Reverse Engineering

“It’s wrong,”

He stood over the seventh tin tray of the evening.

“Too pasty in consistency, close but off by a noticeable margin,”

Five-eighths of the day prior and now one-twelfth of the present had already fallen prey to these experiments. Something was always so grossly inadequate in each. The first had been too dry. The third had marginal charing adorning the top. The fourth was the closest texture-wise but the flavor was off. Number six was too heterogeneous and now number seven lies a homogeneous mass; still. 

The divinity of the heavenly sickle was curtailed at the spill of radiating egg yolks. The moon halted by a light-bulb with an ever-shrinking filament. His eyes burrowed into the bottoms of their nests, his eyelids leaden hulls rising and falling on pools of mercury. There was water on his face. He couldn’t take it any longer, his failure, his falter.

“It isn’t how I remember. It has to be the way I remember. That’s what I told her I would do,”

He promised her he would make it the way she always did. Thanksgiving passed effortlessly from future to present to past with every deliberate wink, every forceful putsch against that slumber which beckons all. He was tired. So dreadfully tired. 

Maybe he needed more bell seasoning, a teaspoon or so to get it just right. Perhaps, an egg yolk instead of the full egg when adding the forth one. He didn’t know.

There were note cards everywhere, some adorned with a sober penmanship, a leveled hand. Some were more runic in nature, vague grasps of familiar symbols. The hand of a doctor wrote these. They were arranged in such a way as to give no indication of a progression. Some were tilted while some were straight. Some were pristine, others marred by some concoction or another. 

He held one in his hands. It was the same as all the others in a general sense. All had the same list of food stuffs. Stale bread, sausage, eggs, celery… All that differed between these copies were amounts and ratios. They were recipes for sausage stuffing. 

He slid his feet forward as his lower back met the face of the oven, he lowered in fits and starts as the friction from his heels scraping the the linoleum floor snagged his downward progress. Hues of ashtray stains sheathed the kitchen. His back was consumed by an uncomfortable heat, it burned after prolonged exposure. He couldn’t bring himself to move. He wouldn’t dare move. 

“She comes over at eight. Dinner is at twelve. I’m not going to be ready. This is the first one, I have to be ready.” 

His voice had a wild syncopation at this point, the meter kept changing. He spoke with the trills of the dead, a guttural rattle transposed into his nasal passages. He spoke with her voice.

“Then add the bell seasoning, about one… then add two pounds of sausage, about…celery sticks finely cut.”

“Why didn’t you write down the recipe?”

Why didn’t she write down the recipe? She always assumed she would be there to make it.

She was coming at eight, dinner was at twelve. 

Sodden eyes met now indistinct shimmers of a pale beacon. The light protruding forward in such a way as to suggest possible passage.

“I wish you were here,”

He didn’t try to grasp the shawls of moonlight anymore. All he had were inexact duplicates, a simulacrum. A recipe based on the most inexact of his faculties. He can’t remember her voice, let alone how her stuffing tasted. 

She wouldn’t know the difference, she would just be happy that he made it, that he was there with her for the first time. 

“It’s her first time, it has to be perfect. Just the way I remember it being,”

One could barely decipher these words if they heard them. 

“Just remember, please…”

“Then add the bell seasoning, about one… then add two pounds of sausage, about…celery sticks finely cut. Then add the bell seasoning, about one… then add two pounds of sausage, about…celery sticks finely cut.”

It was ceaseless. He mined a vein forever buried. New dirt, new bedrock, new everything always in the way. Something always in the way. Something always missing!

He tried to stand but fell forward onto his knees. He collapsed prostrate, hands extended as far beyond his being as possible. He grasped nothing. There is nothing to hold onto. He bowed before the moon. There was nothing outside; the stores were now shuttered; the roads in a placid static; the people bundled up with the thoughts of what was to come in but a few hours. 

She was coming at eight, dinner was at twelve. 

Only the blade of the moon was to witness him now.

“I know you’re not up there,”

He felt eyes upon him. The moon was a memory. The moon is a mirror. The moon will be gone in only a few hours. 

He shuddered at the sense of surveillance. He felt unworthy. His offerings lay in the trash bin. He now lies among the remains of his failed ventures, stale bread and bits of congealed pig. He couldn’t rise. He felt adamant to join her. 

He remembered what she said to him last.

“I can’t wait to spend Thanksgiving with you dear, I love you!”

He closed his eyes.

He was met by a white light. The sun. It was morning. The glare diminished in opaqueness. He was met with a face unfamiliar, as if two people were superimposed onto one another. It was her. It was his girlfriend. 

“Oh my god, are you alright?!”

He rose with the grace of a rusted automaton.

“I’m fine. I was making food and I must’ve fallen asleep. I made stuffing for us.” 

He looked to the counter and saw attempt seven, still too homogeneous. He had to serve it. There was no time.

“Then add the bell seasoning, about … then add… pounds of sausage, about…celery sticks… cut.”

He reheated it in the oven. Twelve struck and familiar bells sounded.

“Honey, this stuffing is amazing!”

“Thank you. It isn’t great, my grandma used to make it better.”