The Machinery of Fall; a Thanksgiving horror

The train banked heavily coming into the station and the jolt was more than enough to send Eliot’s army surplus duffle off the storage rack and directly into his crotch. Had he not been asleep the whole ride he would have noticed it was the first time in the ten hours and change journey that the surly old man sitting across from him laughed. A sight which Eliot wished he could forego as the old man’s ear, eyebrow, and noise hair were textured in such a way as to make a primordial forest jealous. Homecomings were not his strong suit. He had a great deal of time feigning exuberance where his family was concerned. Not that he didn’t love them dearly, it was just hard to act like he hadn’t seen them in some vast epoch when he had just been home for summer.

“[static] you may [static] off board [static] end of the line” came on over the speakers through each train car. It was impossible to hear anything on that thing. Eliot was so used to the journey that he never had to listen for the conductor. The landscape outside always became familiar if he waited long enough. The busted PA was a signal of going home. Home was poor, underserved, and nothing worked be they machines or people. He had slung his duffle over his left shoulder and made the unpleasant move to the closest exit.

He left the city at 3pm and since his phone died he was without a way to keep time. He assumed it was somewhere around 6:15pm if memory served. He’d have to call for a ride from the station pay phones. He hated using pay phones. Most people who don’t have to pay their own cellular bills resent paying a quarter for a service which requires them to overpay (as far as they knew) for something they expected free and instantaneous. One foot came off the train, followed by the other enveloped in ostentatious sneakers. He saw the platform, covered from the track’s edge to street’s edge with oak leaves. The station agent never got it together enough to have the platform cleared in the fall. On the street’s edge an old woman wearing thrice worn work boots leaned against a busted ’89 Dodge Ram. Eliot often forgot that he left the town and somehow garnered more money and ostentation than his neighbors. During summer he had to make conversation with old high school friends about going away to college. ‘Getting out’ they called it, as though Jericho were some kind of enclosure or prison. ‘It’s not like the city’s any different’ he’d tell them but every time he looked at the city skyline and saw all the opportunity he might chase someday. He knew why they referred to his move as an escape.

The old man with the eldritch face hair met the woman standing by her truck. He wobbled and strained. She didn’t walk to meet him. Eliot wanted to laugh at his fumbling attempt to run on aged legs but didn’t. He thought it would be cruel, even though the old man was thoroughly amused by Eliot’s painful near sterilization. Eliot hoped when he became old he would still be a runner and that he’d still laugh. Neither of those were qualities to belittle. The gnomish old man dropped his suitcase and threw his arms around her when close enough.

Eliot turned right and walked to the end of the platform where the orange station sat, all amber paint and dark wood benches. Under his cool red kicks the orange leave parted and one distinctly gets the impression that they were merely a product of the molting station, like a snail trail of scales left by a great fiery snake. Eliot pushed through a great glass door and beheld the Jericho train station in all its underwhelming glory. Lamp-post type lighting from the turn of the century covered the rows upon rows of wood benches and the single ATM in a warm light. There was a familiar young man behind the glass opposite the door. Eliot knew him from school but his ride, at the moment, was more important. He rushed past the booth and into the small alcove to the right of the agent’s booth. The room shown with the same pastoral glow as the main lobby with wooden sculptures. They were angels dark and majestic with the initials of ages carved into them and a polite sign reading, “THE ANGELS ARE MEANT FOR YOUR ADMIRATION, NOT YOUR AUTOGRAPHS, THANK YOU, -THE MANAGEMENT.”

Eliot put a quarter into the pay phone feeling a little creeped out by the angels watching him with his back turned. They were, after all, figures of divine judgement who rained fire down on Sodom and Gomorrah…probably. It seemed unwise to turn ones back on something like that, even if it was just a statue. The phone began its metallic ring. Nothing smooth in those dial tones or the screech of impulse through wires. He turned to the angels and was relieved, oddly enough, to see that they were eyeless. Someone probably waiting for someone to pick up no doubt, he thought.

“Hello.” The voice on the other end surprised Eliot. He had spent an inappropriate amount of time not making eye contact with the vandalized angel.

“Hey, Clarissa?” Eliot was unsure it was her. He was sure this had something to do with the objectively bad quality of public utilities meant to mimic the human voice.

“Yeah.” She thought it was a dumb question and modulated her voice accordingly.

“It’s Eliot.”

“Oh my God, Eliot,” her voice violently changed cadence from annoyed to excitedly annoyed. Unless you have a sibling it’s difficult to describe. “What are you doing?” she asked conversationally.

“Hanging with the angels.” He knew she wouldn’t get it.

“What?” ‘see’ he thought.

“I’m at the train station.”

“Which train station?” To which he thought, ‘which one does she think?’

“Downtown dumb-ass.”

“Shut up!” she screamed so loud he had to pull the phone away from his ears. “You’re home!? You came home?!”

“For Thanksgiving at least.”

“Oh my God. I’m getting mom.”

“No. Come and pick me up. I want to surprise them.”

“Weirdo. I’ll see you soon. I have to make up an excuse.”

“Please try not to be a bad liar.”

“I am such a good liar, I’m your sister. You know me.” She was never a good liar.

“See you soon,” Eliot was ready to hang up.

“See you soon Eliot.” There was a click on the line with naught but silent static after. Clarissa never hung up first. He’d been gone long enough for things to change. He didn’t really like things the way they were before but he knew of no reason why it should change. He hung up the phone and shot another glance at the blind angels. Cruel act, to blind a thing.

He slung his duffle over his shoulder and left the alcove. There was now just the question of how he was going to deal with the man in the glass. He could walk by and pretend not to recognize him. He could give him a head nod to acknowledge their acquaintance. He could stop and say hello but he wasn’t really in the mood. The entire time he walked he was gaging these options. About fifteen steps out he turned around, being far enough away to give a head nod without the fear of having to start an actual conversation, but this gambit didn’t quite work as well as he’d hoped. The ginger gentlemen in the glass case put his mouth up to a skinny microphone.

“HEY ELIOT!” he said over the PA. It was louder than Eliot thought necessary for such a small terminal and that’s aside from the obvious emptiness of the place. Hurriedly he turned around and walked back to the agent’s booth. No one wanted the loud gnarled voice to come back over the speaker.

“Scott,” said Eliot as he approached the counter in front of the transparent wall. “How’s it going? How’ve you been?” He’d considered also asking what he’d been up to until he realized the answer would be as dull as ‘graveyard shift at the train station.’

Scott looked just as he had last year, almost. He seemed to lose about ten to twenty pounds and the acne, for which he was well known, was all but gone. There were only faint scars left behind and accentuating small patches of his face with something remarkably similar to a pox scar. His skin seemed to glow. He was definitely looking better. Eliot did not. He had definitely put on weight since graduation but since he didn’t own a bathroom scale he didn’t know exactly how much.

“I’ve been good man,” he wasn’t very convincing, “where have you been?”

“The Poly Tech…Studying and whatnot. How is it working here?” only to follow up with an equally boring question.

“Boring…been working at Pete’s Pizza Emporium but it closed.” Scott was very nonchalant about it. It was kind of a shame. Pete’s was made primarily for children, tons of arcade games, the occasional animatronic rabbits dancing in the floor show. It wasn’t very fun but it seemed more bleak back home without it.

“I was thinking about heading over to the Saloon some night this week.” Eliot thought it might be fun to try and connect with someone he’d gone to high school with. The angels in the alcove knew he sure didn’t try when he was there.

“Yeah.” Scott didn’t seem to understand that as an invitation.

“Think you might want to join me?” asked Eliot in the interest of being explicit.

“Na, it’s closed anyway. If you wanna drink you gotta buy it and take it over to someone’s house.” Eliot wasn’t sure if this was an invitation and wasn’t too eager to see where Scott spent time off the clock. Eliot was not sure how a town, especially his home town, could get by without the Saloon. Eliot turned to leave, slung his duffle up even further on his shoulder.

“There’s no bar, no pizza joint. Man this town is really falling apart.” A car pulled up outside. Eliot was prepared to pretend it was Clarissa, whether it was or not.

“There’s my ride.” Scott nodded but said nothing. “So…what is there to do here?” Eliot asked on the way out.

With a shrug Scott said, “there’s the movies…”

Eliot found himself in the midst of a clamor. Everyone on the train was crying. Screaming for God to save them. The train was screeching beneath them. The unnatural sound of metal grinding on itself became less pronounced as one half of the train lifted itself off the track and though it was a bit more quite than before the sensation of being thrown to one side was so disconcerting that Eliot wished they could go back to the abject panic without the certainty of what came after one set of wheels has liberated itself from the tracks. He flailed about and his sister jumped up and down, one foot on either side of him.

“Wake up you lazy ass!” she yelled as she jumped up and down on his bed. He attempted to shake himself out of his ominous dream but he couldn’t speak and could hardly move. Clarissa dropped immediately once she had seen that both eyes were open. It seemed like it should have hurt and Eliot reacted as though it was going to. Little siblings could be such pests. She didn’t hurt him and came down off both feet standing to a resting position wherein she lay directly on top of him without stepping on or elbowing or causing some kind of pain one might expect from that kind of laying down tackle.

“Morning ass-hat.”

“Morning weirdo. You smell like the wood chips from the bottom of a hamster cage.” He hated doing his own laundry, he hadn’t had the chance before he left.

“My washer’s busted,” he lied.

“Why didn’t you bring your stuff home? Have mom do it.”

“Na, she’s busy enough as it is washing your gnarly clothes.” She feigned offense.

“Jerk.” She drove her elbow into his side. He made no sound but roughly exhaled.

“What time is it?” He asked.

“10 in the AM.”

“And what are you doing jumping on my bed at 10 in the AM?”

“Have you forgotten what today is?” she asked as though there were something important about today. He thought he knew what she was alluding to but he could be wrong. Best to wait and see what she was actually talking about.

“No.”

“Good, then get dressed. I’ll meet you downstairs for breakfast.”

She jumped off his bed and ran out of the room entirely too fast for a 19 year old. She had applied the same enthusiasm to her escape that most 6 year olds appropriate to the lunge towards the Christmas tree. Eliot rose and went through his duffle looking for the least offensive smelling t-shirt he could hide under one of his sweaters he left behind. There is hardly ever such need for selection with pants. They can be worn more times than you’d think before they begin to smell. He dressed himself and descended the stairs. The second step creaked and bent strenuously. Home seemed to be falling apart just like everything else. His mother stood in the kitchen before a hot stove and the smell of bacon and coffee had become more discernible after the giant wooden door had swung open.

She wore a Minnie Mouse sweater and jeans more worn than Eliot’s, though they were impeccably washed. He walked over to her and kisses her cheek as she leaned back without looking, expecting a good morning gesture of some sort. It was second nature to Eliot’s family, affection and free speech were hard wired. Most who met them thought they were strange but none of the family seemed to mind.

“You didn’t have to go through all this trouble,” said Eliot as he sat down “I could have eaten cereal.”

“Ha. It’s no trouble,” she said smiling “and neither is brushing your teeth…almost bowled be over with that breath.” Eliot cupped his hand over his mouth and hushed. She might have been right.

“It’s not every day I get to make bacon and eggs for my son,” she awkwardly winked with both eyes.

“Apparently,” said Eliot with the same enthusiasm of an unremarkable ‘duh.’

“Don’t be an ass-hole. You can’t ruin this for me. My son is home and he’s eating something I cooked. I feel like Margaret Fucking Stewart.” She flipped a runny egg onto a plate next to two near burnt slices of Bacon and set them down in front of Eliot. Clarissa came in and sat down at the table with a piece of toast and a glass of orange juice.

“Martha,” he said.

“What?”

“Martha Fucking Stewart mom. That’s her name,” corrected Eliot.

“Her too.” Mom smiled.

“You’re so weird,” said Eliot giving a laugh usually indicative of giving up.

“And you’re so home. And I’m not letting you go anywhere. Why didn’t you bring your laundry?” Clarissa shoot him a look and an ‘I told you so’ smile.

“Because I’m home on vacation, I have two good arms, and why should you have to deal with my dirty laundry?” He pierced the yoke with his jagged spear of dark pig slice.

“Why are you so selfish?” His mother asked feigning disappointment.

“So you could come to the movies with us,” responded Eliot as though he were returning an insult after which he smiled.

“You do remember!” exclaimed Clarissa. It was something of a tradition. They used to go to the movies on Thanksgiving before Mom made dinner. It wasn’t really a tradition. In his eighteen years Eliot only remembered going for four.

“Your father and I saw it last week. It was really weird. You’d be into it Eliot.”

“Where’s Dad?” he asked noting his father’s unusual absence from the table, “I barely got to talk to him last night.”

“He’s still in bed. Tired I guess” Clarissa added as if being helpful “He hasn’t been himself lately.”

“Well why don’t you come with us to the movie then?” asked Eliot “you could see it again.”

“No thank you,” she said crossing her arms over her chest, “bit over my head.

“We could see something else,” added Eliot extending his invitation once again.

“It’s the only thing playing there right now,” his mother said.

“Seriously?”

“The second auditorium at the Rialto has been under renovation for the past six months, only one movie playing at a time,” explained Clarissa. This place really was falling apart, Eliot reflected.

Eliot and Clarissa walked down Main St. over a multitude of red leaves crushing loudly beneath their feet as they walked. Clarissa’s stride shifted between a skip, a backwards walk while looking at Eliot and towards the end of the trek a slow stride matching his with one arm linked beneath his. “So what is this movie we’re going to see?” Eliot asked as the marque of the Rialto came into view.

“It’s a real trip. It’s called ‘The Dancing Angels’ and it’s insane. I think it’s Russian or something, from the 1910s.”

“Seriously?” Eliot was rather skeptical. The flick sounded a little too esoteric for his home town and definitely too strange for his sister the buddy cop movie queen to be into. Well, if she likes it than Eliot supposed it must really be something.

“Is it in English?”

“The titles are.” After she had said that Eliot realized it was a silent movie, rubbed non-existent sleep out of his eyes trying to deal with the annoyance that he was going to sit through a two hour movie in silence while reading with his sister. They came face to face with yet another man behind a pane of glass looking less than enthusiastic about being there than Scott from the train station. His name was James and he was one of Clarissa’s classmates.

“Tickets for two?” he asked barely looking up.

“Hey James!” Clarissa said.

“Hey Clarissa.” He didn’t seem excited nor did he feign friendship.

“Slow today?” asked Clarissa earnestly. Even when she was a girl she always tried to start conversations with people, get to know them a little better. In the end she acted like old friends to acquaintances and acquaintances to complete strangers.

“How much?” asked Eliot, trying to break what might be turning into a conversation with someone he didn’t know. Eliot, unlike his sister, hated talking to people he didn’t know but only a little more than he hated conversations with people he did.

“Thanksgiving special my friend, no need to pay.” James said while smiling and waved them past the booth and into the darkened theater lobby.

“That was nice of them,” observed Clarissa.

“Sure was.” Eliot was confused as to how such a big draw to the movies like Thanksgiving could be comped. It was the kind of free lunch with strings attached you’d rather not ask about.

Eliot and Clarissa took their seats in the theater. The red velvet seats and faded red velvet curtains were noticeably frayed and at points bald. Eliot realized that hairlessness was an affliction that things could share as well as people when he was five and spent the entirety of a horror double feature watching The Faculty and Curse of the Puppet Master rubbing his hand over the velvet seat next to him, constantly transitioning his touch between peach fuzz and nothing. The seats were the same but balder. He made a few swipes with his right hand while they waited for the lights to go down. The movie itself was something else entirely.

It was the sort of pretentious movie you’d expect to see in an Intro to Film class and then perpetually trotted out by every member of that class to sound more interesting at parties. The sets were expressionistic and exaggerated. It was set in a sultan’s court and the depiction of that court was mostly painted wood meant to look disoriented. Corridors where lopsided, the sky was filled with menacing creature shaped painted clouds, the throne was some monster of jutting gold bars stuck to each other and healed together by rubber cement and a production designers prayers. As the movie went on though, the cheap look seemed to disappear or at least go unnoticed.

It was a phantastic film. The sultan, who was a huge fan of clockwork creatures, payed for a barge of animatronic angels to be built. There was no purpose for these creatures beyond dancing and rowing the sultan’s large barge around a lavish party with a mote inlaid upon the court. There were pillars which reached higher than the camera’s gaze, a lavishly costumed cast in colors unseen, and the ship itself seemed to be made of solid gold upon which the angels danced. Intensely pleased faces awed at their unveiling and watched them move. The androids were so…real. But then the realness ended. The blocky mechanicals moved in right angles and on arcs but seemed to be organic. It was hard to tell through the poor camera technology of the turn of the century in Eastern Europe whether we were watching actual puppets or human bodies in performance. At first when the angels arrived Eliot had noticed one in particular. A man shaped angel in a great white gown fitted with chains made to look decorative bent to one side to blow his great horn when the costume moved aside…

What Eliot saw he tried to dismiss until another of the angels offended the sultan by spilling a drink on a party goer. The sultan’s guard brandished a scimitar and cut her open at the wasted and what poured forth could just as easily been a fry of eels stuffed in a puppet and suffocating but Eliot could swear it looked more real than that. He remembered how the Patuxet man taught the pilgrims how to catch eel in an effort to keep them fed during the first Thanksgiving. If the pilgrims had felt like Eliot, between the prospect of starving and touching (let alone catching) a live eel, they would have chosen death. The movie only got more outlandish and uncanny as it went on. It was hours of watching maggots masquerade as wires, spiders as claws, some of the bigger tendrils like the bodies of vipers.

It was difficult to see the whole movie, or at least to see it all at once. It was a visual clamor. There were times when Eliot tried paying attention to the plot but then became concerned with the intricacies and inconsistencies of the set, then with the actors and their performance and eventually whether or not they were actors at all. When one of them displayed a portion of their inner workings they appeared as masses of shifting living rubber covered in ichthyic slime. By the end of the movie the dancers had assembled themselves around the Sultan. All the palace guards lay around the throne room dead and in various compromising and uncomfortable looking positions. There was no blood except what two of the mechanical dancers seemed to be painting the walls with. They were putting up strange letters not Cyrillic.

The sultan made a furious dumb show at his appliances turned captors. The title card flashed between scenes of overacted fury to quote him as saying “WHAT DO YOU WANT!” in all capital letters.

“WE WANT TO GO HOME,” The angels emoted. Eliot started to wonder what home they were talking about. They were machines. He conceded his own distraction and unease for not understanding what they were talking about.

“THERE IS NO HOME. YOU ARE HOME.” The sultan fell backwards over the base steps of his throne.

“THIS IS NOT OUR HOME.” The angels seemed to be crying oil now.

“IT CAN BE MADE OUR HOME.” One of the angels, the obvious leader of them looked with conviction.

The tendrils extended out of the dancers, slippery and bright, they whipped themselves around. It didn’t look particularly real but Eliot couldn’t figure out how they managed to do it. Eliot’s mother never cooked anything that took longer than a few hours but it seemed as though she’d been working on it since they left for the movie. When they got home she stood above four burning ranges wrapped in a veil of steam. Clarissa kissed her on the cheek and Eliot did likewise. “Dinner will be ready by seven,” their mother said. This troubled Eliot subtly. Since when had the family become accustomed to eating dinner before nine?

“What did you think of the movie?” she asked.

“It was a trip. Where’s dad?” Eliot asked.

“He’s in the garage,” she said.

This was somewhat strange. Unnatural cinema aside, dad always watched the football game on Thanksgiving. Eliot never liked that tradition. He thought football was a little too esoteric to understand. It was an intensely adversarial game with many twists, turns, rules, and strategies. He felt like he needed a manual to understand it and in the end it left him confused by the shifting on the field and the constantly stopping timer. It was strange that his father wasn’t watching football and even stranger that Eliot cared. He reached into the refrigerator to grab the orange juice which was next to what looked like Korean glass noodles in some kind of tar black sauce. He had planned to drink straight from the carton but put it back as soon as he realized his mom would chastise him for drinking straight from the carton and also because it meant he’d have to see that abomination again when he opened the refrigerator to put it back.

He didn’t want to ask what it was. The answer would be disgusting and he’d rather wait until it was cooked or stuffed in something where the sight of it might be less nauseating. He kissed his mother on the cheek again which tasted vaguely like talcum. He looked to his sister and realized that she had her eyes fixed on him with a vague expression of worry and anticipation.

“I’m going out to the garage. I wanna hang out with dad,” he said feeling his opportunity to escape whatever this was.

He walked down the hall and on either side were pictures. Framed photographs behind glass holding older happier selves frozen in stasis. His reflection fell over his old image and he realized what a funhouse mind fuck family photo galleries are. He pushed on the white door and it swung open on rubber hinges. Dad sat at his work bench in front of an unfinished bird house. A familiar brown bottle sat half-drunk between it and a bottle of motor oil. Eliot was not a stout kid so his turning around, putting both hands on the sturdy bench, and lifting himself to sit and face his father was no cause for alarm. Dad smiled.

“I heard you and your sister went to the movies,” he said innocuously.

“Yeah.”

“How’d you like it?”

“It was strange. I’m still computing it,” said Eliot. He struggled to remember the specifics of scenes but he could only discern moods at this point and the only mood he could remember was unease.

“Yeah. You’re mother and I saw it last week. It’s really weird,” his father said as he lifted a hammer and looked at it in a manner which would suggest it was the first time he was seeing it.

“Do you want a beer?” he asked after a silence.

“No thanks,” said Eliot. His dad had never offered him a beer before. Probably just one of the more touching aspects of growing up. The notion of drinking in front of his father still made Eliot nervous.

“How’s school going?” and dad pops the million dollar question.

“Pretty good,” Eliot lied.

“Staying out of trouble?”

“As much as possible.”

“Crazy parties?” his dad asked with a mischievous smile.

“Oh yeah,” said Eliot thinking of four other engineering students meeting over a six and re-runs.

“Be safe,” his father advised “You know I used to party quite a bit when I was your age?”

“Is that so?” Eliot asked to humor him. He didn’t believe it.

“Oh yeah,” his father said with and eyebrow raise and added after a moment of awkward silence “I’ve missed you so much you know?”

“I’ve missed you too dad.”

“You stopped calling.” Eliot’s father looked hurt.

“I’ve been busy,” said Eliot, seriously considering not lying but not being able to stop having already started.

“No you haven’t. I know you son. You’d call even if you were busy. You always have but not now. Now I leave six or seven voicemails and there’s nothing.” Eliot glanced towards his feet.

“I suppose I’m just…a little overwhelmed…scared.” His own honesty shocked him.

“What are you scared of son?”

“Failure, I’m not doing so well in school right now. I feel like…” Eliot trailed off.

“What?” his father’s eyes radiated genuine concern and Eliot realized it was the most personal he’d been with his father in years.

“Like I can’t do anything right and at some point someone’s gonna notice.”

“You know Eli, when we brought you home from the hospital I felt the same way. I felt like I was the last person in the world anyone should trust with a child. You’re mom and I were still driving trucks at that point and neither of us were very…parental. I was positive I was going to do something stupid and that someone would take you away. But no one ever did.” He was looking dead into Eliot’s face and smiling.

Eliot cracked a knowing smirk and said, “Unfortunately.” His father chuckled a little.

“Laugh it up smart ass but the point is you’re brilliant. You’re my brilliant son and you can do anything you put your mind to. You don’t have to be scared. No one can see what you really are, only those we love. I see you son. I love you. Nothing will ever change that.”

“Thanks Dad,” said Eliot and at the risk of crying began to collect himself and related that dinner would be served at 7. On his way out through the swing back of the door he saw what he couldn’t possibly have seen. His dad drowning himself with an up turned bottle of motor oil. Eliot concluded he must have been mistaken. He still didn’t open the door. It’s absurd anyone would be drinking motor oil but if it was so, no one wants to live in a world where that’s something you’d have to deal with.

Dinner started promptly at 7pm. This was a new feeling. The table was set and looking like the display of a model home. A gigantic turkey golden brown and steaming lay in the middle stuffed to capacity with soaked and seasoned bread crumbs, vegetable bits, and little black flecks. To the right of that was a giant green Jello mold with chunks of pineapple and walnuts which looked incredibly odd next to the freshly made cranberry sauce and below was a German chocolate cake which could stop the heart on sight either by sheer enticement or the contact high of so much butter. There it was and there Eliot was, standing at a table surrounded by his family. After his mother called him into dinner he’d noticed they were all there, waiting, looking at him. Why were they smiling so damned much?

“Dinner is served,” she said making a magical gesture over the food like some kind of fucking witch in a Hansel and Gretel cartoon.

Eliot sat and all through dinner examined his family without taking a bite. The more he listened to them talk to each other the more feigned conversation became, like being stuck in an elevator with a friend of a friend. Eliot looked at them more closely than he’d ever looked at them. There was something about them that was realer than usual. An exceeding of nature which left them camouflaged to the naked eye. A half hour later, without a bite taken from Eliot’s decadent meal, Clarissa brought up the movie.

“I liked it and all but I still don’t think I get it,” she said attempting ditzy.

“What’s not to get? They were monsters,” awkward silence descended. The game had changed and the family were realizing they were going to have to deal with the prodigal son.

“They just wanted a home,” Clarissa continued “it’s not that bad is it?”

“I don’t know Clarissa, is it?” he demanded.

“Why are you being like this? It’s Thanksgiving,” said his father stating the far from obvious.

“It’s not Thanksgiving, it’s a farce,” Eliot asserted.

His mother seemed genuinely shocked at Eliot’s attitude. Eliot would almost believe it was really her. She wore the same clothes and said the same things but what do any of us really know about our mothers. Disheartened and earnestly crestfallen she asked the question they’d been meaning to ask since he’d come home, “What is wrong with you Eliot?” He began laughing hysterically open mouthed at each family member.

“There’s nothing wrong with me,” he insisted. His mother gathered herself and calmly spoke.

“Eliot, I spent a lot of time making this dinner-”

“There’s nothing wrong with me mother. Since when do you have a table set with candles? Since when do you cook giant turkeys?” he cast an eye at his sister, “Since when do you all sit in on insane movies? Since when can you lie?” and from her to his father “Since when do you drink motor oil? And since fucking when have you ever asked what’s really going on with me?”

“Please Eliot just try some of this cake-” before his mother could finish his father slammed his fists onto the table with vigor and shouted in a voice human ears have never heard before “HE SAID HE DOESN’T WANT ANY!”

Dark circles formed under his blank eyes which Eliot had seen for the first time now were black as pitch and flat as discs. Mom recoiled in shame and with such strength her head seemed to whip unnaturally. It jerked and her whole body seemed jointed like a rag doll, flattened and stitched in corners and supported by invisible strings. Clarissa began weeping but her grin remained. Rows upon rows of sharp, shiny, white teeth. She couldn’t stop grinning, her porcelain face would brook no change. Oil ran down her cheeks thick like prom night mascara.

“This isn’t how it was supposed to go. Can’t we just have dinner without screaming and suspicion? Can’t we just be-” her words after were just too obstructed by shuttered gasps to make sense.

Mom tried to put her head on straight but it only seemed to limp worse. It hung so bad that a moment later it detached completely from her body and fell to the floor. It severed mid neck and out of the bottom, squirming and writhing were the silver snakes machine like but definitely organic or properties of a machine no one should ever make. Their metallic and coiled bodies slammed themselves against the floor. But what’s so much worse was mother’s face. It was not horrified or agonizing. It was sad. It was crying. It was embarrassed. She wept on the floor while her body searched around, grasping blindly at semi-filthy linoleum. No one ever did clean it enough.

“I’m so sorry son,” she cried “I don’t-”

Before she could finish Eliot rose and walked towards the door. How could he have been so blind? He wanted to ask what the hell was going on but didn’t know where to begin. When did reality stop and the nightmare begin? The crying continued. He stopped outside the door and listened to it. No one came after him. No one had the will. The defective family acquiesced, whatever plans they had, if any, had been abandoned. They were surprised when Eliot returned. Each looked at the other but said nothing as if in fear. Eliot walked to his mother’s disembodied and still weeping head and reached out. With a wince he put a hand on either side and lifted it. When he brought his eyes back to the abhorred sight he notice that she had winced too.

He set her head near her neck and closed his eyes when the reaching ends of her neck coils joined their missing halves. The room echoed a suction noise which almost made Eliot vomit and would have if not for his empty stomach. He took his seat again but participated in the others silence. He cut a piece of cake off with his fork and ate it. At least there was love here, or so it seemed. It’s not easy to let go of family. Somewhere in a mall people would be crushed under foot so, to Eliot, this dinner was only the most horrific thing until Black Friday.