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The Legs of Vidalia

a disturbing story of gnarly revenge

By Scott DetweilerPublished 3 years ago 5 min read
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The Legs of Vidalia
Photo by SHTTEFAN on Unsplash

In the room next to the kitchen, where the onions were stored, lived a woman named Vidalia. She never left the room. She just peeled onions all day and all night. Nobody could remember how long she had been there, but she was already there when Rank came along. And that had been about ten years. Rank did the cooking, if what he did could be called cooking. The word 'cooking' usually draws connotations like seasoning, spice, blending of flavors, ingredients, etc. But all he did was drop the peeled onions in a big soup pot to boil. Pot after pot, day in, day out. When they would finally become soft and fall apart, turning into a bland slop, he would fill a bowl and take it out to the back porch adjacent to the kitchen.

The back porch looked like a cage from the inside because it was enclosed, floor to ceiling, by vine covered chain link fencing. Aunt Jim would wait for Rank on the rotting bench in front of the rotting table that looked out to the tall weeds. He was required not only to deliver her bowl, but he was also required to stand at her side until it was empty. It never took very long. She ate like a lumberjack. And she would eat her soup hot. Boiling hot. It was a wonder she had any skin left on the inside of her mouth. Because she was already thinking of the next bowl, she would command Rank, as she slurped through her dripping whiskers, "make sure Vidalia has another batch peeled and ready for the next boil….peeled and ready…ya hear me, you idiot!?....make sure....". Rank would pick his scalp or scratch huge belly and reply with a grunt. Like a pig but with less enthusiasm. He didn’t speak. He could only grunt.

Vidalia never looked up from her onions. Ever. The old hag was required to focus on the bucket. There were two buckets. Sticky and dented. The handles had long broken off and gone away. As soon as she’d fill one, she would and yank the rusty chain above her head. The chain would ring a bell that would let Rank know a bucket was ready. He would then come in, take the full bucket, and give her the second bucket (which was empty). Their little system of efficiency ensured that onions were constantly moving into the kitchen. Round the clock. Aunt Jim was always hungry. Every evening when the sun went down, Rank would light the kerosene lamps in Vidalia’s room, on the back porch and in the kitchen.

One night, after realizing he hadn’t heard a bell ring for a while, he went to Vidalia’s room to investigate. It was dark because her lamp had run out of fuel. Rank fetched a lamp from the kitchen and went inside. Vidalia was slumped over her pile of onions and wasn’t moving. When he nudged her to wake her up, she slid off her cinder block and fell onto the floor, face up. Her peeling knife fell from her hand as her arms fell open. Rank put his lamp up to her face. But it was gone. Her face was gone. No features. Just a smooth and brown. He freaked out and went to fetch Aunt Jim.

The combined glow from both of their lamps provided plenty enough light to see that Vidalia’s head had turned into a huge onion. It probably weighed as much as a bucket full of regular ones. Her features were truly gone. And her fingers looked like the stalks of green onions. She had spent so much time with the onions her body finally onionized. Aunt Jim broke down and cackled, “now who’s gonna do my peeling?....what am I gonna do?”. Rank calmly went into the kitchen and got a cleaver. When he returned Aunt Jim had already collapsed and fainted to the floor from the stress of trying to figure out who would do her peeling.

Rank stomped on her head twice. That’s all it took. He didn’t care that his boot was packed with blood and brains. He was sick of her shit. With his cleaver he hacked at Vidalia’s neck until her head fell into the mess that used to be Aunt Jim’s. The big onion was bloody now. He picked it up and began ramming it against the wall. When a hole finally broke through, he put it under his arm and escaped into the breaking dawn.

He stumbled through the tall weeds and tangled vines with labored breathing. The load was heavy, and his legs had atrophied from being in the kitchen for so long. It had been years since he had walked more than a few steps at a one time. Then he heard dogs. And they were getting louder. No doubt they could smell Vidalia’s onion head, the blood, and his own reek.

The barking became deafening. Just as the dogs were about to catch him, he reached a tree and managed to hoist himself to a spot a little bit higher than they could jump. Then the big onion slipped out from under his arm. It fell like a bomb, hit an exposed tree root, and cracked open. A drop of onion spouge splatted up and hit him in the face. With both of his hands now free, Rank climbed even higher and upon arriving to a branch where he felt secure, he managed to get a good look at the dogs. There were three of them. Wild and mangy. Starving. They were attacking the broken pieces of the onion and gobbled it up until only the outer peeling remained. Now the sun was spiking through the branches of the tree.

Rank watched as the bloated dogs went into convulsions, vomiting and foaming at the mouth. It was confusing because he didn’t know that onion was poisonous to canines. As he watched them suffer, his branch finally broke under his massive weight. He fell straight down, flipped around and just before he hit the hard ground, the back of his neck cracked against the very root that had split the falling onion, killing him instantly.

In the late afternoon Vidalia arrived, headless and crawling on her oniony hands and knees. The dogs were stiff by now. With her knife, she sawed off Rank’s head and lifted it to her own jagged neck and stood up. The eyes of the head opened. The mouth of the head smiled. And the stalky legs of Vidalia danced a jig around the corpses as the sun went down.

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About the Creator

Scott Detweiler

Scott Detweiler is a Los Angeles based writer.

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