It has been two days since the Warty Squash moved in, and it is starting to have a Trojan Horse aspect to it. Ostensibly, it is a gift from my friend Mary, a remarkable and seemingly trustworthy woman, but there’s a lot of freight loaded in that “ostensibly.” Mary has a healthy, wholesome, fresh-faced, All-American look to her, which is just how you’d present yourself if you wanted to get away with stuff and you’re six feet tall. Which she is. That’s suspicious right there: that’s more tallth than a person needs.

I have set the Warty Squash on the kitchen counter for now, where I can keep an eye on it.

Depending on the light at any particular hour, it looks like something that came out of the bottom of the ocean, or out of deep space. Last night it was a barnacled creature from the drowny depths that might change color any time, partially submerge itself in the sand, and then rear up, all teeth and velocity, if you happened by.

This morning it has more of a planetary mien, tilted axis and everything, but is it a gassy giant? Or is it some incompletely formed number from the Oort cloud? In fact, are those Woorts?

If Stephen King wanted to write a story about an unknown object discovered pushing up out of the earth, something of unknown origin and insidious intent, he would start with this here warty squash. Townspeople would circle around it at first, eyeing it with curiosity, but eventually lose their sense of caution, and that’s when everything goes south. Is it radioactive? I do not know. You can’t prove to me it isn’t. You could, if you had a Geiger counter on you, and you don’t none of you do.

Mary was casual about it. I could just put it on the porch to scare kids with, if I wanted to, ha ha! Or, she hinted, I could make a nice pie out of it. It being more or less in the pumpkin side of the botanical ledger. Oh, I fell for that once. That’s the kind of thing that sounds cool but you try only one time, like a peanut butter milk shake. But I quickly learned that there is no point, no point whatsoever, in making a pie out of a pumpkin as long as they still sell pumpkin and condensed milk in cans. Not really my thing anyway. I’m more of a savory person, despite what you may have heard.

Or, she wheedled, I could roast it up nice with a bit of oil and butter and salt. Okay. I could eat a carpet square with enough butter and salt.

But right about this time a person grows suspicious. What’s next? Put it on my bedside table so the sacred curcurbit energy could realign my chakras while I sleep? Stake it out to deter roof rats? Why did Mary have so many ideas what could be done with the warty squash? And since she did, why did she want to get rid of it?

See, you have to ask. Schrǒdinger doesn’t know what is inside that thing. It could be packed with pudding. Or peanut butter cups. Only one way to tell, and that is to stick a knife in it. But the more I look at it the more it looks like it could go off.

Sucker might be stuffed with smithereens.