Re-Gifted: an Original Story by Jennifer Weigel
Pauline had been eager to have Donna over for a private party to get to know her better and celebrate the holidays. They had been flirting with one another at work at Fast Joe’s Burger Joint for some time, with her working the register and Donna grinding and grilling the meat in the back.
They both worked the late shift and loved Stephen King novels and Ozzy. Together, they made fun of their over-perky manager who always looked like she was just coming off a morning yoga rave and the 2AM stoners who ordered more food than they could possibly eat. They snuck off for “smoke breaks” and got high together. They had a thing.
Everything was in place, there were pine decorations and lights over the hearth. The fireplace was lit and music playing softly in the background, and a kettle warming mulled apple cider. Pauline was playing the perfect hostess.
Donna was eager to come and was dressed in her velvet finery for the occasion.
She had brought the perfect gift…
Pauline opened the box and screamed. Staring back at her was a severed child’s head in a jar, neatly cut, eyes glazed over. It reeked of formaldehyde. Its blonde hair trailed in wispy swirls to the surface.
Donna stared at her in dazed dread. Did she know? It was still a perfectly good head, it wasn’t obviously pallid or rotting and great care had been taken to drain it of any excess blood so it wouldn’t leak out into the jar and muddy everything in its preservation process.
Was it that obvious?
Pauline clamped the lid down on the box in a frenzy and ran to the bathroom. The retching heaving sound of her throwing up in the toilet echoed down the hall.
Donna worried. She must know… It hadn’t seemed too obvious. The head was still fresh. Donna had only received it from her cousin Ellie the night before at their family holiday social and had complimented Ellie on her exquisite taste and expert embalming skills. A child’s head for Krampusnacht was always the most perfect gift, and she did have quite the collection.
But Donna didn’t need another preserved head. Her mantle was already full so she had moved on to collecting pinky fingers. They didn’t take up as much room and they were always so delicate and small. But her cousin Ellie wouldn’t have known that and so, there she was, gifted with one more head and nowhere to put it.
Surely Pauline would appreciate it, they had so much in common.
They both worked the late shift and loved Stephen King novels and Ozzy. Together, they made fun of their over-perky manager who always looked like she was just coming off a morning yoga rave and the 2AM stoners who ordered more food than they could possibly eat. They snuck off for “smoke breaks” and got high together. They had a thing.
Pauline had finally stopped throwing up long enough to dash to the kitchen and snatch up the phone. She was speed dialing, a low tone followed by two high ones.
It isn’t that bad.
No need to call the cops just because of a re-gifting, how inappropriate and overly dramatic. She should be taught a lesson in manners, thought Donna as she cut the phone line. She knew the police would be on their way soon. She turned to Pauline.
“Don’t you like it honey?” she asked.
Pauline was frozen to the spot clutching the phone in her long beautiful fingers. She let out a long whimpering sigh, almost more like a hushed gasp or a stifled cry. She couldn’t move or think or articulate a response so she just stared back at Donna who glowered at her expectantly.
“I said, don’t you like it honey?” Donna asked again studying Pauline intently like a cat fixated on a birdbath. Donna noticed for the first time how lithe and supple Pauline’s hands were as they cradled the phone. Her nails were exquisitely manicured and painted bright red for the holidays. Her hands appeared soft as silk, delicate and beautiful, not hands that were used to grinding meat or working the fryer…
Donna re-arranged her newly begun collection of pinky fingers later that night. She had to make room for the two new additions… Cousin Ellie and her family’s Krampusnacht gift exchange had come through yet again.
This is the kickoff to a new series exploring nature that is kind of horrifying, at least in ways. Our first subject is Vampires Among Us. There are lots of animals named for vampires, sometimes due to folklore and sometimes for their appearance (like the Vampire Squid), but most of these animals don’t have blood sucking tendencies.
Bats & Birds
There are legit vampire leaf-nosed bats in Central and South America that drink blood. They feed on mammals and are often shown to feed on livestock. They’d be kinda cute if they weren’t so creepy. There are also vampiric birds: some finches in the Galapagos have developed the taste for blood of other birds, mainly seabirds that flock to the islands to raise their young.
Leeches & Lampreys & More
And then you get into leeches and lampreys and other denizens of the water that are known to attach themselves to larger creatures and drink their blood. Leeches were even believed to have medicinal value (and still are in certain circumstances). And there are also numerous plants that are known to be parasitic and feed on other plants, wrapping their roots or vines around others to steal nutrients.
Spiders
Now I’m going to drift off into the realm where this becomes truly horrific. Spiders. Now, spiders aren’t vampires per se, seeing as how they actually kill their prey – they don’t just feed off of it while it remains living and wanders about its business. But because of their structure, they cannot eat solid foods, so they have to inject their prey with enzymes to liquefy it so they can slurp it out like a protein shake. That’s sort of vampirism on steroids if you ask me, just the kind that no one is coming back from.
Bloodsucking Bugs
But let’s get back on topic. Now let’s consider mites and ticks and fleas and mosquitoes and the like. Some drink blood for their survival; others do so as part of their reproductive cycle (like mosquitoes which otherwise eat fruit and nectar but need the extra protein from blood to grow their eggs).
Ticks need to feed on blood once at every stage of their life cycle and can pick up diseases along the way (like Lyme Disease) but don’t always do so. Different ticks are more likely to come in contact with different things and often humans are not their preferred meal but they are opportunistic and will feed on whatever is available when necessary. Symptoms of illness from tick bites may take years to develop and can have really weird side effects (like the allergy associated with Lone Star Ticks which makes a person unable to consume mammalian flesh).
Anyway, here are some brief glimpses of vampirism in nature. Thank you for joining us for Nightmarish Nature and may you avoid getting bitten by any true vampires among us… And I still think spiders take first place in the creepy eating category here, even if they aren’t technically vampiric.
This story came to me in a sort of roundabout way from a rather unusual source. So I thought I’d share it with you, dear readership, and see if you can make heads or tails of it. – Jennifer Weigel
Dread Pirate Rum Tum Tugger could tell this was the right spot.
The site, beneath the sweeping limbs of the Live Oak, Spanish Moss swaying gently in the breeze, was a perfect match to the crude map he had bought off that soothsayer Deuteronomy.
The earth moved easily, as if it had been excavated previously. He dug in with greater fervor with each swipe. The sandy soil gave way to reveal something hard. He scooped and smoothed the remaining detritus from the surface as he uncovered a box.
The carton was simple.
No markings; no ornamentation; no writing. Just a plain cardboard crate, brittle from having been buried for so long but still sturdy. He hoisted it from its burrow.
“Ha HO!” he shouted to the passing breeze, rousing a small cloud of birds that erupted from a nearby thicket. They captured his attention for a moment, but he quickly refocused and returned to his task.
The box was locked but no difference.
Any self-respecting ruffian like himself could pick a lock in seconds. And he did so with panache, as was his way. He pried the lid open and licked his lips.
Inside was the legendary Kernel of Eternal Life, a small sparrow’s heart, still beating.
Artwork description: Myself as Dread Pirate Queen Miss Kitty wearing black bell sleeve shirt and black vinyl skirt with strapping leather belt over leopard print shirt and tights, with strapping leather boots, pirate head wrap and leopard cat ears.
Image text reads: Purr! Avast ye mateys, Dread Pirate Queen Miss Kitty invites ye to check out her booty stash and dig ye up a dungbie prize. Seek ye some buried treasure! Just grab ye a plastic litter scoop and dig… dig… dig… to ye heart’s content.
I created this image for a promotional poster for a performance piece in a charity art show in which I, as Dread Pirate Queen Miss Kitty, hawked a carnival sideshow style sidewalk installation. For a mere $5 donation to the animal shelter the show supported, gallery goers could dig around in a kiddie pool full of litter to find a prize: a cheap plastic trinket from the dollar store. I had some takers, including one kid who seemed to really enjoy the digging and whose parents were all in, saying “You know, you can totally do that at home too.”
For more cat antics, we invite you to read C-2747’s logbook here on Haunted MTL. Feel free to check out more of Jennifer Weigel’s work here on Haunted MTL or on her writing, fine art, and conceptual projects websites.
Happy Mother’s Day to the Queen of Everything… nothing gets by you.
Artwork description: A Happy Mother’s Day card featuring a picture of a Nefertiti doll with swooping hair, glitter makeup, and elaborate gold and blue headdress and evening gown.
Image text reads: Happy Mother’s Day! You are the Queen of Everything and you shimmer brighter than the twinkliest star in the sky. Stay sparkly and shine on in your magnificent glitter bombasticness. You ARE truly everything everywhere all at once and you’ve seen and heard it all. Eyes in the back of your head and superpowered hearing mean we can’t get away with much no matter how hard we try. So Queen on and rule over home in sparkly sentinel.
And may this be a testament to why us kids shalt never get you out of bed too early or run amok while you are getting ready to start your day… Because being the Queen of Everything takes planning and preparation…
Feel free to check out this Mummy Dearest Mother’s Day card from 2021 here on Haunted MTL.
