Sunday dress, a stuffed toy dangling from her hand, its button eyes glowing dark and unnatural. Every drop of the steady greenish rain that should have hit her seemed to choose another path. She stopped before the maw, chin tilted slightly, as if listening for a breath that wasn’t hers. Then the water rose, thick with spoiled rain. The pumpkin pushed out a warm, rancid breath, and with it crawled something that began like a badly assembled person and ended like a memory of hunger. Claws scraped gravel; an inhuman smile sliced the rain. On top of the groaning pumpkin a spider stirred, fat and still, as if it were the midwife of this moment. “Why aren’t you afraid?” I asked, though I had no voice. The girl lifted her toy. Its red eyes didn’t point at the creature, but beside it—toward the thinnest light, as if another world lay there. The pumpkin exhaled again. A second thing seemed ready to follow the first. She nodded slightly, as if counting. One. Two. The rain applauded. Maybe she thought of a game. Maybe a promise. Maybe us. I tried to step back and found no path. The pumpkin breathed heavy ahead; behind me the bog began to speak. The girl took one step forward, the toy winked, and the big fat spider moved—patient, watchful, knowing. Smaller ones followed. No one knows how many breaths a pumpkin has on that single night. Only this: each breath brings something up. How much of us made it home unharmed that night—and how much stayed where the pumpkin breathes? I cannot say. I only know that when the rain stopped, something else began. And it carried away small, wet footprints. -Samara Blue/Kerstin Ellinghoven Rendered with G9 figures in DAZ Studio. My goal was a decayed, inner-glowing jack-o’-lantern in a swampy moor to play with the childhood fears of my youth. Postwork (extra rain, glow, bloom, dodge & burn) done in Photoshop. Made with DAZ | No AI | Krefeld, 10/08/2025