(This story was inspired by two things. First, I am currently in rehearsal for a play dealing with the issue of adult victims of child abuse*, and that got me thinking of what I would like to see happen to the perpetrators of such abuse. Secondly, thanks to J. John Seaver for his excellent story, "SRU: In the Bag"; it's posted at Fictionmania, and I highly reccomend it. )

 

Jackie O'Lantern

by Jezzi Belle Stewart

 

Jack Prior knelt on the long uncut grass behind the worn and age weathered gravestone bearing the name of Jackson Donovan with the birth and death dates of 1840 - 1912, both barely legible on its surface. The grave of Mr. Donovan was a part of Donovan cemetery. Dorsey Donovan had, in the mid 19th century, become the richest citizen of the then town of Greasepuddle and had used his wealth and power to get the name of the town and the cemetery changed to his own; the main street of the town was Donovan Street and there was a Donovan Park also named after him, and there was the Donovan Childrens' Home started by and named for his son, the occupant of the grave fronted by the stone behind which Jack Prior knelt.

The cemetery was full, and had been so since the last burial in 1920. The space around it had, by that time been turned into an industrial district and there had been no room for expansion. Most of the industry had moved out in the years following World war II headed for sunnier climes and cheaper labor and had left outdated industrial plants behind to deteriorate until a recent wave of reform swept into power a city council willing to facilitate a gentrification of the neighborhood. The plan, begun eight years before Jack Prior's nocturnal and seemingly morbid visit to the cemetery this October 31st, had not touched the rotting factories on the north, east, or south sides of the cemetery, which had itself become overgrown, the graves uncared for and the stones allowed to deteriorate and fall over, both naturally and as the work of vandals and satanists. The section on the west side of the cemetery, however, had been razed and a housing development with houses priced to appeal to young families had been built. And that is why Jack, sad to say, was where he was at that time; the houses had almost all been purchased, and, as intended, had been purchased by families with young children ... and Jack was a pedophile.

Jack worked as a custodian at the elementary school that the developers of the new housing on the cemetery's west side had agreed to build. He was smart enough to play the paragon of virtue in the school itself, using it rather as an intelligence gathering resource than as an immediate source of the children themselves. Two years before his current Halloween journey, he had used knowledge of a planned, non parentally approved, nocturnal sojourn from Lydia Haskel's slumber party to "invite" three third grade girls, including Lydia herself, to an entirely different party from the one they had left without Lydia's parents' knowledge. Unfortunately for them, it was an invitation they found themselves unable to refuse. There was a scandal and an investigation, and the case was still open, but no trace of the three had been found. While Jack had been questioned, he was never really considered a suspect; he was, if he did think so himself, VERY clever ... and VERY good at what he did.

Jack had deliberately picked Jackson Donovan's gravestone to hide behind out of several suitable stones that were located in the area of the cemetery where he needed to be. He thought keeping company with the late Mr. Donovan very suitable indeed; they were, he believed, kindred souls. To the best of his knowledge, Old Jack had never hit a child or attempted sexual relations with one, or even yelled loudly at one. However, he knew that founding the foundlings home (He chuckled over that play on words.) had merely been one more way that Old Jack had found for increasing the family fortunes. Of the money donated for the home, Jack estimated from his research that twenty-five percent had gone into Old Jack's pocket, fifty percent had been used to bribe local and state officials, and twenty-five percent had gone into the actual running of the home where drab, ill-fitting clothing, food enough to keep the children healthy but on the edge of hunger, hard work - at jobs around town in various Donavon owned enterprises - VERY strict discipline, and a little schooling was the order of the day. Apparently Old Jack had read "Oliver Twist" and been quite taken with it - though in ways of which Mr. Dickens would not have approved. And things had only gotten worse since Old Jack's time; Jack knew this because he, himself, was a product of The Home.

Jack had never learned who his parents were, and had learned early on that open curiosity was a way to get one's self slapped or deprived of a meal or ordered to do more work. He also learned the pecking order, and, as a large boy, he moved to the top of it - actually food chain was more appropriate than pecking order, as at the top, one literally got more food.

Jack became a bully, pure and simple, and his bullying tendencies were given free reign by the home's employees, chosen solely for their willingness to work for minimum wage. The raging hormones of Jack's adolescence were fed not by girls his own age, as, at the beginning of it, those were usually bigger than he and able to defend themselves, but by little girls, the prepubescent ones, the pretty ones. At first he focused on adoration; the little girls who were willing to flatter him and feed his ego became his favorites. Soon, though, he moved on to sexual favors, and that worked for awhile. But finally came fear. Fear sent a thrill through Jack like nothing else; fear showed his absolute power over those in whom he induced it, and if they were pretty little female THINGS - Jack never thought of his victims as quite human - that was the TOP of the thrill chain.

In his seventeenth year, Jack scared seven year old Theresa O'Leary to death without even touching her. You don't - at least I hope you don't - even want to know what he did. The results for him were both good and bad. The good was that he had the most mind blowing, cum inducing, awesome orgasm ever; in his ecstasy, he felt sorry for Theresa that she was already dead when he ... well, like I said, I hope you don't want to know. The bad thing was he almost got caught ... and HE became afraid. That was no fun at all, and he decided that he would have to become very, very cleaver and very, very discrete to avoid that feeling of his own fear in the future. And being that worst combination of evil and brains, he did so become.

Jack WAS smart and had managed to get a good enough education for himself that after leaving the home at age eighteen, he was able to attend University. While there, he curbed his tendencies and managed to leave with a 4.0 GPA and a degree in child psychology. His professors all agreed that they had never seen a man who could relate to children as well as Jack. Irony is such a wonderful thing.

There's no place like home, and Jack didn't need ruby slippers to get there; he simply took the train. There would have been ample opportunities to satisfy his four years delayed appetite in The Big City. Had he stayed at University, as his professors had urged him to do, he could have acquired the advanced degrees to go into that perfect cover of a practicing child psychologist. He was drawn back to Donovan like a moth to a flame, however, and he was not quite sure why. Using only his high school diploma, and good references from the director of The Home, who was totally clueless as to what really went on in his domain and thought jack rather the best success story to come out since he had taken tenure, he got the job as custodian at the new Jackson Donovan (Surprise!) elementary school.

All this past history was reviewed by Jack as he huddled behind the gravestone. He had learned that for the last several years, Children, urging each other on by peer pressure to overcome their fear, had been including a trip through the cemetery on their Halloween trick or treat runs. The cemetery was, after all, a child's Halloween wet dream, looking exactly like the synthesis of every Hollywood horror film cemetery created since the 1930's. And then there was the pumpkin patch. Edgar Lee Masters had had one of his characters in "Spoon River Anthology" refer to a cemetery as a "wasted garden" and some one, back in the spring of the year, had decided to prove him wrong, planting pumpkin seeds in the area that was, Jack believed coincidentally, most traveled by the children. The pumpkins had thrived on the naturally fertilized soil of the graves, maturing with an unusual bright, almost fluorescent orange color. Jack, sitting amongst the vines, was surrounded by ones with anywhere from eight to twenty-four inch diameters. They hadn't been a part of his plan, but sitting there waiting among them, he began to get a fearsomely delicious and Halloween appropriate idea for making one so.

As coincidence would have it, it was another slumber party that Jack had heard of. Penny Silver and her friend Marta Lieberman had been in Mrs. Angstrom's third grade classroom while he was cleaning it one day a week or so ago. Jack was well aware of Penny and Marta. Both were Jack's type - beautiful, showing the promise of adult beauty that, if Jack had his way, they would never achieve. Penny's angelic nordic face with ice blue eyes was framed by honey blonde hair that was in twin ponytails tied off with ribbons the same pink color as her sweater; Jack thought that made-up she would look like Jon Benet. Marta was the opposite, olive skinned with straight black hair with violet Elizabeth Taylor eyes. Jack imagined both sets of eyes wide with fear and immediately turned his thoughts to their teacher, sixty years old if she was a day and ugly, to discourage the erection he could feel beginning. *Later,* he thought to "Big Jack", *Later.*

Mrs. Angstrom had left the room for a moment, and the two girls had immediately put their heads together and started giggling. To Jack, with his carefully built up knowledge of the minds of little girls, this meant secrets, and he deliberately began to sweep around the desks in which they were sitting, feeling under the edges of the empty desk tops as he did so. Bingo! As he ran his hand along the underside of the third desk over from where they were sitting, he detected several wads of gum, most rock hard, but one squishy, probably newly chewed that morning. He flipped the desk over and began industrially but carefully to clean the underside with spray gum dissolver and a cold chisel. This attention to detail had earned Jack several "Staff Member of the Month" citations from the school board. Outwardly absorbed in his work, he, of course, used the time to listen in and discover exactly what Penny and Marta's secrets were. Carved into the top of the desk he was cleaning were the words "Love you to pieces!" Jack stifled the chuckle that the words inspired; good ideas came from such unusual sources.

Marta and Penny, best friends, were giggling about what they planned to do at Susie Miller's Halloween slumber party. They would sneak out after the rest of the girls were asleep and, both dressed as witches, make their way to the cemetery to get a pumpkin. They would go late, after the teenagers had been and gone. When the other girls awoke in the morning to see the pumpkin, which, with its uniquely colored skin, could only have come from the cemetery, their social status would raise remarkably, and their brave nocturnal adventure would be the talk of the school for ... well, just forever! Jack couldn't believe his luck.

And here he was at one-thirty in the morning, sitting behind Jackson Donovan's gravestone amongst the pumpkin vines and pumpkins. The younger children had come early in the evening, and the teens had come about eleven and had left shortly after midnight. No one had come for the last hour, and he was awaiting with hard learned patience the arrival of the two little witches. The night was a perfect Halloween night, the full moon alternately being revealed and then hidden by clouds scudding across the sky, a light wind stirring the dead leaves in their bright funeral colors across the graves of sleeping (?) dead, and the temperature cool but comfortable. Jack was dressed in brown, green, and orange camouflage to blend in, and it was almost as if the Pumpkins and their vines appreciated his attempt. The pumpkins almost glowed in their fluorescent orange, and the vines almost seemed to curl up around him, their leaves caressing him, welcoming him. All in all, thought Jack, this was turning out to be a most pleasant prelude to the main attraction.

One pumpkin in particular, seeming to glow more than others, had drawn Jack's attention and had given him The Idea. He had brought a black mask to wear, but really was not happy with it. This pumpkin was about eighteen inches in diameter and Jack, with thoughts of a youthful reading of Washington Irving's "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" coming to mind, had thought that it might do as a head. He would cut a circular piece from the bottom big enough to fit over his head and carve a particularly scary face on it for the "benefit" of his two beautiful visitors. He did not notice that the vine bearing that particular pumpkin had its roots sunk deep into the soil at the middle of Jackson Donovan's grave.

At about one o'clock he had carefully untied the bow of the string holding his leather knife case wrapped. He lovingly unwrapped the well worn leather carrier to expose his pride and joy, a set of five knives made by the best Swedish knife maker in the business, knives he had, with the zeal of the fanatic, spent the day sharpening to razor edges and polishing till they shown. They ranged in size from a foot long heavy duty blade, more than adequate to sever a thigh joint if necessary, to a surgeon's scalpel for delicate work on fingers ... or ears ... or eyes. "Love you to pieces!"

He selected the medium blade and began to carve, by one-thirty his "head" was ready; it's carved features seemed to Jack more than able to project the malevolently evil feelings he had aimed for; the carving had gone so well that he was ready to swear that the pumpkin had cooperated in its own transformation. He heard footsteps approaching and with a sense of gleeful anticipation, he placed the pumpkin on his head.

As the two witches stepped into view, Jack attempted to rise from behind the gravestone, but was shocked to find he could not move. Although there was a bright full moon at that moment, the faces of the two seemed to be hidden in shadows cast by the brims of their traditional witches hats. One raised her left arm to the horizontal toward him and began to move her fingers in arcane motions, A fear he hadn't felt in ages began to creep into the edges of his mind as, against his will, he rose and stepped around Jackson's stone into the girls' full view. Far from showing fear themselves, the two seemed to radiate power. Neither spoke a word, but they didn't need to. The other raised her right arm and began a series of movements more complex and intricate than the first. Back at Susie Miller's house, Penny Silver and Marta Lieberman were fast asleep, happy smiles from Halloween fun on their faces just like the other girls. All thoughts of a pumpkin raid gone as if they had never been.

The pumpkin head began to tighten around Jack's head as the circular bottom hole began to expand. The vine from which he had taken the pumpkin wrapped itself around his ankles and pulled him forward so that he fell with the top of his pumpkin head up against Jackson's stone. Jack heard ghostly old and evil laughter coming up through the earth and through the stone to his pumpkin covered ears. Full blown fear exploded through his mind as the vines began to push his body up into the pumpkin. he could no longer see the two witches, but he knew they were there, silently watching. As his shoulders were swallowed, he imagined ... no it wasn't imagination ... he SAW Theresa O'Leary as she had looked the night he had lured her into his car standing before him, pointing at him, a look of justice long deferred on her face, her hair blowing out behind her as if in a wind he couldn't feel. He felt excruciating pain in his head, shoulders and also his chest, which was now also consumed by the voracious pumpkin head. He heard the creaking and cracking of bones shortening and rearranging. He smelt the stink of his bowels and bladder releasing before his buttocks was swallowed, his excrement adding more fertilizer to the no longer wasted garden. The skin of his scalp, arms, chest, and underarms burned with a pushing and pulling feeling which extended to the rest of his body as it was consumed. Just before his groin and buttocks was consumed, Theresa was joined by Lydia Haskel and her two friends. In the background, he could sense his other victim's presence as well, and the pain and fear, which, at the primal level his thoughts had been reduced to, he had thought couldn't get any worse, exploded to new levels as external and internal organs churned around and rearanged. When his feet disappeared into the pumpkin, the bottom sealed itself and the face he had carved disappeared, replaced only by seamless skin. All that remained of his mind at that moment was pure overwhelming primal fear that seemed to go on and on and on.

Where the two witches had stood, two grown plus size ladies now stood. One was wearing an olive business suit with her hair in a no nonsense bun and the other a nurse's uniform in retro 1950's style. As dawn began to break, the pumpkin they had been watching, which had grown to about a four foot diameter after swallowing Jack, began to fade, along with the just and righteous magic of the Halloween night that had spawned it. When it had finally disappeared completely, a beautiful but disheveled and poorly dressed little girl, a feminine version of Jack Prior at age four, was lying asleep in a fetal position among the perfectly ordinary pumpkins.

At a gesture from the olive suited woman, the nurse grabbed the little girl's arm and none too gently jerked her awake and upright. "Jackie! Jackie O'lantern!" said Olive Suit sternly with no kindness in her voice, "I am sick and tired of your running away like this!"

There was enough of Jack left to wonder who the lady was talking about. He was confused, but remembered Theresa and Lydia and the rest ... and the pain ... enough to be still very afraid. He realized he was looking up at her, and he looked down at himself, his thin legs extending from his dirty white cotton dress, his blonde but dirty hair resting partially on his still flat chest. His dress! His hair! JackIE!?! He tried to scream, but only high pitched guttural sounds emerged and he realized he was mute, incapable of speech.

Olive suit - the name Mrs. Corleone floated into Jackie's mind - made an arm and finger gesture that Jack recognized from the night before and a full length mirror appeared allowing him to see her new self. Shocked HE took an involuntary step back. SHE was now Jack Prior's wet dream! Beautiful, small, weak, and incredibly vulnerable, unable to voice any complaints, the perfect victim.

"yes, JACK," said the nurse holding him - Nurse DeSade, Jackie knew. "It's time to take Jackie back to her home. ... To The Home." The mirror, having accomplished it's purpose, disappeared; no evidence of magic remained outside of Jackie's mind ... but that was enough.

*The Home! Jackie lives in the Home!* Jack thought. The Donovan Home, where people like him lived and where people like him were in charge! Maybe worse people than him! And now SHE was being taken there. One emotion was paramount in Jack/Jackie's mind.

"Oh yes; The Home, Jackie." said Mrs. Corleone. The malevolent grins were clear on both their faces as she and Nurse DeSade each grabbed a thin, powerless arm. "Be afraid; be VERY afraid!"

And Jack Prior, now four year old Jackie O'lantern, was, and would be for a VERY long time.

 

End

 

* - the play is "Requiem for the Child" and it will be performed Nov. 18/19/25/26, 2005 in Lombard, IL, a western suburb of Chicago. If anyone is interested, e-mail me, jezzistewart@yahoo.com.

  

  

  

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