Night of the Living Dead Turnips
Scott Crowder
©2011
Published by r[E]volution Press at Smashwords
Contents copyright © 2011 Scott Crowder / r[E]volution Press
All rights reserved. Any reproduction, sale, or commercial use of this book without express written permission of the author is strictly forbidden.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, and incidents are inventions of the author. Any resemblance to actual events, people, or turnips, alive, dead, or somewhere in between, is entirely coincidental.
Cover image was found on the internet and I make no claim of ownership to it. If it’s yours and you’d like it removed, please contact me at zombieapocalypse [at] earthlink [dot] net.
Smashwords Edition License Notes
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. Thank you for respecting the author's work.
* * *
Our story begins in Shmorgasbord Heights
On the very last night before Halloween Night.
The moon hangs low in the darkening sky,
Dropping a wink like a big sleepy eye.
The dark streets titter with chittering leaves.
Corn stands in the fields in tall silent sheaves.
On fence posts and porch steps sit pumpkins agleam,
Alight with bright fright and grim pumpkin dreams.
Young Tommy Tigby passes them warily,
Aware of the eyes that stare at him scarily.
He’s helped set up for his school’s harvest dance.
Now he’s nervous and he feels like he’s got ants in his pants.
As he makes his way home through the deepening dark,
A chilly wind blows and a hidden dog barks.
So his legs are swinging, his footsteps are fast;
Ahead is the farm he wants to be past,
The one that consistently gives him the creeps,
The creepy old farm of Old Farmer Freep.
Freep’s let the failing barn grow quite decrepit.
His efforts at up-keep are thoroughly tepid.
His fields lay barren, fallow and drear.
Everything’s harvested this time of year.
Freep’s only got turnips growing this late
In a sad little plot behind an old wooden gate.
They’d been there that morning and afternoon too,
Growing the way turnips usually do.
But as young Tommy passes he sees with a fright
That the turnips are gone; they are nowhere in sight.
This isn’t, of course, any oddness at all.
Freep harvests his produce every fall.
But no footprints mark the farmer’s toil,
Only holes like tiny graves dug in the soil.
Did the turnips wrench themselves from the dust?
Freep had to have pulled them! He had to! He must!
Young Tommy walks faster, his feet light and fleet,
Desperate for home, to be off this dark street.
As he walks, though, a question burns inside his head
And fills his heart and mind with cold dread.
Who dug the turnips if it wasn’t Old Freep?
This question will keep young Tommy from sleep.
He’ll twist and turn in his sheets that night,
Blood pounding in his veins from fright.
Sleep will elude him until just before dawn
When finally he’ll drop with a groan and a yawn.
Still, in his dreams, ugly thoughts chase him ‘round.
Who pulled the turnips out of the ground?
* * *
Freep stands at a window and sees the boy flee,
His sour old soul burning with glee.
It is slightly too early for people to know
But the boy can tell no one; to whom would he go?
His parents? A sibling or friend? A teacher?
No one would believe him, not counselor or preacher.
They’d laugh and they’d send him away with a shoo.
Such stories, they’d say. Just listen to you!
They’d regret that mistake later on, wait and see,
When they see the vile turnips that Freep has set free.
At last they will know, these dumb country bumpkins,
The mistake that they make when they choose to use pumpkins
Instead of the turnips decreed by tradition.
To punish these bumpkins is his life’s long mission.
The turnip had always been Jack’s lantern, you see,
In the old days in Ireland across the cold sea.
But settlers found the pumpkin easy to handle,
Simpler to hollow and carve for the candle.
So the turnip found itself forgotten,
Tossed aside and regrettably rotten.
The pumpkin held reign on Halloween night
While the now lowly turnip slipped from Jack’s sight.
Freep sneers at the boy’s swiftly vanishing form.
His turnips are gathering like a vegetable storm.
Soon they’ll reclaim their place in the dark,
Lit from within by revenge and a spark.
* * *
Tommy wakes the next morning, feeling foolish and silly.
Turnips are stupid, now. Aren't they, really?
It’s like being scared of carrots or beets,
Things he can squash ‘neath his rather small feets.
So he hops out of bed with a grin and a chuckle,
Wiping sleep from his eyes with the back of a knuckle.
He dresses and calls for his dog Mrs. Floppy,
Expecting to hear her make sounds wet and sloppy.
Instead he hears silence, hushed and unbroken,
And now it is terror on which he is chokin’.
He throws open doors as he runs through the rooms
But the house is as empty and cold as a tomb.
Where is his father, his dog, his sister?
And where is his mother? He couldn’t have missed her!
He stands in the kitchen, fear filling his gut.
What should he do? Someone please tell him! What?
That’s when he notices small prints on the floor
Across the linoleum and out the back door,
As if many small things had carried a load
On many small feet straight out to the road.
Was it the turnips, those foul rotten roots,
That had taken his parents and sister as loot?
Probably so, he thinks with a lurch,
And through kitchen cabinets begins a long search.
After he finds his weapons of war
He turns with a groan around to the back door.
Without even thinking he follows this trail,
His courage wavering, weak and frail.
Out to the street and back toward town,
The same road that last night he’d walked down.
He knows with a start to whose farm he is headed
And the name of the farmer that he’d always dreaded.
Freep the Creepy, Freep the kook,
Whose mission, it seems, is to scare and to spook.
But Tommy keeps moving, striding along
And thinks of his sister and parents, all gone.
Are they at Freep’s farm now, waiting on him?
Or has something far darker happened to them?
But he knows what to do and what must be done,
So in spite of the fear he breaks into a run.
He sprints round the corner and there lay Freep’s farm.
And these prints on the road, will they lead him to harm?
But because he has to, he keeps on going;
He walks up to Freep’s door without even slowing.
He raises his small hand and loudly he knocks…
* * *
Freep rushes downstairs, shocked out of his socks.
He’d seen the boy coming from a window upstairs;
He’d expected the boy to be horribly scared.
Yet here the boy stands, too tall and too proud.
Such pumpkiny pride will not be allowed,
So Freep opens his door to face the brave lad.
“Run along, now,” he growls, “before I get mad!”
But the boy stands firm, refusing to yield,
Tall as the corn sheaves out in the field.
“Give me my family!” he barks at old Freep.
“Don’t make me take them, you creepy old creep!”
But Freep says nothing, stands staring, quite silent,
The look in his eyes evil and violent.
Then he turns his old face to the October sky
And calls out to his minions with a strange gurgling cry…
* * *
Tommy hears the turnips thunder onto the porch
And the fear in his belly burns bright as a torch.
But he pulls out his weapons without hesitating;
His sister needs him, his parents are waiting.
Freep stands watching with a grim awful scowl
And the turnips advance with a hair-raising yowl.
But Tommy stands firm, he cannot retreat,
Not with the turnips massed at his feet.
Pushing past Freep he runs into the house
And into the kitchen, swift as a mouse.
He plugs in his weapons, untangling cords,
Then turns to face the zombie turnip hordes.
Heart beating fast, weapons in hand
Tommy steels himself for his very last stand.
And then come the turnips from left and from right,
Howling and groaning, a horrible sight.
They flood the bare floor and lurch for his flesh,
Rotting and stinky, not one of them fresh.
Turnipey mouths hold black turnip fangs
Which they gnash and they crash in great turnip gangs.
They howl for his blood, his flesh, his life,
So he wraps his fist tightly around his long knife.
The turnips they come from every which way,
And with a yell of his own, Tommy leaps into the fray…
* * *
Tommy stands panting, tired and fuzzy,
The blender in his hand still whirling and buzzy.
The remains of the turnip horde lay on the floor
In a trail of carnage that goes out the back door.
He’d defeated them all, had wrought their vile end.
They lay on the floor sliced, diced, julienned.
He’d used all Mom’s stuff, paring knives, blenders,
Peelers and Cuisinarts as foul turnip enders.
But where is old Freep, has he managed to flee?
Tommy runs to a window in order to see.
And there in the fading rays of Halloween’s sun,
He sees the last of the turnips break into a run,
Carrying Freep in a hasty retreat,
Escaping into the woods on their small rooty feet.
As the sun at last sets on this terrible day
He finds his family tied up and hidden away.
He frees them and hugs them and walks them back home,
And gives Mrs. Floppy a big juicy bone.
But questions still linger; is it through, is it done?
Is everything ended or was this just round one?
Has he seen the last of Freep’s vegetable fiends?
He has a feeling he’ll find out next Halloween.
* * *
So the next time Halloween comes round again,
Make sure that your pumpkins do no more than grin.
If you see a pumpkin smile widely and proudly,
Tell him to stop it and tell him quite loudly.