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Bria awoke. Her eyes, still fuzzy from the battle, adjusted to the small fires lighting the hall. Where was she? Underground? Dead? She remembered being on the Capital steps, the people cheering for her. She had won the Turkey Games, but it had cost so much.
“Hello?” she cried out, afraid. The only replies were soft gobbles in the dark.
She noticed a calendar adorning the wall, assembled from feathers and cranberries. Could it be Thanksgiving this weekend? Could it really be five years since the war?
Every child in the Maple Leaf schools is taught about Minister Colwell—his bravery all those years ago, outlawing small producers from processing their own turkeys. It was the kind of bold thinking that helped birth New Ivany.
Then the rebels came; clashing with the large turkey distributors and the agriculture department they dared to claim were in cahoots. Blood was spilled in those days; the blood of fathers and sons (but not turkeys). They were the years that began ham for Thanksgiving, and thus the end of everything that we knew.
Someone was approaching. Bria reached for her pumpkin knife as the figure came into view. It was Kerom!
“How’d you sleep?”
She ran to the boy she had thought dead and threw her arms around him. The familiar scent of fresh gravy clung to his clothes.
“Kerom, what is this place?” she asked. “What are you doing here?”
“What we’ve always done, Bria. What our mothers and fathers have done. What they don’t want us to do—slaughter turkeys.”
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This article appears in Oct 9-15, 2014.
Aaaaand, for those interested in seeing what a good parody actually looks like:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N2lRxqWbTec
I was really hoping this was a serious article about this issue.