"Well, we've been wanting these pumpkin costumes to fill out, and the store clerk said moonlight would be best for them, so we might as well." Said John cheerfully.
"You got that right." Carrie said in full agreement, having gone around in loose rubber was getting a little awkward. And like John, Carrie two wanted to try being cell-shaded like everything else in this wold.
And while this place was creepy, it was fun and games creepy rather than Nightmare on Elm Street creepy. Then again, this was called 'toon world' it made sense everything would have a side track of silliness.
Enjoying what remained of the sunset, the couple sat on the rusted lounge chairs, which creaked under their touch but didn't break apart as they should have done.
'Should?' John though, 'Since when was there a word like 'should' in cartoons?'
As the sun vanished over the painted horizon, and the always full moon rose in it's place, Carrie and John were static with anticipation.
That was when they began to feel funny.
The moon rose and held their full attention, the moonlight was so pretty.
Carrie and John couldn't help but smile a little at the moonlight, feeling more comfortable by the second.
The lounge chairs moaned a little more but held exactly the same, after all, things were more creepy when they moaned rather than break.
The couple were only vaguely aware of their bodies expanding, the rubber taking on the true cell shaded color of the cartoon world. They couple felt the oddest sensation of their arms and legs growing longer and thinner without actually going with further, and their arms and legs felt as if they were now growing out of the back of their heads.
They felt their body getting larger pressing against the chairs that creaked and expanded to accommodate them, not the costume, but themselves. They didn't feel hungry or thirsty like they did a second ago, but they felt weird, they felt like their bodies were being blown up like balloons, with all the matter on the outside.
John saw his vision begin to be tint orange, and in an eye blink his point of view change. His view was two feet lower, but his range of vision had at least doubled. He felt slightly, warm inside. John noticed a glow on the floor shaped like two triangles and a broken crescent below them. His eye widened and he saw the triangles stretch upwards, he narrowed them, and the triangles lights became stunted pyramids.
He looked over at his wife, and gasped, this got her attention and she looked and gasped as well.
They were jack-o-lanterns, completely. Their bodies were perfectly shaped pumpkins, their heads had vanished into thin air, with no arms, legs, or other details that would make you think they used to be human. Four stalks grew from the top of their bodies, twisted around back, and grew in a pattern that mimic arms and legs with opposing painted leaves on the end that were functional 'hands.'
But what held them both were their faces, John saw the triangles and crescent light he had seen on the balcony boards carved into his wife's front, the crescent currently an 'oh' shape as she looked at him in surprise.
The carved openings reshaped themselves to their expression with liquid grace, and they could see inside each other. There was nothing inside now but the hallowed insides of a cartoon pumpkin, and a candle ever burning but not shrinking down in the least no matter how long they watched the flame.
The transformed humans slowly got off the lounge chairs, that seemed smaller than before. The couple reached out with their hand leaves and touched each other, the sound was leaf against leaf, but the feeling was surreal, where they feeling rubbery cloth or plant matter?
"Wow." Where Carrie's first words as a halloween lantern. The flame inside her grew brighter and darker with the different inflections. The mouth reshape itself to look like it was making the sounds itself, but it was actually for show them the voice came from inside her.
"Yeah, wow." John's voice was like her, echoing from inside their gourd.
The fact that they had lost their equipment for loving making had been given an all expense paid trip to Pluto from their minds and had applied and been accept for citizenship.
Carrie laughed, her body shaking up and down as she did so, the candle not budging an inch, her voice might as well have been coming from a great cavern. "You look strange."
John burst laughing too, his voice sound like something ghoulish from a child's halloween special. "You do too!"
Without even giving it a second though, the two jack-o-lanterns gave each other an eskimo kiss.
As they moved, John felt like his body was on springs, or was that his old body was always carrying around lead weight.
Two skinny vines holding up a giant pumpkin? How was that possible? The moment John thought that thought it was told to sit in the corner and were the dunce cap until it realized it was wrong. Trying to figure out how things could be possible in a cartoon was an absolute waste of time.
Carrie meanwhile could just imagine herself on someone's door step, a giant pumpkin, then rising on her stalks and chasing away screaming kids moments after they had acquired their candy. She was very happy with the thought.
"You're naked Jack, er, I mean John." Carried said plainly to Jack, er, she meant John.
"So are you Jackie, uh, I mean Carrie?" John said, even though his memories said plain as day that's what his wife's name was, his ink gut instincts told him otherwise.
Materially speaking, the two pumpkins didn't see the slightest difference between each other, except for the sound of their voices, they were completely identical with nothing to hint at their original species or gender.
And the the jack-o-lanterns burst out laughing again, scaring away a number of local crows who had been there just for that purpose. Whenever they were feeling confused or distracted a good haunting laugh put everything back into focus.
Inside their room a grandfather clock stuck thirteen minutes past six, a wolf howled, a witch cackled, and an owl hooted.
Below them, from out of mists and shadows a procession of archetypes and symbols of all hallows even marched in front of the ghostly hotel, making a parade in and around the haunted town. The two pumpkin's attention was instantly captured by the show. The sounds of ghostly wails, cawing crows, giggling goblins, and all the rest, creating a chorus of innocent pranks and the celebrated taming of creatures of terror and horror.
Carrie and John felt the urge, the need, to join them, and after only a moment's hesitation, they leaped off the balcony, and landed squarely on their vines, springing up and down as they recoiled.
Grinning broadly, the jack-o-lanterns joined at the back the parade, joining in step with the organized discord as they all hoped along to the unspoken beat. They marched through the town, picking up shadows, through the graveyard, picking zombies and ghosts joining up behind the pumpkins.
The jack-o-lanterns burst together into their chilling laughter again happily swaying on each step. Filled to the brim with a sense of belonging, discovery, and an odd sense of freedom, the jack-o-lanterns began to sing, their voices perfectly harmonized with each other.
"Jack and Jackie went to town, to scare some kids, we turned their frowns upside down, and scared them Not? Oh forbid." Jack and Jackie cackled and began to sing again in those haunting voices again. "Pumpkins grow under the pale moonlight, giving all such a wonderful awful fright!"