Jack's Tale

*Ok when i wrote this i was incredibly bored! Can u tell? Hope u all like it...*

To any weary traveller who may pass this way,

My name is Jack, a common name even when it was given to me all those years ago. But unlike my name I was different. I was smarter than everyone in my village. Seriously, I’m not boasting at all. The village pooled its money to try and put enough together so I could be sent to the college several towns over. Unfortunately they didn’t have enough. I kind of guessed they wouldn’t. I mean how much money can a small village that only has a population of 40 or so have? Especially when the talk of the town is how sunny the weather it. I believe that I would have been a totally different person if I’d gone to college and I wouldn’t have landed in this mess. I was arrogant and childish then and took the rejection of college hard. I wanted to prove to all the people in Meadows’ vale that I was wasted there and that it was their fault that I was rejected from college. I have found, over my time here in what I like to call the Void, that it wasn’t their fault and that I could have been perfectly happy helping the village prosper so others could have the chance to go to college but then I was so lazy and proved to be my downfall.

I remember it well and how the Devil came to me one day and told me that it was my time to die. I tricked the Devil into transforming into a coin, which I picked up and grasped tightly in my hand. The Devil could not get free because upon my palm was a scar in the shape of a cross and made him promise to let me live another year. I believed that I would have another year to be good and help the village and repent my sins, yet as the months rolled by I had forgotten. Soon enough the nest year had come and the Devil had come to reclaim my soul. Again I trapped him and made him promise to let me live another year. I can’t believe that I was clever enough to trick the Devil. Still my talents were wasted but no matter, my story continues yet.

Then the next year the Devil failed to come and I though I had achieved what many crave, immortality. Yet I guess I did, I wish only that immortality were as it is in dreams. I soon found myself in a nasty predicament when a runaway horse trampled me to death as I was walking down the main street. I shudder to think of it still. Alas I found myself at the gates of a wondrous paradise and yet I was not allowed to enter as I had not ever repented my sins nor had I ever done any good for anyone other than myself. I was then guided down into the dept of Hell where the tormented screams and mad laughter of insane victims punctuated through the sulphurous smoke. The Devil was rightly pissed at me for avoiding his capture and refused me admittance then and there to Hell.

Instead he banished me to a place far worse than Hell. A place of nothingness, a vacuum. A place devoid of hope, light and people. Well not entirely of light I was granted the gift of a single piece of coal to light my way, which was placed into a hollowed out pumpkin with a leering face and an eerie glow. And so I wander this place between life and death, a land of perpetual shadows. To all who read this story of mine I wish you to beware, for the only way to read this note is to be in the very same realm as me. Congratulations to you my friend, you have achieved immortality. I congratulate you. Perhaps we shall meet sometime soon where we can swap stories and maintain companionship of some sort, if indeed time does exist here…

Jack O'Lantern