The Blunt Force Butter Knife

It started with a scream, a crash, and a very confused mailman holding a bouquet of slightly wilted daisies.

“I swear to God, Margaret!” shouted the voice from inside Apartment 3B. “If you’ve taken my knife again—”

The door flew open. Margaret McClure, seventy-three years old and running purely on espresso and rage, pointed a trembling finger at her neighbor.

“That butter knife is a family heirloom, Dennis!”

“It’s from IKEA!”

“It has sentimental weight, you goat-faced man!”

The mailman turned slowly, placed the flowers gently on the welcome mat, and walked away without looking back. Again.

Margaret’s butter knife was no ordinary kitchen tool. Blunt as a toddler’s tooth and slightly bent in the middle, it had been used for everything except butter: prying open tuna cans, smashing cockroaches, even fending off a raccoon once. Rumor had it she once used it to loosen the bolts on her ex-husband’s car wheels. She called it Percival.

So when Percival disappeared, Margaret declared war.

Her prime suspect? Dennis Clive—the balding, passive-aggressive taxidermist next door who hated noise, strong smells, and people who "talk too loudly about quinoa."

But then things got… weird.

That evening, Dennis called the cops.

“Someone broke into my apartment,” he hissed into the phone. “They rearranged my squirrel diorama to spell ‘confess.’ In acorns.”

The officer paused. “Did they take anything?”

“My self-respect?”

“No, sir. Items of value?”

“I own a taxidermied ferret named Justice. What do you think?”

They took a report. Margaret cackled when she heard about it.

“Sounds like a guilty conscience.”

Then Apartment 3C joined the chaos. Marnie, the self-proclaimed TikTok psychic, ran into the hallway in a leopard robe, waving a sage bundle and screaming about cursed cutlery.

“I saw a vision,” she gasped. “A silver blade dipped in jam… and blood.”

Margaret perked up. “Jam, you say?”

“Raspberry,” Marnie whispered dramatically.

“That’s my signature preserve!”

By Thursday, the building was a battleground.

The super, Mr. Delgado, found a blunt butter knife wedged into the hallway bulletin board with a note scrawled in Sharpie:

“RETURN WHAT WAS NEVER YOURS. OR ELSE.”

The knife looked familiar. Slight bend. Slight jam stain. Margaret fainted from righteous vindication.

When she came to, she pointed at Dennis with the power of a thousand grandmas.

“You monster.”

“I didn't steal your stupid knife!”

But Dennis had a secret.

See, Dennis had taken the knife. Not to keep—God, no—but to test a theory.

A week prior, he’d discovered a strange hum emanating from Margaret’s kitchen wall. Following the vibrations, he poked at the drywall behind her spice rack using… Percival.

The wall crumbled. Behind it, he found a narrow, tiled shaft—and inside, a tiny box marked “Café Carcossa – 1923.”

Inside the box: a photograph of five people in fur coats, standing in front of a blood-stained café menu. One of them looked suspiciously like Margaret, only younger. And holding… Percival.

Spooked, Dennis reburied the box, stuck the knife into the bulletin board, and vowed never to speak of it again.

Until someone else dug it back up.

Friday night. The power went out.

Margaret lit a candle shaped like Winston Churchill and grabbed her emergency cardigan. A floorboard creaked behind her. She turned.

Marnie stood in the doorway, eyes wide.

“I channeled something,” she whispered. “Something in the knife.”

Dennis joined moments later, carrying Justice the ferret like a protective talisman.

“We need to talk,” he said.

The three gathered in Margaret’s apartment, candlelight flickering across their faces. Marnie’s crystal pendulum spun in frantic circles.

Dennis placed the photo on the table.

Margaret stared. “I… I don’t remember this.”

Marnie squinted. “That’s not jam on the menu, is it?”

The photo began to smoke.

Margaret threw her cup of Earl Grey on it. Dennis screamed—it hit Justice instead. Marnie chanted in Latin, which she’d learned from The Exorcist II.

Then the lights snapped back on.

Standing in the kitchen was Mr. Delgado.

Holding Percival.

“I just wanted to borrow it to pry open a can of Spam,” he said sheepishly. “Didn’t mean to start a war.”

“But the shaft! The photo!” Dennis barked.

Delgado blinked. “That’s just the old dumbwaiter. Someone left creepy junk in there ages ago. I thought it was yours, Margaret.”

Margaret took Percival reverently. “You’re safe now, my sweet.”

Marnie stared into her tea. “But what about the vision? The raspberry blood?”

Margaret shrugged. “That was probably from last Sunday’s scone disaster.”

The three fell silent.

Until a faint hum buzzed behind the wall again.

Margaret picked up Percival.

“Right. Who wants to pry open a portal?”