Happy Thanksgiving Chaos

By John Martin 

The next two days are going to feel like I am sitting in purgatory.  I am the Matriarch of a clan of misfits who are my family.  Yet I love them all.  They are on their way to my house as we speak.  You may find my tone somewhat harsh.  But then my family would make your family’s dysfunctional holiday behavior seem normal.  Here is how this evening will go.  Three of our children and their spouses and their nine children will show up at our door within minutes of one another.  They will struggle to bring their suitcases inside.  Once in the foyer they will begin fighting about who gets which bedroom. 

Our house is just large enough to house everyone.  My husband and I have a large house.  We purchased it for holiday visits for the entire family.  When our grandchildren grow up we are selling it.  But this is just the beginning of our Thanksgiving show. 

Two hours later my oldest son will show up with his new bride of two years.  My oldest son is fifty-eight.  Melanie, his new bride, is twenty-four.  That is twenty-four as of three days ago.  She will be the gasoline for the fire.  She will wear a low cut blouse.  Temperatures will be in the single digits.  Her breasts will be fighting just to stay inside that blouse.  Her pants will be so tight the seam in her crack will be stretched to full capacity.  The men will ogle her every chance they get.  She will eat up the attention.  But she will pretend not to notice them noticing her every move.  They will try to hide their stares.  But their wives will catch them.  That is when the arguments begin.  There will be mumblings under the breath.  There will be loud whispers coming from inside the bedrooms.  My smaller grandchildren will ask me, “Nina, why does your chest hang down and Melanie’s doesn’t?”  I will answer diplomatically that Melanie’s is newer, and leave it at that.  What I really would like to do is put them over my knee.  When I have finished with them, I would ask them why their little rear ends were red.  But they are just the innocents in all the drama.  So I leave it at that.

The women will hate her, but pretend to like her.  She will be clueless.  My son, her husband, will strut like peacock.  All of it will be painful to watch.  The men will try to show off for her—flag football, soccer, running—until one of them gets hurt.  Then I will put an end to the games and the showing off. 

“Someone’s knocking on my door.  I have to go.  Let the torture began.  Oh…I almost forgot.  Happy Thanksgiving to you and your family!”

Joan Harbor - Writer at Red Staircase

Hi Everyone,

I want to tell you about my new book that I just published called Mattie.  It is on Amazon.  The idea of Mattie came to me when I was watching a cute little girl in a television commercial.  She was going door-to-door in her neighborhood trying to persuade her neighbors to purchase an item from her.  When her neighbors opened their doors she greeted them with a big smile.  Her hair was in two cute, neat little pigtails.  She looked adorable.  But even her adorable looks could not hide the devious side of her seemingly innocent personality.  Her neighbors’ expressions indicated that they picked up on it too.  This was part of what went into Mattie.  The rest of Mattie came from inside my head from previous readings and observations.

For example take this quick short story:

“Coming Home”

I put my key into my apartment door and turned it.  I opened my door and walked inside.  The apartment was dark.  It is always dark at night.  I do not leave a light on.  It wastes energy.  My security alarm went off.  The way it was supposed to.  I closed my door and turned the deadbolt lock.  I then walked over to my alarm to reset it.  My light switch is ten inches away from my alarm pad.  My routine is to reset my alarm and flick my light switch to on.  That is what I was doing.  But when I reached for the light switch someone or something grabbed my wrist.  I am almost positive it was a hand.  The hand was enormous.  It covered my wrist and a large part of my forearm.  I tried to yank my wrist free.  The hand was like a vise grip or blood pressure cuff wrapped around my wrist and part of my arm.  I was not going anywhere.

 

The hand yanked me into my living room.  The force was so violent and fast that my feet left the floor.  The next thing I felt were many sets of hands all over my body.  They tore my blouse away.  At the same time they ripped my pants off.  I struggled hard.  But they had me pinned to the floor.  The sound of my clothes being ripped away was so loud that I feared my appendages would be torn off with my clothes.  Within seconds I was completely naked.  My socks and boots were even gone.  I could feel cold settling down onto my body.  Then it felt like a group of people piled on top of me.  Like the game played when you were a kid where more and more kids jumped onto the pile.  But this was not one at a time.  Everyone all at once piled on.  My first thought was rape.  Then I must have fainted or passed out from lack of breathing.

The next thing I remember was someone pounding on my door.  I was too exhausted to stand up and go to the door.  Next I heard a loud crack.  Light poured into my apartment.  Shadows rushed in with the light.

I later saw the pictures of how I was found by the police.  They were the ones who broke in the door.  Someone had called the police and reported loud noises coming from inside my apartment.  It was not a neighbor.  That person was never identified.  But the police said the person who called left details of my condition.

 

The pictures showed me lying in a large pool of blood.  I agreed to a rape kit.  I was examined by several physicians.  I had not been raped.  There were no cuts or bruises of any kind.  But it gets even stranger than that.  The blood found in my apartment was not mine.

 

Physicians said that if I would have lost that much blood I would have died.  Weeks later I was asked to go down to the police station again.  They had the report on the blood.  It came from several different animals—bulls, pigs, wolves, and some could not be identified.  They were as baffled as I still am.

I did not go back to my apartment.  I moved out of that state.        

Initially I knew the police were suspect of me and my story.  No other evidence was found at the scene.  No witnesses or friends had come forward.  There were no leads to follow.  I knew what they were thinking.  Thirty-year-old woman comes home after a party high on some illicit drug.  Does something she wants to forget about.  So she creates a fictitious scene to appease her conscious.  That theory could have allowed them to ignore me.  But in the last twelve months fifteen similar cases have occurred in that city.  Women my age have been the victims.  This is hard to ignore.

I hope you enjoyed the short story.

Love, Joan