20211031 - Happy Halloween & NaNoWriMo + Inktober Day 20: Sprout

Pumpkin picking patch,\ outside the supermarket,\ growing through concrete.

#HAIKUPRAJNA - Inktober Day 20 Sprout

Happy Halloween!

Skipping ahead a number of days because April and I planned a cute flash fiction short story, which I wanted to post today. Much longer than the others will be; 1000 words, where the rest will be definitively within the flash fiction category.

Enjoy! I based this short in part on April and my October Halloween celebrations.

Hope you have a spooky night, and thank you for reading!

...

"Sprouting" - Allen W. McLean

The three Bean children, their parents inside grocery shopping, ogled at the MEGA Supermarket's display of pumpkins.

"If you guys think these orange ones are cool," said their Uncle Trick, a life-long friend of Joe's, who had accompanied their typical weekend trips, "Wait 'til you feast your eyes on the ones in the baskets, over here."

He guided the three through a walkway and around a bend, between two rows of the metal shelves, toward the wooden bins hanging from a display standing in a corner area created by the large orange gourds. In single file, from oldest to shortest, the blue, green and salmon-pink coats followed the maroon-brown faux-leather past dozens of the large and abstractly round pumpkins that were stacked to Trick's eye-level on two levels of grated shelves, lining both sides of the aisle. 

Trick wanted nothing more than to make good memories with the suburban family. He stepped behind, watching the children stand on the toes of their boots and sneakers, to stick their toqued heads into the tiered baskets in the corner at another turn.

"Whoa!" Helvetica, the youngest, said into a bin, "This one is green!"

MEGA MART Superstores had annual pumpkin picking patches outside their stores every October. Large gardens and farms were located along the conurban outskirts, where the closest were a day's ride away by hovercraft. MEGA Corp, well aware of this self-imposed fact, endeavored to provide a suitable replacement for those confining themselves to its city.

The Superstore was on the open south-east end of an unremarkable highway strip-mall which occupied three of the four sides of its connected parking lot. The concrete storefront, with the large red "MART" sign on its second storey, extended out from the entrance to accommodate a roofed curbside pickup area that ran the length of the storefront, which was where the polo-wearing employees had displayed MEGA's impressive number of pumpkins. Kids and their adults came from the neighbouring suburban blocks and headed home with their arms and their minds full of pumpkin. Gutted and carved, the lights and shadows of Jack-o'-lanterns would dance on porches and on doorsteps just in time for Halloween night.

Trick had decided at once, upon seeing the outdoor display as Ruby landed the hover-van, to take the kids pumpkin picking instead of distracting them inside.

Peter, the eldest, had taken credit for this idea for themselves. "I'm so glad we decided to stay outside this time!" 

He exclaimed with the others' gasps and expressions like "Look!" and "Wow!" while looking in the bins at its puny variegated gourds.

They were surrounded by classical pumpkins stacked at different heights on the shelves on either side of them, creating orange-lined walkways, away from the curbside, that turned around corners and into pockets of space along the store's front windows, which looked into the self-service check-outs and the pantry aisles behind them, and which reflected the warm autumn colours back onto the display. Giant cardboard bulk bins full of rejected purple-pink speckled pumpkins were hiding, out of sight, in the furthest reaches. Bundles of purple-red corn cobs and mesh bags of tiny ornamental gourds were piled into the display-stand baskets like the one that the children were rummaging through. 

The different options appeared, to Trick, to be too hindering of a distraction for their curiosity.

Trick said, "You can either pick a big pumpkin and help each other carve it, or you can pick one of the smaller pumpkins on the shelves or in the bins, each."  

Their decision was unanimous, and a relief to Trick's wallet; the kids picked from the smallest ornamental ones because, they said, they were cooler than the speckled rejects. Seven-year-old Kirby turned around with an ugly looking pepper-shaped thing striped with lime-yellow over bumpy patches of a darker forest green.

"Look, Tricky," he said, smiling with his tongue through his missing two top teeth, holding the odd runt of a gourd up toward the taller adult's face, "this one reminds me of you."

"Trick! Trick!" Helvetica's red rain boots clapped hard against the cold concrete as she hopped beside her older brother while holding a yellow and green pumpkin which contrasted her salmon coloured winter jacket. "I've never seen ones so small like these before."

She was lost in the variegation, turning the pinwheel-like colours around in her red mittens; Trick was pleased that the children were interested in all the different options.

"And have you picked anything, Peter?"

He joined his younger siblings with a squat little orange pumpkin the size of his two hands.

"Classic!" Trick clasped his hands. "All right, let's go, before your parents pay for everything. I think I see your mom and dad at the check-outs, now."

At the picnic table in the backyard at home, after the groceries were put away, Ruby sat with her kids in a corduroy overall dress over a black sweater to help them paint their gourds, while Joe, wearing a green and white plaid jacket with jeans, gathered craft supplies for them and Trick. 

He and Helvetica cut construction paper capes for her yellow "Squasha the Vampire", while Joe and Kirby stuck painted bolts into "Gordy the Franken-zombie", and Ruby helped Peter paint clown makeup on "Pumpkin-Pat". Ruby painted fangs on Squasha, Helvetica gave Pumpkin-Pat a removable red nose and a paper knife, and Kirby and Peter covered Gordy in specks of red blood and the impressions of purple bruises.

Outside in the middle of the suburban conurbs, the Bean family, like many others, was making memories and growing through the concrete forests of modern life.

Trick, Peter, Kirby and Helvetica put Squasha, Gordy and Pumpkin-Pat on display by their front door. Soft Christmas string lights were wrapped in the porch's pillars and brightened the red and orange leaves scattered by the maple tree that branched toward the gutters from the edge of their lawn.

The sun had set on the conurban forest hills by then, so Trick said goodnight to the Beans and their children. Before riding off in his hovercar, he promised to accompany them Trick-or-treating the next night.

... 

These Inktober poems and drawings will be collected along with pieces of flash fiction (which will be posted for NaNoWriMo 2021) and a novel-length story as a future edition of the HaikuPrajna Collection about a character that April named Bucket, and his siblings Train and Ruby. You can read all of them here: https://haikuprajna.blogspot.com/search/label/Inktober%202021

Are you participating in Inktober or NaNoWriMo this year? Write a haiku and either tag or send to HaikuPrajna or Electric Armchair to share your work with us! 

Source: Https://Instagram.com/ElectricArmchair

"Escape Perennial City" eBook, paperback and hardcover are now available through Amazon and on Kindle apps and devices, read with Kindle Unlimited: https://www.amazon.ca/dp/B099C5LJ6W

More bite-sized insights into this metaphysical superhero novel can be found in the link at the top of the page, including excerpts straight from the book: https://haikuprajna.blogspot.com/p/escape-perennial-city.html

Thank you for reading.

Until next time,

Allen W. McLean

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