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“Dr Boyfriend calling.”
“Put him through, Friday.” Tony sat back from his latest project. It was at a point where Friday could run the models and stress tests. So really, Stephen couldn’t have called at a better time.
“Hey, Babe.”
“Hello, Tony.” Tony liked the way Stephen could make his name an endearment all on its own.
“How good are you with a knife? I’m asking for a friend.”
Tony shrugged. It wasn’t the strangest way one of their conversations had started. “Well, I’ve never stabbed anyone but I get by.”
“Then could you do my friend a favor?”
“Why not, you upstairs?”
“Yes.”
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When Tony got to the penthouse, Stephen was easy to spot in the kitchen. There were three pumpkins on the counter. Well, it probably counted as two and a half. One of them had a side ripped off. Actually as Tony approached he could see that it had been sliced off or stabbed off.
“I don’t think this is how you make pumpkin pie.”
Stephen sighed. “I thought I could use the Blades of Bertrum to carve it, but, its…I don’t have the precision with the spell to do it.”
“I’ll do it. I’m great at precision, accuracy, stabbing vegetables.” Tony grabbed a knife from the drawer.
Tony was not, in fact, great at stabbing vegetables. It took a surprising amount of force to get the knife through the shell of the pumpkin and when it did it went in too far. The eyes were lopsided but Tony thought he hit his stride with the mouth carefully getting the teeth cutout. When he started on the nose he learned that pumpkins lose structural integrity fast. The pumpkin’s face collapsed on the last cut. The knife hit the back of the pumpkin shell and his hand slick with pumpkin guts slid along the blade.
“Shit.”
Stephen grabbed a towel and herded Tony over toward the sink. The cut bled and stung. Stephen carefully wrapped a bandaid around Tony’s finger.
“You know…”
“What?” Stephen asked.
“I have a laser cutting torch downstairs that’s accurate to a tenth of a millimeter.”
Stephen smiled at him. “New solutions to old problems?”
They went to the lab and got the pumpkin ready for its date with the laser cutter. Tony looked at the face Stephen had asked him to carve as he scanned it into the software. “We could do something more impressive.”
“Maybe on the next one. I told you, this one is for a friend.”
Tony shrugged, already distracted by the thought of carving a screaming Hulk onto the next pumpkin.
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Later that evening, after they had learned a water cutter was better than a laser cutter when it came to pumpkins and washed off the smell of burnt pumpkin, the cloak of levitation floated into the living room.
Stephen proudly lifted up the pumpkin to the cloak for its inspection. It nodded its collar and Stephen placed the pumpkin where a person’s head would go if they were wearing the cloak. It ruffled it collar getting used to the weight. It turned to Tony and nodded the pumpkin forward in such a human way that Tony could believe there was an invisible being wrapped in a cloak with a pumpkin for its head.
Stephen smiled. “It’s the Cloak’s halloween costume.”
“Good look. But where are you going to keep your candy?”
The cloak flapped out its sides in a menace way. The toothy smile of the pumpkin bobbing in a spooky way.
“I think the Cloak’s plans are to lurk in graveyards and scare the crap out of anyone it can.”
“I respect that. Though,” Tony paused “I think it still needs a little something.”
Stephen looked at the pumpkin then looked at Tony. “What?”
“A little magic. What was that spell you used last week? The one everyone kept calling fairy lights.”
“Oh.” Stephen blinked.
The Clock nodded the pumpkin fiercely.
Stephen twisted his fingers in a small movement and an eldritch blue flame bloomed inside the pumpkin. Glowing from inside the pumpkin, it cast stark and strange shadows through the penthouse.
The cloak twirled letting its fabric snap with the motion.
“Go. Have fun. Be safe. Start a new urban legend!” Tony called after it as the cloak made its way out the balcony doors and into the night.
Stephen leaned against Tony. “Thank you.”