And now, we have our All Hallow's Eve/Harvest special! Yay! Hope you all enjoy it :)
"All Hallow's Eve has always scared me," Christine confessed to Erik, knees tucked under her chin. She was sitting on Erik's sofa, staring into the fire. "And someone always manages to take advantage of that and elicit a scream of surprise and terror from me. I hope you don't mind me coming down here for purely selfish purposes, Erik," she said, looking up at him to confirm her statement.
"Of course not, my dear," Erik said, clearly amused. He closed the book he had been reading to look at her evenly. "You know I enjoy spending time with you." He set the book down on an end table and got up to stir the fire and add another log to it. It was always cold in Erik's house-on-the-lake, but especially at this time of year. Christine had taken the spot closest to the fire to avoid having to be smothered by a blanket. The only time she really liked blankets was when she was sick, and when it was actually time to sleep. Otherwise her dresses usually acted the part. Sometimes high fashion was ridiculous, she thought with disdain. But at least she didn't have to put up with that nonsense down here, although when she was up there, Erik wanted her to look as nice as possible, and so he was always fawning over her and buying her this and that, whatever it was she might have mentioned that had captured her fancy.
"What do they usually do to make you screech?" Erik asked, his lips pursing under his stark white mask.
"Last year they stuck a hollowed out pumpkin over my head," she grumbled, wrinkling her nose at the particularly smelly memory. Erik made the mistake of laughing then.
"It's not funny!" Christine protested indignantly. "Have you ever had a pumpkin shoved over your face?" It was a rhetorical question, of course, but Erik chose to answer ayway.
"No, I can't say that I have," he replied, struggling to hide a smile.
"Well, you're infinitely more lucky than I am. It's smelly, gooey, and you can't see anything, and everything sounds funny, and it takes days to get it out of your hair!" she said with exasperation, sniffling slightly with irritation.
"And then," Christine began, but she shuddered at the memory and stopped.
"And then..?" Erik prompted. He hadn't had this good of a laugh in a long, long time. But Christine could always make him laugh, even when he didn't feel like smiling. He had never particularly cared for Halloween, or any holiday, really, but if Christine was around for them, that might just change.
"No! I'm not going to tell you! You'll laugh again," she whined, shaking her head and closing her eyes like a little child who didn't want to eat their vegetables.
"Come now, Christine, you would think me so petty as to laugh at you?" Erik asked, shaking his head. "I thought you would know by now that I would never want to humiliate or embarrass you in any way." Christine's mouth hung open slightly and she looked offended. "Now now, dear, close your mouth. You'll catch flies like that, and it's most unbecoming."
Christine's mouth snapped shut with a clack from her pearly whites. "Fine," she said reluctantly, "I'll tell you..." She sighed heavily. "They stuck a family of mice in my bed, too. I screamed so loudly that I'm surprised you didn't hear me down here."
"I think I may have, at that," Erik said, a corner of his mouth twisting upward in that crooked smile that Christine so loved. "But I thought that it was probably Ayesha."
"I've never heard Ayesha do anything but hiss and growl," Christine said, narrowing her eyes at the cat who was just now walking into the room leisurely, her blue eyes staring maliciously at Christine.
"Oh, Ayesha does lots of things," Erik said, scooping the cat up and scratching her methodically under the chin. Christine thought, for a second, that the cat might actually purr, but all that came out was an angry growl. "She just doesn't seem to care for you, but why is beyond me. I've never seen anyone, or anything, that didn't like you."
"Well, cats generally just have one person that they attach themselves to. She just happens to be more... exclusive than most others," Christine said, sticking her tongue out at the cat when Erik wasn't looking. Ayesha bared her teeth in response, growling again.
"Oh, Ayesha, stop it. Christine hasn't done anything wrong," Erik chided, though he sounded anything but annoyed or upset. Ayesha squirmed out of Erik's arms and settled herself rather noisily on the piano. Christine fairly winced at the dissonant sound, which seemed to be what Ayesha wanted, but Erik didn't even blink.
"Erik," Christine said, a curious tone in her voice, "have you ever carved a Jack O' lantern?"
"No, Christine. Another thing that I have yet to do. And I can't say it's on the top of my list, either," he said, yanking some sheet music out from under Ayesha's paw, as she was poking small holes in the score with her claws. The cat did not look pleased, but then, she never looked pleased when Christine was around.
"Oh, come on, Erik, it'll be fun! You carve in a face, scoop out all the seeds and goop beforehand, and then you roast the seeds with some salt and then eat them!" Christine said, flashing her baby blue eyes at him hopefully.
"You eat the insides of the pumpkin?" Erik asked incredulously, and Christine fancied that under his mask his nose was slightly wrinkled with dsigust.
"No, just the seeds, silly. You throw out all the gunk," Christine said with a giggle.
"I'm not silly," Erik huffed, setting the sheet music down, far out of Ayesha's reach, Christine noted. "I've never had the occasion to carve a pumpkin or watch anyone carve one."
"Well, then we definitely have to do it, then!" Christine said excitedly. "They have some extras upstairs, I think, from the recent harvest celebration. Just let me go and get two... Erik, would you come with me? I can't very well carry two large pumpkins down five flights of stairs and across a lake."
"Very well," Erik said, putting on a pair of gloves. "Let's go."
Christine made a face and laughed at the goop she was scooping out of her pumpkin. "Don't forget to save the seeds," she reminded Erik, who was still staring with a sneer at his pumpkin.
"Of course not," he replied flatly. Christine looked at him before setting down the big spoon she was using to hollow out the inside of her own gourd.
"Take off your jacket," she commanded, putting her hands on her hips. She, of course, knew how messy of a process it could be, and so had put an apron over her dress. "And roll up your sleeves; you'll be better suited to the task."
"I'll remind you, Christine, that I didn't want to do this in the first place," Erik said, taking off his outer jacket and rolling up his sleeves as requested with an obvious practiced motion. She had seen him often enough with cuffed sleeves, hunched over his organ, muttering to himself under his breath.
"Well, you'd like it a whole lot better if you weren't worried about getting your ridiculously-expensive suit ruined," she returned sharply, handing him a carving knife. "Make sure you cut the top at a bit of an angle so it doesn't fall through, but wide enough where you can stick your hand in."
"Yes, mother," Erik said, looking at her with an expression that bespoke of exasperation and annoyance.
"Fine, fine, I'll leave you to your own devices," Christine said, raising her hands slightly and walking back over to her own pumpkin.
"Thank you," Erik said haughtily, deftly slicing into the top of his pumpkin. Christine rolled her eyes, but didn't say anything. She knew Erik hated not knowing what he was doing, and so she didn't even glance at his pumpkin, and instead carved a traditional jack o' lantern face on her own.
"Done," she announced proudly, turning her pumpkin to face Erik. It was simply scary with its triangle eyes and sharply carved teeth. She had even added extremely arched eyebrows to add to the effect. "What do you think, Erik?" She looked up at him, but he was intent on his own pumpkin. In fact, he was concentrating to hard that his tongue was protruding slightly from his mouth. Christine thought it was adorable, and she smiled softly.
Eventually, probably a good fifteen minutes later, Erik backed up from his pumpkin to study it. Christine went and stood next to him, getting her first glimpse of the pumpkin. Her jaw dropped, and Erik laughed and pushed it back up gently.
"It's rather like sculpting with clay, I found, only with a knife," Erik remarked, crossing his arms with satisfaction. Christine shook her head in amazement. For it being Erik's first time carving a pumpkin, he had done better than she ever could. He hand gently touched the pumpkin, and she smiled. Erik truly was a genius.
The carving was a silhouette of a man and a woman from the torso up, and the man had his fingertips on the underside of her chin, studying her gently. There wasn't much detail to the carving at all, no, but you could just feel the emotion emanating from it. The mood was reverent, solemn, but it crackled with electricity.
"Erik, it's-" Christine began, turning to him, but her words died on her lips because he was studying her intently, a cool, in-control look upon his eyes. He reached out a hand slowly and curled his skeletal fingers under her chin, tilting it up slowly.
Christine got a very vague, and yet keen, sense of déjà-vu.
And here we have more phluph stuff. It wasn't a dark Halloween story or anything, but generally I'm not too dark of a writer... But when I write dark stuff, it's dark... I've yet to post anything like that though, haha. Anyway, reviews are always appreciated, so if it tickles your fancy, please do so!
And happy halloween!