No. 213

Craig Hansen examined his pumpkin intently, searching the mottled orange surface for clues or inspiration as to what he should carve into the gourd.

He cast a sideways glance at his friends, all happily hacking away at their jack-o-lanterns. He didn’t see anything terribly impressive. They were all doing the standard smiley-faces with jagged teeth and triangle eyes.  Craig wanted his to be different.

“Forty-five minutes left,” somebody at the end of the row announced. If Craig didn’t have something soon, he’d be forced to turn to the cliché just to have something to enter in the contest.

“Come on,” he whispered at his mute vegetable canvas. “Give me something.”

The pumpkin, being an inanimate object, did nothing to add to Craig’s creative energy.

Time ticked by far too quickly, and though Craig didn’t wear a watch, he could feel the deadline approaching. Usually, he was better at this, but this year he’d been busy in the lead-up to the Halloween season. He contemplated recycling one of his previous designs, but he knew there was a good chance somebody would remember and disqualify him.

With diminishing opportunities, he made the call that would have been unthinkable just an hour before. He raised his knife and began to thrust the blade down to begin the traditional spooky face.

The point met flesh with a satisfying resistance, but Craig felt something inside himself dim as he began to saw the first eye-hole. He stopped and closed his eyes, hoping for a last-minute flash of an idea.

“What’s yours going to be?” asked Lindsay Ross, interrupting his process.

Craig started to tell her that it wasn’t going to be anything special, but the spark he’d been waiting for hit mid-way through his sentence.

“It’s going to be awesome,” he told her with a smile on his face and one careful eye on the clock. “You’ll see in about half an hour.”