Strange Yarns

The Root of Evil

 THE ROOT OF EVIL

 Turnips. I'm not going to go on and on about how turnips are evil. Turnips are root vegetables, inanimate objects, hardly sinister. This story isn't meant to be a smear campaign on the turnip. Sure, this root is not as well loved as the potato, in fact I once read that humans didn't even eat turnips until some war when real food ran short. This however is the story of a particular batch of turnips, which were infested by evil of a vengeful nature, and in the case of Twig, possessed him to commit murderous acts.

Twig Felderman often complained to his mother that turnips were nasty roots that looked evil, tasted evil, and were for all intents and purposes, through and through pure evil; especially in salads. Twig was of course being hyperbolic, but he had no idea how right he was in this claim pertaining to the small crop of turnips currently growing in the garden in the front yard

Twig Felderman, who's real name was Harvey Felderman, but due of his thin prepubescent body, he got the name Twig. He was in ninth grade and while not every boy in his grade was big and bearded, Twig hadn't even received his first pube yet, which was an issue, a major issue. He blamed his vegan parents. Meat puts hair on a man's chest, not veggies.

Twig and his family had moved to Hilltop in early spring. His parents planned to open the small town's first Mexican vegan theme restaurant (Vegasaurus Tex) on Main Street. Unfortunately unlike the big city folk, villagers tend to be meat and potato people and don't much care for parsnip burritos as an entree served by a waiter in a dinosaur outfit.

The first thing the Feldermans did when they arrived in Hilltop (or as Twig puts it "left our friends who will surely forget I ever existed, including Lana Mitts, who I was finally making some head way with, to move to this hick town in this ugly hick house with the creepy apple orchard.") was to uproot those rotten old apple trees to make room for a garden. It is in this garden where the most malevolent turnips began to germinate.

It was a few nights before Halloween when the turnips were harvested. John, Twig's father, had plucked them out of the ground, gave them a good wash and was slicing them into a salad. He was preoccupied with the financial disaster that was Vegasaurus Tex when he sliced his finger instead of the turnip. Never being a wasteful man, he re-washed the blood soaked turnips and into the salad they went.

Lots of inanimate objects posses evil spirits. This is fact. For instance, there is a chair in the New York Public Library that possesses the spirit of Lucifer's cousin Agmokorrial the Unholy. To this day the demonically potent chair has caused no evil or mischief of any kind. This is because the sequence of events that must occur for the evil to activate is complex. We're not talking chia pet here, just add water, no way, no sir. The sequence must be followed precisely. In our case, in the case of the turnips, the process goes as such: The blood from the father of a virgin must spill on plant life of which said plant life's roots had grown over an unmarked grave of an angry spirit that was murdered on the 20th of October as a harvest moon rises. This is the exact sequence to release the evil, causing terrifying events you will soon be privy to, where as the chair in the New York Public Library remains just a chair.

Twig complained as dinner was served that he hated turnips and that they were evil. This was no shocking declaration. Everyone knew Twig hated turnips, and besides, teenagers think a lot of things are evil; curfews, homework, chores, whoever the latest pre-teen heart throb happens to be. Twig shoveled the turnip salad in anyhow. He had a date. There was this girl, Sally Crickets, known to most as just Crickets. Crickets happened to be the coolest girl in school. Not the hottest mind you, though, she certainly was hot, but definitely the coolest. 

Crickets' dad was the sheriff, which meant you probably weren't going to get in much trouble even if you were caught engaging in any trouble making, so long as you were with her. Therefore, Sally Crickets was in a good position as high school drug dealer, babe, mischief-maker and all around popular sweetheart.