Thank You for the Meat

A woman and her stepfather live a miserable existence at a last-chance gas station. One day while they’re trying to dig a bit more out of a dried-up well, the bottom suddenly drops out of it.

They lower a flashlight to figure out how deep the well has become and when it gets to the bottom, something grabs hold of the line. Eventually they get the line back and it holds a chunk of gold and some handwritten notes, but in a language they can’t make out. The stepfather orders the daughter to keep away, but she sends some ham, a note and a dictionary down in a bag.

The next day she pulls the line back up and finds the bag filled with some jewelry and a note in response - ‘thank you for the meat’. She then packs them a basket of goodies, again sending it down the well. They send her all sorts of sparkly jewels in return.

The stepfather returns with a tow truck and a container filled with flashlights. He sends them down on a tow cable, expecting gold and jewels in return. When he pulls it up, he discovers all the flashlights have been destroyed. Furious, the stepfather decides to go down into the hole.

He gets a gun and puts on a gas mask and army suit. He lowers himself down on a wooden platform and tells his daughter to bring him up after ten minutes. Ten whole minutes pass, so she begins to hoist the cable back up.

Soon the wooden platform is back to the surface, to her relief, standing on the platform is her stepfather, still clutching the gun. Obviously concerned she walks over to him. To her horror all that has come up is the suit, stuffed with gold, jewelry, coins and a single note attached which reads ‘Thank you for the meat’.

——

Edit: Source seems be a short story called Hey You Down There! by Harold Rolseth, which was later adapted into an episode of Amazing Stories. The source of this particular version of the story is unknown.

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