I was twelve years old, and the family had been summoned to the casa de Susan for that year’s Thanksgiving holiday bash. Everyone who was anyone would be there. Your favorite cousin Gilroy? He’d be there. Your least favorite uncle Ziggy? You bet he’d be there. And old Grandma Beatrice? Yep, she was going too. All of the stars and more would be in attendance, and far be it from my parents to exhibit a shred of autonomy on the matter.
I was of course none too pleased about the trip, being a rather sullen and disagreeable boy. Personally I didn’t care if we had any family at all, and was always secretly relieved whenever news came of another relative’s death, provided it occurred too far away for us to reasonably attend the funeral. This and other details of my character I would later reveal to a therapist, who frankly didn’t seem all that interested.
The trip in my Dad’s station wagon was a long and cold one, and the farther north we drove the darker the sky became. Freezing rain pelted the windows, running down the glass in icy streams. I passed the time playing a harmonica, until my sister Becky threatened to shove the thing up my ass. Dad seconded the notion. Mom said nothing at all.
I realized that her lack of enthusiasm for this visit might have rivaled even my own. Mom had never gotten along with Aunt Susan. The air was always strange between them, behind their forced smiles. The two of them were always snipping at each other, chipping away, both too anxious to take the more obvious and lasting approach of outright murder.
But what was the genesis of this animosity? I only ever caught fragments of its origin. It was something that went way back between them and neither ever talked about, something almost mysterious, hinted at only in whispers.
After many years I now believe it had something to do with illegal genetic experimentation they were involved with in college, or possibly time travel.
ARRIVAL
The amount of cars parked outside Aunt Susan’s house was ridiculous. You’d think the place was an airport. There were two rows of cars lined up in the driveway, cars in the front yard, cars parked all up and down the block.
Maybe the neighbors would complain. Maybe the police would come and shut this whole lousy shindig down…
Yeah, right, I thought. Everyone knew Aunt Susan owned the police.
By the time we made it to the house the party was already in full swing. We opened the front door to a house jammed up with drunks and degenerates and the general detritus of society.
My own miserable bloodline…
You think it pains me to speak of it so?
Bah! How I relish and welcome our obliteration.
We suffered the onslaught of a dozen hugs and handshakes and many slurred and rambling greetings. There were people here I’d never seen before in my entire life, and would have been just fine to keep up the tradition. On the car ride up I was told we were all related in some way, like it was supposed to impress me. “Isn’t that something, kids?” Dad said into the rearview mirror. “There’s nothing like the smell of family. No, really, there’s a smell. We Crackers all have it. Trust me, as soon as you open the door, you’re gonna be like, ‘Oh yeah. Oh yeah, I know this stench.’” Mom turned up the radio.
Now we were being smothered to death by the corpulent flesh of a dozen stinking Crackers. They were trying to kill us, I was certain. They were going to kill us all.
Aunt Susan appeared from nowhere, the whistle already in her thin reptilian lips. Three shrill blows later and the family snapped itself into focus, got itself ready, and lined up for inspection.
We were promptly informed that it had been a good thirty minutes since Aunt Susan’s last head check, so busy was she in the kitchen. At least nine of us Crackers had joined the party since then, and thus were overdue for a gander.
I was the first to take my medicine. As usual Aunt Susan ordered me to turn around and drop my trousers. On the wall before me were two painted white handprints to indicate where my palms should go. One of them had blood on it. In a proud but somewhat misguided act of youthful defiance I bent forward and placed my hands just outside of their intended parameters. This may have induced a chuckle or two from the general rabble, but not from Aunt Susan. The bottom of the white glove snapped against her wrist as she secured it tightly on her hand.
Just before she took the plunge she was happy to inform my parents that she was trying a few new recipes this year, and hoped that they’d enjoy them.
“Oh, I’m sure we will, Aunt Susan,” Dad said. He was already undoing his pants and assuming the position. Then the rest of them, despite a few tears, soon followed suit.
BOBBING FOR HATE
The first game the Cracker clan was forced to play that Thanksgiving was bobbing for apples. No doubt several of you are already shouting at your screen, “But that’s really more of a Halloween thing!”
Well, not at Aunt Susan’s. No rules applied here, except for those set down by Aunt Susan herself, who alone could break them. Besides, I think it was less about the game for her and more that she just enjoyed watching us try to get our mouths around something wet, round, and hard. She had no shame, that rascally Aunt Susan, and her witch’s cackle was the only thing our cold wet ears could discern above the splashing water. Of course Aunt Susan had intentionally selected only the largest and most oblong apples for use in the games, and no one’s mouth, save for perhaps Grandpa Hank’s, could have possibly equaled the task. But Hank was long dead.
Also, the water, I think, was several parts vinegar.
Sometimes, as a family member was bent over with their head in the bucket, Aunt Susan would come round and give a harsh paddle across the backside. My other Aunt, Aunt Trudy, still bears the marks from that day. She showed me.
It was my Dad’s turn in the bucket (everyone had to take a turn, no matter how old or small or infirm your body might be). He said to me, “Son. Bind my arms behind my back.”
“I will, father.”
“Not so fast,” Aunt Susan said. “I do the tying around here.”
“Oh, but Aunt Susan,” Dad started. “The boy has been training. It would be such an honor to us both.”
“And suppose the boy’s feeble fingers should fail him? Suppose the knots are loose…”
“I still would not attempt an escape,” Dad assured her. “I know the rules, and I accept my fate with eyes open.”
“Oh, very noble,” Aunt Susan said with a snide grin. Gently she began to caress his cheek with her index finger. For a moment I remember he seemed to be enjoying it. Then she raked him across the cheek. “Silence!” she hissed.
Dad recoiled, stung. Hot blood fell from his cheek. He regained himself enough to tell her, “You dishonor us both.”
“OH, IT SPEAKS OF HONOR?” the witch howled. In an instant she had my old man around the back of his neck and forced his dopey head into the bucket, like a puppy to the bowl.
She meant, I assumed, to kill him.
“Spank him,” she commanded me. “Spank your father with the paddle!”
While I admit it had long been a dream of mine, to turn the paddle against he who would wield it, I took no pleasure in my actions. Not there, in front of my entire extended family. Not in front of my mother. When Dad started openly weeping I temporarily lost my resolve, until the eyes of Aunt Susan bade me continue. I dared not deny them. So I spanked my father’s ass until the numerous burst blood vessels had turned its color into a deep and unsettling maroon, speckled with blossoms of violet. He didn’t sit right for the rest of the year.
But my old man was no quitter. Despite her attempts to sabotage the game with unnecessarily large apples, Aunt Susan hadn’t accounted for my father’s unnaturally long incisors. The man looked like a beaver at certain angles. It was truly a hideous spectacle, and one wondered how the man ever managed to land the buxom Nordic babe that was my mother.
Through snot and tears he persevered and at last managed to pierce the skin of the sour fruit and bring it up hence from the water. A victorious battle cry sounded from the last of his lungs before Dad passed out from the stress. Mom got out the smelling salts.
Grandpa Davey put his hand on my shoulder. “You’re a brave boy, lad.” It was the first and only thing he ever said to me.
As each of our turns at the bucket ended, the survivors would meet and huddle at the fire. Stories of better times, of Thanksgivings long past were whispered in wistful tones, and still, among the newly inducted to the Cracker clan, plans of escape.
Fools. Some of them had married in, others were younger than four. They had yet to come to the obvious conclusion about their fates. Aunt Susan had them now, and only Aunt Susan could choose to let them go.
Which was never going to happen.
SIT DOWN AND SHUT UP
An hour later a gong sounded, deep and resonant. We gradually recovered our wits and rose to our feet. Upon the second gong we started single file toward the dining room and its three long dark tables. The arched room was candlelit and vast and more resembled a great Viking mess hall than an intimate family setting. The Cracker seed had spread far and wide over the decades, breeding our foul broods and further contaminating the human bloodline. In this aspect alone I admired Aunt Susan, who had graciously opted to avoid the sin of childbirth. There were simply too many of us now, and if the old witch managed to thin the herd a little this year I wouldn’t have been able to fault her.
She came now into the room dressed in white, gliding through the air, supported on the shoulders of four young children. Some of the children I recognized, others I assumed Aunt Susan had plucked from the streets of her idyllic little town. No doubt their parents were worried sick, but there was really fuck-all they could have done about it.
She floated among her guests on her way to the throne. A horrible electric caterwauling assaulted our ears as another child began to play a theremin. The boy’s skill with the instrument was questionable at best, or this may have been the fault of the existence of the instrument itself.
Slowly the woman was lowered to the floor. Now the children helped to hold up her long trailing robes as the procession followed her to the tall white chair at the head of the center table. She sat down. Only then were the rest of us allowed to join her. My father’s chair and several others had been adorned with inflatable donuts for their sore and beat red asses, a gesture they appreciated and would later thank Aunt Susan for profusely.
We waited for the woman to speak, to make the slightest gesture. She raised the silver bell in her hand and rang it once. At the sound a series of hidden doors in the walls sprang open and a group of what I can only presume to be gnomes of some kind began to flood into the chamber, each one of them carrying a steaming platter stacked high for the feast. Eight golden roast turkeys were set about the tables, followed by four glowing glazed hams, twelve kinds of steamy potato dishes, seven types of bubbling casserole, three large wobbly molds of cranberry jelly, and the usual assortment of buttered vegetables and biscuits. There was even a large dish of macaroni and cheese. Twenty flagons of ale would slake our thirst, poured into every empty glass at the tables without regard to the age of its recipient. Finally, set along the table against the wall, were twenty plump pies of pumpkin and apple and blueberry. Once the gnomes had finished burning their little gnome fingers upon every hot dish they immediately disappeared back inside the walls, never to be seen again. (I wanted to ask about the gnomes later, but I forgot.)
Everybody ate. Everybody drank. Except for Aunt Susan, who did not partake. Her nourishment was derived purely from the contented sounds of her guests as they marveled and gasped at each new and delicious dish. Uncle Jerry said to her, “Why don’t you just have a little taste?” At his very words the knife was in her bony hand, and in one foul motion Uncle Jerry’s right ear was gone. Aunt Susan picked it up in her claw-like fingers and devoured it in a single gulp. “Mm,” she said. “You’re right. Delicious.”
“Three cheers for Aunt Susan,” said a man none of us had ever seen before. I think he was a fourth of fifth cousin. All I know is that he was trembling, sweating very badly, and that he did not want Aunt Susan to eat him. He hoisted up his beer stein and proclaimed that, “A finer feast has never been served!” Every Cracker in earshot joined him with raucous applause, such was our fear of Susan’s wrath.
SACRIFICIAL LAMB
So we ate and we drank until our bellies were near to bursting and our bladders began to leak. This of course was the goal, and the next phase of Aunt Susan’s Thanksgiving was about to begin.
There were no bathrooms at Aunt Susan’s house. Or rather there were, but we were not allowed to see them. If you wanted to relieve yourself you had to take it outside to the pit. “And then one day,” my father explained, “As prophesied, once the great pit is full, and all of our waste has been spent, the dark lord Garrok will arise from the void and devour the unworthy.”
“Dad?” I said. “How is Aunt Susan related to us again?”
“She’s your Aunt.”
“No, I mean… who’s she related to? Is she your sister or Mom’s?”
“Well, no. I think maybe she’s one of our cousins.”
“Well then she wouldn’t be my aunt.”
“I don’t have to know how it all works, son. I just have to believe that it does.”
Next we ate pie. I had a slice of pumpkin and one of pecan. They were pretty good.
After the meal someone tried to put on the football game, and was swiftly killed. It was time for everyone to put on our red robes and follow Aunt Susan outside to the garden. It was a bitter November cold, but the robes were thick and the torches were lit. Grandma Enid was appointed master of ceremonies. The old mare stood at the edge of the abyss and read aloud from the tattered scroll of the unholy sacrament that was to unfold. My father, drinking the blood of the goat, began to recite the incantations, joined soon by others, until the hideous bleating of the once noble Cracker clan became as a single grating cry.
And who was to be this year’s sacrifice?
Why, it was my own sister Becky. The women folk had already washed and prepared her body for passage into the nether realms, where she would surely spend eternity. They adorned her pale head with a crown of lotus flowers and ushered her naked to the edge of the pit. My mother was weeping, her face twisted and ugly, her harsh cries bitter and unholy. “Damn you, Aunt Susan,” she said.
For my part I had little reaction to the murder; Becky had recently broken my Nintendo.
Aunt Susan raised the snake head dagger high above her and readied for the plunge. The last of the incantations rang out above us. I thought I heard Dad say to Becky, “We’re so proud of you, sweetheart.”
Becky was run through. Now she doubled over, her slender hands clutched against her open belly, and fell forward like a lifeless doll into the great pit. Her body disappeared into the darkness. A brief silence was punctuated with a sudden splash. The pit was deeper than I had imagined. We gathered around the rim and waited patiently, wondering if this was the night that the great dark one would finally appear.
It wasn’t. Nothing happened that year, or for many years hence. The dark pit, as my father reminded me, was still a very long way from full. “We could gather around it and shit blood into it and throw our favorite children to their deaths for the next twenty years and still be standing out here with our dicks in our hands, waiting for a show that ain’t coming, at least not in our lifetimes. But like I always tell you,” he said, ruffling my hair, “It’s not about the destination. Is it now, Harvey?”
“What about Aunt Susan?” I said. “How will she witness the great resurrection?”
“Aunt Susan is immortal, son. We are but blinks of an eye before her, motes of dust. We serve our purpose and question not.” He hugged me then. Mom, having recovered from her bout of unexplained hysteria, hugged me too. We all hugged each other, the embrace of our remaining family members both warm and wonderful. In fact I don’t remember ever feeling better in all my life.
A few hours later, below the red moon, a grotesque orgy ensued. Semen spilled like wine.
I met my future wife. She was my first cousin, Bessie, a stout young maiden with a jutting brow. We have one child between us. He walks kind of funny but other than that he’s cool.
But why did I tell you this story? Was I seeking some catharsis? Was it to better explain myself, or my beginnings, or to lend you a clearer or more well rounded perception of your friend and humble narrator?
Not really. No, there was no great revelation at the end of this story, and apart from a few more bad memories, my general character remained unchanged.
This was just a thing that happened to me, and if you really think about it, a lot of times in your life are like that.