Thanksgiving Day, November 27, 2025 – Cafferty Farmhouse, Upstate New York

Every year, without fail, the Cafferty family returned to the crumbling old farmhouse perched on a windy ridge outside Auburn, New York. It didn’t matter that nobody liked each other. It didn’t matter that Uncle Don still hadn’t paid back that loan from 2003 or that Grandma Sybil once mistook Cousin Jax’s girlfriend for a call girl. It was Thanksgiving, and like an obligation handed down from purgatory itself, they came.

The house smelled of mildew, wet leaves, and the burning edge of overcooked pie crust. The radiator banged like a pipe organ being murdered. Voices competed in volume and pitch.

“I’m just saying, gluten is a myth,” said Aunt Lorna, for the third time.

“Lorna, if you say that one more time I’m putting stuffing in your ears,” growled her sister, Nancy, elbow-deep in a turkey carcass.

Jax sat at the far end of the table with his podcast mic, whispering, “Welcome to Family Fractures, the only show where blood isn’t thicker than gravy.”

Despite the dysfunction, the food was good. Real good. Plates were passed and scraped and refilled. They ate. Argued. Ate again. And again. And again.

The bickering became part of the meal—as familiar as cranberry sauce and just as tart. Grandpa muttered about Eisenhower. Sybil cackled with glee every time someone snapped. The Caffertys were awful, but they were full.

Or they should have been.

“Didn’t we already finish the yams?” asked Nancy, looking puzzled as she ladled another scoop.

“Did you make two turkeys?” asked Don.

Nobody answered. Nobody remembered cooking a second.

By 9:00 PM, they were sluggish, slouched, still chewing. The meat was… tender. The gravy dark and heady.

“This tastes like nostalgia,” said Jax, chewing slowly, eyes glazed.

And still the food came. No one admitted bringing more. No one left the table. Not even to use the bathroom.

At midnight, Nancy rose unsteadily and said, “I feel like my skin doesn’t fit right.”

She wasn’t wrong. Her cheeks sagged like old dough. Don’s teeth were falling out. Lorna’s fingers bent backward when she reached for a biscuit.

“We’re eating ourselves to death,” someone whispered. Maybe Sybil. Maybe not.

And still they kept chewing.

A long moment passed. Then, in silence, a fresh tray of steaming rolls appeared at the table’s center.

No one moved. No one spoke.

Except Jax, who leaned into the mic, and said in a hoarse, cracking voice, “And that, dear listeners, is the sound of the final course.”

The next day, the farmhouse was quiet. Warm dishes still sat on the table, half-eaten, the steam now long gone. Eight chairs. Empty.

A single photo rested on a folded napkin. It was new. The Caffertys all smiling, posed at the dinner table, their faces waxy, wide-eyed.

And behind them, in the kitchen doorway, stood a tall, gaunt figure in an apron, face obscured by steam, holding a ladle.

Smiling.

Just smiling.