On the night where the moon is sliced in half, and purple clouds chase the stars, she rises.The Pumpkin Witch lifts her weary head and blinks into the night. Spluttering slightly, she picks pumpkin seeds from her dried-up lips and flicks them at an unsuspecting slug. She cricks her neck and begins to draw herself to her full height, stretching out of the turgid mud in which she has been sleeping.
A hacking cough produces another stream of seeds, and buries the already startled slug into an early grave. Oblivious, she lifts one of her bestockinged feet into her first footstep after a year of hibernation, and steps on it. Bubbling from under her, it's mucus catches the moonlight, and her eye.
Looking down at it's moist carcass, her stomach rumbles. "Sleeping with the pumpkins for twelve months makes a gal hungry!" she mutters to herself as she scoops up the innards into her mouth.
After picking out the entrails from her jagged teeth, she begins to clamber over the swollen orange gourds that have been her bed-fellows. Her eyes take on a phosphorescent glow as she begins her annual search.
She knows just what she is looking for. For one thousand years she has disturbed her sweaty slumber on this night alone. Maybe she will find it this year. She mumbles, "A nice juicy one" whilst lazily plucking a moth mid-flight and squeezing it against the roof of her mouth.
"Pop!" She screeches with glee. An on-lookng toad wonders if she is referring to the moth, or the object her tangerine eyes have become transfixed by.
She has found it.
Right in the middle of the patch, is a pumpkin the size of an elephant. Squealing with ribald delight, and spitting seeds with frenzy, she leaps over the lesser fruits towards it. Her talon-like nails extend infront of her as she runs, whirring and twitching in anticipation.
When she reaches it, the nails continue their strange dance, but no longer through the crisp, night air. Instead they tango over the thick rind of the enormous pumpkin, cutting and slicing through to the spongy flesh beneath. Thin slivers of orange grow at the witches feet, and slowly a pattern emerges on the body of her treasure. Strange, unitelligible words tumble from her husky lips, and echo the strange, unintelligible symbols that appear at her nails on the pumpkin.
The toad looks on, perplexed.
Light starts to gleam from within the pumpkin, as her writings become clearer. Her strange song becomes louder, and her scribblings more crazed. The dark sky becomes full of this pumpkin light and crows in the trees screech. The toad begins to worry about his health.
She becomes aware of him now, and abruptly turns, leaps, and catches him in her clammy hands. Turning back to the pumpkin, she falls to her knees in front of it, proffering forth the nausesous toad. He can't help but stare at the monstrous, glowing thing in front of him, and is alarmed to notice that the carvings gouged into it's skin by the orange witch, resemble...toads.
He gulps audibly.
