We’ve fallen off of this a little bit, Matt Specter and I, but at one point we were excited to send this Chapter of The Story, Chapter 51, “Zek,” out every Thanksgiving. It was originally a Specter chapter, but I think it has truly come to belong to all of us.
Every year that one of us remembered, it went to at the very least, the people depicted in it, and often whichever poor souls we deemed deserving of attempting to relive a moment of our lives in Cincinnati.
It was new 26 years ago. Don’t let that sink in.
Reviews have always been mixed, but I like to think we created a Story Cinematic Universe that rivals the fair-to-middling productions by Tolkien, Marvel, Roddenberry, and Lucas.
This year, there is one Schattenjager in particular who needs to read it: James Brunner is dealing with a diagnosis of colon cancer, possibly as a result too many pops and pushes back in the 1990s (we never did learn how those cubes worked). He’s started a Yoda’s Thanksgiving of medical and surgical treatments.
Hopefully, laughter is still good medicine (the best medicine, of course, is usually, well, medicine), and hopefully this is still funny:
No quote fits this chapter.
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“Mmm, come, come. With a Jedi it is time to eat as well,” said Yoda.
Yoda had laid out quite a spread. We didn’t know what anything was, but
there sure was an awful lot of it.“Eat, eat. Mmmm, good food, yes? M-hm-hm-hm-hm-hm-hm. Ohhh.”
We sat down around the tiny table, careful not to bang our heads on the
low ceiling.“Mmmm…Came you very far, yes? Hungry you must be! Eat, eat.”
We looked at each other hesitatingly. Quite frankly, the stuff looked
and smelled gross. Finally, Saunders decided we had better not make an
incident, and started scooping himself some glop.“Why all the food?” asked Saunders conversationally, as the rest of us
followed his lead and helped ourselves.“Is it not holiday in universe from where you came?”
I almost dropped by plate of swamp algae. I wasn’t shocked that Yoda
knew where we were from, but Yoda’s use of the word ‘Holiday’…I looked at my watch, which still continued to function as if I were
walking around earth. The date said 11/27.“You made us Thanksgiving dinner?” I asked Yoda.
“Yes! Yes…good food we have, talk we will. Work I not on holidays,
whatever universe may they be in. Come, eat, eat.”I paused for a moment, then said genuinely and sincerely, “Thank you.”
The others turned to look at me, shocked by my sudden mood swing.
Slowly they seemed to realize that this really was our Thanksgiving
dinner, and that we should be truly thankful for it. Yoda had gone to
great trouble to make us feel welcome. I smiled, and took a bite of my
food.It was nasty. I chewed slowly, fighting the urge to spit it back out.
Everyone around me was having a similar reaction, except for Yoda, who
ate with wild abandon, constantly commenting on the quality of the food.Suddenly, he stopped, and looked up in shock.
“Ohhh…” he said, “Forgot I the most important thing!”
We all watched with intent curiosity as he picked up an empty bowl, got
up from the table, went over to the corner of the room, and opened a
large door, revealing a small horse-like creature. Yoda placed the bowl
on the ground in front of the horse-thing, then calmy went to its side
and punched it in the gut. The horse responded by vomiting into the
bowl. We stared in a mixture of horror, confusion, and nausea, as Yoda
brought the bowl back to the table, and began to spoon it over his food
like gravy. Suzanne had her hand over her mouth, and Loren looked
green.Yoda finished scooping, and offered the bowl to us.
“Use the horse puke,” he said, “Use the horse puke!”
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