Stories

The Five Days of Thanksgiving, Day 1: Shopping – Fresh Turkey

I blame my Aunt Jean who suggested maybe I should write stories for holidays other than Halloween. I thought, “huh, maybe for Christmas, but November is for NaNoWriMo!” Yeah, that hasn’t panned out. Like last year and the year before that 31 Ghosts left me creatively winded. But in the last few days I’ve been thinking, “Well… maybe a little commitment might be fun…” And so I bring you the Five Days of Thanksgiving, a new theme each day. Today is Day 1, which is for Shopping (for Thanksgiving).

Julie volunteered to host Thanksgiving this year for her parents and inlaws. While the thought initially overwhelmed her, she patted herself on the back by breaking down the daunting tasks involved into smaller, more manageable steps she could take care of while still maintaining her full-time job, marriage, and, hopefully, her sanity.

Her husband Alex volunteered for whipping their small house into guest-shape and said something about “setting a tablescape” that tacitly answered where her Martha Stewart Living magazines had disappeared to. She’d made sides that she doubly verified could freeze ahead of time without loss of flavor and marked their completion down on the extensive Excel spreadsheet she compiled with all the steps. She followed the rows down to the first task today:

11/25/2019 Purchase FRESH Turkey

She had nothing against frozen turkeys. She’d had frozen turkeys in the past that were delicious. But she’d never had a fresh turkey and, initially, it looked that it wouldn’t be an option this year either. She crossed off the local organic turkey farm when she checked prices and then verified that, no, the “per pound” prices weren’t, as she had first hoped, the price for the whole bird. Or two birds. Fine, maybe the organic grocery store would be better. And they were! Incrementally better, that is. She resigned herself to another Butterball when she stopped by her local supermarket and saw the sign: “Fresh Organic Turkeys! Reserve yours today!”

She did.

Oh, yes, she did! She could pick up her 20-25lb bird on Monday, November 25 after noon. On her way home after work she found a parking space and took her life in her hands as she crossed the busy parking lot. Once inside the store the dangers hadn’t diminished as Julie dodged shopping carts driven wantonly by manic, bleary eyed men and women. Thanksgiving zombies.

Doesn’t anyone have any Thanksgiving cheer? She thought.

At the meat counter in the back of the store she waited patiently for the young man to finish stickering lamb shanks plastic wrapped to pink cellophane planks. “Can I help you?” he asked.

“I’m here to pick up a fresh turkey for Julie Sykes.”

“Oh,” he said as the color drained from his face. He stared at her in silence for a moment that stretched uncomfortably on.

“Is there…” she started, “…a problem?”

“Uh…” he stammered. “You said fresh turkey, didn’t you?”

Oh crap, she thought mentally wondering whether she could thaw a Butterball before Thursday. “Yes,” she said. “Fresh turkey. 20-25 pounds–“

“Oh god,” he said as he turned from ashen to green. “That’s a big one.”

“Well,” Julie said, “I suppose so. Look, is there some kind of problem? Do I need to get a frozen bird?”

“No, no…” his eyes locked onto another meat department employee who had been restocking the store-brand frozen birds. “T.J!” he called over Julie’s shoulder.

“Yeah?” T.J. came over to the counter next to her.

“I..uh… I need you to get this woman’s fresh turkey from the fridge.”

His response was immediate and utterly unwavering. “Hell no. I got the last one. This is you.”

“But…” the man behind the counter began.

“But nothing. This is all you Alan.”

“Oh god,” he swallowed hard and turned with the same demeanor as a condemned inmate having received word his last appeal had been denied by the governor. Stoically, he walked to the walk-in cooler, opened the door with a whoosh of frost, stepped inside and let the door close behind him.

Julie waited patiently for several minutes. She thought she heard thuds and bangs coming from the walk-in, but chalked it up to someone manhandling stock elsewhere in the back. After five minutes she started to grow impatient. After ten minutes she grew concerned.

“T.J. is it?” she tapped the man stocking the generic birds. “Sorry to bug you, but I’m a little worried. It’s been more than ten minutes since the clerk went to get my fresh turkey. Is everything okay?”

“More than ten minutes?” his eyes grew wide with panic. “Jesus Christ!” he yelled and bolted for the swinging door separating store from meat department. He threw the cooler door open and Julie heard a scream, high and desperate escape from the walk-in. J.T. ran in and the door hung ajar as now Julie absolutely heard what sounded like a fight – thuds, certainly, but also slaps, groans, another shriek, a louder thud.

Then silence.

Julie stared at the open walk-in with genuine fear. Should she go in herself? Find someone else? See if that sale on Butterballs over at Raley’s was still going on…

Then she saw a pink nub appear around the edge of the door. What the hell? She thought.

As if in answer, the nub resolved into the pink, plucked wingtip of a turkey. Then the rest of the bird – completely plucked of feathers and utterly headless – emerged around the door of the walk-in moving on feet-less drumsticks. It turned its chest towards the walk-it it just emerged from and then used its wingtip to slam the door closed with a force that belied its twenty-to-twenty-five-pound stature. Julie watched in spellbound horror as it turned its body towards her. It locked its neck-hole on her eyes and she felt it was sightlessly staring into her very soul.

Without eyes, without a head, hell without even most of its neck, you would think it difficult for the turkey to convey emotion or intention. Not so. Julie knew two things immediately: one, the turkey was pissed. Two, she needed to run. Now.

She turned run, starting down the long back aisle towards the bakery. She heard the swinging door of the meat department flung open and the wet tapping of drumsticks on tile as the turkey chased after her with furious speed. Julie cast a quick glance back and saw it closing on her breasts canted forward, wings pumping hard.

She juked left around the last horizontal freezer in the aisle, putting the freezer between them. After all, she thought, maybe it can’t see well without… I don’t know A HEAD! She stopped when the turkey stopped opposite her with a skittering slide, the open freezer between them                obscuring the bird. She listened, trying to catch her breath. She heard the tap-tapping of its drumsticks as it started for one side of the freezer; Julie moved to the opposite side. The turkey stopped. Tap tap tap to the other side. Julie moved back to the other corner. Without warning, the naked headless pink turkey leapt up onto the edge of the freezer, its wings outstretched. Julie started to take a few steps backwards before the beheaded bird crouched and launched itself towards her. Julie skittered out of the way as the bird crashed into an endcap display of Pennsylvania Dutch Egg Nog. Bottles crashed, shattering with impact. Julie ran for the bakery as the turkey shook off its rum-soaked dairy bath, regained its footing and started pursuing its quarry.

Julie turned to see if the bird had gotten up and let out a little cry when she saw the pink beast closing on her. She drew a day-old baguette from a table, whipped off the paper wrapper and held it en garde. The turkey sensing danger, skid to a stop just outside baguette range. They faced each other, plucked bird to plucky human. They circled each other, the turkey feinting with a wing which Julie batted with the baguette, Julie taking a step forward with the hard loaf, the bird dodging nimbly. The rounded halfway around and Julie’s foot slipped in a puddle of egg nog. She cursed herself for not changing from her kitten heels into her gym shoes before leaving work as she went to a knee. The turkey lunged at the opening. But Julie hadn’t forgotten everything from those fencing classes in college and she antagonized the attacking bird with the rock-hard baguette, keeping its wings back but still getting spattered with egg nog or turkey slime – she hoped the former. She slashed at its drumsticks and hope blossomed as if fell onto its stub tail with a wet splut. She regained her feet, kicked her shoes off and sprinted back down the aisle. 

As she approached the meat department the door swung open again. She momentarily hoped it might be T.J. or that other guy. Instead she stared in horror as half a dozen pink, plucked, headless Cornish game hens hopped out into the main aisle, turned towards her and ran en masse towards her. Julie’s sprint brought her quickly towards the charging tiny headless hens. At the last moment, she dropped letting her momentum and the poly/rayon blend of her DKNY slacks carry her into a slide worthy of the shortstop of her state champion high school fast-pitch softball that she had been more years ago than she cared to admit. She slid into the puckered game hens more wrecking ball than bowling ball, as the tiny carcasses careened hither and thither.

Back on her feet she stole a glance behind her and saw the turkey back on its drumsticks and gaining momentum with each furious pump of its featherless wings. Her sprint carried her past the frozen section, passed the canned goods. As she started past the paper towels and toilet paper and cleaning supplies, she saw a display of store-branded cloth shopping bags. She hurried around the corner into the aisle and grabbed a bag.

The turkey, seeing her turn down the aisle, adjusted its path to make a full-speed arcing turn into the aisle Julie had disappeared down. It immediately regretted the decision as Julie crouched with the shopping bag wide open and waiting. The bird tried to halt itself, but the bone of its drumsticks skidded easily over the tile as it disappeared into the canvas sack. Julie closed bag as soon as the beast disappeared inside, hurriedly tying the carrying handles down securing her catch. The turkey flailed hard in the sack and Julie held tight. When she heard the bag start to tear she reached for the first thing she could close her hand around – in this case a toilet plunger – and used to mercilessly beat the lurching bag with everything she had.

She kept wailing on the bag after it stopped moving just to be sure. As her blows slowed she looked up to see a crowd of open-mouthed shoppers gathered around her in the aisle, several with cell phones out and recording.

Julie stopped hitting the bag and set the toilet plunger back on the shelf as she nervously climbed back to her feet. She picked up the now-still grocery bag and held it aloft. “Fresh turkey!” she said.

31 Ghosts 2019: October 31 – Bumps in the Night

I can’t believe it’s already Halloween! And with it, I can’t believe the 2019 run of 31 Ghosts is completed! Thank you, everyone, for coming along for this ride! If you’ve missed stories, I’m going to update the “Stories” tab at the top of the page with this year – things have been a little busy lately. I’m planning on keeping writing – I think I’m going to try my hand at NaNoWriMo this year. Yikes, that starts tomorrow! I hope to have more for y’all to read soon! Until then, not all ghosts are unwanted…

I’ve known our house was haunted since we moved in.

Footsteps in the attic, knocking on the walls, items disappearing and reappearing… we’ve had a little bit of everything. But it never felt menacing. Playful, maybe.

Once, we didn’t close the front door all the way and a gust of wind – legitimately, it was blowing like hell outside – pushed the front door open. Opie, my indoor-only cat saw his opportunity for a jail break and ran for the exit only to stop just inside the house, back arched, hair on end, hissing fiercely at something unseen in the doorway. I came out of the kitchen and saw Opie in the invisible standoff in front of the open door.

“Huh,” I said, and closed the door. “Thanks, Carl.”

Two knocks came from the wall behind me.

We have no idea where we got the name Carl, but it feels right. So, our ghost is Carl.

Recently, Carl has upped his tech game. First lights in rooms we were in would blink off…

“Carl, knock it off.”

… the light comes back on.

He’s taken to helpfully turning lights off when we’re not in a room anymore. Seriously, this ghost should be listed as a feature of this house! Not that we’re ready to move or anything.

Tom, my husband, was out of the country on a business trip. He’d been gone for almost a week. After we talked on the phone, he wished me a good night (I wished him a good morning) and I went to bed. A few hours later I heard footsteps downstairs and wondered what Carl was up to. I rolled over and went tried to go back to sleep, but the footsteps came to the foot of the stairs.

Slowly, step by step I could hear the footfalls on the steps. They reached the landing halfway and continued up slowly and steadily.

Annoyed that Carl was being particularly brazen, I got up, took two strides to the door and opened it.

I’ll never forget what I saw. The moment lasted a second but the details are still fixed clearly in my mind.

At the top of the stairs stood a man.

Not a ghost.

A man.

Dressed head to toe in black. The wood brown and chrome handle of a revolver jutted up from his waistband. A roll of silver duct tape in one black-gloved hand, a heavy black MagLite – turned off – in his other hand.

We both stood frozen for just a second.

Then his eyes hardened in annoyance that I was awake. He tensed to lunge at me.

And then something like an invisible bowling ball slammed into his midsection punching his breath out and knocking him backwards. He dropped the tape and the flashlight as his arms flailed uselessly. He fell back down the stairs and rolled down hard onto the landing, ricocheted off the wall and kept tumbling like a ragdoll down the rest of the stairs. He hit the ground with a thud.

Before I even had time to process what had just occurred, two things happened. First, red and blue flashing lights lit up the front yard. Second, the front door – which I locked, bolted and chained earlier – unlocked with audible clicks and opened.

Two officers came in with guns drawn.

“Are you okay, ma’am?”

“Yeah… yes, I… I am,” I stammered.

They pulled the gun from the unconscious man and started to handcuff him.

More police cars pulled up with sirens blaring.

“It’s good you called, ma’am,” one officer said to me.

“Call?” I said.

My phone rang on the nightstand. “Can I… get that?”

I grabbed it and it was Tom.

“Tom! How did you know to call? Oh my god,” the sound of his voice made everything sink in and I started to cry and hyperventilate.

“Whoa, whoa, Cindy, calm down,” he said. “Know to call? Honey, you called me.”

I sat down hard on the edge of the bed. “Thank you, Carl.”

31 Ghosts 2019: October 30 – Right of the Pentuple

So, October is almost over. How do I know? IT’S MY BIRTHDAY! Like my birthday itself, I had a hard time with my story today. It’s not that I’m having a tough time getting older, it’s just that with the fires and evacuations and power loss (I HAVE POWER NOW!!!) it just really overshadowed the celebration of another trip around the sun. But as inevitably as my birthday came, so comes today’s story. Who would you choose to meet?

My grandmother was a witch.

I thought that was just something my dad used to say when he was fed up with having to do another chore for her. “That witch can landscape her own yard with her sorcery!” My mom just sighed and reminded him, “And what do you think her daughter is?”

He died when I was a teenager. Later, my mom explained it was true – not that my Nain should or could do her own landscaping, that she was a witch.

“So she can do spells and stuff?” I asked.

“She can…” she replied in an equivocating tone, “To an extent.” And she talked about the Welsh traditions that powered her spells didn’t hold much power in this country. “She’ll talk to you about it herself when she’s ready.”

She almost died without being ready.

Like, literally, she was on her deathbed. Congestive heart failure. She hadn’t spent a night in the hospital her entire life and now it looked like she would be spending her last nights there. At least that’s what the doctors said. Nain had other ideas. All of us were there – Mom, me, my aunt, her three boys – and Nain said “All of ya, step out for a minute. I have to talk to my girl, Carys.” That’s what she called me. Yeah, I know, my name is Alison. Carys is the diminutive of my middle name Ceridwen and it was the only name my Nain ever called me.

“Mom,” my mother started, “We’re all here for you…”

“Did I stutter?!” she said firmly. “Out! All of ya!” her Old World accent still distinct after most of a lifetime in America.

No one said anything but filed out of the room quickly until it was just my Nain and me.

“Carys, come here, dear.” I did. “What’dya know about me being as gwrach?”

“As what, Nain?”

“Gwrach. Witch. Don’t deny you’d heard about it. Yer ma told me she’d told you.”

“Nothing beyond what she told me, Nain. She just said you were a witch and that you’d tell me about it when you’re ready.”

She took in a deep, contemplative breath and broke into a coughing fit that wracked her thin frame. I was about to call for a doctor when she held her hand up in restraint. She stopped coughing, drew another long breath that wracked as she took it in, then she let it out carefully.

“I guess I thought I’d have all the time in the world,” she smiled. “But I don’t. I don’t even have past sunset,” her gaze went to the window.

“Nain, the doctors said you had a few days–“

“Hush, Carys, they don’t know what they speak of. A few hours is all. And that’s fine. It’s been a good long life. I’m ready. Well,” her eyes fell on me, “Almost ready.

“Carys, the tradition of witch is matrilinear – only woman to woman. But it skips a generation, always. So, yer ma was skipped. But you…” her smile turned mischievous as she pointed a bony finger at me. “You’ll inherit the mantle, Carys.”

“What… what does that mean?”

“Oh, I’m ‘fraid to say not much. This land is bereft of memory and the old world doesn’t hold enough sway to really allow you to do much. With one exception.”

“Oh?”

“The right of the Pentuple.”

“The pentup… what?”

“Pentuple, dear. I don’t have a lot of breath left. Pay attention. You’re 21, yes?”

I nodded.

“Every five years of age – 5, 10, 15, 20, 25” she put emphasis on the 25 as the other milestone ages were past. “Every five years of age you are granted the Right of the Pentuple. In the moments before the clock strikes midnight and your birthday begins, think of someone who isn’t living that you want to spend your day with. Anyone dead is fair game. Do you want to spend the day talking philosophy with Aristotle? Better brush up on your Greek, because for the next 24 hours you’ll get to talk with him. Maybe you’d prefer an English speaker like Amelia Earhart – you wrote that report on her in fourth grade, right?”

“How do you remember that?”

She winked at me. “At ten to twelve on the 29th you focus on dear old Amelia and you can spend your birthday asking her about aviation, her crash, whatever you want – you’ve got her ghost for the day!”

She got serious for a moment and said, “There are some caveats, Carys. This is for you and you alone. Ya can’t have a party of it and bring yer friends around. Just. You. You can’t take them out on the town – ghosts don’t travel well. Get comfortable because those 24 hours are in the same place.”

“I don’t know what to say…” I said honestly.

“Well, you’ve got the better part of four years to think about your first Pentuple. Now give your Nain a kiss and get the lot of ‘em back in here to say goodbye.”

I leaned over and kissed her on the forehead and then went out to let my family know to go back in. My mom didn’t believe me when I told her Nain said she wasn’t going to last past the sunset. But as the shadows in the room grew longer Nain’s strength faded.

“I’m going to take a nap, I think,” she said, and everyone said their goodbyes to let her rest. I couldn’t keep the tears from falling down my cheeks. “There now, girl,” she said. “It’s not forever.”

Mom told her she would be in the waiting room if she needed anything, then she kissed Nain on the forehead before following me out the door. A few minutes after we all left her heart stopped.

Losing Nain was hard. Losing my dad was brutal, but it was a slow decline from cancer – by the end it was something of a relief, as terrible as that sounds. But Nain… she’d been such an important part of my life I didn’t appreciate fully until she was gone.

Even four years later I thought of her daily, which is why on the eve of my 25th birthday it was she I focused on. I was living on my own in a shitty studio apartment in the flight path of SFO. I’d just broken up with my boyfriend and even if I had finished mourning my Nain, I felt I needed her then. And I had so many questions about this whole witch thing.

I stared at the alarm clock willing it to strike midnight. When the numbers flipped over, I was delighted to hear her Welsh lilt, “I told you it wouldn’t be forever!”

I leapt from my bed and ran into her arms. Real arms! “You’re really here!”

“Well, what’d you expect?”

“Oh, Nain, it’s so good to have you here! We have so much to catch up on!”

“Well, girl, you’ve got twenty-three hours and fifty-eight minutes. Let’s get going!”

And we did. And it was wonderful. We talked about being a witch – she recommended books and places in Wales I needed to go to for research. And we talked about life – mine now and hers then. She showed me the recipes from my childhood that she never wrote down. She even sang me a lullaby she used to when I was a kid. It was a needed catnap. And as midnight approached, I kissed her on the forehead and said goodbye. But it was a happy goodbye because we truly used every minute we had together.

That birthday had a profound impact on my life. Part of it was the ability to let go of my grief, part of it was having the interim time to think about what I wanted to talk to my grandmother about. Part of it, too, was finding out how to become a better witch, a task I took to heart and certainly changed the tenor of my life. I didn’t quit my job and start riding brooms, but I spent my idle time reading books about witchcraft and I traveled to Wales and joined a community I hadn’t known existed.

It also helped me come out. I talked to Nain a little about my sexuality – something I’d always been afraid to even bring up at all when she was alive, and we had a lively conversation that was supportive and encouraging.

As my thirtieth birthday came around, I tried to think about who I wanted to meet. There were a number of important women in the Witch community who I would love to pick their brain. Then there a number of artists who I considered, like Picasso or Van Gogh (obviously), but also Frida Kahlo or Georgia O’Keeffe. I’d recently finished Charlie Chaplin’s autobiography and I thought that would be fascinating.

Ultimately, though, on the eve of my thirtieth birthday I thought of my dad. He died when I was barely in high school and I never got to meet him as an adult. When I heard, “Hey Pumpkin,” it brought me back to that awkward teenager, and we spent the next 24 hours getting to know each other as people. Have you ever came out to your dead dad before? It’s a weird experience, let me tell you!

Unlike after my day with my grandmother was over, it took me a few months to unpack and re-grieve my dad. He was a new person to me now, and I had to both reconcile that with the person I knew as dad as well as let go of this really interesting, complicated, person who screwed things up from time to time and was terrible with money. It didn’t change my life as much as help me re-order it.

And it drew me closer to my mom – if that’s possible – because I got to meet the man she fell in love with and forged a family with. I felt I knew her in ways I never knew, that she could never tell me.

That was before they found her breast cancer. I was 34 and she was having a really tough time with the chemo treatments. As my birthday neared the doctors worried the cancer wasn’t disappearing as they’d hoped and her body was just wrecked.

And so it was on the eve of my birthday I struggled to think of who I wanted to spend the next 24 hours with. I went through the lists I’d made over the years. Eleanor Roosevelt was a strong contender. Malcom X, too, but I’m not sure how he’d feel about a white woman summoning him… Ultimately, though, I just wanted to be with my mom.

And when the clock struck twelve, my mom walked in and said, “Oh my god, I’m dead?”

No, I’m just kidding! That’s so messed up of me! That didn’t happen at all! No, I didn’t kill my mom by thinking of her! Wow, sorry, I had to do that, though! No, my mom is fine. I didn’t make her a ghost by thinking about her. I conjured no one and spent the day with her. We ate cake. We spent quality time together and when the day ended… I still had my mom.