The blue pumpkin

by BRK   

Dominic is sure his blue pumpkin jack-o’-lantern will be a hit. What he doesn’t know is what will be brought forth when he lights the candle within…

The universe is an unfathomably complex natural machine, designed to function safely and reliably for billions of years, able to cope with any contingency, lending its incalculable weight to stability and endurance. The universe is built for the longest haul imaginable and beyond.

But as anyone who dates regularly knows, a nonstop diet of safe and steady is smart but boring. You gotta shake things up every once in a while—tear up the town with a night you’ll never forget, even if you’ve gone back to the stability of what’s good for you in the long run.

The universe has stuff like that, too. Little trips and triggers strewn through the cosmos that create scary little vacations from the safe and steady, in lots of different and random ways.

One of these … is the blue banana.

But it is not the only one.

Jack waited calmly in the bin. He’d shaken off his twelve-month slumber not that long ago. The time was near.

The late-October air was chill and crisp in the little pop-up roadside market, though Jack didn’t mind the cold too much. He was half-buried in his insentient brethren, their hard-skinned ribs pressing heavily against his own rigid, rounded form at various points, but that didn’t bother him much either.

The market was busy. Cars whizzed past on the two-lane blacktop, but more than a few were slowing and pulling over to check out the autumnal offerings in the crates and stalls along the long, three-tent impromptu emporium. Little waves of people in flannel shirts and fleece-lined jackets ebbed and flowed through the place. Chatty adults and laughing kids burbled all around him. Their excitement was infectious, Jack realized. He was feeling the anticipation, too. His mind was buzzing with possibilities. And he wouldn’t have to wait long. Someone would find him. Someone always found him.

The occupants of the bin he was in started to shift. Someone was looking through the others, examining them, then setting them aside. One after another was not quite right. Then he felt hands grasp him firmly on either side, and Jack was lifted up and examined critically.

“Aren’t you a beauty,” the man said. Jack warmed a little at the admiration. He couldn’t see the man yet, but he could sense his emotions. Childhood was in his past, but he still remembered its fondest moments, and the traditions he’d loved as a boy enough to keep them up as a man. This was one of his favorites. He could hear the smile in his voice.

Jack probed deeper. Dominic. The man’s name was Dominic Keane. Jack liked it. He had not known a Dominic in a while.

“Nice and solid,” the man, Dominic, went on appraisingly, hefting him a couple times to judge his weight. “Should have a thick rind, perfect for carving. Good size and symmetry, too. That cabbage-blue tinge on your lower half is a little odd, I’ll admit.”

Pumpkins are gourds after all, Jack thought, wondering if the man could hear him. Not many could, not when he was like this. And gourds come in all colors…

“Hmm,” the man hummed, turning Jack around and examining him from various angles. “I suppose gourds do come in every color in the box. And there is something to be said for having a pumpkin on your porch that’s not like all the others.”

Jack wanted to smile at that. He could wait. Patience came naturally to him, fortunately enough.

“Definitely something about you,” the young man mused. Jack abruptly felt himself stuffed under Dominic’s arm and pressed against his hip, and then they were moving, away from the bin and toward the trio of happy farmers collecting cash at the far end of the market.

Soon, Jack thought. It would be soon. All he needed was fire. Fire… and a face.

Shwick. It was a distinctive sound: a match drawn across a striking surface. “Here we go,” he heard the man say. The flame lowered into Jack’s insides, and he had to tamp down the thrill of anticipation. Why did it seem like this one would be different? Everyone so far that wasn’t a covetous fool was a shrieking numbskull—starting with the appalled and paranoid old Quaker who’d cursed him with this strange existence over two centuries ago.

The wick list with a barely audible sst… and Jack, at long last, was fully and vividly awake.

He blinked his triangular, fire-filled eyes, and the young man let out a small gasp.

Jack stared up at his new “master”. He’d been kneeling in front of Jack to light him and had now dropped back on his heels in surprise; the hand with the matchbox lowering slowly to hang limp at one side, while the blackened, dead match remained raised, pinched between the thumb and forefinger of the other hand. Low instrumental blues played from a sound system in the corner as they watched each other for a long moment. Jack’s flame and the feeble wisps winding away from the shaken-out match were the only movement in the room.

The man, Dominic, was handsome enough, Jack decided: he was in his mid-to-late twenties, well-built, with dark-brown hair that was just long enough on top to be edging toward messy curls; the sides were trimmed close, the goatee below even closer. His thick, long-sleeved button-up shirt, matte black with a variety of little orange jack-o’-lanterns, had obviously been selected especially for the occasion and confirmed the love for the holiday and its traditions that Jack had already sensed on their first encounter.

What really struck Jack most of all, though, were the young man’s bright, intelligent eyes, a light hazel brown ringed with cornflower blue. Most men’s eyes (in Jack’s experience, both in his current state and before) were muddy and closed, but this man’s seemed almost as inwardly lit as Jack’s.

There was almost no light at the moment in the shadowy, simply-furnished living room beyond what Jack himself was giving off, so it was his own ambience that seemed to be kindling those eyes as the man stared back at Jack, unsure whether to doubt what he had just seen, or thought he’d seen. Jack found himself wanting to see him smile. He was somehow sure that the man’s smile would be even more incandescent than his eyes.

Jack let his own toothy grin widen slightly, just to gauge the man’s reaction.

Had Dominic fallen back in terror, or screamed, or leapt to his feet in horror and started madly kicking and smashing at Jack with those heavy work boots he was wearing until he was a lifeless pulp on the polished hardwood floor, Jack would have been disappointed, though not surprised. He’d seen all those reactions before, so often they were verging on the mundane. Worse would have been the look of hungry greed that came over the worst sort of men when they realized Jack was a supernatural creature. Men always seemed sure such a “demon” would serve them and raise them above all others.

Jack was finding himself to be increasingly jaded after two lives, stretched over centuries of time. Not a lot of thing could risk tearing out his nonexistent heart, but this man reacting with eager avarice might have been one of them.

Instead, Dominic’s eyes widened as his bearded lips curled into an open O. He tilted his head slightly, and Jack understood with a thrill that the young man’s core reaction to Jack’s uncanny existence was curiosity. Curiosity, and fascination.

“What are you?” the man asked in wonder.

Providence, Rhode Island, 1811

“I thank you for a lovely repast, Widow Johnson,” said Mr. Allen. “The grouse was surpassingly fine, and I must say I had never yet had custard pie made from pumpkin before tonight. It was nearly delicious enough to tempt me to overindulgence! But I must take my leave before darkness comes and evil walks the land.”

“Overindulgence would never be you, Mr. Allen,” said Mrs. Johnson with certainty, showing him out onto the front porch. “But high praise indeed. I am glad your visit to Providence included a fine meal and a pleasant visit with a lonely widow, before—”

“Good heavens, what is that?!”

“That? Why, that’s our jack-o’-the-lantern! All ready for the Hallows’ Eve. My Casey must have lit it up while we were lingering at the table. It’s the very pumpkin we made the pie from, in fact, and quite toothsome in the end for all it’s blue instead of orange. I was somewhat afeared on that account. Do you like it?”

“Like it? It’s alive!”

“Alive? Come now, Mr. Allen, have you never seen a jack-o’-the-lantern before? I’d heard they had them even up in Boston.”

“Foolish woman! Look at it! It is no ordinary lantern. The leering smile, the unnatural fire—you have summoned a spirit from the beyond!”

“Mr. Elias Allen! Honestly, what a thing to say!”

“I know that soul. I know it. He dogs me, day by day. Watches me. I know who possesses your monstrous lantern!”

“And who is that, pray?”

“My sodomite grandfather, John Patrick Allen! I cannot doubt he went to hell for his perversions, and became one of their mightiest minions! And now he is become trapped in your blue pumpkin!”

“Poppycock. Mr. Allen, I had no idea your head was filled with such utter balderdash.”

“I tell you, I have felt his eyes upon me, in my very home!”

“You don’t say. Have you perchance a portrait of the gentleman hanging in your sitting room, sir?”

“And now! Now my undying grandfather infests the blue pumpkin, taking on its strange magic to twist and expose the secret desires of all who bring his fire to life! Your carving and fire has given it eyes and a voice! We are all doomed!”

“We are not doomed, Mr. Allen,” the good lady said firmly, “and I’ll thank you to leave my porch and stop spouting nons—Mr. Allen! Stop this at once!”

“It must be destroyed! My cane is sturdy enough, though a poker would be better. Die! Die, you deathless fiend!”

“Mr. Allen! I must say I now regret allowing you to darken my door. You are comely and well-made as widowers go, but now I see you are also a fool and an ass, and you shall never set foot on my porch again!”

“So let me get this straight,” Dominic said, now sitting before Jack with his legs folded under him. “Blue pumpkins normally make your words come true. So when the Widow Johnson served up a bit of blue-pumpkin pie for their special tryst, the pie made Elias Allen’s ravings became real… and because of that, that particular blue pumpkin actually did become possessed by”—at this Dominic quirked a smile—”his own ‘sodomite grandfather,’ a.k.a. the long-dead John Patrick? And now… what? You possess all the blue jack-o’-lanterns?”

“I possess all the blue pumpkins,” Jack clarified. “But when one is carved into a jack-o’-lantern, I’m given eyes and a voice, just as my grandson commanded.”

“But you’re not a demon.”

“No. My grandson only said he believed I was a demon.”

“And a sodomite.”

“That,” Jack said with a smirk, “was more than mere belief.”

Dominic huffed a laugh. “Looky looky, a queer jack-o’-lantern. So what happened to crazy Elias? Did he run screaming through the town, ranting about fire-faced demons?”

“He tried to. But no one could understand him.”

“No one could… wait! Did he actually, literally become an ass? Like, an actual donkey?”

“Well, Elias changed things, you see. Normally the blue-pumpkin pie they’d both eaten would have simply functioned autonomically and made her words true, and he would have been turned into a well-made, comely, and foolish ass. But Elias had basically made the blue-pumpkin magic sentient, and so now it was my will how to use the elemental magic of the universe. His fate was mine to decide.”

“And you turned him into an ass.” Dominic was grinning.

“A well-made, comely, and foolish ass,” Jack corrected. “It was my last conscious act before my fire went out and I left that pumpkin for good.”

“So, Jack… what happens now?”

Dominic’s question sounded casual enough. But he was leaning forward slightly, and his eyes were intent. The banter was over. Jack felt strangely nervous. He didn’t want Dominic to be like the others—but he didn’t want him to be boring and saintly, either.

“Now,” Jack said carefully, “it is your fate that is mine to decide.”

Dominic watched him a moment, eyes glinting, his lips slightly curled, as if he were slightly skeptical that matters were truly that one-sided. “So, what if I asked for a well-made and comely ass?” he asked. “Would you twist my words and make me like Elias?”

“Maybe I’d just give you a nice pet donkey,” Jack teased.

There was a knocking at the door, followed by repeated ringings of the doorbell. “Is that trick-or-treaters?” Jack asked. He’d be a little disappointed were that the case—he’d much rather spend time unbending Dominic than perched out on the porch while kids in store-bought superhero suits paraded by and contemplated knocking him over. Not that they’d get the chance, the hooligans.

But Dominic shook his head. “That’s tomorrow. I invited a couple of coworkers over for pizza and horror-themed board games. Though probably we’ll just hang out.” Jack got the impression that they’d worked together for a while but hadn’t quite bonded as friends, and Dominic was hoping to get to know them better and open things up. Jack found this to be an intriguing scenario for his own purposes, not that he was quite sure what those purposes were yet, this time around.

He wondered what their current level of bonding was. “Work”, Jack knew from peeking into Dominic’s head, was a place called Carlson Enterprise Media Design and involved things like “web app development”, but Jack’s exposure to modern technology was barely enough to tell him that such things involved computers and not spiders and apples. Or—they did involve apples in some way, he remembered. Jack decided he should be savvier about such things and resolved to pick Dominic’s brain later, literally or otherwise.

Dominic stood up as the knocking and doorbell-ringing repeated, but then he bent and quickly lifted Jack up onto a low, walnut coffee positioned within reach of a cozy-looking four-person dark-chocolate couch. Once Jack was situated, he stood over him a second with his arms folded, looking thoughtful. “If I told them that you were just an animatronic talking jack-o’-lantern I got at that pricey game store in town… could you make it so they definitely believe me and don’t question it?”

Jask tsked. “Mucking around in your friends’ heads already. Are you the wicked one after all, perchance?”

“A little bit,” Dominic responded, twitching his dark eyebrows at him playfully.

Jack winked. “It shall be so,” Jack said, affecting a pompous, magisterial tone.

Dominic grinned. “I like you, Jack,” he said indulgently, and gave him a little caress near his lid before turning and heading for the door and his impatient guests, turning on a low-intensity floor lamp across the room as he went.

Jack watched him go with a wide smile. Now that was indeed one well-made and comely ass, though how foolish it was remained to be seen.

Dominic’s friends were a nice-looking gay couple, Richie and Ben. Richie was pale, blond, and quiet; his outfit seemed self-consciously retro—not “retro” as Jack would have thought of it, as his original clothes-sense dated to the era of waistcoats, snug breeches, and long powdered wigs, but more in tune with some of the clothing he’d seen during his Halloween appearances back in the 1950s: black and white houndstooth-pattern jacket, a black mock turtleneck, and black trousers, topped with black-framed glasses with no lenses. Richie might have been specially kitted out for the holiday, but neither Dominic nor Ben was costumed up, and he sensed from Dominic’s reaction to Richie’s outfit that the attire was simply his friend’s latest affectation, rather than any kind of fancy dress. Jack thought it suited him. Ben, meanwhile, was dark-skinned, smiling, and effusive, though his outfit was a simple mustard button-up shirt and bulky dark khakis. He was the first to hug Dominic, moving in for a tight clinch, then Richie took his turn.

They stepped back, complimenting Dominic on how good he looked, and they weren’t wrong. The two newcomers were fit and attractive, but Dominic was subtly better looking and a notch more muscular than both of them, and stood an inch or two taller than Ben and a few inches taller than Richie. All this was… a slight adjustment on Jack’s part. During the hugs it had become painfully obvious to Jack from external cues and body language that while they truly loved each other, Ben and Richie were both also craving Dominic something rotten. Jack had also gotten a powerful sense directly from Dominic’s mind that he knew about their crushes and, though he kind of got off on it, he was not going to do anything about it. So Jack had craftily decided to up Dominic’s hunkiness during the hugs, just to see what would happen, and at the same time had made it so Richie and Ben weren’t conscious of the change, only the results. Dominic was aware of everything, of course, and was both pleased and unnerved that Jack was screwing with him, but he gamely pretended nothing strange was going on as he ushered them into the living room.

“Wow,” Ben said, coming over to the blue pumpkin on the coffee table. “What’s this?”

“That,” Dominic said, “is Jack. He’s an interactive animatronic jack-o’-lantern!”

“An interactive animatronic jack-o’-lantern,” Richie repeated slowly, glancing back at Dominic skeptically. His voice was a sweet tenor with a subtle rasp that made everything he said sound wry and disinterested.

“I got him at Titanium Toys & Games,” Dominic explained. He rolled his shoulders, trying to adjust to his slightly altered proportions. “Cost me a pretty penny. Say ‘hello’, Jack.”

“Greetings, puny mortals,” Jack said as they stared at him, putting on his fruitiest sepulchral demon voice. “Welcome to my domain! Your souls are now mine to play with! Bwahahahaha!”

“Wiiiiild!” Ben said excitedly, crouching for a closer look.

“So weird,” Richie commented. “Why is he blue?”

“The blue ones grant wishes,” Dominic said blandly. “What do you wish for, Richie?”

“Right now I wish for a white russian,” Richie said, moving over to sit on the couch, choosing a spot near the middle. He glanced at Jack and raised a finger. “The drink,” he clarified, joining in the joke about Jack granting wishes in his own dry fashion. “Don’t go summoning Kerensky or anything.”

“I think we can handle a regular white russian,” Dominic laughed. “What about you, B?”

Ben was still bent over Jack, watching him avidly. “It looks so real,” he gushed. Jack winked at him, and Ben went, “Wooooow!”

“Ben!” Richie called over to him, amused. “Drink!”

“Yes please,” Ben said, not moving.

Dominic snorted. “One screwdriver, coming up,” he announced, heading through the open doorway into the kitchen.

Ben was checking around at the pumpkin’s back, probably looking for a cord. “So cool,” Ben said. He grabbed the stem and started to lift the lid, like he was going to peer inside.

“Careful, now,” Jack said, “or I might do the same to you.”

“Ha ha, so cool,” Ben repeated gleefully, letting go of the stem. He went back to peering at the carven face Dominic had given him—a very traditional jack-o’-lantern face with triangular eyes, a small round nose, and a wide, two-toothed leer. “You got the smell and everything.”

“Stop smelling the fake jack-o’-lantern and come sit down,” Richie said from the couch.

Ben ignored him. “So, what, are you like a magic eight ball come to life?” Ben asked Jack.

“No, I’m a magically possessed jack-o’-lantern,” Jack said truthfully.

“Ha ha, cool. Possessed, huh? Are you a demon?”

“That’s only a rumor.”

Ben laughed. “It’s so real!” he said, turning to grin at Richie.

“Very nice,” Richie said indulgently. “Try not to get cursed or turned into a wolfman or something.”

“Aw, you wouldn’t do that, would you, Mr. Lantern?” Ben said, turning back to the pumpkin.

“Call me Jack.”

“Ha ha, so awesome. You grant wishes, right? What are we wishing for?”

“Dominic,” Jack said.

Ben’s smile vanished. “What?”

Richie had been watching the entrance to the kitchen for their host’s return, but at this his eyes flashed over to stare at Jack. “What did it just say?”

Jack smiled at them. “Say? I didn’t say anything.”

Ben blinked, suddenly confused. “I… thought you said… something…” he said slowly. Richie was still squinting at him, but his slightly creased brows said he no longer knew why.

This year should be interesting, Jack thought. He’d have licked his lips if he still could. Hidden desire had always been Jack’s fascination, even when he was still an unrepentant red-haired Lothario back in 18th century Boston; and at the moment Dominic’s living room was redolent with it.

Just then Dominic came through the doorway with a tray of drinks. He was a little red-cheeked and seemed self-conscious, maybe because Jack had given him another attractiveness upgrade right as he’d passed back into the room. He was only a little better looking in his face and general allure, but his 6-foot-6 form was now as packed with carefully sculpted muscle as an Olympic gymnast, a fact that was very obvious even through the heavy tailored black-and-jacks shirt and loose-cut blue-black jeans he was wearing. Of course, even gay men born in the days of tall ships and periwigs had a particular interest common to the queers of all eras, and Jack had not neglected to also subtly but perceptibly boost Dominic’s prominence in a certain location between his newly enhanced legs—not just in size but in how the eyes were drawn to it, sparking a curiosity and a building desire for the hidden, potent animal that lay behind the bulge. Dominic shot Jack a look, half exasperated and half cautiously intrigued, as if to say, What are you up to?

Richie audibly drew in a sharp breath, and Ben, turning to look, caught sight of Dominic and seemed to forget all about Jack. He straightened, in more ways than one, then hastily sat down next to Richie, eyes wide and fixed on their hot friend. Their hands found each other, fingers interweaving, and they watched intently as Dominic served their drinks. He positioned square cork coasters on the coffee table before them and then set down a couple of cocktails in hefty rocks glasses: one had swirly layers of white, brown and dark, the other a vibrant orange-yellow. “One white russian for you,” Dominic sang, placing Richie’s drink, “a screwdriver for Ben, and—” He paused. “Hm. Why did I pour myself two vodka cranberries, I wonder?” he asked himself rhetorically. The question was directed at the obviously culpable supernatural prankster flickering not-so-innocently between him and his guests, but Ben answered anyway.

“Because you know we want there to be two of you,” the man said happily, as if it were obvious. He was sitting forward, watching Dominic hungrily. “One for each of us. Dom and Nic!”

“Such a tease,” Richie added. He was leaning back more in the sofa, affecting nonchalance, but his body language was just as alert and attentive.

Ben and Richie exchanged a surprised, slightly alarmed look. This was the kind of talk they kept to themselves, in the privacy of their own bedroom. But tonight it seemed that whatever thoughts they were secretly harboring were coming out almost naturally. Ben’s eyes were alight—he seemed to find the prospect exciting. Richie bit his lip pensively.

Dominic glanced briefly at the lit jack-o’-lantern sitting there on the coffee table between them with its back to him. He wasn’t sure why. There was some kind of weird magic in the air here tonight that he almost wanted to blame on the strange blue pumpkin he’d carved—he was sure there was something he was forgetting about that pumpkin, something that he’d remember later. It didn’t matter, though. The way he felt right now, he was ready to roll with pretty much anything that happened next.

He went ahead and set two coasters in front of the spot on the couch to Ben’s right. “And you guys are not even buzzed yet,” he teased. “Well,” he added gamely, “there’s only one of me for now.” He set the tray under the coffee table and straightened, preparing to move around the table and sit, but when he sat down next to Ben…

He was also sitting next to Richie.

The two Dominics looked at each other. The one by Richie cleared his throat. “I guess I lied. Can you pass me my drink, please?” he asked Ben.

Ben was looking at him with a giddy smile. He turned to look at the Dominic at his end—not really necessary, since his leg and shoulder had pressed automatically against his magnetically sexy friend the moment he sat down, but the visual verification made him start lightly panting. He looked back at the other Dominic and swallowed. “Did I do that?” he asked hopefully.

Belatedly he looked at his partner, but Richie was staring hard at the Dominic sitting next to him, who turned to look at him with a raised eyebrow. Richie blinked and seemed to realize he had everyone’s attention. “Uh, why don’t you hand Nic his drink, B?” he said levelly, with only a slight hitch in his voice giving away his own excitement.

“S-sure,” Ben said. Glancing briefly at “Dom” as if to make sure he wasn’t imposing, he gingerly lifted one of the two vividly colored vodka cranberries in his right hand and handed it off to Richie. As soon as his partner had hold of it he turned back to the coffee table and snatched up his screwdriver, taking a hefty dose that half-drained the glass. He plunked it down and let his eyes drift back to “Nic”, who had accepted the glass and was taking a slow sip, watching Ben and Richie over the rim.

Richie gave him a look. “That one’s yours,” he said pointedly, nodding toward Dom, though his lips quirked as he said it. “This one’s mine.”

“Right. Right!” Ben said, turning quickly to Dom, who was also sipping his red-purple drink, either consciously or unconsciously mirroring his duplicate. “So,” he said eagerly, “are you? Mine, I mean?”

“I’m mine,” Dom said, amused. “And you’re Richie’s.”

“We talked about this,” Richie put in, as if they were handling routine couple stuff, like the very everyday and mundane scenario of the object of their shared crush splitting in two. “If we ever got a chance with Dominic, we’d share.”

“That’s right,” Ben said quickly, staring hard into Dom’s hazel, blue-ringed eyes. “Do we? Have a chance with you?”

Dom let out a breath. “I’ve been wanting this,” he admitted, and Nic said it at the same time. They both started slightly and frowned. They had intended never to speak that thought aloud.

“Interesting,” Richie said, intrigued by their shared response. He was looking Nic right in the eyes the way Ben was with Dom, but he stole a quick glance at Dom before returning his attention to Nic. “Are you two… connected? Like, will he feel it if I…” He trailed off and leaned in for a gentle kiss. Returning the kiss, Nic set his drink aside on the table without looking, then placed his hand along Richie’s jaw and deepened the smooch, opening for Richie and letting their tongues play.

Ben and Dom were both watching, their ragged breaths slow and audible. “Fuck, I can feel that,” Dom said. He set his drink aside and turned to Ben. “Hurry up and kiss me,” he said, and Ben’s head whirled with comic rapidity to face him. “C’mon,” Dom urged. “I want to return the favor.”

Ben beamed at him. “Okay!” he agreed, and dove in for a big, deep, messy kiss that made Dom chuckle into his mouth. They started seriously making out, and Nic moaned at the extra stimulation. Dom and Nic shifted so they were more on top of Ben and Richie, the two guests’ backs fully against the back of the couch as they held hands tightly and made out with the two identical men fiercely and with great passion.

Ben was moving his hand along Dom’s powerful shoulders through the thick fabric of his holiday-themed shirt. He broke the kiss long enough to moan, “Naked,” and then both Dom and Nic were utterly naked in all their glory. Ben gripped Dom’s round, hard left delt in ecstasy, and then he was gripping his bare, corded upper arm too, and another hand emerged to stroke Dom’s right flank.

The same thing had happened to Richie, who groaned into his kiss with surprise and lust. While the couple kept on holding hands as before, long fingers intertwined, they both used all their other hands to grope Dom and Nic’s god-muscled torsos with a fervor that matched their kisses.

A moment later they were grabbing the identical men’s asses, too. “Fuck fuck fuck,” Richie murmured into Nic’s questing lips. “Bedroom!”

Less than a second later they were all in Dom and Nic’s upstairs bedroom, Ben and Richie naked and on their backs under Dom and Nic, still keeping one pair of hands laced together and using the rest to feel up their hosts’ powerful, perfectly proportioned bodies. They were alabaster now as if made of marble, and proportioned to maximize beauty, masculinity, and strength all at once, with proportions that would have made Pythagoras weep. Within moments Ben and Richie’s defined torsos were smeared with thick trails of precum as Dom and Nic’s massive fifteen-inch, palm-wide cocks slid up and down their taut bellies.

No one noticed that the jack-o’-lantern was now up there with them as well, sitting pertly on the dresser where its shifting yellow-orange light could dance over the four impressive forms on the bed.

They stoked their pleasure like this for a long time. “Fuck us,” Ben said suddenly, breaking his kiss with Dom. Dom and Nic pulled back, looking down at their beautiful, fit, six-armed guests. Dom and Nic’s hands were on either side of their heads, their shoulders pressed hard together as they loomed over their friends.

Ben and Richie shared a glance, then they both looked up again. “Fuck us,” Richie confirmed. “We can take them,” he added, as if reading their hesitation. “We’re stretchy.” To demonstrate, he started inching one of his left hands around Nic’s middle back, the muscular arm slowly lengthening as it went, until it wrapped all the way around Nic’s lower torso to twist Nic’s left nipple. Both Dom and Nic grunted at the sensation.

“Fuck, so hot,” Ben said, having avidly watched his partner’s new ability present itself. Before Dom knew it his beautiful upsized body was practically wrapped up in Ben-arms like they were dark, five-foot-long, muscular tentacles. The two of them were still holding hands between them with their fingers intertwined, but all the rest of Ben’s arms were coiled around Dom’s seven-foot megagymnast torso. Ben’s legs were twined three or four times around Dom’s long adamantine legs as well.

Dom grinned down at him, a little stunned. “Looks like you got turned into a monster after all, B,” he said.

Ben was looking a little crazed. Happy, but crazed. “It’s all so we can take you guys,” he said hurriedly. “Because you’re both so big—so, so big—so impossibly big—!”

Dom and Nic looked down at their three-foot-long, leg-sized cocks, their hearts skipping a beat. They could each sense what the other was feeling—amazement mostly, and a flickering fear, but mostly hungry anticipation for what was coming next even as they broke in on Ben’s babbling. “Stop!” Dom begged, laughing.

“Geez, Ben!” Nic added, staring down at his achingly hard fencepost cock with a kind of stunned awe. “Even with you stretchy guys being all… stretchy…”

“We can take them,” Richie insisted, even though his face was actually half-hidden behind the enormous, veiny tool in question. He’d copied Ben and wrapped most of his arms around his own seven-foot god, leaving just the one for the clasp with Ben. Unlike Ben he’d left his legs free. His gaze as he looked up at Nic was intense. “We’re really stretchy.”

“Really super stretchy,” Ben echoed. His words were a little indistinct—he was letting his tongue expand without even meaning to. Dom’s already tripping pulse kicked up another notch. Suddenly he wanted to be making out with Ben again. Or watching Ben and Richie making out with each other.

“And you guys leak so much precum we don’t need lube,” Richie added firmly.

“C’mon,” Ben whined suddenly, his words getting more and more blurry. “C’mon, Dom-and-Nic! We need your cocks so bad!”

Richie groaned. Had Ben’s words intensified their already consuming need for Don and Nic to fuck them? The two of them traded glances, then said, “Do it, then. Wrap your hot, tight, stretchy asses around our giant dicks!”

Instantly they were complying, though in different ways. In the space of a second or two Richie easily pulled his legs up behind his own back, while keeping his arms wound around Nic’s torso. Then he compressed himself toward his head, offering his exposed butthole. Nic, meanwhile, shifted back with his own ass as far as he could, until he finally managed to position his inflamed, bowling-ball-sized head at Richie’s entrance. His slit poured clear fluid over Richie’s ass as he pressed it there and nudged gently, teasing Richie withe the giant cock he craved.

Ben, on the other hand, was stretching his upper thighs just above where his legs were looped tightly around Dom’s, drawing his round ass along Dom’s cock in the tight space between them. Incredibly he managed to slide his ass all the way up to his head, bending double, while still holding onto Dom with his many arms. With an impressive effort of will he got his ass bent back and started it sliding over the slick, wide head of Dom’s cock.

Watching Ben’s progress with wide eyes, Richie turned to Nic and said desperately, “Do it! Do it! Please!”

Obliging, Nic pushed in, even as the wave of pleasure from Dom’s engulfment flooded through him. As he started pressing deeper and deeper into Richie in tandem with his identical self the pleasure more than doubled, and the two of them let out at cry that was almost a scream. Their own cocks, huge and hard now against their abs and chests, were spitting out precum like an early, constant orgasm, but they were all completely focused on the euphoric wonder of the two lovers’ bodies taking these enormous, rock-hard cocks.

Ben and Richie started drawing themselves onto those giant cocks even faster, eliciting more cries and moans from all of them. The two lovers turned their heads and watched each other for a moment as the huge erections sank deeper and deeper into them. Spontaneously they stretched out their necks so their faces could come together and they started kissing each other, hard and wet.

Dom and Nic were growling now. Their cocks seemed to be getting more sensitive the further they plunged into their friends’ hot, stretchy bodies. “This feels—” Dom grunted.

“—beyond amazing,” Nic finished, his voice rough and raw.

Their cocks were, impossibly, seated all the way inside their friends now, and the room seemed equally filled with the scent of male sweat, musk, and sex. For Dom and Nic the feeling was so exquisite they knew it would impossible to hold out for very long. “We’re not going to last,” Dom promised.

“This time,” Nic added, and he and Dom shared a feral grin.

Together they bent down and started kissing and sucking and Ben and Richie’s necks as they set about fucking the two men in earnest, pistoning deep into their pliable bodies as the two of moaned and recklessly kissed each other. Ben broke free only long enough to say, “Harder!” and Richie agreed, getting out “Do it hard!” before going back to sloppily making out with his long-tongued partner.

Dom and Nic did as ordered, pounding them hard so it seemed their cocks would shove straight up their elongated necks. The precum spouting from Ben and Richie’s fat, collarbone-high cocks was spattering hard against the wall behind them. All four of them were sweating and panting and Dom and Nic picked up the pace, pounding the two lovers hard and fast.

Suddenly Dom and Nic were both rocketing toward orgasm. “We’re gonna cum!” they gasped, panting hard. Ben and Richie were breathing so heavily themselves they couldn’t maintain the kiss and separated their mouths, letting Dom and Nic see how Ben’s foot-long, pink tongue was wrapped loosely around the much stiffer, cock-like tongue erupting from Richie’s grinning, panting, kiss-swollen lips. They were staring hard into each other’s eyes, both of them enraptured and needing urgently to cum.

“Fuck!!” Dom screamed, a half-second ahead of Nic, and suddenly they were gushing out insane amounts of cum from their enormous, melon-sized balls. Ben and Richie were cumming too, all four of them emitting immense amounts of spunk. Dom and Nic’s cum started spraying out of Ben and Richie’s mouths around their transformed tongues, and they were laughing and cumming and grunting as they painted each other’s faces with pint after pint of hot, white jizz.

Finally they started to come down off the monumental orgasms, the sprays of cum lessening, and Dom and Nic collapsed into Ben and Richie’s many-armed embrace and began a slow, happy, half-unconscious kissing session that lasted a very long time.

Eventually they had the pizza—three pies’ worth, delivered by a messy-haired teenager whose eyes widened to the size of Olympic medals when a shirtless Dom and Nic met him at the door, one deftly taking the stack of pizzas while the other gave him a hefty tip in cash.

First they’d had a shower while they waited for the food to come. Fortunately Dom and Nic’s shower stall seemed to have enlarged enough to accommodate two seven-foot, tree-trunk-cocked Adonises and a couple of regular sized, extra-defined, very slightly rubbery-looking guys with lots of arms. It had even acquired not one but two of those thermostatic “rain” showerheads with matching hand showers, which they had great fun using to clean all those hard-to-reach places—not that anywhere was hard to reach for Ben and Richie now. The only trouble was that while Dom and Nic’s mammoth cocks had finally subsided and were now hanging very heavily between their equally-thick legs, the massive heads seeming interested nosing at their ankles, Ben and Richie were so into being next to the two identical godlings, soaping them up and washing them down with all their eager hands, or maybe just the idea of Dom and Nic (and themselves as well), that they were both still unrelentingly and painfully aroused. In fact their wide cocks tapped so impatiently against their pecs you’d think they hadn’t just cum so much Dom and Nic thought they might need a crack on-call cleaning crew. Richie’s uncircumcised mouth-boner still protruded rudely from his swollen red lips, too, and it was a constant distraction, mesmerizing and inviting. He seemed drolly exasperated by the situation, and was so sensitive after cumming that he had push away the other three as they laughingly kept trying to kiss him.

After getting dressed—barely noticing that their clothes had of course all adapted to their new forms—they sat down to dinner on the long couch, Nic moving the leering, flickering jack-o’-lantern (hey, wasn’t this up in the bedroom before?) onto a side table while Dom put on a fresh jazz playlist. The pizzas came, and Dom and Nic set out the pies and sodas and plates and garlic and all that. Drinking in the wonderful smell, they leaned forward, famished and ready to dig in—then as one they paused and turned to look at Richie, who was staring at the pizzas forlornly, his mouth hard-on still poking stubbornly past his lips like it might never go away.

Ben grinned at his lover, squeezing the hand he still had interlaced with his own. Dom and Nic realized that they hadn’t let go this whole time—the hands even looked kind of fused together. It was actually a little perplexing—they must have let go at some point in order to redon their outfits, Ben once again in yellow mustard and Richie in his flashback-fifties houndstooth overshirt (though now there were a lot more arms and the very perceptible shapes of large, thick cocks twitching behind both). But it sure looked like the two of them were more or less merged at the ends of those two back arms—part of their bodies’ original set, Dom and Nic were pretty sure—like being that way was, for them, just an implacably simple and wondrous fact of life.

“You think you’re not going to get pizza, babe?” Ben teased, and Richie gave him a look. Then Ben used the weird ambient magic of the night one more time. He pulled a slice out of the sausage pie in front of him with one of his many hands, brought it up to his mouth, and took a bite, keeping his eyes on Richie the whole time. As he took the bite of pizza into his mouth, chewed a little, and swallowed, Richie’s eyes widened.

“See?” Ben said proudly. “Whatever I taste, you taste too. Whatever I eat, you eat too! You and me, monsters together, monsters forever.” Richie grinned around his mouth-boner. Ben licked some sauce off his lips and added, “I’ll even throw in a little extra,” leaning toward him for a tomatoey smooch. But Richie was faster, reaching forward to slip a hand or two behind Ben’s neck and pulling him into a steamy kiss.

“Wow, I think I tasted that,” Dom joked. Nic laughed, and the two lovers separated sheepishly before things could get too out of hand. After that they talked and ate, laughing together like the truly close friends they hadn’t quite been before. Richie quickly got into the routine of sharing Ben’s gustatory sensations, at one point gesturing eagerly toward the white pie—evidently one of his favorites—whereupon Ben happily pulled out a slice and helped Richie to thoroughly enjoy it.

Time passed, and the candle in the jack-o’-lantern was burning low and the playlist had cycled twice by the time Ben and Richie stood to leave. The four of them gathered near the door and kissed each other deeply, Dom and Nic talking turns with Ben’s extra-ardent stretchy tongue and Richie’s rock-hard tongue-cock. As they separated Richie was visibly blushing, but seemed serenely content. He looked, they thought, kind of like a man who was meant to have a stiff, delicious, indomitable erection sticking out of his mouth (rather than into it, as most gay guys preferred).

“So!” Ben said, wiggling his eyebrows. “We’ll be needing to partake of your wonderful cocks again very soon, of course, but in the meantime… you guys will both be at work on Monday?”

Dom and Nic nodded slowly, checking their memories. It seemed they both had jobs side-by-side at Carlson Media—very, very nice jobs, in fact. The prospect of going to work, though, brought the rest of reality beyond the walls of their house back into conscious existence.

Dom looked down at the sweats they were wearing. Both of them looked like they’d managed to stick two legs in one of the pants-legs and a third in the other. They looked back at Ben and Richie, slightly chagrined. “Yeah,” he said. “Monday… should be interesting.”

“Pfft,” Ben scoffed. “You’re only that big down there when you’re around us. And naked.”

Dom and Nic quickly looked down again to see that their bulges now showed monster meat that only reached halfway down their sculpted thighs. They were still seven feet tall and built like they were designed to make every red-blooded homosexual who saw them bone up and cum a little just from their radioactive hotness, but at least now their cocks were a little more in proportion to the rest. They were half-tempted to shuck their clothes then and there just to test the switch-over. Then again, they all knew it would not be a terribly long wait before the necessary conditions presented themselves.

They grinned down at the guys. “Thanks,” they said together. “And as for you guys being all stretchy and extra-limb…y,” Dom went on.

“And cock-y,” Nic added, eyeing Richie’s mouth-boner like he wanted another taste.

“Nobody’ll give a fuck,” they finished together.

“Unless you want ’em to,” Dom added with a wink.

Richie smiled and shrugged. “Whatever,” Ben said contentedly. “We kinda liked turning into Halloween monsters, but we love being Halloween monsters even more!”

“You sure you don’t want to try for an undo?” Nic said.

“Do you?” Ben shot back.

Nic grinned. “Hell no!”

Dom snorted. “I’ve been in retail. Returns are the worst.”

“And it’s gauche to try to return seasonal items,” Nic added.

They ended up kissing again for a while before Ben and Richie finally left together, hand in hand as always. Dom and Nic closed the door after them, chuckling and more than a little turned on. They re-entered the living room. “Alone at last,” Nic said, half-singing the words. “Just me and me…”

“…And Jack,” finished Dom. He stopped with Nic in the center of the room and stared at the blue-tinged jack-o’-lantern on the side table. The pumpkin in question, meanwhile, having let them remember again, was now laughing out loud.

Nic set the pizza boxes on the floor while Dom carefully shifted the jack-o’-lantern back to its place on the coffee table. They knelt in front of it, as Dominic had when he first lit the candle and brought Jack to life only a few hours back.

Now the candle was burning very low. To Dom and Nic, it felt ominous. Jack looked pleased, but a little the worse for wear, as though he’d been carved a week ago instead of just a few hours.

“You okay, Jack?”

“We’ve got another candle—”

“It doesn’t matter,” Jack said. “It only works once for any given pumpkin. But I want to thank you guys for an amazing show. It was awesome. And the transformations weren’t bad either,” he added with a wink. “I’ve… never gotten to make choices quite like that before.”

“Glad you liked it.”

“Though we weren’t doing it for you.”

“As you know, since you’re the one that made us forget.”

Jack chuckled. “Obliviousness and arousal,” he observed. “A demon’s greatest weapons.”

“You’re not a demon, though,” Dom reminded him.

“What happens now?” Nic asked.

“Now? I fall asleep until another blue pumpkin is harvested,” Jack said. “Someone carves it, lights it up—presto! A little more weirdness in the universe.”

“Hooray for weirdness,” Dom said.

“What if… you didn’t have to go, though?” Nic put in unexpectedly.

Dom glanced at him, instantly diving his new thought. “That’s right,” he said quickly, his lips curving into a smirk. “Just take over Nic here—”

“Hey!” Nic said, bumping shoulders with Dom in mock offense.

“Guys, it’s a nice idea, but—” Jack started to say. For all his cynicism he sounded a little touched.

“Look, Jack, I’ve figured you out,” Dom said patiently. “You get your rocks off on bringing out what guys most desire. Well, right now, what I desire more than anything on Earth is to have a twin brother who’s really a 300-year-old queer prankster ex-ghost.”

“And my heart’s desire,” Nic put in, his crooked smile matching Dom’s, “is for my minds and souls to remerge so that I—we—can give this body to you.”

“It’s what we want,” Dom finished.

Jack watched them, clearly wavering. “You—don’t want to make out with your hot twin?” he said skeptically. “Because I’m pretty sure you do. I’m pretty certain I was right about that.”

“Oh, I do,” Nic said.

“I just want that hot twin to be you, John Patrick Allen,” Dom said.

“So what do you say?” Nic prompted. “Are you ready to rejoin the land of the living and spend the next three-hundred-plus years making out with your sexy twin and fucking a couple of extra-armed stretchy guys?”

Jack didn’t answer immediately. Then, like a switch had been tripped, the candle inside the jack-o’-lantern suddenly shivered and died, its orange light vanishing from the room so that only the moody glow of the corner floor lamp was left. A tenor sax crooned faintly on the low-volume playlist, but there was no other sound.

Dominic turned uncertainly and faced the identical man sitting next to him—the one who’d formerly housed Nic, now remerged with Dom. The eyes were firmly closed, eyelashes dark against his cheeks, and he seemed deathly still.

“Jack—?” Dominic said hesitantly. He reached out a hand, grasping the powerful shoulder through the thick, pumpkin-themed shirt, the twin of Dominic’s own.

The eyes opened. They were bright, penetrating, and a rich cabbage blue.

A slow smile spread across Jack’s face. He licked his lips, first with one tongue, then, right behind it, with another.

“Making out with my sexy twin and fucking a couple of extra-armed stretchy guys,” Jack promised, “is only the beginning.”

Laughing, Dominic pounced on Jack, pushing him down on the couch. They kissed hungrily for a very, very, very long time, and did not notice when the blue pumpkin silently vanished, becoming latent once again until it returned in another autumn, no longer the vessel of a trapped ghost but a simple artifact of the universe once more.

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