A Thanksgiving Carol

This is my entry for Bruce Bethke's Friday Challenge for 12/04/08

A Thanksgiving Carol
by snowdog

Ok, so I'm walking down the crowded sidewalk along Walnut Street in Center City, Philadelphia. It's Thanksgiving Day, early evening actually. It's just starting to get dark. The smells of the holiday waft to me from the side streets lined with endless row houses. Aside from a brief stint in the country which taught me only that I never wanted to go back, I've spent my entire life here. It's an amazing place and I know every inch of brick and concrete. I've seen every strange person, place or thing the city can throw at a guy.

So you can imagine my startlement when I'm stopped in mid-stride by a gleaming apparition. I might not have been quite as shocked had it been the restless spirit of my grandmother, although that would have certainly arrested my attention. But the translucent image that shimmers ten feet in front of me on the busy walk is that of a turkey. Its outline seems to fade in and out as it shifts from glowing blue to purple and back. Then I notice its face.

This turkey is angry. I don't mean in some primal way, as if I had wandered into its nest. I mean angry with me personally, as if I had just called its chick ugly. It stands in front of me, glaring straight into my eyes with a stern indignation not normally associated with poultry. It's not a pretty sight.

Strangely, no one else seems to notice the bird as they walk around and sometimes even right though it.

"Gobble-Gobble-Gobble?!"

It takes a few purposeful steps to toward me and I have to admit, fear rises in my throat. I stumble backward and duck into an alley way to my left. As I turn to pick up my pace there are two more ahead, both staring me down in smoldering rage.

One by one, more glowing turkeys flicker into existence in the alley, like fluorescent tubes coming to life. I turn to run, but there are at least ten more blocking the exit. I'm trapped!

"What do you want from me?" I shout under their accusatory glare, not quite sure that they can't understand me.

A thought hits me and I make a quick count. Then I do the math in my head. Sure enough. Thirty-two. I'm surrounded by the ghost of every Thanksgiving Day turkey of which I've ever partaken. I put up my hands, and stall, trying to concoct some sort of defense for my behavior. But before I can get a word out of my quivering lips, one of them struts close to me. Though barely as tall as my thigh, he never takes his eyes from mine. He points a wing toward the back of the alley.

"Gobble-gobble!"

I look in the direction he's pointing and see the mass of turkeys part to allow me through.

"No!" I start to protest, "I'm not--" When I turn back, the turkey is still glaring at me and pointing. There is no choice. I swallow and take a few tentative steps toward the dead end at the back of the alley, the proverbial green mile for the condemned man.

As I approach the graffiti-covered concrete block wall, it starts to shimmer in blue. My accuser darts past me and I feel my body follow him. I'm but a passenger now. The blue light surges, filling my senses.

Streets, lights, signs, people, cars... they blur past as I'm pulled along at impossible speeds through Center City, reaching at least thirty-five miles per hour at one point! The sounds merge into one another in a wave of incomprehensible white noise. Left turn... up the stairs... through a wooden door.

Five people are seated around a plain rectangular table in a dark, cramped apartment. The father is saying Grace over the food. There are the usual Thanksgiving trimmings, the potatoes, stuffing, and cranberry sauce. But that's not why I've been brought here. At the center of the table sits a steaming, delicious looking turkey. The corpse of...

The ghost bird who brought me here pecks at my leg in anger.

"Hey!" I yelp. "Look!" I gesture toward the small blond boy on the far side of the table. "I was only four! I didn't know what I was eating!"

I watch in horror as my younger self waits until his mom isn't looking, then starts to pass slices of my accuser under the table to the basset hound. I laugh nervously and look back down. Somehow the turkey's stare was even more outraged.

WHOOOSH! I'm back in the alley.

One by one, bird by bird, I'm taken back to visit every single Thanksgiving that involved my consuming the delectable white breast meat, all in chronological order.

There was the time when I was twelve. My mom had refused to take me to see Star Wars for the fifth time, so I screamed in rage and plunged my fork into the turkey meat on my plate again and again. Then I threw it in the trash.

I was eighteen and locked in a shouting match with my dad. I threw turkey at him.

I was twenty-four, during my short stay in the country. Billy and I swilled beer and dropped the turkey head first (well front first) into the fryer. We whooped in delight. Then it caught fire. So did the trailer.

I was twenty-seven. My wife and I were settling into our first apartment in Philly. She watched in horror as I stuffed a chicken inside a duck and then shoved them both inside a turkey! This bird is particularly angry with me.

Finally, I've returned to the alley after seeing my most recent crime against poultry.

Again, one at time, each turkey ghost looks at the first bird that appeared to me and says:

"Gobble."

Somehow, I know that translates as "Guilty."

"Wait!" I shout, and all the stares turn toward me again. "Don't I get to defend myself?"

Then the chant starts. "Gobble! Gobble! Gobble! Gobble! Gobble! Gobble!"

They start closing in on me. Now the apparitions begin to glow an angry red as they back me into the now dark dead end of the alley.

"Gobble! Gobble! Gobble!"

I can't take the accusations anymore! Delicious! They all look so...delicious. Some of them start to recognize that look in my eyes and turn to leave the alley. I make a run at them all and send the entire flock fleeing out onto Walnut Street.

"Come back!" I shout, much to the confusion of oblivious window shoppers.

I pursue the turkey ghosts past the bank. Past Woody's Bar. Past the idiots protesting the sale of Fras Grois. Past the endless scaled down fast food chains that line the busy, but narrow street.

"GOBBLE! GOB GOB!! GOBBB!! GOBBLE!!!"

I'm getting close. I reach up to wipe drool from my face. Then I take a dive at a straggler in the flock, flinging my body headlong, arms stretched as far I can. The turkey vanishes and the sidewalk rushes up to meet my face.

BAM!!!


I'm finally aroused by my sleep apnea. I bolt upright in my recliner and try to catch my breath. As I get my bearings, I glance down at my swollen belly. There lay the crusts of the fifteenth and hopefully last turkey sandwich of the post-Thanksgiving leftovers.

Stevie's Message

This is my entry for Bruce Bethke's Friday Challenge for 11/14/08

"Stevie's Message"
by snowdog

Stevie walked through the abandoned shell of the ark ship with a brisk sense of purpose. Many of the bulky gray fiberglass wall panels had been removed years ago to fashion temporary shelters from the frequent rain storms, such as the one that pounded on the roof now. Fortunately, most of the overhead panels were still in place.

The boy glanced nervously through each missing section of wall, unconsciously fingering the package he had brought, tucked away in his jacket. He was half expecting his father to catch him in the act before he even made it to the communication center. When he came to the ladder, he hesitated a moment, gazing up through the portal that led to what remained of the bridge. There was a reason that laws had been passed forbidding trespassers from entering the wreck: so much of the structure had already been scavenged that no one was quite sure which decks and compartments had been compromised.

Stevie took a deep breath and started up the ladder toward the upper decks, making it a point to keep his gaze trained forward, onto his hands. His insides did a flip as one of the rungs creaked under his weight, but still he climbed.

Senator Steven Williams, his old man, would not be pleased to know what he planned to do, even though the idea had been his own. His father didn't know that Stevie had overheard him and his late-night poker buddies laughing as they knocked back glass after glass of homemade ale. The next afternoon, the six-man Senate had passed a resolution that no more messages would be sent back to Earth. The equipment had never been quite up to the challenge of inter-system communication in the first place, and that provided an excuse to discourage the U.N. from launching another ark ship to help colonize the planet.

Although Stevie remembered only the last couple years of the journey, he did recall that things had looked pretty grim in the months before they had finally made planetfall. The seal on one of the ship's two aggro-domes had failed barely three years into the voyage, so half of the crops were lost completely. There was hunger. Then violence. Fortunately, his father had managed to keep the family fed, if only barely at times.

He remembered the day Tau Ceti IV appeared on the edge of the long-range scan, confirming what scientists back home had long suspected. The equatorial zone of the planet was something of a paradise, similar to that of temperate Earth back in her better days. A month later came the horrendous controlled crash that had reduced their numbers even more than the long famine.

Three years had passed since that day. The first two were hard, but the weather was agreeable, allowing the planting of genetically altered quick-harvest wheat, some of which immediately went into father's now-famous pale Tau-Ceti Brown Ale, and numerous fruits and vegetables. Also, a small burrowing rodent-like creature, originally dubbed "rootrat" was renamed to "rootdigger" when it was discovered to be quite tasty when roasted on a spit.

To his relief, Stevie made it safely to the top of the ladder and now stood staring at another, though shorter one. This last ladder led up to the communications console located one floor above the bridge. He checked to make sure he still had the burlap-wrapped package in his jacket pocket. Yes. This time he was at the top in just a few seconds.

The communications console was powered down to save stress on the failing reactor core at the heart of the wreck. But Stevie had spent many hours watching his mother who had been one of the communications officers. He had a pretty good idea how the thing worked. He slid into the swiveling leather chair and pressed a button under the right-hand ledge of the console, holding in down for a moment as he prayed that the bridge still had power.

Five seconds later, lights began to appear across the main panel as the self-testing software engaged. In all, it took about two minutes before communications were online. To his left, he spotted the seldom used minicam. He had bothered his mother time and again, trying to get her to show him how it worked. Finally, she had acquiesced and used it to send a low-power transmission while the captain was away from the bridge. Now, he flipped the switch to activate it again, for only the third time since the ark had left Earth. But he needed a moment to prepare, so he didn't start the transmission.

Reaching into his jacket, he pulled out the small package he had brought, loosened the twine and pulled back the burlap. Then he took a moment to steady himself. His heart was racing at the thought that millions of people back on Earth might one day see this long-delayed message. Deep breaths. Faster. Faster. When he had worked himself nearly into hyper-ventilation, he pressed the transmit button and looked wide-eyed, directly into the minicam.

"This is Stevie-- Steve Williams Jr, on the bridge of the ark ship Covenant." He made a show of pausing for breath, "We're now at our destination, Tau Ceti IV. Something terrible has happened! There are animals here-- they're huge! And mean! They killed my dad. My mom said..."

He looked to his right. "They're in the ship!!" He took a moment and gathered himself. "My mom said," he continued, "to say not to come here! They've killed almost all of us! The rest of us won't last long!"

With that he jumped out of range of the minicam and screamed. He pulled out the remains of a rootdigger that he had killed with his slingshot and rubbed blood all over his face before leaping back in front of the camera.

"Stay Away!" he shouted hysterically and fell to floor, once again out of sight. Then he carefully reached up under the console ledge and powered it down for the last time.

Stevie got back to his feet and smiled to himself, happy with his performance. That ought to do it. Climbing onto the chair, he stood slowly, careful not to lose his balance as it swiveled slightly. He reached behind the minicam, grabbed the wire and pulled hard. It look three good yanks, but the connection came loose. Then he used his pocket knife to pry the assembly apart until he was left holding only the tiny camera unit which he shoved in his pocket as the souvenir his dad had promised him.