Title: The Pumpkin Eater
Author:
kitmerlot1213Rating: PG 13
Word Count: 520
Disclaimer: This story is for fun and no profit. No harm was intended to small children or animals, real or fictional :)
Summary: Peter Parker and his hatred of pumpkins.
A/N: This is my first story for the Spider-Man: Homecoming fandom and my contribution for the 2018
Spook Me Halloween ficathon. ENJOY!
For as long as he could remember, the autumn season had been Peter’s favorite time of the year.
When his parents had still been alive, he loved nothing more than running around in the coldly crisp air, jumping into piles of leaves and getting to drink hot cocoa when he’d finished.
And when he went to live with his aunt and uncle, he’d loved planning his Halloween costume and plotting out the best neighborhoods for him and Ned to go trick or treating.
Now that he was a teenager, he realized that what he truly couldn’t get enough of was all of the pumkiny foods that were abundant this time of year.
From pumpkin muffins and donuts, to pumpkin ice cream, pumpkin pie and pumpkin flavored drinks, the fall season was a veritable bouillabaisse of awesomeness for all pumpkin lovers.
Unfortunately, that all changed because ever since the spider bite, Peter turned in the total opposite direction and he now had an extreme aversion to pumpkins.
He didn’t want to go anywhere near a pumpkin patch to pick out the biggest, brightest, orangeiest one he could find, he didn’t want to compete in a carving contest to see who could make the scariest Jack O’Lantern and he stayed far away from any pumpkin related snacks.
He would be happy if every pumpkin disappeared off of the face of the planet, never to be seen again.
But it wasn’t just an aversion to pumpkins, but a deep, bitter hatred. He hated the stupid nursery rhyme “Peter Peter, pumpkin eater,” he hated that people drew ridiculous expressions on pumpkin’s faces, and he even hated miniature gourds.
MJ was convinced that Peter suffered from samhainophobia which was the fear of Halloween, but what Peter truly suffered from was cucurbitophobia, an excessive, irrational and unreasonable fear of pumpkins.
Peter paused in disbelief that there were other people who had a phobia about pumpkins but it was also kind of comforted him that he wasn’t the only one out there with this affliction.
And you would think that if you feared pumpkins as deeply as Peter did, you’d love the idea of cutting into one and carving it up, but Peter couldn’t stand to look at the orange menaces, let alone touch their waxy skin.
What Peter wouldn’t realize until years later, when the invasion was just beginning, was that his spidey sense had been warning him all along: pumpkins weren’t harmless vegetables but dangerously sentient plants who had been planning their revenge on humans for years.
~~~
The hand covered in green leaves and vines tugged gently yet insistently, like a child wanting attention, on the pumpkin still wrapped up and buried in the soil.
The leaf that was wrapped around the pumpkin brushed against the hand, caressing it slightly as a voice whispered soothingly, “soon, soon,” and the hand stopped its restless pulling, seeming to calm at hearing its mother’s voice.
Soon, their plan would be complete and come to fruition.
Soon, they would have their vengeance for the years of cruel mistreatment and the humans would be crying for their mercy.
Soon.