A NOT SO TRADITIONAL THANKSGIVING
by Kevin Burns
1
The boy awoke to see that he was still in captivity. He was not sure how long he had been away from home and there was no way to distinguish between night and day from the ship that he was on. The only porthole showed an endless night full of distant stars that never seemed to change or get closer. He could tell from the vibrations of the hull and the humming of the engines that they were moving at a much faster pace than any vehicle he had ever been in before.
The boy had been abducted from his bed on the Sunday night before Thanksgiving. He had spent the day watching the football games on the television with his father. The Redskins lost a squeaker to the Cowboys, 13 –10, and the Patriots were crushed by the New York Jets, 27 – 3. The Patriots were his favorite team but were having a terrible season. They watched the games in the basement playroom on a television set that his father had built from a kit. He sat next to his father on the black leather couch that always felt cold when you first sat on it.
The cell that the boy was confined in seemed to be able to read his thoughts and simulate them. His nose picked up the scent of his father’s after shave lotion and his smoky breath that had a hint of whiskey to it. The air seemed to be thick with the smoke from his father’s favorite cigarettes. The boy smiled and coughed a little as he fondly remembered the day before the aliens came.
He remembered his last meal on Earth. His mother made his all time favorite meal, lasagna and garlic bread. The odor in his cell changed again to meet this new memory. He could smell the garlic bread baking and the lasagna that was on top of the stove cooling before being ready to eat. His mother, as always, was busy doing ten things at once. He watched as she readied the kitchen table, poured the milk in his glass and wipe down the counter. Tears came to his eyes as he remembered his mother, the most beautiful woman in the world, and as he has found out now, the universe. He longed to be hugged by her.
A guilty feeling came over the boy as he remembered his last conversation with his mother which ended with an argument over his bedtime. “Mom, I do not want to go to bed!” he screamed, “I want to stay up and watch the Twilight Zone. Please Please!”
His mother replied “No, you have school in the morning. Now go brush your teeth and get ready for bed.”
He screamed “That is not fair; everyone else gets to stay up late and do what they want. Why not me?”
“Be quiet and get upstairs before I get real angry.” said his mother.
The boy now scared that she may get the wooden spoon out, ran up the stairs and muttered “I hate you!” through his teary eyes.
As the boy recalled this last conversation he wondered if she had heard his last statement. Tears came to his eyes again as he wondered if this was the last thing that his mother would ever hear from him. He quietly wished to himself that he could go back and tell her how much he loved her.
2
The cell that the boy was held in was made from a clear type of plastic and was only 5 foot by 5 foot square with just barely enough head room. The cell was actually a box that was set against the wall of a large rectangular room with many similar boxes lining both sides of the room as far as he could see in each direction. Inside each box was another living creature apparently taken from their home just like he was. His closest neighbor looked like an eel with lizard-like legs. It had one enormous eye in the center of its head and large scales for skin that seemed to continuously emit a brownish fluid over its body. None of the other inmates resembled a human or any other earthly creature that he knew of, they came in all shapes and sizes. The weirdest one looked like a puddle of oil like he would see in the driveway under his fathers old station wagon but with three eyes floating on top and it would move by stretching in one direction and then pulling itself in that direction like an inch worm.
His captors were walking about among the cells with what looked like an electronic note pad. They would stop periodically at a cell and nod their large heads and point while tapping on the note pad with the tip of their fingers seemingly taking notes. The aliens who abducted the boy have three legs and stand about 5 foot tall. Their arms are long and nearly dragged on the floor as they waddle across the room on their short legs. Their hands have only three fingers and their feet have two long toes and one short toe that stuck out on the side for stability. They have big stomachs that jut out from their rib cages. Their skin is gray in color and completely without hair. Their faces consist of huge eyes set far apart with a long snout like an anteater. They sucked their food up the snout like a vacuum cleaner. The aliens do not wear clothing but still the boy could not distinguish their gender.
One of his captors was approaching his cell, most likely to take him to the examination room for some more poking. Over the last few days, the aliens had done just about everything imaginable to the boy. They poked him all over, scanned him with bright light and took samples of all his bodily fluids. They put a tube into his stomach through his belly button and injected a fluid and a paste. The boy assumed this was the equivalent of water and food since he did not crave for either. No tubes were inserted for waste removal because whatever they were feeding him was completely digested and no waste was produced. Lastly, the aliens tattooed a symbol on the tip of his right index finger that resembled a bar code. This, he thought, helped the aliens to identify him.
The boy found it difficult to distinguish the aliens from one another, so he soon began to give them nicknames to remember who was who. The alien that would fetch him from his cell everyday had really bad breath and therefore was nicknamed Butt Breath. The alien that performed most of the experiments was given the nickname Dr. No from one of his favorite movies and the alien in charge of his feeding tube was called Lunch Lady. He figured that if he could taste the stuff being injected into his stomach, it would taste like the crap that the lunch lady at his school would serve. He noticed only three other aliens on board the vessel but he hadn’t thought of names for them yet because up to now they had stayed away from him.
Butt Breath opened his cell and signaled for him to come out and to follow him. The boy was unable to communicate with the aliens except for using some simple hand signals. The aliens however did communicate with each other verbally but to the boy it just sounded like a series of clicks and clacks and an occasional shrill. Butt Breath led him down to the end of the large room to a door. The door automatically opened as they approached. They exited into a hallway, which quickly came to a tee. The examination room was always to the left but this time Butt Breath pushed him towards the right and down a small hallway to a door at the end. The door opened and the boy entered a room with a large table on one end and a stainless steel chamber at the other end. The alien motioned for the boy to get into the chamber and closed the door behind him. The door had a glass opening that the boy could look out. The other aliens came in and began to help the first alien with some activity around the table. The boy could hear a loud clatter as the aliens excitedly spoke among themselves. The chamber that the boy sat in was extremely hot and he soon began to sweat as he waited for whatever they had in store for him.
While the boy was waiting, he thought to himself that it this could be Thanksgiving Day. The boy wondered if his family was going through with the Thanksgiving holiday without him. The heat of the chamber was oppressive and the boy began to daydream about his family and his favorite holiday.
3
The family Thanksgiving holiday was pretty much the same year after year after year. On Wednesday, the boy, his siblings and his mother would wait for their father to come home early from work so that they could get on their way to their paternal grandparents house. When his father got home they would hurriedly pack the car in order to get on the road before the holiday traffic would get bad. Every year they failed to beat traffic and the two hour trip turned into three and a half hours. The boy learned that if you slept during the ride it somehow made the ride seem shorter so he took a nice nap every year to help pass the time. The rest of the family played travel games such as punch buggy or they read license plates in the hopes of seeing one from all fifty states.
The family would arrive at the grandparent’s house right about dinner time. They would just walk right in the front door without knocking or ringing the bell. Grandpa would greet them briefly from his favorite chair where he was watching the nightly news. Grandma would be in the kitchen, where she spends most of her time, preparing for Thanksgiving Day.
The boy would race to the kitchen to hug his grandma as soon as he got in the door. She is a small frail looking woman so he would hug lightly afraid of crushing her. She would ask him if he was hungry and without waiting for the answer began making a peanut butter sandwich. She used oatmeal bread and a chunky style peanut butter, the same brands as his mother would use but somehow the sandwich always tasted better. He thought that this was because of the way she would cut the sandwich into perfect little bite sized triangular pieces for him.
After the sandwich was finished, his grandma would bring out the his favorite treat in the whole world, the very dessert that he would wait all year for, the cookie that made all other cookies meaningless and obsolete, the one and only homemade ginger snap. The cookies were stacked neatly in a circular tin about a foot in diameter and three inches deep. The cookies were perfect and uniformly round with a light crisp outside and a chewy center, not too chewy, always just the right amount of chew. The boy would spontaneously salivate every time he thought about his grandma’s ginger snaps.
After dinner, the boy would retire to the living room to watch television with his grandfather. They would talk briefly, mostly about football and what kind of season the New York Giants, his grandpa’s favorite team, were having. Grandpa always sat in his easy chair, which was off limits to everyone else. The boy would sneak a quick sit in the chair the first chance he got when his grandfather would leave the room. The chair was old and musty and smelled like his grandpa, who always smelled like the barbershop. To the right of the chair was an end table with a built-in magazine rack. On the top of the end table would be an ashtray and a glass with some liquid in it that his grandfather would place his false teeth into whenever he felt the need to remove them. The boy would quickly get back over to the couch before his grandpa returned and saw him in the chair. Soon his mother would call to him and send him off to bed.
4
The chamber continued to get hotter as time went by. Periodically, the alien, known as Lunch Lady, would open the door and spray some kind of liquid over his naked body and to throw in some round stone like balls. The boy continued to watch the aliens though the glass, all six were present and seemed to be keeping themselves quite busy around the table. There was a very large clear container on the table that was partially filled with a greenish liquid. Each alien would periodically take a drink with their long snouts and as time went by they seemed to get more boisterous and stumble around on their three short legs. He observed that the other five aliens kept some distance between themselves and Butt Breath, so the boy wondered if they too were offended by the odor.
5
After waking up on Thanksgiving Day and having a small breakfast consisting of toast and orange juice, the family would drive over to their maternal grandma’s house for a visit. This was a highlight for the boy because he loved his maternal grandma very much. She was not as frail as his paternal grandmother; therefore he was able to hug her a little harder and little longer. Grandma was a very quiet woman that always had a big smile for him. Her smile was enough to keep him warm and happy the entire day. The boy especially enjoyed her squeaky giggle of a laugh that reminded him of Betty Rubble from the Flintstones cartoon. Like his other grandmother, she would be busy in the kitchen with an apron wrapped around her waist. She would sneak the boy some hard candy from the pocket of her apron whenever she noticed the boy’s mother was not looking. The boy loved to watch his mother and grandma together because he could see how much they loved each other from the glow on their faces as they spoke to each other. This visit was much too short for his liking and the next stop he knew would be the worst part of his Thanksgiving holiday.
They would go to the home of one of his father’s boyhood friends, who entertains a large group of family and friends every year. The boy always felt out of place there and would retreat as quickly as he could to the basement after the initial formalities. He would endure annoying questions about his school, his activities, his sports and other such things from virtual strangers. He hated talking about himself and would respond to every question with his standard answer, “It’s alright”. He would hear them tell his parents things like “He is such a nice boy.” or “It’s just baby fat, he will outgrow it”. The television was in the basement and the boy would watch the football game down there hoping that no one will come down and bother him but they would eventually make their way down. He would then go upstairs and pester his parents that he wanted to leave.
After a few hours, his parents would finally concede and head back to his paternal grandparent’s house for the Thanksgiving feast. Upon entering the house, the family would be greeted by the aroma of turkey baking. The smell of the Thanksgiving feast would trigger a hunger pain deep in the boy's stomach. This would get him thinking about the ginger snaps, which were sitting quietly in the cookie tin on the shelf in the pantry. He knew his mother would say that the ginger snaps would ruin his dinner, which is why he wouldn't ask for permission. Besides who would notice if one or two or even three cookies were skimmed off the top. He knew that when the little plastic thing on the turkey popped out his mother and grandmother would head into the kitchen. His father and grandfather would be busy in the living room watching the game. This would be his opportunity to sneak into the pantry and steal a few ginger snaps. Once the cookies were eaten and the hunger temporarily satisfied, the boy could rest easily and wait with the others for the turkey dinner to be served.
Eventually his grandma would come out of the kitchen and inform everyone to take a seat at the dining room table. His grandpa arrived last because he would linger in front of the television as long as possible in order not to miss any of the football game. He would even go so far as to start wheeling the television towards the dining room so that he could watch the game during dinner but grandma would never allow it. The boy would be the first to grab a potato and start to prepare it while the rest of the food was placed onto the table. He wondered how his grandma could bake the potato so that the inside was soft while the outside remained hard and crispy. Next, he would add green beans to his plate. This was the only vegetable that the boy really liked. The beans came from the garden behind his grandparent’s house and were cooked to perfection, which meant they still had a little snap to them.
Finally the turkey was brought out and placed on the table. The stuffing would be removed from the bird and placed in a bowl. The boy's mother was in charge of the stuffing. The stuffing was the second best thing about Thanksgiving next to the ginger snaps. The secret to his mother's stuffing was the big chunks of sausage that she used. For etiquette sake, the boy would take a conservative spoonful of stuffing and put on his plate next to the beans but he would constantly monitor the level of stuffing left in the bowl during the meal. When the bowl started to get low, he would hurriedly grab it and get another serving before it disappeared. There were many dishes on the table that the boy did not like. The cranberry sauce that sat in a bowl but maintained the shape of the can and the candied yams were two dishes he wished would stay as far away from him as possible. Also, he could never figure out what was so appealing about the big round slimy green thing with multi-colored chunks of fruit imbedded in it. His mother called it a jelly mold; he thought it looked like a year's worth of bloody snots. He never could understand how anyone could eat such a thing and at the time he ironically thought that it was not even fit for aliens to eat.
The boy's grandfather would carve the turkey. While the rest of the family fought over the dark meat and the drumsticks, the boy stocked his plate with plenty of white meat. The most disturbing part of the Thanksgiving meal was the turkey innards. The innards usually consisted of the heart, liver and the gizzard. The boy did not know what a gizzard was but if it was an internal organ of some kind, he wanted nothing to do with it. The internal organs had been placed in a bag and stuffed inside the turkey while it baked. All the other male members of the family fought aggressively for these items like starving cavemen with only one Pterodactyl egg. For some reason he thought that eating the organs was cruel and unusual punishment for the turkey. The very thought of eating the innards was enough to make him want to vomit.
Nobody talked very much during the meal except to ask for something to be passed down the table. The meal took hours and hours to prepare but only 20 minutes to consume. When everyone was full and the silverware put down to rest, his mother and grandmother would clear the table and prepare a pot of coffee. The adults would all light up a post meal cigarette to go along with their coffee and make small talk. This signaled that it was time for the boy to move from the table to the couch to watch the rest of the football game and digest his dinner. Even full the boy craved his beloved ginger snaps but he knew dessert was not served until his parents and grandparents finished their coffee and cigarettes. He often dozed while watching the football game after a meal, once he heard someone refer to this phenomenon as falling into a food induced coma.
6
After what seemed like an eternity, Butt Breath finally came and opened the chamber door and motioned for the boy to follow him over to the table. Dr. No signaled for the boy to lie down on the table and then injected something into his neck using what looked like a hypo spray that Bones from Star Trek used. Next, several large flexible tubes came down from the ceiling and were spaced out across the boy’s torso. Dr. No readjusted the positioning of the tubes several times to get them in just the right spots. The alien doctor then tapped his notepad and the tubes came to life and starting to make a loud grinding sound. The boy felt like his organs were being ripped from his body and sucked up into the tubes. Amazingly he felt no pain as he watched several items fly up the tubes. The boy couldn’t believe what he was seeing but the items appeared to be his heart, liver and kidneys. But if this was true then how was he still alive. He wondered if the hypo spray was somehow keeping him conscious while they harvested his organs. The objects removed from his body were wrapped in paper as thin as a piece of gauze and placed in a bowl next to him.
Dr. No then inserted a white plastic object into his back that looked like pushbutton that was stuck in. The last thing that the doctor did was insert a hollow tube into his rectum and shot what seemed like several pounds of a dry gritty substance into him and then when finished sealed his bum shut with a laser. The boy was quite uncomfortable but still felt no pain. However, he was starting to feel very afraid as he began to think that the aliens may have something really sinister planned for him.
The alien known as Lunch Lady picked the boy up and placed him on a large tray and carried him back to the stainless steel chamber. The alien placed the boy inside the chamber, which was even hotter than before, and added some unknown orange and green items to the tray that the boy was now sitting on. The boy observed that the round stone like balls were now getting soft from the heat. Then just before closing the door, Dr. No shoved the gauze wrapped organs down the boy’s throat. Immediately the boy realized what was happening to him and he started to scream but all that was heard was “garble, garble, gobble, gobble!!!”
7
The boy woke to a scream, which he realized was his own. He looked around dazed and confused from sleep and saw his whole family around him including his maternal grandma, which seemed unusual because she was not there during dinner. His mother was sitting at his side and was running her fingers through the hair across his forehead. His father was further down the couch and was gently rubbing his knee.
His mother called him by his name and said, “Shush shush, its okay! You were having a nightmare. Nothing to get upset about.” she laughed and said, “There is a chemical in turkey that makes you sleepy and you fell asleep on the couch while watching the game.”
“Hey, Sport, you’re okay! But you missed it. The Lions came back from ten points down in the last two minutes.” added his father.
The boy looked around and was relieved because the dream had seemed so real. He looked at his parents and he breathlessly told them, “Mom, Dad it was the most horrible dream ever. I was kidnapped by aliens and they did experiments on me and one of them had really bad breath and then Dr. No harvested my organs and then the Lunch Lady she”, the boy gasped for more air and then continued, “she shoved them down my throat and then she put me in the oven to cook like a turkey and then they put potatoes and vegetables in next to me and then they basted me several times and then and and…”
“Now take it easy son.” interrupted his dad, “Slow down, it was just a dream. It was not real”
“Your father is right, dear, just rest now, and I will get you some water”, his mother said.
The boy grabbed his mother and wouldn’t let her go. He hugged both his mom and dad and cried “Mom, Dad I love you so much. Thank you for everything you have done for me. Thank you for my wonderful life. I love you! I’m sorry that I said ’I hate you’ the other night. I didn’t mean it, really I didn’t. I love you! I love you so much!”
They smiled and laughed lightly and asked him if he was ready for some dessert. They waited quietly while the boy caught his breath.
The boy finally replied, “No, not right now. I am not very hungry”
His grandmother then spoke to him “How about a ginger snap?”
The boy at once began to salivate and said, “Yes! That would be great!” He wiped the saliva that was pooling at the side of his mouth with his right hand. As he wiped the saliva on his pants, he noticed a tattoo on the end of his index figure that looked a little bit like a bar code and he began to scream, “Mommieeeeee…..” Immediately his family began to fade from his view.
In the brief time between his family fading from sight and darkness, the boy noticed that the plastic pushbutton like object in his back was no longer pushed in and that six sucking snouts were descending down towards him and one of them was emitting a hideous odor.
