Tinny chiming filled the air. Flo groaned and slapped the ancient alarm clock. The stop was broken, so she had to endure its clamor until the spring wound out. In Flo's opinion, 4:30 am was a cruel time to be waking up during vacation break. But family tradition was family tradition. No matter how old she got or how far she moved away, family tradition would still suck her in. She pulled on clothes and staggered to the kitchen.

"Well, Little Miss Lay-a-Bed! Glad you could join us! You can start the stuffing!" Her mother handed her a bowl of chopped celery and onions. "Don't forget the garlic. The giblets are on the stove."

Flo tossed her weave over her shoulder and shuffled over to the stove. Butter was melting in a big frying pan. The smell of celery and onions cooking in butter, it was the smell Thanksgiving.

Nana tweaked her hair as she passed by. "Why do you want to be somethin' you're not, girl? You don't need no fake hair to be beautiful!"

"It's just style, Nana. All my friends wear it, even some of the boys!"

Nana snorted and turned back to making pies.

Flo sulked and stirred hot celery. The vegetables sizzled and popped as she threw the boiled giblets in the pan. She couldn't believe she was spending Thanksgiving break in Jardin du Lac. The rest of her college friends were in Florida, visiting theme parks and enjoying the beach. Her mother had been insistent this year, and Flo had succumbed to guilt.

"Nana's not getting any younger. Three years you been at college in Baton Rouge, and you haven't come to Thanksgiving once!"

"Nana will be dancing at our funerals, Mom." Flo couldn't imagine the world without her grandmother in it. Nana was continual and eternal, a goddess in support stockings and ancient flower-print dresses.

In the end, this year at least, family guilt had triumphed. Here she was in the middle of nowhere at Nana's house instead of enjoying herself in Florida.

"Bring a friend with you, liven things up," her mother had suggested. Right, like she wanted any of her friends knowing her grandmother was Nana Blythe, local Voodoo Queen and head of the Jardin du Lac Senior Ladies' Altar Society. Nana was famous in her parish. Hell, she was famous in neighboring parishes, for all that Jardin du Lac was small enough to make Thibodaux, population 14,000, look like a happening place. Flo didn't believe in any of that nonsense. Either kind, Voodoo or Catholic. The thought of bringing somebody from college home to this superstitious backwater made her queasy. Or maybe it was just the smell of frying giblets.

"Are you putting the garlic in that?"

"Yes, Mother!" Flo scowled at the un-chopped garlic cloves and opened the ancient metal cabinets, looking for garlic salt. A yawn overtook her as she grabbed a big shaker full of white powder. Carelessly she dumped on a couple of tablespoons and tasted a chunk of celery. Stuff must be old, it barely had any flavor. Flo stared at the peeling, illegible label for a moment. Nana kept things forever. She made Flo nuts. With a shrug, she upended the shaker.

She shoved the mixing bowl full of stuffing at her mother and went to get some coffee. A battered pot perked on the stove. Nana didn't believe in drip coffee makers. Flo poured a large helping into a stained mug and added molasses and cream. She ached for a double latte from her favorite coffee shop in Baton Rouge. Or even just regular coffee with artificial sweetener and powdered cream.

"Hurry up with that coffee and come stuff this bird so we can get it in the oven," her mother called. "I've got to punch down the rolls."

Flo rolled her eyes and went over to the kitchen table where the bird rested in state and savagely rammed stuffing into its cavity. She hated the feel of gooey stuffing. A shudder passed through her as her fingers brushed the ice-cold flesh along the turkey's ribs. This was the worst part of Thanksgiving, up to one's elbows in raw turkey. Flo sniffled, thinking of Florida.

"Mind you sew that turkey the way I taught you," Nana called out as she wrapped foil around the edges of her piecrusts.

Pumpkin pie, pecan pie, apple pie. The same three kinds of pie every Thanksgiving for as long as she could remember at Nana's house. Everything here was the same. Boring old place. All the young people moved off as soon as they could. No jobs, no future, no fun. She put in the last stitches on the turkey and wrestled the thing into its roaster. Flo shoved it into the oven with a sigh of relief. There was nothing left to do that the older women would trust her with until setting the table. Nap time. Slinking out of the kitchen towards the back bedroom, she fell face down on the musty chenille bedspread.

"Florette!"

Flo groaned. She hadn't been asleep thirty minutes, what could they want? After shoving her feet into faded bunny slippers she shuffled to the kitchen, groggy and grumpy.

"What?"

Her mother glared and pointed at the oven. "Is that any way to put a turkey in the oven?"

Flo stared in disbelief. The turkey was backside up.

"I guess I was more tired than I knew. I did have to drive here late last night, you know!" She offered an apologetic shrug

"You're young, you'll cope," her mother riposted. "Take that thing out and put it in proper like!"

"You young things don't have much stamina these days," Nana commented. She was cutting radishes and carrots and things into elaborate vegetable flowers. "I could make you a tonic."

"No! Thank you!" The last tonic Nana had made her had left her sick to her stomach for a week.

"Widow Hartley and Widow Devereaux and Widow Smythe-Holman are all coming over, and of course Father Briggot," her mother listed what must have been half the widows in town.

"And your Uncle Cal and Aunt Martha and your cousins, and Jimmy Hanks, you remember him? He was sweet on you in sixth grade. His parents are off on a cruise, so we invited him over. Such a nice young man."

"He threw up on my shoes, I don't think that counts as being sweet on me."

"A lot you know about men," Nana said darkly.

Flo resisted answering back to that, but Nana still raised her eyes in that knowing way. Nana was creepy sometimes. It was like she knew what you were thinking, knew what you'd been doing that you shouldn't have done.

"I'm going back to bed," Flo announced.

"I'll wake you for Mass," her mother said.

"I'm not going." She wasn't about to participate in church hypocrisy on her vacation time. No church for her, no way. She'd dropped all that as soon as she'd moved off to college.

"We're all going." Her mother glared steadily at her, daring her to defy family tradition.

"Somebody's got to watch the bird." Flo played her trump card straight-faced.

The two older women stared at each other, temporarily outwitted.

"I'll stay," Flo's mother said firmly. She snatched the dishrag from the sink to clean the already clean countertops.

"I'll stay, it's my house," Nana countered.

"I stuffed the darned thing, I'll stay," Flo insisted. "Ya'll don't want to miss your friends on Thanksgiving."

Her mother turned from wiping counters. "Thanksgiving is a Holy Obligation, not a social event." She brandished the bowl of garlic cloves. "You forgot the garlic."

"Did not, I used powdered."

"It's not as good as fresh."

"It will be fine."

"I don't keep powdered garlic," Nana broke in, a frown wrinkling the brow under her hairnet.

"Well, that explains why the shaker was only about a zillion years old then!" Flo flounced off to nap once more.

She knew it was a dream, but she couldn't wake up. She was at one of those awful parties of Nana's. All the altar society ladies, crocheting and gossiping. They nodded their heads and looked her way, looking right through her to continue their conversation.

"And I tole her, time and time again, never mess with the dead!"

"It's only a turkey, for godsake!"

Flo sat up abruptly. That wasn't a dream. That was her mother. She trotted back into the kitchen.

"See what you've gone and done, Missy Florette?" Nana snapped as she held the oven door shut with both hands. The turkey was beating its naked, half-browned wings against the oven door.

"What do you mean, what I've done?" Flo stared in appalled fascination at the bird. Her mother shook the empty garlic shaker at her.

"Zombie powder! You put Zombie powder in the blessed stuffing!"

"Nana always said that stuff wouldn't work unless you were a Voodoo practitioner, and then only if you were good at it, and only if you really meant it to happen!" Flo screeched. Nana let go of the oven door, and the turkey flopped out on the floor.

"I made that Zombie powder, and I assure you, I meant it." Nana looked at her with narrowed eyes. "But you're right. You must have the Gift!" Nana suddenly beamed at Flo.

"NO!" Flo screeched louder. Just what she needed to make her life complete, Voodoo weirdness. People with chicken bones and graveyard dust wanting her to do stuff for them at all hours. Trance-dancing and gris-gris balls had no place in the nice Information Technology career she had all planned out.

"Gift, no gift, you call that turkey off of me, Flo," her mother interrupted, fending off their presumed dinner with a roasting pan lid and a wooden spoon. The bird hurled itself along the floor, leaving greasy spots and bits of stuffing in its wake.

Nana shook her head. "You didn't sew it up right. Stuffing everywhere."

"Make it stop," Flo demanded piteously.

"You raised it, you put it to rest."

"And you can mop up this mess when you're done," her mother added.

"What! Just how am I supposed to do that?" Flo looked imploringly at the older women. This had to be some sick joke. Or she was still dreaming.

"You're the college girl. Don't you know just about everything now?" her mother asked in bitter tones.

"I study Network Administration, not Voodoo." She stepped away from the turkey with a shudder as it brushed up against her ankles. It was acting like a puppy, trying to climb her leg. She wanted to scream and run away, but with her luck the damned bird would follow her all the way back to Baton Rouge.

Nana sighed and handed her a butcher knife. "Just stab it in the heart and recite the prayer to Saint Michael."

"And where exactly would its heart be right now? Last I recall, it was chopped up into the stuffing." Flo started to giggle hysterically. "Besides, I don't know the prayer to Saint Michael, I slept through CCD whenever I could."

"I'll pretend I didn't hear that." Her mother gave the turkey a sound whack as it attacked her once again.

"Michael the Archangel. . ." Nana prompted. Flo repeated the prayer uncertainly and stabbed the bird several times. It flopped and struggled a bit more. Flo squeezed her eyes shut, she could almost hear the bird squawking as she stabbed it. Finally it lay dormant and cooling on the faded linoleum.

"Good thing I got a ham in the smokehouse," Nana said with a laugh.

"Flo, you've ruined Thanksgiving." Her mother handed her a large garbage sack.

"I think the Widows will forgive her the turkey, when they hear about her Gift," Nana contradicted thoughtfully.

"Can't I give the darned Gift back?" She was not getting into all that weird stuff. This kind of thing never happened except when she was here. Dammed Jardin du Lac.

"Well, no, you can't. But you'll learn to like it, I promise." Nana picked her way carefully around the slick spots and stuffing gobbets on the floor to give her a hug. "What a wonderful Thanksgiving present! My own grandbaby Florette, gonna follow in my footsteps!"

Flo suffered the hug and rolled her eyes. Next Thanksgiving, she was definitely going to Florida.

*~*Author's Note*~*

"No Place Like Home" was originally published in the 2011 Undead Embrace anthology by Under the Moon publishing, which is still available on Amazon. The other stories in the anthology are less goofy. I did warn you that I'm terminally goofy?  Happy Halloween and Happy Holidays. 

**This recipe is meant for fictional purposes only. Do not attempt to raise your own zombie turkey. Consult a professional immediately if  you find yourself similarly infested.**