They said Todd would return when the gravy ran dry.
I thought it was a metaphor.
It was not.
It all began in a Denny’s parking lot, as most great American revelations do. A trail of cranberry sauce led me to a man in a bathrobe whispering secrets to a rotisserie chicken. He looked up at me with gravy-stained eyes and said, “Todd sees you.”
Todd, as it turns out, is a Royal Turkey. Not royal as in aristocracy. Royal as in glowing, interdimensional, and possibly fueled by moonshine and unresolved family trauma. He appears only to the truly desperate—those who have committed the unspeakable crime of dry stuffing.
My initiation began with a mashed potato séance. We chanted over a plate until the potatoes whispered back. Somewhere between “butter” and “guilt,” I found a soggy piece of paper that read:
“BRING ME THE LADLE OF TRUTH OR PERISH.”
Signed,
Todd
The Cult has three rules:
- All leftovers must be sacrificed by full moonlight.
- No store-bought gravy. That’s heresy.
- Never, ever question the giblets.
I rose quickly through the ranks. Mostly because I owned a deep fryer and once survived a family reunion in Tulsa. I was named Prophet of the Second Baste.
One Thursday, as Todd appeared in a flash of stuffing and shame, he bestowed upon me the Cranberry Codex. I asked what it meant. He gobbled three times and exploded into fireworks shaped like Ronald Reagan’s ghost.
We wept.
We danced.
We wrote a folk album called “Drumsticks of Destiny.”
But fame tore us apart. One of the acolytes sold out to the Ham Lobby. Another ran off with a gravy boat full of secrets.
Now it’s just me and the Codex, living out of a haunted Arby’s, waiting for Todd to return and fulfill the prophecy:
“When the Arbor Day Tree bleeds cranberry, the Feast shall begin anew.”
I still don’t have any gravy.
But I do have faith.
Gobble gobble.
INSTANT NOODLES 