It was that time of year again, and Josie, Micah, and Eliza were helping their parents clean and cook in preparation for Thanksgiving later that week. Thanksgiving was nearly always at their house, and extended family from all over their state and the next one over were planning to come. This year, though, because of a meat shortage, all the nearby grocery stores had run out of turkey early.
“I’ll have to shoot one myself,” their father said. “I saw a big old turkey the other day out in the tall cogongrass next to the Duffys’ grain silos.”
The Duffy family had abandoned their fifty acres, and those grain solos hadn’t been put to use for years. They were all rusted.
Their father went to his gun cabinet and selected his finest bird hunting rifle for the occasion. It wasn’t one of his best guns, but it was one of which he was proudest.
He went out two days before Thanksgiving and never returned.
While the sheriff was organizing a search party, their mother selected the best gun from the gun cabinet. She went out the night before Thanksgiving and did not return the next morning.
Josie, Micah, and Eliza stayed at home and finished cleaning and cooking as they were instructed by their parents to do. They were good kids, and this was confirmed by the sheriff who patted them on the heads and said as much. They finished preparing the cranberry sauce, the pecan pie, the mustard greens, the mashed sweet potato, and the stuffing. But they had nothing to put the stuffing inside.
“I ought to get one of the guns and shoot something,” Micah said.
“But we’re forbidden to touch the gun cabinet,” Josie said.
“Besides,” Eliza added, “We don’t have the key.”
With nothing left to do and Thanksgiving hours away, they got ready to cross the road onto the Duffy property. It was an old county road that went fast and winding through the trees and over the creeks, past fields of unpicked cotton that looked like the whites of eyes.
Something stank as the children got closer to the road. It was a familiar enough thing, but what they found was unrecognizable. It was a carcass that had probably been run over more than once.
“That might be one of those turkeys Daddy was talking about,” Eliza said.
They grabbed some of their father’s rope and chain from the shed and used it to haul the carcass back. They were running out of time, and the first guests would be arriving at their house soon. They hadn’t called anyone yet because they hadn’t known what to say.
Pinching their noses with wooden clothespins, the children set to the grisly task of stuffing the turkey. It was something they had seen their parents do before.
When the guests arrived, the children opening the door to them, they were alarmed when the kids said they did not know where their parents were.
A putrid smell was coming from the oven. Aunt Odessa and Uncle Yancy opened it and rolled the carcass around, and when they were met with the remnants of a human face, they let out a scream.
At the same time, a second cousin pointed out the living room window and shouted.
Outside, from the Duffy side, a thing with the head of a turkey and the body of a man was dragging something large towards the road.
Did not expect that ending lol