Ficlet: Pumpkin Carving
When Sylar was younger, Halloween was his favorite holiday.
Christmas inevitably disappointed; whether the presents were good or not, the anticipation was always too much for the actual event. His birthdays were packed full of false cheer, fake smiles, a façade of familial love that he found unsettling. Thanksgiving was never the time of family cheer that it should have been.
And what did that leave?
Halloween. The one night when Gabriel (Sylar thinks back on that name with scorn) could be something he wasn’t.
Not that he dressed up - no, he abandoned that before the fifth grade. But he could feel it, in the air - there was always something different, strange, mysterious about Halloween night.
Beforehand, of course, he and his mother would carve pumpkins. He remembers her grin, the crooked, clumsy way she handled the knife, and his chest twists with something akin to affection, to regret.
Right now, he watches Peter gasp, weakly, clutching at the wall for balance. He staggers, falls to the ground, his muscles refusing to obey his commands.
But Gabriel and Virginia used to strip out the pumpkins - cut open the top, scoop out the insides, until there was a mash of strings and seeds, slippery and cold, staining the countertop. You scrape it free, Sylar remembers, until the insides are blank, smooth. Your fingers ache and your wrist is stiff, but it’s worth it.
Peter’s gaze lifts to Sylar’s; his eyes are fire, pure fire. Sylar admires it, detached, from a distance, and he holds out his hand, casually pinning Peter to the wall. Casually turning up the pressure. Casually pressing the air from Peter’s body.
Once a pumpkin is blank, you can remake it in any image you choose.
Gabriel used to fancy that he would learn to carve pumpkins like his neighbors, the ones who had eight or nine every Halloween, snipped and shaved to utter perfection. They wouldn’t even be faces; they would be scenes, pictures, drawn in knife and flesh. An art Gabriel itched to learn, but never did.
Sylar could master that art, right now.
The pressure releases, all at once, and Peter coughs, curling up. Sylar has broken him twice now, twice, and still -
“You won’t win,” Peter manages, between breaths. “I won’t-” and a shuddering gasp - “I won’t surrender.”
Please, thinks Sylar, and he hopes, beyond hope, that Peter will beat him.
And yet…
“Let’s try again,” says Sylar, low and dangerous, with only a hint of the pain to come.
Christmas inevitably disappointed; whether the presents were good or not, the anticipation was always too much for the actual event. His birthdays were packed full of false cheer, fake smiles, a façade of familial love that he found unsettling. Thanksgiving was never the time of family cheer that it should have been.
And what did that leave?
Halloween. The one night when Gabriel (Sylar thinks back on that name with scorn) could be something he wasn’t.
Not that he dressed up - no, he abandoned that before the fifth grade. But he could feel it, in the air - there was always something different, strange, mysterious about Halloween night.
Beforehand, of course, he and his mother would carve pumpkins. He remembers her grin, the crooked, clumsy way she handled the knife, and his chest twists with something akin to affection, to regret.
Right now, he watches Peter gasp, weakly, clutching at the wall for balance. He staggers, falls to the ground, his muscles refusing to obey his commands.
But Gabriel and Virginia used to strip out the pumpkins - cut open the top, scoop out the insides, until there was a mash of strings and seeds, slippery and cold, staining the countertop. You scrape it free, Sylar remembers, until the insides are blank, smooth. Your fingers ache and your wrist is stiff, but it’s worth it.
Peter’s gaze lifts to Sylar’s; his eyes are fire, pure fire. Sylar admires it, detached, from a distance, and he holds out his hand, casually pinning Peter to the wall. Casually turning up the pressure. Casually pressing the air from Peter’s body.
Once a pumpkin is blank, you can remake it in any image you choose.
Gabriel used to fancy that he would learn to carve pumpkins like his neighbors, the ones who had eight or nine every Halloween, snipped and shaved to utter perfection. They wouldn’t even be faces; they would be scenes, pictures, drawn in knife and flesh. An art Gabriel itched to learn, but never did.
Sylar could master that art, right now.
The pressure releases, all at once, and Peter coughs, curling up. Sylar has broken him twice now, twice, and still -
“You won’t win,” Peter manages, between breaths. “I won’t-” and a shuddering gasp - “I won’t surrender.”
Please, thinks Sylar, and he hopes, beyond hope, that Peter will beat him.
And yet…
“Let’s try again,” says Sylar, low and dangerous, with only a hint of the pain to come.