Post by Regan Voorhees on Apr 4, 2021 20:12:35 GMT -5
Easter is an absolute abomination of a holiday. Irritating enough that every Twitter comedian thinks calling it some iteration of Zombie Jesus Day is the height of hilarity, but the associated practices are a cavalcade of the grotesque. The most vile of which is coating baby chicks and bunnies in paint and awarding them to ghoulish children utterly unprepared to care for an animal. Even as a child, I found the traditions appalling. Yet still, my ambitious nature won out in the matter of hunting Easter eggs. Voorhees Farms hosted a massive hunt each year, over a hundred eggs, all to be sought by me and my awful cousins and the equally awful children of family friends. For three consecutive years I dominated the contest through sheer fortitude, cunning and deductive reasoning. But on the third year, when I was a girl of nine, my Uncle Waylon became emboldened by Easter wine and saw fit to challenge my achievement.
“You’re like that goddamn Omen kid,” he slurred, attempting to infuse his insult with some semblance of pop-culture power.
My Easter basket overflowed with eggs in all colors and patterns. Neons, pastels, glitters, stripes, polka dots, even rainbows. As was my ritual, they would be given a proper burial after I claimed my victory and the Amazon gift card that came with it. The card would pay for extra feed and treats for the eggs’ distraught mothers. A minor reprieve from their fowl grief. I stared back at my uncle, his bloodshot eyes attempting to intimidate me. I would not look away. “I’m not sure what you mean, Uncle,” I explained. “My success in this gastly egg hunt is well deserved, I assure you. Perhaps you should lie down.”
He staggered before me, propping himself upon the white painted fence beside us. Our English longhorn Virgil snorted from within. Like all little girls, I went through a Dante Alighieri’s Inferno phase, which was the origin of his namesake. The bull had a fondness for me, as I would often feed him pears and play my clarinet for him. There was no smacking of my hands when I would butcher Frere Jacques. Only two souls bonding over a mutual love of music. Uncle Waylon, blissfully unaware of his peril, continued his tirade. “You cheated,” he said, thoughtfully adding, “You little shit.”
I denied the accusation, shaking my head. Only one of my pigtails remained, as I undid the other so that I could bandage the ankle of a limping goat with the ribbon. Mother would be aghast at the sullying of my pristine Easter attire, but it was a worthwhile sacrifice. “I used the tools available to me,” I said, unaware that my arms were now hugging the basket and its hard won contents. My claim was the truth. While the other participants enjoyed success of their own in finding eggs, I seized their spoils through the power of argument. At the sight of a heavy basket, I would ask the holder how their own mother might feel if they were torn from her loving arms, never to be returned. If they were then piled together with other abductees, boiled alive and garishly painted afterwards by untalented and uncaring hands. And if, as a final affront to their memory, they were frivolously strewn about under bushes, next to rocks, on windowsills and low-hanging branches as part of some ghoulish contest. Even if they were found, they would be discarded like trash. The best fate they could hope for was to be overlooked and eaten by a dog some months later. Tears would inevitably follow and as they flowed, I would take their plunder as my own.
Uncle Waylon, for whatever reason, took exception to this strategy. Unable to undo my success with words, he lunged for the basket, sliding in the mud as I deftly sidestepped him. Virgil snorted again, dismayed at my uncle’s lack of sportsmanship and charged to my rescue. The fence exploded in a rain of splinters and Uncle Waylon was waylaid by Virgil’s two-thousand pound frame. That day, all three of us learned that with the proper angle, a bull’s horn could enter a man through his anus and emerge out his urethra. Fascinating, anatomically speaking. While it was a triumph for Virgil and myself, a spray of Uncle Waylon’s blood covered the front of my Easter dress, a seafoam piece I was particularly fond of. A dire price.
As Uncle Waylon’s loosed testicle rolled in front of me, I considered collecting it, painting it, and placing it in some devilishly clever hiding spot. Satisfying as that may have been, I doubt it would compare to the sound it made when squelched beneath the heel of my Mary Jane.