Pumpkinpuff Ghoul
written by "Lord" Andy
part two
Bubbles flew through the night screaming. Her cries of terror could be heard echoing throughout the entire realm of Pokey Oaks. Seeing this as a simple Halloween gag, everyone who heard it continued on with their jolly business. As Bubbles shot through the Halloween night, two beams caught up to her.
"No! Don't hurt me!" Bubbles cried. "Please, leave me alone!!" She stopped flying and started slowly gliding to the ground.
"Bubbles! Bubbles it's me!" Blossom said, shaking her frantic sister.
"What happened? Where's Mary? Why are you crying?" Buttercup asked.
Alas, no answer came. Bubbles was breathing too fast for her talk to her concerned sisters. She simply gasped for air, staring into the night.
"Bubbles, snap out of it!" Blossom begged her sister, looking into her eyes. "Calm down. Take deep breaths."
As Bubbles slowly regained the normal breathing patters that kept people alive, Blossom started to gently carry her to the ground. A few kids walking by looked up to see the three Powerpuff Girls, but thought nothing of it. They had candy to get, (yum-yum!).
"Buttercup, go and bring Susie and Mitch here. I left Susie only four blocks to the East." Blossom said as she cradled Bubbles in her arms.
"But I want to know what happened!" Buttercup concernly said.
"So do I, but I don't think we should leave those two alone. We're supposed to be watching them."
Buttercup frowned, but flew off for the other two class mates, leaving her monster bag costume behind, blowing away in the slight breezes that continued to blow.
After Buttercup left, Blossom turned her attention to Bubbles. She pulled Bubbles's bunny hood off from her head. "Can you tell me what happened now?" Blossom asked calmly.
Taking a few breaths before hand, Bubbles confessed of what she saw. "Me and Mary were walking through that dark scarry place on that one street with all those trees. Halfway through, we bumped into a trick-or-treater. He was wearing an orange Powerpuff dress and a scarry pumpkin on his head."
Bubbles took a few more breaths of air as Blossom waited patiently. Suddenly, something seemed to catch Blossom's attention. She looked at the bushes ahead of her, but saw nothing. Looking up and down the street, she saw that there wasn't anyone around. Still she couldn't shake the feeling that someone was watching them.
Apparently, Bubbles couldn't either. "Oh Blossom! What if he's still here? What if he followed me and wants to get me too!?" She moaned.
Am extra large gust of wind blew through the small street they had landed on. They were empty, except small loose objects. The breeze caught Blossom's hair and undid it, making it now waver in the wind that was slowly picking up.
But this was no time to think about that. "What do you mean get you too? What happened to Mary?"
Bubbles's eyes opened wide in fear, the moonlight reflecting off of them.. She couldn't hold it in. "She's dead Blossom! The pumpkin person cut her head off with a buzz saw blade!!"
As Blossom gasped, Bubbles started to cry again. About this time Buttercup arrived carrying a blacked robed spook and a giant banana. They all joined the scene, wondering what happened.
"What happened?" Buttercup asked. Mitch and Susie approached the crying Bubbles.
"Where's Mary?" Susie question.
"Why's Bubbles crying?" Mitch laughed.
"Common everyone!" Blossom suddenly shouted, picking Bubbles back up in her arms. "We better investigate what happened here!"
And so they all flew off. Of course, only Blossom and Buttercup were flying. Blossom was still carrying Bubbles while Buttercup was carrying the other two. After a few seconds, they arrived at the scene of the ... scene. The entire area of trees was empty. There wasn't a single person in, as I just said. Bubbles had gotten a hold of herself, and was walking around by now.
"Is this the spot?" Blossom asked Bubbles. She noded slowly.
"Well, I don't see anything!" Mitch shouted out.
As Buttercup told Mitch to shut up, Blossom turned to Bubbles. "Well Bubbles, he is right. There's nothing here but us!"
In shock, Bubbles looked all around. There was no sign of anything that had happened around. There was no pumpkin wearing Powerpuff, and no bit or piece of Mary. No body, no head, and no red blood stains across the sidewalk.
"But, she was just right here!" Bubbles cried franticly. She ran around looking for anything, something to prove what she just saw. But it was to no avail. As she collapsed into a sitting position, she started to wonder if she was hallucinating.
"What happened?" Buttercup asked, annoyed. "Where the heck is Mary?"
"She gone!" Bubbles bawled before Blossom could answer. "Some person who looked like a Powerpuff with a pumpkin on his head killed her!!"
Buttercup, Mitch, and Susie gasped in disbelief. Before they could say anything, Blossom butted in. "We don't know that for sure!"
Now Bubbles took her turn in gasping. "I know what I saw!" She demanded.
"But then there'd be a body at least!" Blossom said. "And if there was one and the killer dragged her away, don't you think that there'd be a trail of blood or something? Becides, this area looks just like it normally does. There's no evidence that proves what you saw."
Bubbles started to pout when Buttercup joined the conversation. "But she's still missing Blossom!"
Blossom sighed. Looking at Mitch and Susie, she told Buttercup to bring them home to the Professor.
"What? Why?" Buttercup wondered.
"Because you have to bring them to safety while we look for Mary, now go!" She ordered.
Buttercup scowled, shrugged, then did as told. Two where carried and the other one flew through the night sky. As soon as they had left, Blossom looked at Bubbles.
"Are you up for a search, Bubbles?" Blossom emotionlessly asked.
Silently, Bubbles simply nodded. Then Blossom zipped off into the woods on one side of the street without warning. Bubbles sniffed back one last tear before turning towards the other side of the woods.
She stared at them, not thinking of anything. Eventually, she glided into them. She was, in fact, completely terrified. The place was quite; very quite. There was an occasional chip of a cricket, but that was it. The moonlight looked evil, poking through the dark twisted trees. No laughing trick-or-treaters, no friends to talk to, nobody to protect her but herself.
"Wait, what am I so scarred of?" Bubbles suddenly asked herself.
"I don't know!" She answered. "I'm a Powerpuff Girl! I'm strong, and not afraid of anything!!"
She chuckled to herself, realizing how silly she was acting about the whole situation. Listening to wind pick up, she pulled her bunny hood back over her head. "I scared of a killer hiding behind every tree I look at."
She sighed, being to afraid to worry about herself. But perhaps, she didn't see Mary dead, her eyes playing tricks on her. Maybe the echoing footsteps where just heres. Maybe the figure watching her really wasn't there. And maybe the killer was someone she actually knew.
Halloween sure can mess up your mind!
As the night moved on, Buttercup arrived at her current destination. Landing at her front door, she put Mitch and Susie down. Then she turned around to take off again into the twilight.
"Wait, where are you going?" Mitch asked Buttercup before she got too far away.
Buttercup stopped to answer. "I'm going to find Mary and my sisters. Hopefully this won't take long. I can't understand where Mary would run off to."
"She probably just wanted to get away from Bubbles!" Mitch laughed.
Buttercup almost laughed too, but now wasn't the time or the situation. "Look, just wait inside. When everything's straightened out we'll come back for you."
And with that, Buttercup zipped off into the dismal night sky for a search party. Mitch and Susie sat on the front step in silence for a few seconds when the front door opened.
"Well, Happy Halloween you two!" Professor Utonium said as he held open the door with one hand and a glass bowl of treats in the other. It was then he noticed who the two trick-or-treaters were.
"Why Mitch, Susie, what are you two doing here? Where is everyone else?" He asked.
"They're all out looking for Mary." Susie said. "She's lost or something."
"Mary got lost?" The Professor gasped. "That's terrible!"
"Actually, Bubbles thinks some crazy person killed her!" Mitch said.
"Now don't say things like that!" The Professor scolded. "And I suppose my girls are out looking for Mary."
The two kids nodded in agreement. "Well come on in." The Professor said. "You two get comfortable while I call the police."
Everybody went inside and the Professor turned off the house light to try and discourage any hungry trick-or-treaters that would come by. Without any children running up the walkway to the house, the Utonium residence was quiet. Very quiet. Quiet enough to hear the bushes shake, even though there wasn't any wind this time.
As the Professor went to the phone, the worried Halloweeners made themselves at home. Susie went upstairs into the bathroom to get out of her huge costume. After all, dressing up as a giant banana for several hours was tiering. Mitch had taken off the hood of his costume so he could see what the Utoniums had in their refrigerator. After all, why start eating his candy when he can eat someone else's?
"Hello, Police Chief? This is Professor Utonium calling." Said the Professor, obviously. "How is everything? Well, that's just the thing."
Before the Professor could say anything else, the line was cut off. "Oh, not again!" The Professor groaned. "Every single Halloween night somebody snips the phone line during an important call!"
Hearing the ruckus, Mitch came out of the kitchen with a gigantic sandwich he had made for himself. "What's wrong Professor?" He asked between bites. "Did you call the police?"
"No, I tried but someone cut the line." He moaned, hanging up the phone. "I bet it was that rude pikachu kid. Can I help it if I don't carry the name brand candy?"
Shrugging, Mitch walked back into the kitchen. That sandwich was making him thirsty. As he went for a drink, the doorbell rang.
The Professor sighed. He waited a second, maybe the person would go away. But this was not to be so. Instead, the doorbell rang. Then it rang again. Again and again it rang in a slow, monotonous rhythm.
Mitch ransacked his way through the refrigerator. "Aww man, all they have is 1% milk. Not even any soda!"
He stopped tossing things out of the fridge when he heard a strange sound. At first he thought it was that annoying doorbell, but there was something else. Between the rings, exactly in the middle of them, the was one small tap. Like the sound of someone slowly rapping on a window.
At the door, the Professor bit his lip in thought. What strange kind of a trick-or-treater could this be? "Probably that kid dressed up as that purple dinosaur playing a trick on me. Can I help it if I give the lowest amount of candy in a five block radius?"
Mitch walked over to the Window where the sound was coming from. "Maybe, maybe it's that thing Bubbles said she saw." He said, actually starting to get worried as he grew closer and closer to the tap tap tapping sound.
The doorbell rang again, never breaking its ominous pattern. Groaning, the Professor turned on the outside light. He looked out the window to see one lone trick-or-treater standing by his or herself. Not sure what to do, he grabbed the bowl of candy and approached the door.
"All right, all right, I'm coming! Don't break my doorbell!" The Professor called out to the mysterious ringer.
Slowly, very slowly Mitch reached the tapping behind the window. Letting curiosity take the best of him, he slowly reached up and took hold of the closed curtains on the rapping window. He took a deep breath, listening to the patting on the glass a few hits more, then ripped open the shades.
Straightening his tie, the Professor opened the door. "Why hello there!" He said to the person who had taken his hand off the doorbell as soon as the door was opened.
The Professor chuckled to himself. "My, that's certainly a creative twist to one of the most popular costumes I've seen tonight! And I should know, of course!!"
What Mitch saw in that window shade made him breath a sigh of relief. It wasn't any killer. In fact, he didn't even know what it was. Some large crest shape dangling from a wire.
"Looks like the Professor dude has got some groovy Halloween decorations going this year!" He said happiness. He turned around to go back to his search for food when he realized what he was looking at.
Meanwhile, the Professor was preparing to give his guest some candy treats when he noticed the kid didn't have a candy bag.
"What's this?" The Professor asked. "Don't you have a candy bag to carry your candy?"
The figure looked at the Professor through the huge object on his head, hiding his identity. Tilting his head aside he slowly reached behind and whipped something out right at the Professor.
The Professor gasped, and the realized it was only a candy bag. "Oh-ho-ho-ho," he laughed in his own merry way, "you sure are a creative little scamp. You take after a true Professor Utonium, you know that?"
The doorbell ringing figure looked up at the person he was dressed up as for candy. The huge rectangle paper bag had the Professors face drawn on it. Excitedly, the character held up his candy bag, his large white lab coat blowing in the wind.
Back in the kitchen, Mitch started screaming. Upon second glance, he now knew what was making that tapping noise. And he didn't like what he was now seeing.
Hanging from outside the window was a giant yellow banana. And inside the banana was Susie. She slowly swung in the wind, back and forth, against the window. That is what was making the tapping sound. She was supported in the air by the snipped phone line that had been wrapped around her neck.
Still screaming, Mitch tossed what was left of the sandwich he was still holding and ran to the Professor at the front door.
Just as the Professor was dropping some candy into the Professor dress up's bag, he stopped and looked up at the screaming kid running through his house. "Mitch? Mitch Mitchelson, what's the matter?"
"It's Susie!" He screamed between breaths that were almost as big as Bubbles's. "I just saw her outside! She was hung by the phone line!"
"What?" The Professor asked in shock and disbelief. "Mitch, is this some kind of a trick?"
Before anyone could say anything, the kid dressed up as the Professor shoved the real Professor's hand into the candy bag.
Surprised, the Professor soon returned to his cool and calm exterior. "And I suppose this is some kind of a trick too, huh?" He asked.
Suddenly there was a sound breaking SNAP. The Professor gasped and pulled his hand out of the bad. On the end of his fingers was a genuine mouse trap. Groaning in temperate pain, he pulled it off. He looked at his bruised fingers before looking at his so called guest.
"And you better have a good explanation for that trick!!" The Professor sternly scolded the little trickster.
The kid looked at the Professor, then pulled off his Professor mask. Underneath was a large, Powerpuff size head. It had an evilly carved face in it with a twisted smile. And underneath the lab coat was an orange Powerpuff dress.
"Very creative, but who the heck do you think you are?" The Professor demanded.
The pumpkin headed Powerpuff looked at the Professor with a tilted expression. Then, using it's arms that even looked like Powerpuff Girl's arms, it reached behind its back.
"Listen here kid," The Professor said as he started to close the door with Mitch still screaming in the background. "You better get out of her before-"
The Professors words were cut off by his own scream of pain. The dark, orange figure had picked up the candy bowl the Professor had dropped only a second ago, and had smashed it over his knee.
The Professor winced, almost falling over in pain as he grabbed his broken knee. He could feal the broken bones and looked up at his ungrateful guest to see it holding an axe. With the carved face almost laughing, it swung the axe at the Professor's head.
The Professor ducked just in time. Unfortunately, the character was also fast. Using the butt of the axe's handle, the pumpkin character bashed the Professor in the head. The Professor quickly collapsed on the floor unconscious.
Walking over to the Professor, the villain raised the axe to finish the job. But then it saw Mitch. Cocking its head, the killer used the axe to point. First it did to the West, the direction the real Powerpuffs left to find Mary. Then it pointed into the kitchen, to the body hanging outside. Next it pointed to the Professor. Finally, it pointed to Mitch.
And, with its satanic pumpkin smile still on its face, the pumpkin wearing Powerpuff raised the axe to claim its next two victims.
End of Part Two