Erin Reddekopp

^{Second Place Story at Vancouver Story Slam June 2023}

This story starts innocently enough. I’m visiting my parents for Mother’s Day or possibly my mom’s birthday.

We have just come from a fancy dinner and are settling in for a nightcap when this haunting encounter happens.

She’s telling us about the friends that had messaged to wish her “happy, whatever day it was that we were celebrating” when she mentions that she had got a weird text from her friend Harriet.

Now, the most important thing to know about Harriet is that Harriet is a chaos demon.

I’m not sure if she intentionally tries to create chaos, but somehow everything Harriet does wreaks havoc on everyone around her.

For example, Harriet recently left her husband of 50 years.

She woke up one morning annoyed by his snoring and decides she can not listen to it for another day, and she leaves him and moves from Edmonton to Cuba.

Harriet lasts about a month living in Cuba because she had never been there before and she actually hates the heat, crowds, spicy food, and she doesn’t speak Spanish.

The other important thing to know is that my mom is a little gullible. She has street smarts. I don’t have to worry about her giving thousands of dollars to a Norwegian prince, but she often times takes Harriet’s stories as truth.

So let’s get back to this night, in May or June, where we’re celebrating some event for my mom, where I ask a question I will probably regret till the day I die,

“What did Harriet have to say?”

“Well,” my mom replied, “she’s very concerned because there are furries in her grandson’s grade 5 classroom.”

I’m convinced I heard her wrong and ask her to clarify, and my mom says again, “Harriet is very concerned because there are furries in her grandson’s classroom,” only this time she adds, “what’s a furry?”

Now, I’m not sure about you, but just about the last conversation I want to have with my 70-year-old parents is about furries.

I decided to take a bit of risk here and ask the internet what to do, and it turns out I’m not the only person who has had this problem.

It turns out Google actually auto-fills,

“What to say to your senior citizen parents when they ask you what a furry is?”

So very carefully, I click on this link making sure I don’t accidentally click on images,

the link about what to do if your senior citizen parents are furries.

And read out the PG answer from Google: A furry is a fan of media that features animal characters doing “human” things like walking and talking, or a person who likes to give animals human characteristics.

I’m ready to high five myself, thinking I dodged a bullet when she responds, “Oh, so like me, so I’m a furry?”

Alarm bells go off in my brain, and my inner brain is saying, “Danger, Danger, abort, mission.”

I frantically say, “No, mom, you’re not a furry. Please don’t tell people you’re a furry.”

She says, but, isn’t that me with Otto.

Some important background information: I’m a terrible only child who never gave my parents grandchildren and instead gave them a grandcat, Otto. My mom loves Otto like a grandchild and she sometimes texts Otto,

and because I love my mom, Otto “texts” her back, to tell her about his day.

But I’m now worried that my innocent pandering of my mother is now going to involve her telling people she’s a furry.

Trying to do damage control, I explain that some furries like to dress up in costumes.

This is when my dad joins the conversation and says, I thought they were people who had sex with animals.

So yeah, dad is also a chaos demon.

You can see the wheels going in her head as she thinks:

Nope, I’m not a furry!
What the hell is going on in Harriet’s grandson’s grade 5 classroom??

And I’m thinking: Do I correct this? Is this my escape?

Maybe I’m also a chaos demon, because I decide to correct it.

I very delicately say, well, no, that’s bestiality.

And I’m cursing myself for answering and questioning why I’m still talking.

As I say, well, that’s not quite right, and try to explain that yes, there can be a sexual component to furries, and some people are attracted to other people in animal costumes and they may engage in sexual activities while wearing their costumes.

My mom looks shocked, my dad is laughing, and I’m cursing Harriet, and wondering how I wound up here.

As my mom says, how does that even work, aren’t those costumes onesies?

I die a little inside and thinking I’m going to need a lot more whiskey if I’m going to have to explain the anatomy of how a furry can have a conjugal interaction with another furry, with my 70-year-old parents, when my mom’s phone goes off again and it’s another text message from Harriet.

So, it’s really important to remember that Harriet is a chaos demon here.

It says, “oops, forgot to send the rest,” followed by another message.

It turns out, there are no furries in Harriet’s grandson’s classroom. Harriet was worried that there were “furry creatures in the classroom” because the classroom had a mouse infestation.

^{This story is a work of fiction inspired by real events or individuals. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental. While certain elements of this story may be based on real-life experiences or anecdotes, significant creative license has been taken to adapt and fictionalize these elements for narrative purposes. The views and opinions expressed in this story are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of any person or entity mentioned in the narrative. All rights reserved. © Erin Reddekopp 2024}

^{Performed at Vancouver Story Slam February 2024}

I got the call on a Tuesday.

‘It doesn’t look good for Joan, it’s cancer,’ said the voice on the other end.

Five days, two airports, and three cities later, I’m holding her hand as she passes.

In the room, we were discussing Yellowjackets, and our joke to the hospice nurses that she must have really wanted to avoid spoilers, demonstrated our family’s dark humor and how we Reddekopps use humor to mask our feelings.

Joan was my great aunt and godmother, my Grandmother’s baby sister, who had been our family’s matriarch for the past 30 years.

Brilliant, and slightly crazy, like all great matriarchs, Joan was known for her love of her family, cats, AND her inability to keep a secret.

That final belief was about to be challenged in a manner that would rock us to our very core.

48 hours later and we are going through her apartment when I hear my mom’s shaky voice call out, ‘Erin, can you come in here? I found something.’

I walk to the bedroom, silently praying that she hadn’t found sex toys or naked photos. After all, this is the woman who, when asked what she was giving up for Lent, announced ‘sex and cigarettes’ to my father and his cousins and siblings when they were young.

Mom tosses me an innocent-looking travel bag from the 70s, which at the moment’s only crime is being slightly tacky, and says…’I found human remains.’

Grief and shock do weird things to you because, Yes, My normally thoughtful and proper mother has essentially just said, ‘Here catch, and possibly thrown me a literal bone.’

I drop the bag immediately, and very delicately pry it open the bag with a pen. Much to my relief, it’s not a disembodied head, but a bag of what appears to be unlabeled cremated remains.

I’m going to blame shock for my next actions because I really leaned into my inner chaos demon, taking out my phone and sending a picture of the ashes to my dad with the message, ‘Found something weird in Joan’s closet, do you know who this is?’

As I wait for Dad’s response, I jump into detective mode. I’m an expert detective; I have read and watched a lot of mysteries.

My first thought is one of her old cats, but a quick shake of their little urns confirms that they are indeed still in there.

Next, I weigh the bag, and since I’m an expert, I consult Google, WebMD, and reddit, and confirm these are, in fact, cremated remains and are likely someone who was around 135 pounds.

Now Joan was unmarried and childless, could this be a secret lover? An illegitimate love child? A mortal enemy? Endless possibilities.

I assure my mother that I don’t think Joan was a secret murderer. She was friends with nuns and priests for Christ’s sake. But my mother no longer believes this, especially since we keep finding piles of cash hidden around the apartment.

To be honest, I’m starting to wonder if 90-year-old great aunt had been a secret assassin? I’m still doubtful, but things have gotten rather strange.

For the next hour or so, I continue to search for some clue to who this might be when my Uncle arrives and immediately says, ‘You put that in a text message? What were you thinking?’

I start to wonder if we’re no longer in investigation mode and have fully moved into cover-up mode and am I now an accessory? Should I have reported it? My fingerprints are now everywhere. I’m too privileged to survive jail. TV and Books had taught me how to solve mysteries, not how to get away with actual crimes.

Master criminal mode doesn’t last long and my curiosity wins out, and I suggest we place the bag on the memorial table with a sign that says, ‘Do you know who I am?’ Unsurprisingly my family rejects this idea, as is my suggestion to ask people as they arrive if they might be missing a loved one that was around 135 pounds?

I’m told, a funeral is no place for an investigation, but my inner detective is wondering when else will I get a chance to have all of my aunt’s friends and acquaintances in one place at one time.

I’m starting to feel like my great aunt, the family gossip, and woman I would vote most likely to spill your secret, had taken a big one to her grave.

When my dad’s cousin Frankie arrives and Frankie is morbidly curious like me.

‘Show me the ashes,’ she whispers, and we sneak into the other room so I can show her.

She opens the bag, takes out a bit of the ashes, rubs it through her fingers, sniffs it, and bursts out laughing. I know who it is.

‘Who?’ I exclaim.

‘It’s Callie’s,’ I don’t listen to the next word. Callie is my aunt’s rescue cat and still alive, so the next word must be the former owner. Yup, my aunt killed someone to get a cat, and that fits.

But I realize Frankie hadn’t said owner, Frankie had said litter. It was a bag of Callie’s litter. A weird sandy litter.

And so my detective days were over before they started. The case of ‘Why my great aunt had a bag of cat litter in a travel bag from the 70s in the back of her closet?’ does not have the same draw as what literal skeletons she was hiding in there.

I guess you’re not a detective just because you watched someone play one on TV.

What is a Furry

What’s in the Bag