SOC

Save our crops: An Attack on Omnivores

By: Tennislove

I watched from the hands of some grubby child, as my best friend Stan got massacred. They were doing the most horrendous things to him. First, they cut a hole in his head, and then they scooped his guts.

'Eww! I didn't know our guts were so stringy'

Then they did the worse thing imaginable! They put a face on him. Yeah, I know it doesn't sound that bad, but we pumpkins are faceless creatures. Oh, we can communicate with each other, but it's through hidden vines. Not the ones those disgusting humans in overalls pull us from, but the ones hidden in our stem. Yes, we melons are a complicated species, not the sweet delicious dewy thing you make us out to be. Anyways, back to my friend Stan. He was sitting on the table now with triangles for eyes, crooked triangles at that. Then they started on the nose. And yeah you it guessed, it was also a triangle. I mean if you were going to murder a man, you could at least give him different facial features!

This is when I decided that a change needed to be done. Year after year, my brethren get taken weeks previous to October 31st, to be put out on the table as a decoration. We are a species to people. You don't see us taking those rounded things with floppy appendages humans call heads and placing them on our porches. But now that I think about it, maybe that's exactly what we should do. I mean why not? The humans do it to us all the time. We can use our hidden vines to pop those rounded things right off their shoulders and use it as a decoration. If only I could get out of these sticky hands. I looked up to see what had become of Stan.

'Oh god they were putting a light in him'

He glowed eerily like a lifeless corpse. Actually, he resembled some of the family that had made him. Maybe they were going for a self- portrait kind of look. Poor Stan; and he had little melons on the way. They were sprouting up just right. His wife, lemon, would be so devastated. Yeah, we keep it in the fruit and vegetable family. Could you imagine one of us mating with a piece of beef, not to mention I heard they were a bunch of meat heads?

Anyways, where was I? Oh yeah, my escape. I could try that tootsie roll move my sister had taught me. She said the humans called it the stop, drop, and role. Whatever that is. I slightly shifted in my capture's hand, seeing how far I was form the ground, since pumpkins were fragile creatures. Then I rolled and the hands dropped me; just like I thought they would. And I rolled right out of that house. Okay yeah, so I had to dodge a big hairball that I heard one of the human address as Mitsy, but other than that and a spare shoe, my escape was problem free.

Now I was just rolling down the street; inconspicuously that is. I couldn't use my vine legs and arms, seeing as humans have a hard time believing what they can't explain or what isn't written in those bounded trees they call books. Now all I had to look out for was the dude they call Peter.

Yeah him, the one that's a pumpkin eater. Once I was in the clear, no really, I was in a small clearing; I searched for the closest tree. Ahh , there's one. I used its roots to send out a national melon alert. We'd need to bring in the whole produce section for this.

About an hour later, everything from celery, to a long lost cousin, to an apple came. I noticed that the guacamoles were far from the pumpkins. As it should be, we didn't trust them. There was something suspicious about their bumpy surface and also they envied our smooth one. I got in front of the group and used the old maple to get my message across. He would intercept what I was saying and would transmit it to the wind, which then would carry it to all the proper stems and receptors.

"I have called your attention today to address the holiday that is called Halloween. I watched as my friend Stan was carved into what they call a jack o' lantern." All of a sudden the air was filled with a zesty scent; lemon had started crying.

"This is horrible and we should not have to suffer anymore. We should not have to be taken and used as decorations or worse, be put in a can. Farmers have taken us for centuries now to supply their kind. We must take a stand!" By now, I had everyone's attention. The broccoli stalks were getting so into my speech, I thought they might lose a puff.

"I propose we retaliate against the humans. We desecrate their fields. We use them as decorations. Alone we cannot do anything, but together we are strong." By the time I had finished, all the vegetables and fruits had become truculent.

"But wait!" spoke a lone green bean. "What does this have to do with us? I mean Halloween doesn't affect the non-pumpkins."

"Yeah!" chanted the other fruits and vegetables in the group. This green was starting to get on my nerves. If he wasn't careful he would find himself in a casserole. If he was gone, well it would be a nuance.

"Yeah sure Halloween doesn't affect you. But how about the holidays after; say, Thanksgiving or Christmas?"

"Yeah, well yeah …you didn't say anything about those holidays." He said then disappeared into the forest of green that was the broccoli. No wonder I heard the farmer saying he was an immature bean pod.

"So are you with me or are you with me?"

"Let's get them." That's what I wanted to hear. I would no longer be a specter in the slaughtering of our kind.

We started out with the fields. The place where we had first been taken, so many centuries ago. Well at least that's what the veggie tales had said. The corn stalks went to go get those things they used called hoes and pitchforks. Those would have to go first, then after that maybe the silverware. For some reason, the broccoli didn't want us to burn the fields. Something about accidently burning a tree they called cousin. I tried to convey to them that the trees would remain unharmed, but they didn't want to listen. I think it had something to do with one of them dating a daisy. We gathered the farmer's supplies and put in a wheel barrel. The cucumber wheeled it over to the creek, while the watermelons jumped on one end, making the hoes and pitchforks fly into the river. We watched as they slowly sunk to the bottom.

"Next I say we go after the humans. Going after their tools is seed play." Shouted a particularly endowed onion. He had the most layers out of all the under grounders.

"Yeah!" chanted the apples. I was fine with that, but I had always liked to start out small. But when I thought about it, if we got rid of the humans then they wouldn't be there to use the tools. Coming out of my silent reverie, I noticed they were all staring at me.

"I think the under grounder is right. Humans are the cause off our problem. Why not start at the heart?" I said even though I was piqued that an onion had thought of this before me. But I couldn't let it go to my head. We had omnivores to carve.

We rolled, hopped, and creeped down the dusty street looking for our next victim. In my eyes, all humans were guilty; they all had eaten one of us at some time. Just then we came upon screaming and shouting.

"Hey give that back." said a woman. Then a man was running forward, well, toward the alley that was right by us. He had a purse in his hand. When he got to the alley he stopped, from the excitement he didn't see us there.

I looked over to the onion and nodded at the alley the human had run into. He nodded back, agreeing the runner would be our first victim. Slowly, I made my way to the mouth of the alley. All the wrong that had been done to us was about to be reconciled. The broccoli slid up beside me as I lead the bunch into the alley.

"How are we going to do it?" one of them asked.

"Were going to carve him." I said. Carve him with what? I didn't know. The human was bent over at the hips his hand resting on his thighs. Apparently the run had been too much for him. I rolled in front of him, getting ready to extract my vines.

Then the human looked over.

"What the…" but he didn't get a chance to finish because the pineapples started shooting there needles at him. He started to cuss and scream. The effect was greater than what I expected due to the amount of pineapples there actually was; I think this was due to revenge for all the hams they had been on.

"Stop, w-whats going on?" he screamed putting his hand s up to fend off the needles.

I didn't give him a chance to speak. I reached up with my vines and snapped his neck. We could hear the bone snap. It was a tight pop, the sound of the head severing from the spine. Blood started to spew out of his mouth and nose. But that wasn't enough, to just kill him. We had to carve him.

"We need to carve him." I said. Then one of the squashes handed me a stray piece of pipe.

"Well give you the honors. For your friend Stan." He said gravely. I like the squash; they were after close to the melon family. I grabbed the pipe and wielded towards the humans head. I knew that the omnivore's skull would be hard to get through, but we pumpkins were known for our strength.

I jabbed the pipe into the head, and made a line down to the nose. Blood and a milky liquid spewed out of the eye socket, it popped like a grape. Not that I'd tell them that, they'd probably try to carve me themselves. That's the worst thing, to do, to be compared to a human.

I made a sharp cut under the eye and closed the triangle. I did it again on the other side, as more liquid spill out of the socket. Then I went for the nose. As I raised the pipe to stab, I noticed that flesh was sticking to the pipe. Kind of like a piece of bloody bologna. I stabbed at the top of the nose and blood sprayed out, making the peaches behind me squeal. I noticed that lemon was swaying, maybe she was experiencing vertigo, due to citrus loss.

Once the nose had been carved out, I started out on the hardest part of the mouth. It was going to be a jack o' lantern face. I plunged the sharp edge into the corner of the mouth, but I was resisted with a sickening wet smack.

"Onion I need some help, it won't go in." I said through an extended vine, that wasn't trying to drive the pipe in.

The onion wobbled over here, using some of his layers to push himself. For some reason he didn't like rolling.

"What?" he snapped. Sometimes I didn't like onions, they were really tactless.

"I said that it won't go in." before I even finished my sentence. He heaved and shoved the pipe in. I heard some the teeth crack, and they fell out of the agape mouth.

"Thanks."

"No problem."

I finished the mouth quickly, now that the teeth were gone it was easier to carve. When I was done, they all gathered around to see.

"Well he does look like a jack o' lantern."

"Kind of bloody."

"That is just gross."

"When do we go after the next one?"

"People calm down. One is fine for tonight." I looked over at lemon, who looked quite despondent.

"I don't think we should have done that," she said quietly. Everyone turned around to look at her.

"Why?" I said.

"Because the humans have found out. And we may have vines, but they have disposable thumbs and the silverware on their side," she said. Looking at something behind us, I turned around to see humans, lots of them. And in their hands they had forks, knives, and the dreaded scoop. Then I looked to my left, amidst the killing we hadn't noticed, we were right in front of a grocery store. We had infringed on enemy territory.

A/N: This was a story I wrote for english.