Dark Meat

A Story by srh922

Assignment: use juxtaposition to create irony. I also experimented with second person.

Dark Meat

The rich, mouthwatering aroma of Grandma’s roasted Thanksgiving turkey reaches your nose the moment you get off the interstate across town from your annual holiday convocation. Memories of last year’s festivities flood your mind in a sea of sights, sounds, tastes, and smells. You can feel the creamy mashed potatoes against your teeth. As always, your family’s slow trek through holiday traffic in the city is unduly slow, but full of fun. You wave to the children in the cars around you. You count fifteen Pennsylvanian license plates. You sigh with boredom. The crowded side streets and towering skyscrapers begin to thin out. Then, at long last, you’re jumping out of the minivan and you’re seated between Uncle Bob and cousin Jack, passing the gravy to Aunt Poppy and getting kicked under the table by cousin Kelly. Just as you expected, the turkey melts in your mouth, and your mashed potato volcano erupts with gravy just as it did last year. You barely notice when it begins to pour outside as your favorite team wins the big game. You glance out the window for a brief moment and see a ragged man standing on the sidewalk in the rain, looking inside. Your eyes connect for an instant. As you watch, he sighs and continues at a limp down the street. You tell yourself there’s nothing that you could do…

…Unless…

He kicks the empty can down the street as he walked from house to house. Wind and rain buffet the man from every angle, but he just keeps limping on. It’s all he has left to do now. His house is gone, his family with it. Ordinarily on Thanksgiving he would sulk in an alley, but this year he is restless. He roams the streets in the rain looking for a Thanksgiving feast. He looks in the window at the next house. For a split second, he makes eye contact with a small boy standing inside looking out at him. A tear forms in his eye as he breaks eye contact and hobbles off to the next house. For the first time in his life, the man prays. He prays that the boy never winds up like him. He prays for a bright future and a warm bed for both of them. A few minutes later he watches the family with the boy exit the house and get into the car. The car drives away. The man notices something on the porch and limps back to house. A bucket of Kentucky Fried Chicken waits for him underneath and next to the door, out of view of anyone exiting the house. The man quickly stumbles over and peers inside: a lone drumstick. Tentatively, he raises it to his lips…and spits the meat bitterly on the ground. “Dark meat,” he thinks to himself.