If Jared thought life as a dog had been dull, it was nothing compared to spending day after day as a pumpkin. True, he got to observe the world, at least within his immediate vicinity, through a distorted orange filter.
He still saw his family, father, mother, brother, and the hated impostor, as they went about their daily lives which no longer included him.
Without hands, without mouth, without much of anything except a still intact consciousness, he existed at the whim of external forces. So, when his younger brother collected him from the front porch one afternoon, Jared let himself think that things might be about to change. In the end, he was proven correct, in a way.
Kevin wrapped a hand around the green stem and carried the orange pumpkin into the kitchen. He placed the bright gourd on some newspapers spread across the kitchen table. In a neat arrangement on the table adjacent to the newspapers Kevin had placed his mother's best kitchen knife, a large slotted spoon, and some smaller cutting utensils. Once he seated himself at the table, he spun the pumpkin, evaluating the various aspects of the imperfectly round gourd.
The spinning dizzied his transformed brother, who began screaming words that echoed in his consciousness without any tangible impact on the external world beyond his orange hull. "Kevin! It's me! Wepwawet tricked you!"
Kevin picked up the large knife. "Kevin! What are you doing with that knife?"
Kevin stabbed the gourd, driving the blade deep into the interior. Then, rotating the knife, he began sawing through the orange rind, moving in a circular motion around the green stem the pumpkin had retained after being plucked off the vine in the field and harvested, none of which Jared truly remembered as he had become one with the pumpkin only in the last few days.
Jared felt the cold metal blade thrust deep into his orange body and experienced a mental shudder.
Kevin turned the blade and used it to pry loose the severed section of the pumpkin's rind attached to the green stem, lifted it from the rest of the gourd, and placed it aside on the newspapers.
"Stop! Kevin! Stop!" jared continued to plead in futile desperation. "It's me! Jared!"
Kevin picked up the slotted spoon and used it to begin the tedious work of scooping the guts from his pumpkin, depositing each sticky, stringy scoop of orange flesh and seeds in heaps upon the newspaper.
For poor Jared, it felt like he was being diminished one spoonful at a time. He tried to anchor himself with one main thought. "Me Jared," he intoned wordlessly as more of his insides ended up outside the hollowed shell. He could see the growing mound of fibrous pumpkin guts and slimy seeds.
Kevin spun the hollowed-out pumpkin one last time before settling on the part of the surface that would present the face of his Jack-O'-lantern.
Jared felt cold, alone, and diminished, but he remained locked into the alien consciousness of the simple harvested produce.
Kevin used a black marker to outline the pattern for the face he wanted to bestow on the Jack-O'-lantern before he used some of his smaller, more delicate cutting utensils to provide a pair of eyes, a nose, and a jagged grin.
Kevin finished his artistic handiwork in less than half an hour and felt quite proud of the resulting Jack-O'-lantern. He lifted the finished organic sculpture and carried it to the kitchen counter. Jared was forced to watch as his younger brother began disposing of the newspapers and the rest of Jared's pumpkin body.
"No! Don't!" Jared pleaded, but halted his desperate attempts, not because he recognized the futility of it, but because he caught a glimpse of something in the polished stainless steel surface of the Webster family toaster.
Through his strange orange haze, Jared the pumpkin saw how he had been transformed. He had two triangular eyes, a thin slit of a nose, and a wide, snaggletoothed grin, all carved into the orange rind of his body. If tears had been possible, he might have cried.
Kevin carried one of the sections of newspaper holding the pumpkin innards over to the sink and dumped the contents into the stainless steel basin. With his limited view, Jared lost sight of the lost part of his body, but then a horrible, grinding noise shook him to his empty core. The mechanical reverberations from the garbage disposal built into the sink sank into the hollow gourd and gave impending notice that most of his body was getting mulched. Kevin pushed the last of the pumpkin innards into the grinding gears of the disposal, which whirred and did its work quit efficiently.
He then took up his Jack-O'-lantern and left the kitchen to...