"OK, sucker," Marty growled, brandishing the kitchen knife. "Only one of us gets out of here alive!"

The pumpkin stared insolently back at him. Marty had drawn a scary face on it, with narrow, slit-pupilled eyes and jagged teeth, but he had yet to make the first incision. He didn't want to mess this up; he needed Luke to be thrilled to bits by their first Hallowe'en without Jem.

Jem. She always threw herself into the spirit of the season, dangling ghosts and bats from the porch and covering the house in cobwebs. They'd had such fun last year with the party they'd thrown for Luke and his friends, Jem bobbing for apples alongside the kids. And that costume...But it was after he’d driven the last party guest home that Marty had walked in on Jem kissing Paul in the kitchen, and their six-month affair had come out...

"That's enough!" the Shiba Inu said out loud. Luke finished school at half-past three, and it would be dark an hour later. Marty had promised trick-or-treating and a 'big surprise', but if he didn't get a move on the surprise would be that there was no surprise. Grasping the pumpkin in his left arm, he sawed at the top.

It was more difficult than he had expected, and the lid ended up rather lopsided. The inside was full of stringy orange flesh and slippery white seeds, which he scooped out into a bowl. Tongue poking from the side of his mouth, he began to trace around the marker lines.

Marty's forehead was wrinkled with concentration, and the tight curl of his tail bobbed at each stroke of the knife. His pads and wrist were starting to ache, but he pressed on. After this he'd decorate the house, make it cobwebbier and spookier than ever before. He didn't want the neighbours thinking he couldn't cope on his own - or Luke regretting the fact that he'd chosen to live with his dad instead of his mum.

The last corner of the mouth was tricky. Marty tried shifting the knife to his left paw, and gave it a little twist.

"Shit!" The knife slipped and deprived the pumpkin face of two teeth before carving a deep gash in Marty's right arm. "Oh, shit!"