I am Legion, for we are many.

The face of your jack-o-lantern: the shape of your soul?

A holiday about demonology and death should be my favorite, and yet this weekend I was really hoping I could carve a pumpkin as fast as Lucy does in the Great Pumpkin. I'm still sick and have midterms coming. So I didn't think about it too hard and went for something easy I call "Demon howling in hell."

Merry told me it looked sad. That's kind of the point. If you're a demon the Devil created you to be bad then punishes you for it. Sounds like the Old Testament God in fact. Here is Merry's pumpkin. A bit irreverent and Devil-may-care:

Here is Lucas's. With pumpkins, as with all things aesthetic, he has strong opinions and favors the traditional. His timeless face is patterned with intention:

Ambrose drew out a challenging design. He told me cute was what he was going for and I think he nailed it. I begged Elizabeth to carve it for him, he had asked me to, and she did a fine job. With a knife, she is the best of us.

Ezra worked a long time compulsively perfecting these scars. The face bears the marks of careful but merciless determination to endure a thousand cuts grappling with angels.

Here is Beth's. The eyes are a gothic flourish. Without the flash in this picture you can't quite get the rakish slash of its maw. Beth's pumpkin is unapologetic. It doesn't suffer like mine, wracked with fruitless guilt, tortured more by its own self-judgment than the judgment of pompous angels. At the end of time, confronted for its crimes against God and his world Beth's is like "What, me worry?"

Look close and see our souls. The family that slays together stays together.