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Mad Men
Mrs. Johnson was one-hundred and two when she died. She'd lived in Lebanon her whole life and had seen the South surrender and Kansas change in more ways than one cared to admit. There wasn't much unusual about her passing. An elderly lady dying in her sleep wasn't uncommon, even in nineteen-sixty-two with color television and rock and roll music. What was unusual, was that Mrs. Johnson didn't really leave when she passed, or perhaps none of this would have happened.
She had been an avid gardener while alive. Won a blue ribbon every year for her jams and jellies at the county fair, and as opinionated as she was she had been a pillar of her community. So much so that with her passing, and lack of any living family to pass her property on to, the town banded together and shared out her pantries. Waste not want not, as it were.
Everything was fine for a week. Then the voices started.
“What are you doing! Is that short-patent flour? Oh, my God preserve me! What on God's green earth possessed you to put my blue ribbon black-currant jam on litebread! Stop it! Stop it right this instant! This is a travesty! A betrayal! A crucifixion of all my hard work! My blood sweat and tears! Oh, my grandmother must be just rolling in her grave!”
And it escalated from there.
“David Ryan Patrick! Don't you dare put my blue ribbon black-currant jam on that toast! It's burnt! Just burnt to a cinder! Don't you do it! Oh, someone stop him!”
“Phyllis Arnold, if you so much as think about putting my poor blue ribbon jam on that saltine cracker I will suffocate you in your sleep!”
“John Jacob Patrick, do something about your son! He shouldn't be allowed anywhere near a kitchen, let alone my blue ribbon black-currant jam! He's burnt that toast! He's burnt that toast and he's smearing my jam all over with a salad fork! A salad fork John Jacob! If you don't do something about that boy I won't be held responsible for my actions! I really won't!”
“None of you deserve it! None of you! You're all philistines! Don't you understand! That recipe has been passed down from my great grandmother! Litebread? Saltines? Flapjacks! You should all be ashamed of yourselves! None of you deserve my jam! It should be enjoyed on a freshly baked biscuit! Not a damned burnt piece of toasted Wonderbread! You're pathetic! How could you even hope to experience the depth of flavor! The subtleties! On a disgusting, tasteless scrap of litebread!”
By the end of that summer the Men of Letters had become involved, mostly at the behest of one John Jacob Patrick, who had nearly lost his son when the ghost of Mrs. Johnson nearly strangled the boy for 'burning' his toast.
So, all the remaining jars of jam and jellies and preserves had been rounded up and put away in the Men of Letters archive.
Mrs. Butters had found the elderly woman's ghost quite entertaining and had agreed wholeheartedly that litebread was a sin against such craftsmanship. So, every Sunday, for tea-- she baked scones and served them hot with a bit of Mrs. Johnson's jam.
For years it went on thus. Until The Incident.
Then the Winchesters had appeared, and Mrs. Butters had hesitated. Samuel and Dean didn't seem the type for Sunday tea after services. So, she'd abstained from scone baking.
Then, a few weeks after she'd gone Dean shuffled into the kitchen one morning sullen and sleepless. He didn't usually indulge in those melancholy desires for home cooking, but that morning had been the end of a rough week, and the start of an even rougher one.
They were out of sandwich bread, and the world was at a standstill, missing every living person but himself, Sam, and Jack. All the bread they'd found looting the local grocery was moldy and inedible, and Dean wanted a damned sandwich.
Bread... Bread couldn't be that difficult to make. Flour, water, milk?
Okay, maybe no milk.
The bread came out flat, and lumpy and smelling nothing like any bread Dean had eaten before. But it held up when he cut off a chunk, so he decided it was better than nothing.
He ransacked the cabinets and found a half-pint jar in the dusty overhead cabinet. The ring of the lid was rusted and Dean worried momentarily that he was going to get botulism here at the end of the world and shit himself to death. Chuck would just love that.
The ring came off with a few hard twists, a dish cloth protecting his hand from tetanus. The seal popped pleasantly when he pried at it with a knife.
“Oh, you poor thing.”
The voice startled him and he turned a complete circle glaring at the room around him, butter knife raised. “Who said that!”
“That truly is a sorry excuse for bread, but I'd be lying if I said I hadn't made worse in less desperate times.”
Dean stared down at the jar in his hand dumbfounded. “I'm hallucinating...”
The voice snorted. “Hardly. Though 'hallucination' is only slightly less insulting than 'ghost'... I'm Mrs. Johnson... I made this jam in nineteen-sixty-one, the year I died. I've been trying my damnedest to make sure it's actually enjoyed, but since the world's gone to shit, I'd say my hopes are dashed, so go on. Have at it.”
“What?” Dean said to the jar.
“At least it's not litebread... Go on, I said! Eat!”
Dean didn't feel hungry anymore, but was too stunned to disobey the ghost in the jelly jar.
His bread didn't hold together under the spread of butter and jam. He stared at it sitting there on the counter top with a queasy feeling in his stomach.
“Young man, I do hope you're not going to just let it sit there and rot. I've withstood a number of trespasses against my dignity but this is just torture.”
He almost hoped Jack would happen by and save him, but that was unlikely. With a shaking hand he took up a piece and stuck it quickly into his mouth.
“There, not so difficult now was it!” There was an air of disdain in her voice.
Dean took another bite. “This-- this is really good.”
She said nothing.
“Hell of a lot better than that sugar free crap Sam gets.”
“It's even better on a proper biscuit... Helevinnia would make the most delightful English Scones!”
“Helevinnia?”
“Yes, Mrs. Butters.”
“You knew Mrs. Butters?”
“Not quite... After the Patrick Incident all my jams were moved here and the only ones to enjoy them were the gentlemen of the Men of Letters, and they didn't exactly have the most refined tastes.”
“Yeah, my brother's the same way-- everything's sugar free, or fiber enhanced, or green--”
“Dear me...”
“Yeah, there's not much in the way of conversation these days, sorry.”
“Well, I suppose there's nothing for it. At least you're not using Wonderbread.”
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