Congratulations to both of our Halloween Short Story and Art contest winners, Jackson Haycraft and Kailyn Becker!
The Carving
By Jackson Haycraft
It was something they did every year, the carving. Her parents said it was to get in the
Halloween spirit, but she had always found the process rather morbid. She couldn’t quite put her finger on the reason why exactly it was so disturbing- it was difficult to explain. She knew this was a perfectly normal thing to do, her friends piqued about the Carving on occasion, it wasn’t just her family. But the fact that this morbid practice was happening en masse, and she was the only one to feel sickened by it? It only made it all the more worse.
And here she was, knife in hand, unable to do it. She could see her brother hacking
away at his subject in her peripheral vision- chunks of flesh strewn about here, juicy innards
there- it certainly didn’t help. She could see her father, ever the artist, scrapping off bits of skin with the delicacy of a butcher in a more elaborate fashion. Her mother had already finished hers, and was now proceeding to cook the innards in an oven.
She couldn’t bring herself to do it. Just like last year, and the many years before last
year, the gory sight was too much. She excused herself to her room, where she would spend
the next half hour crying herself to sleep.
Her parents never really understood their daughter’s aversion to the carving. Maybe
next year, they would try carving something else- maybe pumpkins?
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