The smell hit first. Not turkey, not pie… something darker, sharper, wrong. We pulled the roasting pan out, laughing, tired, ready to collapse on the couch. Then we saw it. A warped, alien-looking lump fused to the bottom of the oven, glittering with tiny bits of metal. For a moment, everyone went silent.

We crouched around the open oven like it was a crime scene. The thing was about the size of a thumb, oddly smooth in some places, jagged in others, with a thin metallic spine running through it. Someone muttered that it looked like a piece of a crashed drone. Another swore it had to be part of a broken dish. But the more we stared, the more unsettling it felt: this hadn’t just sat there, it had survived something.

Only when we spotted the twisted remains of the ignition wheel did it click. A lighter. Someone must have dropped it onto a tray days ago, forgotten it, then slid everything back in for Thanksgiving. The oven heat had melted the plastic into a grotesque sculpture, leaving only the metal skeleton.

The realization came with a chill: it could have exploded. We laughed it off in the end, but now, before every big meal, we double-check the oven like a ritual.