Room for Thirds by J. Alan Hartman (ed)

Author:J. Alan Hartman (ed) [Hartman, J. Alan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: anthology, cozy, culinary, detective, holiday, mystery, recipes, women sleuths
Publisher: Untreed Reads Publishing
Published: 2013-10-24T00:00:00+00:00

Vegetables Aren’t Good For You!

By Laird Long

Morris knew something was wrong when the fat, brown potato he was about to pull out of the ground said to him, “You don’t really want to mash me, do you, Morris?”

Morris dropped the potato like it was hot and jumped backwards. Then he watched with widened eyes and gaping mouth as the potato burrowed itself back into the black earth.

Morris staggered over to the pumpkin patch section of his large garden. Thanksgiving was only a week and a half away, and he needed to start preparing the “all-inclusive” dinners for which he was rightfully famous throughout Morin County. His meals boasted turkey and all the trimmings, fresh raised and killed and cooked on his hobby farm.

So he was shocked a second time, when the big, orange pumpkin he laid trembling hands on said to him, “You don’t really want to gut me, do you, Morris?”

Morris backed off, almost tripping over one of the chickens that had free range of his small barnyard. He wiped his forehead, his mouth, staring from the pumpkin patch to the potato patch. Maybe if he approached a smaller vegetable, things would go better.

Morris cautiously walked over to the pea patch. He reached down for a plumped, green pod on the vine. And the peas inside said to him, “You don’t really want to shuck us, do you, Morris?”

He backpedaled.

Morris didn’t know what the heck was going on, but he did know that he sure as heck wasn’t going to approach the squash patch. He could well imagine what those large, yellow gourds would say to him.

Morris planted a damp, twitching hand on the side of his small red barn for support, thinking maybe the cream he’d put in his coffee that morning had been curdled. He often forgot to sniff in his rush to get to work.

It was a beautiful morning—bright and warm, a huge yellow sun beaming down out of a clear blue sky. Chickens clucked and birds chirped and…vegetables mouthed off? Morris didn’t grow any “magic” mushrooms on his farm, like some of his neighbours.

As he was leaning against the barn, desperately trying to regain his composure and figure out a plan of extraction to take on his vegetables, he suddenly heard the tramping of tiny feet behind him, coming from the open barn. He gulped, afraid to turn around. Were the animals against him, too? No, that chicken hadn’t beaked back.

He turned around.

Morris’s turkeys were marching out of the barn where he kept them, in a four-abreast formation, swinging their wings and waggling their wattles, webbed feet crunching rhythmically on the hard-packed ground. And as they tramped forward in feathered formation, they chanted in cadence, “Eat me-at, Morris! Eat me-at, Morris!” Bird after bird, marching out of the barn toward the stunned hobby farmer.

Morris reeled away. He stumbled over the chicken, tumbled backwards and banged his head on the blood-stained chopping block in the middle of the yard. He hit the ground like a sack of potatoes, out cold.

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