A/N: Hello everyone, and Happy Halloween! As has become my custom, I've prepared a holiday special for the occasion, although this one wont be quite like the others. This one has pretty much eaten up my writing time for this month, and I didn't even finish it until yesterday. But I wanted to write it ever since I had the idea last Halloween, and I was not going to let it slide by this year. That said, I'm especially excited for it, and I can't wait to hear what you all think before it's over.

Warning: While this fic is rated "Teen and Up", it is definitely on the higher end of that. This story is labeled as "horror/suspense" for a reason, and will include character death, blood, and some amount of gore. I have done my best to keep it to what you would expect from a PG-13 movie, but if that is not your thing then you may want to avoid this one.

The Monster in the Rainforest

"Pineapple, pineapple. Yummy, tasty pineapple," Jambu half hummed, half sang to himself as he weaved his way through the thick foliage of the rainforest. It was a hot, summer day that only bothered him a little bit; he knew that soon a refreshing rain shower would cool everything down. It was how it worked in the Rainforest, a natural part of life.

"Bananas are nice and guavas taste good, but pineapples are my favorite food," he began to sing louder—he was all alone, after all. No one around that could be annoyed. "La de da, doot doot toot, pineapples are a very good fruit!"

And fruit was exactly what he was after with this trip far from the Rainwing Village. It was getting to the end of the season for pineapples, and he was on the hunt for some wild batches that hadn't been harvested yet. Which was easier said than done, especially with the Nightwings that had moved into the rainforest.

Of course, Jambu got along more than well with most of the black dragons, but they had quickly developed a tendency for fruit. Which meant that there were more dragons out harvesting the bounty of the rainforest. Which meant that Jambu had to search longer and harder for his delicious pineapples.

But it wasn't a big deal. With any luck, he'd fill the satchel he'd brought in no time and get back home before sun time. Most of the time the plants grew near each other, so all it would take to load up is just one glimpse of…

"Pineapples!" he exclaimed aloud, breaking out of his song as he spotted a ripe fruit down below. Quickly he swooped down and alighted on the rainforest floor nest to where he'd seen the one, and grinned widely as he saw that there were several more with it.

He plucked one immediately and sliced it in half with a claw. He licked the interior: it was juicy and sweet with a little bit of bite. In short, it was delicious, and he gobbled it down before reaching out and picking another, stuffing it in his satchel.

Snap.

The sound of a branch breaking distracted him, and he looked around. Seeing nothing, he shrugged his wings and went back to picking the pineapples. It was probably just a jaguar, after all.

"Tasty yummy tasty fruit," he went back to singing as he worked, "Pineapple, pineapple, woot woot woot!"

Soon his bag was filled—he wished he'd brought a bigger one—and he wiped his claws together to get rid of some of the dirt they'd picked up. He'd gotten about a dozen, which was a nice haul. Enough to last him a couple days. Maybe he'd give a couple to Glory, too. She'd asked him to pick a few for her if he found enough.

He picked one more for the trip back, but paused. He frowned as he looked around him again. It felt…it felt like he was being watched.

"Glory?" he called out, wondering if he'd been followed, "Mangrove? If anyone's there, you can come out. I've picked all I want."

There was silence. The feeling didn't go away. He noticed that the normal, active sounds of the rainforest had gone quiet. No insects were buzzing around him. He couldn't even hear the calls of toucans in the trees.

"Hello?" he called out again, getting worried. A smell reached him, one of something rotten, like the prey the Nightwings hunted but didn't kill and let half-die before they ate it. He felt a little nauseous, and resisted gagging. "Is this a joke? It isn't funny."

He shifted uncomfortably on his claws and clutched that final pineapple tighter. He'd lived in the rainforest his whole life, and was excellent at spotting even the smallest animals in the dense foliage, but as he scanned the trees he saw nothing. Nothing at all. Even as the feeling of being watched remained.

"Hello?" he tried one last time, a bit louder so as to scare away anything that may not have been a dragon.

Again, there was silence, but then he heard a loud rustle of leaves behind him, and he actually gave a sigh of relief as he heard what sounded like a dragon approaching. "There you are. Is that you, Glory?"

It wasn't Glory, and that was about all that Jambu had time to understand. For all he got as he turned around was a single glimpse of a flash of color. Then he saw several white fangs—or were they claws?—and then they were on him, slicing through his scales. He hadn't even had time to raise a defense. And suddenly he felt a fierce pain that almost immediately grew into a cold numbness.

Jambu opened his mouth, but nothing came out. He experienced an odd sensation of not being able to speak, for his vocal cords had been severed in the same slice that he hadn't even realized had destroyed his throat. And with that realization, his eyes widened as he looked down and saw the leaves around him growing wet, as if from a light rainforest drizzle, but with droplets of red.

The last thing he could even process was a low hiss, and his vision grew black. He didn't even feel himself fall to the ground, nor take any note of the pineapple rolling out of his claw and into a puddle of mud and blood.