By Emi Gruender
I’m sitting in an oppressively air-conditioned Dairy Queen, twiddling my thumbs as I look wistfully out the window. I had left Uncle Ben—Spiderman’s Uncle Ben, that is—a voicemail. I had slipped a formally addressed envelope to Aunt Petunia—Harry Potter’s Aunt Petunia Dursley, that is—through the mailbox on Number 4 Privet Drive. And finally, I had sent a Morse code telegram to Uncle Fester’s residence—the Addams’ Family’s Uncle Fester, that is—containing the same message as all the others.
“Dairy Queen. November 18. 3:21 pm sharp.
Don’t Be Late 🙂
–The Dastardly Coalition of Aunts and Uncles”
One by one, they file in, on each wrinkled forehead a sheen of sweat. I had noted the weather forecast beforehand, and planned our monthly meeting accordingly. Sometimes we would meet on Privet Drive, or the Addams’ Mansion, or in Ben’s small apartment. But today, what with the glowering sun overhead, we fell back on our last resort location—the Dairy Queen on Campbell Avenue.
“This place smells like absolute rubbish!” squawks Aunt Petunia as she slides into the Dairy Queen booth, her handbag perched before her. She turned to Ben, who was following behind her. “Doesn’t it smell positively horrid, Ben?”
“That might just be your perfume, Petunia,” gruffly returns Uncle Ben, with a hint of a smile upon his lips. Petunia rolled her eyes—this was a usual quip, even from the most reserved of the group.
“H-hello everyone!” Uncle Fester appears out of nowhere with a flourish, his skin the same deathly pallor as always. “I hope everyone’s Halloween was positively horrible.”
Petunia wrinkled her nose. “Goodness, Fester, don’t you ever use foundation? It could really….lighten up that pale complexion of yours.”
“W-well, Petunia!” squeaks Fester in his strange voice, “Once you find a shade that’s precisely the shade of feline rigor mortis, m-maybe I’ll consider it! But Sephora really is a bust. No diversity for corpse shades!”
Ben jumps in right in time. “Well, I think your complexion’s just fine, Fester.”
I dump four copies of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein on the horribly stained surface. “Have you all forgotten the reason we’re gathered here today?”
“Sounds like the introduction to a funeral. How festive!” Uncle Fester clasps his hands together in excitement, his grease-black eyes shiny and wide. He picks up one of the books. “I really did like this month’s selection, Emi. Full of death and gore. I read it to the children as a bedtime story sometimes.”
“I really can never understand your family, Fester,” shoots back Aunt Petunia. “My dear Dudley positively detested it! That Shelley woman uses such ancient language, no wonder the book’s a bore.”
Uncle Ben speaks directly to me, ignoring the others. “Though it was a little dense, I’ll admit, I did like this month’s selection more than usual. Victor Frankenstein really tried to run away from his creation—the product of his power—not realizing that with great power, comes—”
“Great responsibility….” the rest of us boredly finish. Though Uncle Ben had been long dead, and only attended our book club as a ghostly figure, he could not seem to stop quoting his own iconic lines as his nephew continued swinging around the city, saving people from crime. His mustache bristled as he smiled.
“I see I’ve taught you all well,” he says.
“You have. If you ever make it back to the material plane, you should consider teaching AP Literature,” I suggest good-naturedly.
Though our Dastardly Coalition of Aunts and Uncles tended to have conversations over our literature such as these, we couldn’t help but continue meeting on the 18th of every month, sharing our vastly different perspectives on each new novel. Though at times a new Aunt or Uncle joined the Coalition, in the end, it was always us four, an unlikely group, eating our ice cream together at Dairy Queen.