A/N: This is a re-write. :D
A straight cut here. A curved slice there. A poke and a prod and a pluck. The entire Ander-Hummel family, cat included, ruminates over pumpkins as they create the trio of terrifying monsters that will adorn their front porch. Kurt, using a template that he found on the Internet, has decided to go with an image that is both aesthetically grotesque as well as psychologically horrifying – Donald Trump. He plans on placing it underneath the pride flag they've had hanging since they moved into their abode, with a "bloody" hatchet sticking into its lumpy, orange flesh, right between its squinty, deceitful little eyes.
For flair, he told his husband when Blaine raised an eyebrow at Kurt's design idea.
Kurt also plans on keeping his pumpkin outside until it decays into a rotting, festering pile of moldy slop … and then set it on fire.
His own form of political protest.
Tracy hasn't revealed the identity of her pumpkin face yet, nor shown a single inch of it to her parents, only revealing it to their cat, consulting with the animal over eye placement and (from what Kurt can tell during a hushed conversation) the shape of the teeth. Otherwise, Tracy sits hunched over with her pumpkin propped between her legs, concentrating hard on the face emerging beneath the safety blade of her neon green pumpkin cutter. Sitting in a clumsy triangle, dad, dad, and daughter are all hard at work on their masterpieces. But in the quiet of their newspaper covered living room, Tracy can't shake the feeling that she's being watched.
They don't live in a creepy house. A big house, but not a creepy one. Tracy has never felt anything but completely safe living there with her dads. But still, she has an uncanny sensation, a cold tickle at the base of her neck that tells her that someone, or something, is paying a whole lot of attention to her right now.
She looks at her cat Brian, lying beside her on the floor, gaze aimed up to keep an eye on the kid with sticky goop coating her fingers, less those fingers make their way over to his fur, but that's not the attention Tracy feels. She lifts her head slowly … slowly … eyes peeking up last in fear of what she may see … and jumps at two sets of eyes staring back at her.
"Ah! Daddy!" Tracy giggles. "Papa! You're not supposed to be peeking!"
"We can't help it!" Kurt says. "You've been so serious over there for the past half-an-hour. We're curious!"
"Yeah! Show us, Tracy!" Blaine pipes in, tickling his daughter under the arms.
"Yes! Show us your scary pumpkin face!"
"Wait a second! Wait a second!" Tracy quickly puts the final touches on her pumpkin. "I'm not done with it yet!"
"Well, hurry up! We're impatient men!"
Tracy bounces up and down on her seat in excitement. "Okay, okay! I'm done! On the count of three."
"One …" Kurt counts.
"Two …" Blaine adds.
"Three!" Tracy cheers, turning her pumpkin so her fathers can see. The roughly carved façade of a nondescript ghoulish face stares back at them. One side of the pumpkin is almost gone, the remaining 20% unequal eyes and mismatched teeth, a few stray slices left where they shouldn't be, but still the most gallant effort by a six-year-old that Kurt has ever seen (in his totally biased opinion).
"That is super scary!" Blaine says, pretending to shiver when Tracy growls for added affect. "Good job, sweetie!"
"You think so?" Tracy growls again so her dads can make an informed decision.
"Absolutely. It's excellent." Kurt pulls the little girl into his lap and gives her a squeeze. "You did an amazing job."
"Thank you, thank you." Tracy takes two little bows, and Blaine grins. Tracy gets that from her mom … and from Kurt. Tracy smiles proudly from Kurt to Blaine, but grimaces when her gaze falls on Blaine's pumpkin.
"Uh … what are you making, Daddy?"
Kurt takes his first glance at Blaine's pumpkin, scrunching his nose at the mangled gourd sitting in front of his husband. Kurt tilts his head to the left. At this angle, the combination of cuts and chunks taken out seem to want to be a mummy … zombie … type thing. He tilts his head the opposite way, and it looks more like Mike Tyson if he were a bruised honeydew melon. "Yeah. What is your pumpkin face supposed to be, Blaine?"
"Originally I wanted to do something traditional," Blaine says, plucking out a perfectly crosshatched piece that Kurt is sure turned out that way by accident. "You know - triangle eyes, circle nose. The stereotypical Jack-O-Lantern. But then I got to thinking …" Blaine pauses, framing his pumpkin's face with his hands as if he's carefully mapping out his next slice.
"Yes," Kurt prompts, knowing his husband is stalling on purpose, "go on. What were you thinking?"
"I was thinking - how cool would it be if I didn't just carve the face of one monster, but all the monsters! You know, the ghost over the wolf man over a vampire over Frankenstein. You know, like a tur-duck-hen. That way, my pumpkin wouldn't just be one kind of scary. It would be all kinds of scary!"
"Wow!" Tracy looks at her father's pumpkin with the wide eyes of ultimate awe. "That's so cool!"
"Thank you, Tracy," Blaine says with a superior sniff. "I thought so, too."
"Why don't you go clean up and get ready for bed, munchkin." Kurt stands the girl up and pats her bottom. "And when you get back, we'll find a candle for your spoopy pumpkin."
"Yes! Okay." Tracy scrambles to her feet, sending a wary Brian racing into hiding. She hops over the pile of pumpkin guts and seeds, and scurries to her bedroom. Kurt waits till his daughter is out of earshot, then he scoots closer to his husband. He peeks over at Blaine's pumpkin and smirks, the scent of b.s. from Blaine's explanation lingering in the air.
"You have no idea what you're making, do you?"
Blaine makes another crude slice and tugs, popping a hard won piece of pumpkin flesh out and unintentionally flipping stringy guts across the room. "No. No, I do not."