By Fran Friel
1 – Cody’s Revenge
Dipping her finger in the icing, Samantha takes a decadent lick, grinning at the rich taste of chocolate swirling on her tongue. Surrounded by the warmth of her kitchen and the scent of baking, she marvels at how happy she feels. The two years since her brother's disappearance had been all consuming, but with the love of her family and some good therapy, she feels alive again. Golden curls frame her face as she gazes out the kitchen window at the green Spring day - she breathes deeply, hungry to fill herself with the moment.
Turning back to her work, she puts the final touches on the birthday cake, when Cody, her twelve year old son, slams through the kitchen door at a trot. “Hey, Buddy, how was school?” asks Samantha. He whizzes past her in a blur of blonde hair and baggy denim on his way to the refrigerator.
“Okay,” he shrugs, while he nabs an ice cream sandwich from the freezer.
Samantha looks at the ice cream and then at her son with her patented raised-eyebrow, “Sorry, buddy. Birthday or not, there’s no junk food before dinner. Besides, you’ll be in a sugar coma soon enough at the party tonight.”
The boy rolls his eyes at her and tosses the ice cream back in the freezer, then grabs an apple from the bowl on the kitchen table. “Happy now?” he asks, as he swipes a finger full of icing from the mixing bowl.
Samantha swats at his hand and smiles. “You haven’t told me your special birthday dinner request yet,” she says. “What’ll it be, buddy?”
With a sly grin, Cody answers, “Mashed potatoes!”
Chill bumps slip over Samantha’s skin. Her son knows how she feels about the horrible roots. Obligated by tradition to prepare his one birthday meal request, she realizes he’s enjoying a moment of revenge for the “no junk food” rule.
“You okay, Mom?” He beams at her with cherubic innocence.
“How about some rice instead, Cody?” She strains to maintain a neutral tone, knowing her son’s ninja-like skill at detecting any sign of parental weakness.
“Nah, I don’t want rice, Mom. I’ve really got my heart set on mashed.”
“Fine...brat.” She mumbles, accepting her defeat.
“See ya’.” The boy heads for the door, calling over his shoulder. “Going skating with Brian and Josh.”
Already lost in her thoughts, Samantha doesn’t answer. With a blind stare, she no longer sees the chocolate frosted cake in front of her. Instead, she’s remembering the root cellar at her parents’ farm and her the favorite sport of her two brothers – terrifying her.
2 - Brotherly “Love”
“You heard about Old Lady Carne, the witch, didn’t ya’? How she kills people and chops ‘em up?” said Samantha’s brother, Butch. Samantha stared down at the school book laying open on the kitchen table, pretending to ignore her older brother who was looming beside her.
Butch continued, “Folks say she’s pure evil, Sam. She eats her victims’ hearts, then casts a spell on the leftover bits and stashes ‘em in people’s root cellars. Those bits just sit there waitin’ for a new host to spread her evil. If you touch ‘em,” Butch whispered leaning close to Samantha’s ear, “you’re done for.”
“Yeah,” said Danny, standing across from Samantha. “I heard the evil hibernates in your flesh for years just waitin’. And all it takes is a little spilled blood to wake it up!” Danny slaps his hand hard on the kitchen table, and Samantha’s body jolts at the noise. She drops her chin to her chest, hoping the veil of her hair will hide the fear on her face.
With a satisfied grin, Danny says, “You know, Sam, when you get older, Mom’s gonna make you go down in the root cellar - down in the dark all by yourself. We’ve had to do it,” he said, nodding toward Butch.
Butch nodded his head and stared down at the floor. “Yup, it’s just a matter of time before it’s your turn, Sammy.” Her brothers stared at each other with feigned concern. “Poor, Sam,” they said, as they walked by patting her shoulder and snickering behind her back. “Just be careful what you touch down there in the root cellar.”
They were right, of course. The horrible day came when it was Samantha’s turn. “Go on down to the root cellar and get me some potatoes, Samantha,” said her mother, as she dressed a chicken for supper. Samantha froze on the spot and looked at her brother standing in the doorway. He looked back at her and nodded with his eyebrows raised in a “see, I told you so” look. Shaking his head sympathetically, he slipped from the doorway.
Samantha dawdled around, putting on her jacket and tightening the laces on her sneakers. “What are you waitin’ for girl?” her mother asked, shoving a basket in her hands and chucking her under the chin. “Go on now. Those potatoes aren’t gonna walk into this kitchen on their own.”
In the waning light of the Autumn afternoon, Samantha crossed the yard to the root cellar like she was marching to the drone of a funeral dirge. A chill breeze gusted up from behind her as if urging her on toward her fate. Accepting her doom, she sighed, put the basket down at the entrance and opened the heavy cellar door. It squealed in protest, exposing the wooden steps below.
The stairway down to the root cellar was littered with shadows from the fading light. With stoic determination, Sam hooked the basket over her arm and clumped down the steps, one by one, feeling her way along the cool wall with her hands. As the darkness closed around her, she felt a sudden painful prick from something sharp along the wall. She cried out and stuck her finger in her mouth, tasting the rusty tinge of blood and feeling her thin courage slipping away like a ghost.
Sam’s face turned hot with tears and anger. Why would her mother put her in such danger? Hadn’t she heard about the witch? It didn’t really matter, she thought to herself, because once her mother gave an order, there was no way out.
Resigned to her duty, Sam continued down the steps with her shoulder to the wall until at last, she felt the hard dirt floor beneath her sneakers. She’d watched her mother pull a light string at bottom of the steps so Sam groped around above her head in the dark searching for the elusive string. She imagined that the damp odor of the room surrounding her smelled like an open grave. Near panic at what lurked in the cellar, Sam’s shallow breaths became gasps in her desperation to find the light. The groping turned into flailing her arms, while the cut on her finger throbbed to the beat of her pounding heart.
When Sam finally felt her hand catch the light string, she gave it a violent pull. The cellar burst into earthy color. With a heavy sigh her shoulders relaxed as she looked around at the rows of shelves packed with homemade fruit and vegetable preserves, and baskets and sacks of produce neatly lined along the side walls. She was relieved by the tidy surroundings and felt infuriated that her brothers had frightened her for so long about nothing. “I’ll show them,” she said to herself, as she tramped over to the bumpy brown sack marked “potatoes.”
She sat her basket down on the dirt floor and reached into the sack of potatoes. A putrid stench met her nose just as her hand sunk deep into a warm slime. Wormy fingers grabbed at her hand, sucking at her skin like starving maggot mouths. Before she could pull away, her wrist was squeezed tight in a firm fingered grip within the swarming mass – a hand! The open cut on her finger burned with the sting of acid. Shrieking and yanking at her arm, Sam finally wrenched her wrist free; just then the light snapped off. She was left in complete darkness.
A deep panic rose in her belly, while under her skin crawled the ghost of the wormy fingers. Soaked in cold sweat, she panted like a frightened animal and stumbled back toward the stairs. The potato sack shifted behind her, and in the dying afternoon light dusting the stairwell, Samantha saw a shadow pass in front of her. She stopped dead still, holding her breath; praying that her pounding heart couldn’t be heard in the dark. A scraping sound came from behind, as something clamped down hard on her shoulder. Overtaken by hysteria, Sam screamed and windmilled her arms around her.
A loud cackling echoed through the cellar. The light popped on with her brother, Danny, holding the pull string while Butch doubled over behind her, his eyes watering from laughter. In tears, Samantha slapped her brother with her slime-covered hand, and kicked the other in the shin as hard as she could. Pushing past, she screamed, “I hate you!” and ran up the steps, sobbing.
Samantha never forgave her brothers for their cruel prank, which of course became family legend. Since that day, she loathed the sight, the smell and the feel of potatoes. For many years, she had full-blown phobic attacks of sweating and hyperventilating at the mere sight of a potato. Besides this problem, Sam was also plagued by a strange reaction whenever accidentally cutting any part of her formerly slime-covered hand. Even a paper cut could bring on a blazing rash from her fingertips to her shoulder, along with an unbearable wormy feeling that swarmed beneath her skin. Unable to cure the problem, several doctors assured her it was all in her head.
Although teased mercilessly by her brothers - “Spud Alert! Spud Alert!” - Samantha sought therapy for her potato phobia. After many years of counseling, she was no longer thrown into a panic by the proximity of potatoes. French fries and hash browns lost their hold as subjects of her nightmares. With a family of her own, on occasion Samantha even subjected herself to buying potatoes, if only to prove that she could do it. Still, she never cooked them, leaving them to sprout, wither and rot away in the safety of the potato drawer.
When Samantha’s parents retired, her brother Butch assumed the duties of the farm. After years of teasing her about the earthy nemesis, her brother suddenly stopped the mocking without explanation. In fact, she noticed that during her visits to the farm, they no longer served potatoes at the family meal. An uncharacteristic courtesy by her brother, Samantha suspected it had been the doing of his wife, Sissy. When she thanked Sissy for her kindness, she was assured that it was Butch’s firm instructions that potatoes be banned from the table, and from the house for that matter – apparently he’d developed an allergy. Samantha had her suspicions about the allergy but she thought it was best to avoid the subject. She was just grateful for the absence of what she secretly still considered to be putrid lumps of evil.
3 - Tuber Duty
No longer noticing the fine Spring day, Samantha takes her time cleaning-up after her birthday cake baking project, glancing at the potato drawer with trepidation. Stalling as long as possible, she covers the cake and places it on the kitchen table. She washes and dries all the dishes - by hand - stacking them neatly in the cupboards. Sweeping the kitchen for any stray crumbs, Samantha steers clear of the potato drawer. Finally, with the kitchen spotless she can no longer avoid the inevitable encounter with the dreaded tubers.
Like a soldier preparing for battle, Samantha pulls the heavy-duty rubber gloves out from under the sink – the ones she uses for nasty cleaning jobs and harsh chemicals. Shoving her hands deep into the thick red gloves, she walks toward the potato drawer like a bomb squad technician; the sound of pulsing blood hammering in her ears. As she reaches for the drawer handle, she hesitates, hearing a muffled sound of rustling. She tells herself that it’s just the leaves on the trees, blowing in the breeze outside the window. Cold sweat beads on her forehead and under her arms, as she reaches for the handle of the drawer. Taking a deep breath, she gives it a firm tug. It doesn’t budge. She tries a better grip, but the drawer won’t move – it’s as if it’s been glued shut.
Samantha considers her options – a stuck drawer could be a good excuse for not making potatoes for dinner, but then again, she knows that her son would come along and pull the drawer right open. She’d never hear the end of the teasing. “Oh, come on Mom. They’re just harmless potatoes. See!” he’d say, as he chased her around the kitchen with a hideous spud. No, she had to get the drawer open on her own.
After several rounds of unsuccessfully yanking at the handle, Samantha’s potato fears fade into the background, as the important job at hand is simply to open the stubborn drawer. Finally, she resorts to a good strong butcher knife for prying it open. Choosing the biggest and thickest blade she owns, she slides it free from the its sheath in her butcher block collection of knives.
Hindering her grip, she tosses the thick gloves to the floor and grabs hold of the knife handle with her bare hands. Holding the thick wooden grip fist over fist like a hari-kari blade, Samantha slots the knife around the edge of the drawer with determination. Kneeling before the drawer, she grits her teeth and levers back as hard as she can. With a loud Crack!, the drawer pops open and her hands slip down the razor edge of the blade, slicing deep into the flesh of her palm and fingers. With the shock of the wounds, Samantha drops the bloodied knife, leaving it to fall into the open drawer; her warm red blood mingles with the fingery roots that have emerged.
An old terror rises in her mind and body as the wormy feeling rushes under the skin of her sliced palm and creeps up the length of her arm. The allergic reaction leaves her breathless; her chest tightening with fear.
Trailing blood behind her, she runs to the sink, cursing herself for being so careless. She turns the faucet on full and lets the cold water run over the gaping wounds in her hands. The water spins red around the sink and into the drain. Hot tears roll down Samantha’s cheeks as she washes the deep cuts with stinging soap - the allergic reaction to the slashes intensifies as the burning rash covers her skin. She watches in horror as it crawls along her arm, while she mumbles self-recriminations, “How could I be so careless and slice my hands? How could I be stupid enough to be afraid of potatoes?” She pulls long rows of paper towels from the holder and wraps them tight around her hands – no doubt her sliced hands will need stitches. Shock and the loss of blood begin to make her feel woozy.
“Dammit, what a fine thing to do on Cody’s birthday!” On shaky legs, she turns to reach for the phone to call her husband but something is squeezing her ankles. She looks down stunned to see slender white roots spreading across the kitchen floor, winding their way around her ankles and crawling up her bare legs. As the scream peals from deep in her throat, her feet are yanked out from under her. She falls and the back of her head slams hard against the edge of the kitchen table. Samantha’s world feels like a slow motion movie. From behind her eyes, she watches the birthday cake tumble from the table and splatter beside her on the floor; bits of frosting and shards of the shattered plate fly at her face.
Tears well in her eyes as her foggy gaze falls on the chocolate icing and the yellow innards of the ruined cake that are scattered across the floor. “My poor, Cody,” the thought whispers in her mind. Feeling a tug at her wrist, Samantha glances down - at the movement a searing pain shoots through her head. Blinking hard to clear her vision, she sees that the long fingery roots have followed the trail of her blood that began at the open potato drawer. In a flash of clarity she remembers the wormy fingers in the potato sack; the acid-like burning of the cut on her finger. She realizes that her blood is tainted, dormant with the evil curse her brothers had thought was only a joke. Her therapist told her the witch’s curse wasn’t real. The doctors said the crawling rash of her allergy was psychosomatic. As Samantha lay paralyzed on the kitchen floor, feeling the slimy root fingers wrapping around her body, she knows for a fact they were all wrong.
Samantha feels the fleshy roots that have roped around her, tugging and pulling at her body until she begins to slide. Unable to resist, her back slips across the smooth tiles of the kitchen floor, through the splattered icing, the chunks of broken birthday cake, and past the industrial strength gloves she wished she’d never taken off. Helpless to cry out, Samantha begins to feel squishy, as if she is melting inside her own skin.
The long white fingers continue to flow and creep around her, squeezing and tightening until her breathing becomes nearly impossible. Drifting in and out of consciousness, Samantha hears the tangle of roots rustling over her face, searching for any skin that has been left bare. A sudden pain sizzles across her body, jolting her fully awake one last time. To Samantha, her brother’s disappearance is no longer a mystery. She knows that her flesh is dissolving. Hot tears fall from her blind eyes and her last breath fades as she feels the crushing sensation of being squeezed into a drawer.
The memory of her husband’s embrace flits across Samantha’s ebbing thoughts along with images of her children...Cody’s cherubic grin. As her mind slips away, a final thought bubbles to the surface – “I should have made the rice...”
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