SECOND LIFE residents are making the most of the grid’s annual three-day period of tasteful autumnal restraint before absolutely everything becomes covered in pumpkins, skeletons and fucking cobwebs.
Across the grid, picturesque autumn markets have opened their doors, offering residents a fleeting opportunity to enjoy fallen leaves, rustic wooden stalls and tasteful arrangements of gourds before Halloween arrives and somebody puts a severed head in a birdbath.
“It’s lovely at the moment,” said Willow Amberleaf, 47, while standing beside a wheelbarrow containing six decorative pumpkins and a small chalkboard bearing the word AUTUMN. “There are little market stalls, hot chocolate, knitted scarves and those strings of warm lights everybody puts between two trees. It’s really peaceful.”
Willow then gazed wistfully across a nearby lake where a rowing boat had been positioned specifically so that nobody could actually use it. “We should enjoy it. By next Tuesday there’ll be a twelve-foot animatronic clown standing there.”
Second Life’s autumn season traditionally lasts from the moment the first leaf turns orange until approximately five minutes later, when sim owners collectively decide that what their beautiful woodland really needs is a Victorian psychiatric hospital with blood coming out of the windows.
Already there are signs that the transition has begun.
At Pumpkin & Pine Autumn Market, proprietor Jade Shadowfall has discreetly introduced a small Halloween section behind the artisanal candle stall. “It’s nothing major,” she insisted, standing beside a 30-foot pentagram. “We've just got a few witchy bits.” These currently include 74 pumpkins, nine skeletons, a haunted crypt, several ravens, a woman crawling backwards across a ceiling and an interactive Victorian pram which occasionally screams.
Kenzie says the market will remain primarily autumn-themed until October, although overnight somebody has replaced the acoustic folk music with the sound of a child whispering Mummy from inside a well.
Elsewhere, photographers are working around the clock to complete the grid’s annual supply of pictures featuring an avatar in an oversized jumper staring thoughtfully into the middle distance while holding a mug with both hands.
Second Life meteorologists believe Peak Autumn will occur sometime this week, when approximately 83 per cent of all available regions simultaneously contain a wooden crate full of apples that nobody is allowed to eat.
After that, conditions are expected to deteriorate rapidly. By early October, experts predict it will be impossible to travel more than 40 metres without encountering fog, gravestones, enormous spiders or a sexy witch selling a BOM skin at 30 per cent off.
Willow remains determined to enjoy autumn while she can. “I just want fallen leaves, cosy jumpers and maybe some cider,” she said.
Behind her, Jade quietly replaced the market's WELCOME TO AUTUMN sign with a pumpkin with WELCOME MORTALS carved in to it in Comic Sans.