SUMMERWEEN 2025 HONORABLE MENTION
Detective Miles Grimsby stared at the watermelon. It was, he had to admit, a standard-issue seedless watermelon, except for the fact that it had been crudely carved into a leering jack-o’-melon, filled with sticky, melted saltwater taffy, and used to bludgeon the town’s “Summerween King,” Jim Nance, to death in his own poolside cabana.
“Any witnesses?” Grimsby asked, his voice as flat as the oppressive July heat.
His partner, a perpetually sweating man named Henderson, fanned himself with a novelty ghost decoration. “None. Just this note.” He held up a small, candy corn-shaped card in a plastic evidence bag. On it was written, in neat, festive script: “YOU’RE NOT IN THE SPIRIT.”
Grimsby sighed. It was the third one this week. First, it was the family who took their plastic skeletons down on June 23rd, then the teens who refused to wear costumes to the beach bonfire. The killer, whom the press had dubbed “The Party Pooper,” was systematically eradicating the town’s supply of festive buzzkills.
The world reacted with the sort of frantic glee only possible in the face of complete absurdity. Summerween, once a quirky local tradition, became a national mandate. Spooky-themed pool parties became memorial sites for the fallen un-festive. Sitcoms were pulled from the air, replaced with twenty-four-hour programming on advanced pumpkin-spice mixology. Public service announcements urged citizens to “Stay Spooky, Stay Safe.” Frowning was reclassified as a public nuisance, somewhere between a broken tiki torch and an un-iced pitcher of spider-web sangria.
Grimsby was uniquely suited for the case, primarily because he hadn’t felt a flicker of holiday spirit since 1997, and even then it was just a brief, involuntary sense of contentment at a well-organized filing cabinet. He saw the world not as a party, but as a series of facts to be cataloged.
The killings continued, moving down the party-goer food chain. An improv troupe that put on a non-spooky show was found encased in a giant, decorative gelatin mold, their terrified faces suspended alongside plastic spiders. The organizers of a local fun-run were discovered buried up to their necks in sand, each head marked by a tiny flag made from a candy wrapper, because they had failed to call it a “Monster Dash.”
Then, things got personal for the general populace.
Reginald Parker, an accountant from Ohio vacationing in town, was found frozen solid in his motel room. His crime? Complaining about the heat. “I just wish it was a little less humid for the parade,” he’d reportedly said. The Party Pooper had frozen him in a giant block of red fruit punch, his body surrounded by perfectly suspended gummy worms.
Panic set in. A grim, forced cheer descended upon the nation. People practiced smiling maniacally in the mirror. Dad jokes were fine, but only if they were Halloween-themed. The newly-formed Ministry of Mirth issued guidelines for attire, recommending garish orange-and-black Hawaiian shirts.
Grimsby’s investigation was a surreal nightmare. He interviewed potential witnesses who spoke in high-pitched, joyful voices, terrified a stray complaint might mark them for death.
“Did Mr. Parker seem… unenthusiastic?” Grimsby asked a fellow tourist.
“No!” the man chirped, his eyes darting around. “He was… pleasant. He did say the pumpkin-spice clam chowder was a bit much, but he said it with a smile! Please don’t tell anyone.”
Grimsby’s only lead was the killer’s escalating festivity. The Party Pooper wasn’t just killing people; they were killing them with the physical embodiment of Summerween itself. It was a pattern, but a ridiculous one. It was like trying to solve a crime spree perpetrated by a haunted house decorator on a sugar high.
The criteria for what constituted “a lack of spirit” became terrifyingly broad. A meteorologist was found flash-fried after accurately predicting a brief afternoon shower would interrupt the town’s “Horror Luau.” A woman who tripped on a stray plastic skull and muttered, “Oh, for goodness sake,” was immediately entangled and crushed by an inflatable, 50-foot spider decoration. Mild annoyance was now a death sentence.
The Ministry of Mirth deployed Spirit Squads, who roamed the streets with devices designed to detect dips in enthusiasm. Food was processed into pumpkin-spice-flavored everything to avoid the potential for “blandness.”
Then came the Unintentional Spiritlessness Purge. A man whose last name was Graves was found buried alive in a local cemetery. A baker, whose only crime was producing a batch of plain, un-decorated sugar cookies, was discovered drowned in a vat of orange and black frosting. The Party Pooper was no longer just a killer; it was a cosmic party planner, retroactively punishing any flicker of solemnity.
Grimsby watched the world contort itself. Language warped. To avoid accidental complaints, conversation was reduced to a series of government-approved shrieks of delight. Art, music, and literature were remade with a mandatory horror theme. The very concept of a quiet moment was deemed too risky, its lack of stimuli eerily similar to boredom.
His partner, Henderson, was the next to go. While walking through the humid evidence room, he let out a long, weary sigh, wiping sweat from his brow. He didn’t complain. He didn’t frown. But his body, in a primal, involuntary exhalation, conveyed a single moment of genuine exhaustion.
Grimsby found him an hour later in the town square, now serving as a scarecrow. His limbs were propped up by broomsticks and he was stuffed to bursting with crinkling, brightly colored candy wrappers, his face frozen in that brief, fatal moment of tired relief.
The world grew loud. The cities became year-round haunted houses inhabited by shuffling, grinning figures terrified of their own quiet thoughts. There were no more complaints, no more sighs, no more un-spiced baked goods. Humanity had achieved a state of perfect, unassailable festivity.
Grimsby stood on a rooftop, looking out over the garishly decorated, cacophonous expanse. The moon was a swollen, orange orb that looked suspiciously like a giant, carved watermelon. The air smelled of sugar and cinnamon. He was, as far as he could tell, the last one left. Everyone else had either fallen to The Party Pooper or had simply broken from the strain of forced joy. He hadn’t had a single festive thought in his entire life. He was safe.
But then, he considered the situation. A universe of infinite possibility, of blazing stars and complex life, meticulously and violently forced into a single, unending, tacky holiday until only one, singularly drab man remained. A cosmic operation of immense scale and power, all to enforce a party. The sheer, pointless, overwhelming tackiness of it all.
It was, objectively, the most ridiculous thing that had ever happened.
A faint, dry chuckle escaped Detective Miles Grimsby’s lips for the first time in his life. It was a small, unfamiliar thing.
And then the sky cracked open.
A shadow fell over the city, vast and festive. Grimsby looked up, his chuckle widening into a genuine grin of understanding. Plunging from the heavens was a jack-o’-melon. An enormous, leering, perfectly carved jack-o’-melon, its face a mask of terrifying glee.
As it descended, a single, booming voice echoed through the loud world, silencing it for a moment. It wasn’t a word. It was a command. A celestial, universe-ending demand to be happy.
A small candy corn-shaped card fluttered down beside Grimsby just before impact. He didn’t have time to read it, but he knew what it would say.
GET IN THE SPIRIT.
Dimitry writes comedic absurdist stories that are hilarious to himself and, potentially, countless others.
He’s a frequent contributor to humor-adjacent online publications such as The Haven, Daily Drunk, and many others.
Published 8/26/25