PRACTICE
In honor of Thanksgiving, write about an uprising staged by a group of resentful turkeys in protest of their featured place at the Thanksgiving table.
Write for fifteen minutes. When you're finished, post your practice in the comments section. And if you post, please be sure to comment on a few practices by other writers.
Have fun and happy Thanksgiving!
Turkeys everywhere are uniting to fight. It's an uprising! Photo by @makuw.
Here's my practice.
I was fast asleep when my phone started vibrating on the bedside table. I didn't look. I just grabbed it and hit the snooze button. It rang three times before I woke up enough to realize it wasn't my alarm, that it was four in the morning and something was clearly wrong.
My wife sat straight up and grabbed my arm and said in that way excitable people say things when they've just woken up, “Honey! What is it?”
“”I don't know. Calm down.”
I finally looked at my phone. Two missed calls from my sister and one from my dad. I called to check my messages. That's when I first heard the flapping and flutterings. I got up and went to the window. It was a cloudy, moonless night. The sky was pitch black. I entered my voicemail password.
“”John wake up you idiot,” it was my dad. “Listen to me. You guys need to get out of the Northeast and now. Get in your car as soon as you get this and… beep beep….” A new call was coming in. “What is it?” said my wife.
“”I don't know yet. Hold on.” The incoming call was my sister. I answered.
“”Cari?”
“”John you need to come over here. We need you. They've trapped us in the house. We can't get out. You need to help us. And bring a gun!” She sounded hysterical. What was going on?
“”What are you talking about? What's trapped you?”
“”The turkeys, John! They're attack….” I heard a crash, a window breaking. The line went dead.
That's when I realized the dark clouds were moving. It wasn't a cloudy night at all. The sky was dark with flying turkeys.
Rose and her daughter Suzy arose early Thanksgiving morning to put the finishing touches on the turkey (a little baste, maybe, and definitely some more seasoning). They did, and Rose said, “Ok, Suzy, we just make sure our oven is preheated.” Suzy said it was. “Ok honey, open the door up for me.”
And Suzy opened the oven door. Rose carried the pan across the kitchen, leaned over and put the turkey in. Suzy closed the door. “How long is the turkey going to be in there?”
“We’ll want to leave it in for nine hours, not a minute longer or it might dry out.” They began washing vegetables. Rose drank her coffee and Suzy drank her tea while they worked. No sooner did Rose start shredding carrots did a sudden commotion startle her. She cut her finger with the peeler and cursed.
“Mommy look!” Suzy cried, pointing at the oven. Rose followed Suzy’s gaze and upon seeing it, she covered her mouth. A bead of crimson bubbled from her finger, slid down her skin and gravity pulled it to the floor. They peered through the viewing glass together, frozen in place.
A banging sound repeatedly crashed in unison with the turkey swinging its arm (wing? fist?) toward the glass. It was, no, it couldn’t be. It was standing up inside the oven pan on its own two legs. It pounded on the door and Rose swore she heard a muffled gobbling.
Next door, Ron opened the refrigerator to pull out the turkey and put it in the oven. Yawning, he opened the refrigerator door and before he had a chance to look down, he felt a pain in his groin. Crying out, he looked down and the turkey hopped off the bottom shelf of the refrigerator, and ran across the kitchen. It had punched him.
Lisa appeared in the doorway. “Honey, what hap- Oh Dear God!” The turkey jumped up at her, flapping its featherless wings and slapping against her with its cold, wet skin.
Thawed (formerly frozen) turkeys took to the streets and formed large groups. Onlookers stood and watched from the not-so-much-safety of their living room windows; their mouths were agape in horror and disbelief.
Turkeys went commando, duel-wielding Beretta’s, toting mini-guns and throwing ammo belts around their necks like scarves.
Living, full-feathered turkeys sat around a poker table, smoking cigarettes and drinking scotch, somehow. “Gobble gobble,” said the leader. “Gobble,” said his right-hand man. “Gobble gobble!” another one said.
On the leader’s command, all the thawed (formerly frozen) turkeys had begun construction of a giant oven. Big enough for a human, you might say. The Agobblelypse had begun.
This is awesome. I like that the plucked, beheaded, frozen turkeys could inflict such damage. What an image!
Thanks for the prompt, Joe (and everything else you do)!
You’re very welcome, Karl. 🙂
Wow, that escalated quickly.
If I get to this prompt, I’ll probably take the “cooked turkey rebellion” angle, but in a different direction.
I’m interested to see what you come up with 🙂
This is so good! Makes me nervous about tomorrow. I love how you go into the neighbor’s house. You build such great tension.
Aw shucks! Thank you Maria!
*Marla. I meant Marla!
It’s mean to tempt struggling NaNoWriMoers with such a fun prompt! With intense discipline I return to slog out the remaining 17,000 words….. Wasn’t there a song “Cows with Guns”? maybe I’ll go look at some Gary Larsson cartoons……. 🙂
Ha. Sorry for the temptation, Juliana. Maybe you can add a turkey squabble into your NaNo novel. 🙂
It’s rather considerate, though, to those of us who aren’t writing a novel this month. 🙂 Kudos on the discipline and all my regards to your remaining words. 🙂
so funny with that headline, joe – i loved this! happy thanksgiving.
Thanks April!
Henry, who of late will only answer to On-Ree, is hooked on
scratch. Sunflower seeds, dried fruit,
popcorn kernels, it’s all he ever talks about.
And when Julie comes out to give us a snack, Henry flutters up to her
elbow, that’s how excited he is to get to it.
“Crack is what they should call it,” I said one day last
week.
We were in the back yard, watching “Love it or List it”
through the french doors. People, what
are you going to do, right? Always wanting an en suite, or a wine cellar where a basement would be more practical. If I had just
one home improvement out in the pen, it
would be a water faucet. Julie isn’t
keen on cleaning out our waterers, and sometimes it’s a hideous mess.
So, we’re watching LIOLI, like I said, and a commercial
comes on. You know what it was
about? Thanks-freaking-giving. One of our own had been slaughtered and
plucked and roasted to a deep brown.
Henry just about gave up the ghost.
I had to wave my wing across his face so he wouldn’t see a small girl
take a bite. Atrocious, if you ask me,
and there Julie sat watching it, her glasses sliding down on her nose, a
catalog from J. Crew in her lap.
Now I don’t trust her.
Oh sure, she’s acting the same.
Warm oatmeal in the morning, scratch at noon and four. I let her pet me, as usual, but I’m closed up
inside. It’s a week out from
Thanksgiving, that dark day, and I’m trying to get Henry to fly the coop, so to
speak, with me. We’re free rangers.
But Henry, he’s got it bad for this chicken named Ulysses,
who would never go to the guillotine because she’s a layer, delivering
aqua-colored eggs every other day. Uly,
as I’ve come to call her, is a spoiled brat, sitting on Julie’s lap, following
her across the yard. She got sick once
and Julie took her inside for a week.
When she came out she was hooked on Doritos and broccoli casserole.
I’m saying to Henry, “Look, boy, you’re a good two pounds
heavier than me. Who do you think Julie’s
going to come after, you or me?
Henry, who is gullible, if you want to know the truth, just
scratches the dirt and shakes his head.
My best shot is Uly.
If I can get her to leave, so will Henry. She’s always had a thing for me, so I tell
her I want to take her for a walk out in the field tomorrow. But she hesitates.
“What about the Lab that runs the ridge?” she asks.
“He’s running with the poodles now,” I say, “way past Wilson’s
farm. He won’t be anywhere around.”
So she agrees, and I rub my head across her neck, to seal
the deal. Uly’s a high strung little
thing, and she likes the attention, so I feel pretty sure she won’t back out.
My next battle is Henry.
“Uly is going for a walk with me tomorrow,” I say. “After breakfast. Wanna come?
“Why would Ulysses go with you?” Henry asks, abashed I
believe and a tab bit jealous.
“Because I told her you’d be going with us.”
Henry’s head turns blue, which embarrasses me, because it
means he’s getting randy over Uly.
“Calm down, boy,” I say.
“It’s just a walk.
When Julie comes out to see us, I snub her.
“Sebastian,” she calls to me. “What’d I do to you?”
I cut my eyes at her, the turkey-eating winch.
And then her phone rings, a thing of wonder to me, the
little square that connects her with the world.
She answers, talking quickly. “I
know, I know,” she says. “I heard it on
the news. You really think I should put
Henry and Sebastian up til after Thanksgiving?
You really think some idiots would try to catch them for dinner?”
She frowned, and rubbed her forehead with her free
hand. “I’d die if anything happened to
them. I’ve had them since they were
eggs. And Sebastian, bless his heart, he
acts more like a dog than a bird.”
I felt something stick in my craw. I thought about the early days, wrapped in a
washcloth, sitting with Julie on out in the shed. She fed me with an eye dropper. She sang Adele to me. How I love my Julie.
Henry comes waddling up beside me. “Ulysses is really excited about tomorrow,”
he says.
“The walk’s off, buddy,” I say. “The Lab showed up this morning, sniffing
around. Not safe out there. Not safe at all.”
Henry turns, his head down.
He’s not one to challenge me. I
figure he’s going to tell Uly, who may now be a bigger problem. She’s a one-turkey kind of gal, and Henry’s
not in the running. I’ll have to make a
play for one of the other girls, stir up a little trouble, make Henry seem like
the better bird.
I let out my best gobble and stride up to Julie, and I rub
against her leg like she likes. I wish I
knew what she meant by that dog comment because I am so much better than the
canines I’ve seen sweeping through this area, tongues hanging out, sniffing the
hindquarters of any living thing.
What an awesome display of the turkey’s point of view. I like your comparisons of food to crack. “She was hooked on broccoli and doritos,” Lol!
Thanks Karl, and Happy Thanksgiving!
Oh my word this made me laugh!!!
Thanks Zoe!
“I’m not sure” he said, sceptically. “The humans seem so nice.”
“Listen to me.” Turk continued, in a harsh whisper, his voice pleading. “Tomorrow they will commit a mass murder. They will kill all of us. Every single one, then eat us.”
“Can you hear yourself? You speak like it is some sort of conspiracy thing going on. Why would the humans, who have done nothing but feed us, and take care of us, want to kill us?” Another voice shouted from the bunk above them.
Turk was frustrated, he had seen it with his own eyes. Every night he stayed awake shivering in his feathers. How could they not see that they were just being fattened for slaughter. He couldn’t understand. How could he open their eyes? Then it came to him. It would have been in a dream but he was wide awake, the idea was so perfect. In fact the idea was so good h wanted to wake Earl up right now and ask for help. But no, it was too early in the morning. This would work, this had to work. It was time, for a revolution.
I love this. Beware of the hand that feeds you!
Thanks Marla 🙂
The basement on the corner of 22nd and Gravy st. wasn’t our usual scene, but on this occasion we though wed’s make an exception. The dame was a brunette weighed a buck 80 and was the editor of our great countries top cooking magazine.
Little Giblet was in the thick of negotiations . “It’s gonna be different from now on see.” “We been barryin too many of our kind.” “You evea had ta bury ya sister when alls is left is a head?!”
Giblet roared to great applause and bobbing of heads. “We an’t thankful fer dat… we an’t thankful fer dat,” he trailed off as in a distant memory.
“What’s gonna happen is yer gonna write the most beautiful Thanksgiving menu we’s eva seen.” Giblet boomed. “Turkey free!” “Mickey here is gonna email it to your office.”
When the dame was through and the email was sent, she spoke for the first time. “Ok you’ve got what you wanted.” “This is crazy, it’s not even going to make any difference,”she asserted from her position secured to a rusty chair.
Giblet shook his head. “We an’t as dumb as we look sweetheart.” “This is only the beginning. “We’s gonna need to make an example out of you, an’t we Turks”
Giblet gave the sign and the turkeys were upon her.
This was great! “We ain’t thankful fer dat,” oh man that is so funny. And his name is Giblet. That is great. Good work.
Thanks:) I’m glad you enjoyed it.