A nightmare scenario: You wake up with your eyes already open, electricity cranking your face into a rictus and jolting all your systems into overdrive. Your brain sparks like Pop Rocks inside a mouth, your irises spin in their sockets, your deadwood wrists rattle in restraints you don't remember being there when you went to bed. You register a rainbow of wires streaming from your head like hair, clock the maniac clanking of beakers on a medical-grade tray, and know that you are in The Lab. The brain lab! The lab where they steal brains.
And yes, here's the doctor, appearing suddenly behind you as if he read your mind. (This being a brain lab, he probably did.) His downy bowl cut has gone all zany from directly applied voltage, the force of which peeled his eyeballs — just physically dissolved the lids. He is a mad scientist, so naturally, his cackle is deranged. It is raucous and loud, although not quite so loud that it drowns out the desperate mewling of your caged compatriots. It does, however, permit you a peek at his teeth, all of which are fangs. You try to force a scream from your involuntarily gaping maw, but you only succeed in burping up a human heart. Which is odd, considering that in this nightmare, you are a pumpkin.
If this description is not really bringing the tableau to life for you, please stop reading and go visit the Bergen Street pumpkin house in Boerum Hill. You know the one – it sits between Bond and Nevins, and its residents like to spook their neighbors with elaborate, squash-based Halloween displays. Remember 2018's demon dentist? That bus ride straight to hell? The ... cursed maternity ward of 2013? Every year a new and craven cornucopia for your enjoyment. Go check it out you gourd heads, it's more than we deserve and it won't be around forever. Halloween is but one (1) week away.
