Pass the Torment, Hold the Grace [Wraith]
Hell celebrates on a Thursday that never ends, a stuck calendar page glued to the furnace of forever where clocks melt and alarms keep ringing without moving a single hand,
An endless dining room stretches off both ways, tablecloth scorched at the edges, chairs mismatched, all carved from bones and old pews that refused to stay in any promised land,
Up above, chandeliers drip wax that never cools, strings of cranberries char to black pearls, and the ceiling sweats grease that smells like every bad decision anyone ever made in a church parking lot when they swore they had a plan,
Down below, a crowd of the damned shift in their seats like nervous relatives stuck at the kid’s table of eternity, napkins made of old apologies folded neat on their laps as if politeness might save them where no prayer can.
At the head of the table sits the host, tie red as raw regret, shirt crisp even as the flames lick the cuffs,
Smile sharp enough to carve ham, eyes reflecting all your worst moments on loop, the greatest hits of every time you turned kindness away because it felt too soft, too rough,
They raise their fork and the room falls quiet, the pitch of the silence high and brittle, like the instant before a fight during a normal family holiday when everyone pretends everything is fine while their teeth grind through bluff,
Then the silver cloche lids lift and the smell of the feast crawls over the table like a fog that tasted resentment in life and came back down here distilled, pure and tough.
The turkey arrives first, a massive bird that never stopped flapping, wings pinned with skewers hammered through tendon and stubbornness,
Its skin blistered and splitting, steam rising in shapes that look way too much like faces you recognize from grudges you packed and never unpacked, faces you swore you would forget but never truly let off the hook, no matter how much forgiveness you profess,
Every slice bleeds stories instead of juice, each strip of meat a replay of some moment you could have shut your mouth and did not, some kindness you could have offered but turned into a weaponized joke instead, then claimed it was all in jest,
Carving knives slip easy through breast and thigh, letting loose a sound halfway between a sigh and a scream, and the host laughs low, saying this bird was marinated in unspoken apologies and marred chances, then basted in every “I’m fine, really” you ever used as a bulletproof vest.
Stuffing spills from the cavity, thick with stale promises and crumbs of good intentions never actually baked,
Little cubes of dried bread shaped like plans you never followed through, soaked in the grease of indulgences you justified while insisting you were awake,
Mixed in with the herbs are names you cannot say out loud anymore, the ones you lost by slow neglect while you scrolled and drank and chose silence at the crossroads instead of a call you were too proud to make,
You spoon it onto your plate and it clings to the metal hard, as if the past is tired of being scooped and digested and wants to stay intact for once, wants to remind you that for every given second chance, there was one you never offered back, no matter how often you claim grace as a trait.
Gravy boats circle, heavy and hot, filled with liquid from an underground spring where every swallowed grudge dripped and settled,
It pours like melted bronze over everything you touch on the plate, a slick coat of bitterness made silky and tasty enough that you barely notice how much of it you have already accepted,
Mashed potatoes arrive as clouds of guilt whipped airy, smooth, with the lumps taken out so no one chokes on the reality of what the harvested roots lived through before they got mashed into something palatable and aesthetic,
You dig your fork in and steam rises in greasy halos that ring your head for a second, mocking the version of you that always pictured yourself as the wounded party, never the architect.
At the far end of the table, two souls argue over which side dish they deserve.
One clutches a bowl of green beans strung with onions charred black, each crisp head a little halo of burnt promises,
The other reaches for candied yams, those orange slabs drowned in sugar and scorched marshmallow, sticky enough to trap flies and excuses and every time you said “that’s just how I am” and meant “I refuse to unlearn my poisons,”They bicker in whispers that sound like your thoughts at three in the morning when you replay every petty comment you have ever made, deciding again that you were justified, then doubting it, then assuring yourself that you were pushed, driven, forced,
And the host watches, amused, letting both bowls drip onto the cloth until stains bloom like maps of disasters you set in motion long before you claimed sin never came from your own hands, just from some outside source.
When the wishbone comes, it arrives on a silver tray carried by a servant whose eyes are empty holes filled with flickering reruns of all the times you made a wish and then never lifted a finger to help it live,
The bone is bigger than it should be, forked and glossy, still wet with ghostly meat that smells like every half-hearted gratitude speech you faked at dinners when you kept one eye on the door and one on what the leftovers would give,
Two nearby damned are chosen to pull, hands slick, grip slipping, knuckles white as they strain to snap potential in their favor, each one silently asking for escape, for a do-over, for someone else to just be the one to forgive,
It cracks, of course it cracks, sending splinters into both palms, and the host grins, explaining that down here the wish always goes to the bone, not the bearer, and the bone only ever craves more fractures to live.
Pumpkin pie is served in slices that tremble but never fall apart, filling like congealed fear, spices sharp as any blade,
The crust crumbles under the fork with the exact sound your heart made when you realized you never said thank you to the one person who held you together when the year chewed through your plans and left you betrayed,
Whipped topping swirls on top, white and perfect, that fake purity taste laid thick over a center full of every time you took kindness as weakness, every time you rolled your eyes at someone’s sincere gesture like affection was some cheap charade,
You eat it anyway, because you are wired for sweet, for comfort, for that numb moment where taste beats thought, and for a while the sugar sits heavy enough on your tongue that you forget every dream you quietly flayed.
No one leads a blessing here.
Instead, the host points to each guest in turn and lists, out loud, what they used to be thankful for when they believed someone listened upstairs,“My job,” says one, “my health,” says another, “my family,” adds a third, and the host nods, then finishes each line with the addendum they never voiced, the selfish little clause tucked underneath, the “as long as nothing is asked of me in return, as long as I do not have to face my own share, as long as no mirror appears,”By the time they reach your name, you are staring at your plate, watching gravy swirl into shapes that look suspiciously like faces you ghosted, numbers you deleted, messages you never answered out of spite, fear, or the simple comfort of pretending not to care,
The host recites your lost blessings with surgical accuracy and then carves them open, shows you the rot at the core where gratitude existed only when things went your way, in your time, on your terms, never when it meant bending, yielding, sharing the air.
Outside the windows you cannot open and would not want to, a sky of molten coal glows and boils,
Ash drifts down in lazy spirals that mimic snow from far away, but carries the smell of burned out plans and charred loyalties and every time you stayed silent in the face of cruelty because you did not want to get involved or lose your spot among familiar faces who loved their darker spoils,
Inside, the candles on the table burn with small blue flames that cast shadows wrong, stretching smiles into grimaces, turning affectionate gestures into claws when you look at them straight,
Somewhere in the corner, a kid who never got the childhood they deserved sits on a booster seat carved from old school desks, breaking rolls in half and stacking them into small fortresses, whispering their own private thank you to nothing at all as they pretend the burning wallpaper is just a loud, weird sunset.
Dessert trays come last, piled with every memory you tried to bury under seasonal cheer.
Those cookies you ate in the dark while doomscrolling instead of answering your mother’s call, those drinks you poured too strong at Friendsgiving and then used as an excuse for words that cut deeper than any carving knife here,
It’s all on the tray in edible form, frosted and candied, dipped in chocolate and rolled in crushed nuts of resentment, labeled with polite little signs in looping script that reads things like neglect, envy, petty cruelty, cowardice, fear,
You reach for the smallest piece and your hand passes right through, unable to choose, because down here the feast is already in you, the menu was written on the inside of your ribs long before you ever walked through those doors, year after year.
In the far distance, though distances mean nothing in this place, another table flickers in and out of sight,
A cheap card table in a tiny apartment you used to share, plastic plates and mismatched forks, a turkey breast instead of a full bird, laughter that came in shy waves but carried more heat than this entire furnace bright,
You feel the echo of it in your fingertips as you now grip a fork carved from bone and branded with your worst stories,
There was a time when you sat grateful over instant potatoes and store brand gravy because at least someone sat across from you and stayed, at least someone knew your name without reading it from a file or a list of past glories.
Hell’s host sees your eyes drift and smirks, leaning in close enough you catch the smell of every altar candle you ever lit for show and never backed with change,
They ask if you miss it, that cramped little table, that cheap canned cranberry you swore you hated but ate anyway because someone bothered to slice it into circles and fan it on a plate they borrowed from a neighbor, the entire scene small and strange,
You do not answer, but your grip on the fork tightens until your knuckles slick with the grease of this feast, your reflection warped in the polished metal like a funhouse mirror you cannot step away from because the heat behind you slams every exit door, leaves you in range,
This is what Thanksgiving looks like with no gratitude, just consumption, no grace, just a tally of debts and missed chances, served family-style in a hall where every bite takes something that might have been salvageable and salts the field so nothing good grows back within sight, no matter how wide your stomach or your rage.
Here, thanks is a word stripped down to bare bones, shoved under the carving knife, examined vein by vein until only motive remains.
If you ever do get a way out, it will not be because you cleaned your plate like a good guest, or because you could recite your blessings like a script while ignoring who you stepped on to reach them,
It will be because, even at this table, with your mouth full of your own history cooked to a perfect, blistered golden brown, you finally push the plate away, turn to the soul next to you, and say an honest “I am sorry I was like that,”Because down here, just for a second, the overhead lights flicker when anyone shares food without wanting something back, and the holiest thing you can do in this worst of dining rooms is refuse to keep feeding the beast you brought with you, that bottomless pit behind your ribs that never learned to leave a bite.