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Holiday Horrors: The Stroke of Midnight

12/30/2014

In this season of warm and fuzzy good cheer, we year-round-Halloween folk feel a certain responsibility to offer a few winter chills to those like us who seek them.

After all the fun we had bringing you scares from Prospero all October long, we couldn't resist concocting this series of festive flash fics of fear.

So check back with us throughout the season for fresh, bite-sized of holiday horrors!

Previously On... Holiday Horrors: Black Friday, What the Movies Don't Show, What's Eating Mall Santa, Where Gran Hides Her Presents, Bindley

The Stroke of Midnight

By F.J.R. Titchenell

My family’s business isn’t so terrible, really.

I get that I’m going to be doing it forever. I can live with that.

It’s only the pressure that sometimes gets to me, and the overprotectiveness, having to be around that all the time.

That’s why I’m here, at a New Year’s Eve “party” in some club I’ve never been to, full of people I don’t know, after a three drink equivalent cover charge, watching the clock run down, trying to decide how close I’m going to let it get before I call Ester.

We work New Year’s, every year. That’s why they were all so against my getting out to celebrate it even for a couple hours, and probably why I’ve always wanted to.

I didn’t have much of a plan when I got here. A few fantasies about meeting Prince Charming’s eyes across the crowded room, dancing until I almost lose track of time (but not quite), and getting to see those eyes turn disappointed and determined to find me again somehow when I tell him I have to run.

Instead I’ve spent most of the night sharing a table with a woman who might be named Cheryl or Sharon or Sherry, it’s hard to tell through the music, who’s been doing her best to help me understand with the help of gestures exactly how she got stood up here.

She’s probably the person here I have the most in common with, except she had a date at the beginning of the night.

I’m not sorry when a new Prince Charming (well, maybe not prince, more a Duke or Marquis Charming), graciously allows her to whisk him onto the dance floor and I steal the nearly untouched glass of champagne he brought her to seal the proposition.

I’m almost at the bottom of the glass when I realize something’s wrong.

This isn’t the steady increase in the warm dizziness the other drinks have been compounding. All at once, the club begins to swirl in luminous molten lava shapes.

Shit.

I’m barely tethered to my body by long elastic bands, but I manage to maneuver it onto its high-heeled feet and toward the nearest door. The lights are a thick, near-solid that I can barely swim through but which fails to support me, and the music coaxes me in deafening sparkles to just dance, just dance.

I consider for a moment trying to warn Cher-something about the man she’s dancing with, but I can’t see them anywhere in the magic eye kaleidoscope of the dance floor, and if I don’t find Ester while I’m as conscious as I am, he’ll be the least of anyone’s worries.

Somehow I get myself through a door, by guessing that the middle one I can see is the real one, end up in a gossamer white bathroom and check my phone.

When did it pass eleven thirty?

After three tries chasing down the pulsating symbols with my thumb, I unlock the screen and return the most recent call. Ester answers on the first ring.

“Where the hell are you?”

It’s 11:40 before I can answer, and I’m pretty sure the echoes of her question aren’t all in my head.

“At the glitter pony. I need you to meet me.”

I have the name of the place wrong but close enough for her to get it right.

“I’ll be right there,” she says. “Be out front.”

“I’ll try.”

My voice seems to take forever to reach the phone.

“WHAT DO YOU MEAN, ‘YOU’LL TRY’?” she demands.

I start describing my symptoms and the circumstances that led to them, and she identifies the drug by its scientific name, which sounds like it starts with a K, but it’s hard to tell between her more familiar cursing.

“You do understand what happens if we don’t complete the ritual and line the next year into place?” she rants. “You do realize there won’t be any more new years, or any more parties for anyone, including you?”

Of course I realize it. It is my one stupid job in the whole universe, the one that only requires two seconds of blinding agony a year and ends existence as we know it if it’s not done.

Needless to say, it’s not a job I applied for.

Ester says something about her and Edgar coming to find me so we can all join hands by midnight, and I don’t know if it’s my senses or the way time itself unravels toward the edges that make her words run parallel to the phone being back in my pocket.

There’s a window set high in the ceiling. My body does that elastic thing again, and it’s 11:48 when I start standing and already 11:54 when I reach the wall and determine that the window both painted shut and not adjacent to the outside.

It’s probably about 11:58 when Cher bursts in, leaning so heavily on Viceroy Charming that her feet drag along the floor.

My knees launch the rest of me away from the source of the K-champagne, fingers scrabbling at the top of the nearest stall wall for a place to hide and toppling headfirst over it. My jaw collides with the tiles, and I realize dimly that I would hurt tomorrow, if there were a tomorrow.

Beyond the half open bathroom door, the partygoers cheer to a clock that must be slightly fast but not fast enough, “Happy New Year!”

For more horrors from F.J.R. Titchenell and Matt Carter, find us on Facebook and Twitter, or check out our other works!

FJR: Facebook, Twitter, Books.
Matt: Facebook, Twitter, Books.

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Holiday Horrors: Bindley

12/28/2014

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Bindley

By Matt Carter

My wife and I had an agreement when it came to Christmas. She would do all the shopping, I would do all the decoration and cleanup. It worked out for everyone this way, really. She was insanely competitive and knew how to find good deals. I knew how to put things in and out of cardboard boxes and garbage bags. Win-win really.

It’s not that I didn’t take any pride in what I did. I made sure everything looked good. Our door had a wreath, our fireplace had its stockings hung with care, our mantle decorated with greens and lights. The first floor had been taken over by Christmas decorations, all centered around the six-and-a-half-foot Noble Fir tree that took place of pride in the middle of our living room. Decked out in ornaments, lights, strings of popcorn and about ten boxes of tinsel, it was a sight to behold if I must say so myself.

The kids loved it, of course, not that they wouldn’t have been happy with whatever I put up because it was Christmas, but I tried to make it right for them. We never really did much for Christmas when I was a kid, so I guess you could say that I was trying to overcompensate and make sure they had the most Christmasy Christmas possible.

Christmas morning was great. They woke up at four-thirty, hyper and jumping up and down on our bed, telling us that Santa had come. They practically dragged us downstairs to show us the mountain of presents beneath the tree and the bites that Santa had taken out of the Oreos they left on the coffee table. Presents were torn open, there was much cheer and pictures taken of fond holiday memories. They played for a few hours, then passed out (because hey, that’s what happens when six and seven year olds wake up at four in the morning), and while my wife brewed another pot of coffee I cleaned up all the boxes and torn wrapping paper.

If only that were the last of the cleanup necessary.

See, that’s the problem they never tell you about going all-out on decorating, that eventually you’re going to have to take it all back down.

I think I did that pretty responsibly too. Every night after the kids went to sleep, I’d take a little bit down, box it up and hide it back in the attic or the garage. It got to the point that they barely noticed a thing was missing until all I had left to take down was the tree.

We knew they’d be despondent if they saw the tree go down, so my wife took them out to the mall for some post-holiday clothes shopping and left me to take it down and out to the recycling center.

It was kind of sad, taking it down. It was that one last bit of the holiday that we still had to hold onto before getting back to the real world. When I pulled down that first handful of tinsel and tossed it into the trash, however, I realized one thing I wouldn’t miss about this season.

Bindley.

Bindley was a six-inch tall wooden gnome, with a jaunty red and green pointed hat, a high collared, furry suit, and a beard that reached down beneath his ample belly. His smile was wide and his blue eyes sparkled, and his one outstretched arm pointed out to his side at nothing in particular.

And I absolutely hated him.

My kids wanted an Elf on the Shelf this year, but since we couldn’t find one, I got a deal from one of my neighbors on Bindley, who was supposed to be some new equivalent made by one of those companies specializing in handmade toys. Since I needed it on short notice, I said sure, why not.

And from that moment on, I hated it.

According to the instructions, Bindley was supposed to move around your house, always pointing out to kids reminders that Christmas was on the way, and at first, I played along. I’d ignore his smirk, his eyes that seemed to follow me everywhere, that pointing finger always drawing attention to what I’d set up and how it didn’t match up to what other, better, dads could do.

But the kids loved him and searching for him, so I did my duty and moved him around.

Well, most of the time at least.

Bindley had a bad habit of popping up in weird places that I know I didn’t put him, like in the medicine cabinet, or in my glove compartment. Always pointing at me, always staring. My wife or kids had to be moving him, like some kind of joke, and I couldn’t say anything because I didn’t want to break the illusion of the holiday.

But I was looking forward to packing him away for the season.

I pulled him out of the tree and set him down on a nearby bookcase. I should’ve thrown him out, but the kids would remember next year. Maybe say you just lost him…

After taking down a few more ornaments and packing them away, I looked back to Bindley.

He was pointing at me and the tree. Staring. Smiling like there was some private joke that I wasn’t in on. I knew I must’ve just set him down that way, but it still gave me a start.

“What’re you laughing at?” I joked, trying to smile it off.

He didn’t say anything. He couldn’t say anything. He was just a toy gnome. But still he pointed, and for some reason I couldn’t quite explain, I felt compelled to look at what he was pointing at.

I pulled away a handful of tinsel, revealing a surprisingly empty section of the tree. It had been full when I bought it, and I’d kept it really hydrated, so this shouldn’t have been a problem. Pulling more tinsel aside, I probed deeper.

Then I saw it.

There was a bulge in the trunk, about the size of a softball, looking almost like a wooden tumor with a glossy sheen over it.

I looked back at Bindley, “So this is what you’re laughing at? That I got a funky tree?”

Still no answer, just staring and pointing and laughing.

Reaching inside, I made to tap the bulge. My fingernail barely scratched its glossy surface when it softly ruptured. Thousands of tiny, writhing insects poured out, scuttling down the tree and my arm. All at once they seemed to start biting me.

I screamed, pulling away from the tree, watching as my blood started to drip onto the ground. I pulled at the bugs, trying to scrape them free and only succeeded in covering my other hand.

I stumbled, falling to the ground. Looking close in one last moment of lucidity before they started burrowing deeper and climbing further up my arms, I could see that they weren’t insects, not quite.

They were miniature gnomes, all with tiny, pointed hats and even tinier, sharper, teeth and claws.

Bindley looked down at me from the bookshelf, pointing down at me and smiling down at us like any proud father would.

Before blood loss and their teeth took me for good, I couldn’t help but have one last, crazy, thought.

Guess I’m not going to have to clean up the tree after all.

For more horrors from F.J.R. Titchenell and Matt Carter, find us on Facebook and Twitter, or check out our other works!

FJR: Facebook, Twitter, Books.
Matt: Facebook, Twitter, Books.

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Holiday Horrors: Where Gran Hides Her Presents

12/21/2014

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Where Gran Hides Her Presents

By Matt Carter

“I know she keeps them in here somewhere,” Olivia said, rooting through the cabinet in Gran’s den.

“I don’t think we should be looking,” I said.

“Oh come on, Jacob, don’t you want to see what she’s getting us?” she said, setting aside another stack of family photo albums.

I really did. Gran always got us the best Christmas presents, and it would’ve been cool to see what she got us this year, but something about finding out early just felt wrong.

“Can’t we just wait until Christmas morning?” I asked. “You know so then we can be surprised and mom and dad can get the great pictures of us?”

“Oh stop being such a baby,” Olivia said, pulling a straw doll wrapped tightly with chains and an old hat from the cabinet. “There’s nothing in here. Come on, let’s keep looking.”

She got up to leave, which meant I had to put everything back. Stupid Olivia.

My older sister hated surprises, and if there was ever any reason to be getting presents she’d always found some way to find out what they were before they were supposed to be opened. She’d ruined pretty much every birthday and Christmas that mom and dad ever tried to hide anything from her for. The only person who’d ever hid stuff from her good was Gran, and that was probably because we didn’t go to Gran’s house that much, which was usually fine by me because her house was old and weird and I think had animals living in the walls.

But mom and dad needed to do some last minute Christmas shopping, and Gran wanted to join them, so we had to spend the day at her house. Alone.

At least Olivia wasn’t calling me stupid for wearing my Santa hat. At least I got to feel like I knew what Christmas was about.

She was walking out of the basement Gran always told us to stay out of when I caught up.

“Wasn’t that locked?” I asked.

“Not very well,” Olivia said. “Gran’s getting old. She only turned the lock, like, halfway.”

Against my better judgment, I asked, “Find anything?”

“Nah, it’s just empty down there. The only thing I found was like some chalk circle on the ground and a bunch of weird writing around it. And a box of Christmas decorations she hasn’t got to putting up yet. And it stinks, too,” she said.

“Stinks?” I asked.

“Like the time Mr. Whiskers crawled into the crawlspace and died and dad couldn’t find him for a week,” she said.

“Ew,” I said.

“Tell me about it,” she said, waving a hand in front of her nose. “You’d think for all this nice stuff she’s got she’d have a nicer basement.”

She was right about that. Gran’s house, like the stuff she always got us for Christmas, was nice and expensive-looking, though the stuff she got us wasn’t covered in dust and looking real old.

“Where do you think she got the money for all of it?” I asked Olivia as she started walking to Gran’s bedroom. I startled when I heard something in the wall. Fast and scrabbling, some rat with inch long fangs and claws like swords, no doubt. I could’ve sworn I saw it moving beneath the wallpaper, but maybe it was my imagination.

It had to be my imagination. Olivia didn’t see anything, say anything.

“From Grandpa, I think. He made a lot of good investments after the war, mom says,” Olivia said.

“What war?” I asked.

“One of those ones where people died; does it matter?” Olivia said. We were in Gran’s room now. All doilies and dust and perfume, so much perfume, from those bottles on her dresser. Bottles of gold and green and blue and some so red they looked like blood. A tall Santa decoration made out of a dressed up paper towel roll stared at us, so at least we knew Gran remembered some of her decorations.

“Whatever war it was, it was one where people back here had to hide things away because they were afraid they’d be invaded and wouldn’t be able to have stuff anymore, so I think that’s why Gran got so good at hiding things. Then Grandpa got sick and all the money was hers,” she said.

“What happened to him?” I asked.

“Something bad, it, like, made his body rot off his bones. She’s got an album with, like, day by day pictures of it happening,” Olivia said.

“Ew,” I said.

“Yeah, tell me about it, she’s got all sorts of messed up pictures in her albums,” she said.

“I thought they were just baby pictures,” I said.

“Those too, but they’re kinda mixed in with a bunch of pictures of people in hoods standing around bonfires,” she said.

“Old people are weird,” I said.

“Tell me about it. See if she’s got a safe or something hidden behind that painting,” she said, motioning me to a bad painted landscape hanging on the wall.

I pulled the painting off. There was no safe, just some badly-drawn picture of a goat’s head inside an upside-down star, surrounded by weird writing.

“Nothing,” I said, putting the painting back.

“Damn,” she said. “Guess we’ll have to check her closet.”

Gran’s closet was an impassible mess of shoeboxes and clothes packed several feet thick. She knew there couldn’t be presents in there since most of that stuff hadn’t been moved in years, but there were shelves up top that could easily be used to hide gifts. Olivia climbed the pile, higher and higher so she could reach the upper shelves. When she got most of the way up, I could only see her legs.

“Hey, I think…”

“What?” I asked. I wanted to see my presents on Christmas morning, I wanted to wait for the surprise, but I could feel a thrill when she said that.

“I found, I think, where she’d keep something. There’s a hole high up in the wall up here, it’s pretty big,” she said.

“Is there anything in it?” I asked.

“I’m reaching, I’ll see… oh,” she said.

“What?” I asked.

She wasn’t saying anything. Her legs started to jerk like she was trying to dance, and it looked like she was going to fall, but then they jerked upward and disappeared like she just flew away. I could’ve sworn I’d heard something crunching.

“Olivia?” I called out. No answer.

“Olivia?” I called again. “You find anything?”

There was a heavy breath from up there, then she talked again.

“Jacob, you have to come up here, you wouldn’t believe the presents she’s got for us!”

Her voice sounded a little weird, choked and heavy, like it was her but not her. Still… there were presents.

I wanted to be good. I wanted to wait until I saw the presents beneath our tree to know what we got for sure. I wanted to be the good one, not like Olivia, not going out of my way to break the rules of Christmas.

I wanted to be a lot of things, but the call of presents was too strong.

“Coming!” I said, climbing up after her.

For more horrors from F.J.R. Titchenell and Matt Carter, find us on Facebook and Twitter, or check out our other works!

FJR: Facebook, Twitter, Books.
Matt: Facebook, Twitter, Books.

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Holiday Horrors: What's Eating Mall Santa?

12/14/2014

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What's Eating Mall Santa?

By F.J.R. Titchenell

I got suckered into the big red suit at the ripe old age of eighteen.

Mom’s a pediatrician, needed someone to fill the suit last minute for the children’s hospital, and of course no one who worked there could do it, because the kids might recognize them.

You’d think some of them might also recognize that the guy behind the beard is only a little older than the kid humoring him from the bed next to them, but event planners think kids are stupid, and most kids know how to make the best out of our clumsiest attempts at magic and goodwill.

Other kids are just good at not bursting the event planners’ bubbles as long as those bubbles keep bringing them presents.

And we think we’re fooling them.

Thing is, it grows on you. You feel ridiculous putting it on, but then those first eyes light up when they see you, and you want to be Santa. The best Santa you can be.

So it seemed like a no brainer to try out for the job at the mall the next year, hope to put on the suit again and help make a merrier Christmas for my little brother. Because that doctor’s paycheck? Not all it’s cracked up to be. Not when there are still student loans to pay twenty years later.

I knew it was a longshot, this being an actual paying job with tryouts and all. Maybe they’d tell me I was better suited to be an elf, or maybe afterward I’d go hit up some of the surrounding stores for seasonal work.

I was right about there being a lot of other applicants, plenty with real beards and no need for padding, some already in their own red suits. I was wrong about there being an abundance of promising potential Santas.

I’ve never seen a surlier bunch of people than the men packed into that big back room, all hard-lined faces that were never made to smile.

The friendly mall-shirted folk didn’t seem at all surprised by the odd turnout as they examined us, the small, cheery-faced woman who was clearly the event planner in charge asking each of us to demonstrate our jolliest laugh.

A flash of something like pity cut briefly through her smile when she heard mine. I knew my age showed a little more in my voice, but I couldn’t see how it could possibly be that bad, compared with the snorts, snickers and outright cackles of some of the others.

I’d always assumed it had been my imagination, how terrifying visiting Santa at the mall had been as a kid, half-remembered details thrown out of proportion by my then painful shyness. If these were how the standards had always been though, maybe I’d been on to something.

Without further instructions, the event team disappeared into some deeper part of the mall’s employee maze, leaving the applicants to glance awkwardly at each other for a hint of what to do next.

We’d stood in that fluorescent-lit white room for maybe fifteen minutes when a girl about seven years old stepped inside from the door to the mall floor. She wore a pine green dress and matching shoes with the curly tops Santa’s elves always wear, making me wonder if she belonged to one of the planners. The nervous, uncertain way she closed the door behind her made her look even smaller than she was.

Given my current company, I couldn’t blame her.

“You okay?” I asked, side stepping away from the other Santa hopefuls to try to give her a less crowded space to approach, dropping automatically to one knee so she could see my face better.

The elf girl swept her extra bright eyes across the whole crowd of us before acknowledging me, without a change on her face. When she finally reached me, she gave me that lighting-up face in fast motion before launching herself into my arms.

“Santa! They need to see you in there!” She pointed over my shoulder, further down the employees only hallway.

Without the suit and beard, I looked easily the least like Santa out of the meager competition in that room, and I doubted she would know if I was being asked for in a direction she hadn’t come from, but thinking that she might be looking for help finding whatever family she might have back there, I let her take my hand and lead me down the hall.

A few of the others tentatively started to follow us, maybe belatedly sensing some kind of test, but the girl hurried me down two more hallways ahead of them and slammed the door to another room as soon as it was behind us.

This backroom was full of elves. Men, women and children of every shape and size, all of them dressed in pine green adorned with curlicues. Only the red mall shirt of the sorry-looking planner sitting with her head in her hands in the corner stood out against the forest of them.

Their clothes matched the girl’s too perfectly for coincidence, backing up the theory that she was somehow connected with them, but something about the matching glint of all their bright eyes turned on us at once made me push her behind me at the sight of them.

This broadened all their grins enough that I could see the needle-sharp points of their teeth.

“Only one today, Sprinkles?” A squat man near the front chirped to the girl behind me.

“He’s got oodles of Christmas spirit to go around!” Sprinkles replied excitedly.

The room full of elves all ran tongues over their needle teeth, tasting something in the air that caused them to nod in agreement with Sprinkles.

“The dregs in the breakroom are yours,” the squat elf man called over his shoulder to the event planner, nodding toward the way I’d come from. “Pick a decent one to suit up for the kids this year!”

The elf swarm flooded toward me, just as my hand missed the doorknob and Sprinkles’ teeth found my wrist.

For more horrors from F.J.R. Titchenell and Matt Carter, find us on Facebook and Twitter, or check out our other works!

FJR: Facebook, Twitter, Books.
Matt: Facebook, Twitter, Books.

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Holiday Horrors: What the Movies Don't Show

12/7/2014

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Holiday Horrors:
What the Movies Don't Show

By Matt Carter

I’m not a bad guy, but I done some bad things. I know that, but I didn’t deserve this. Neither did Chuck. Neither did Marty.

Okay, maybe Marty mighta deserved some of this because it was his idea and he said it’d be easy, but he didn’t deserve all of this, not all the way.

You hear that? He’s out there now, I know it, maybe behind that door, or in the vent. I can hear him scrabbling around, giggling, knowing there ain’t shit I can do against him, just waiting for his moment and knowing all I can do is lie here tryin’ to stop the bleeding before I pass out, looking at all his movie posters and watching its end on TV with all its happy holiday music…

There was music like that playin’ in the bar when Marty came to us with the job. He’s always been one of those guys lookin’ for opportunities, usually makin' a dishonest buck. When I still had my job I’d just laugh and wish him good luck not gettin' caught, but you know how things are. The economy’s shit, and you gotta make money somehow, especially this time of year. I mean, I got kids too, ya know? What am I gonna tell them, Santa couldn’t find them because their dad’s a bum?

No way I’d do that.

The air vent’s rattling. He’s in there. Glad I moved that bookcase against it when I was still strong enough to think. The bleeding’s not stoppin’…

Marty said he’d heard of this house, some rich mansion out in the boonies where the people who owned it left for the holidays. They had walls, but they were so far out they didn’t even invest in bars and security systems. All we had to do was bust open a window, spend maybe half an hour clearin’ out jewelry and electronics and boom, we’d all have a Merry Christmas.

So yeah, Chuck and me followed Marty out in the middle of nowhere in his van. We climbed the wall and we crossed the snowy yard to the most beautiful, plushest mansion I’d ever seen.

He’s trying the door handle. Blocked that too you little son of a bitch… He’s not trying too hard. He knows this house better, he’ll find a way in.

Would you believe it? We found an open window. It was like the Christmas spirits were smilin’ on us. I mean, yeah, the room we climbed in wasn’t all that nice, but we got in a little further, and we were in fat city. The living room alone, with its big shiny Christmas tree in the middle, had like three game systems, a safe Chuck said he could open quick and two jewelry stashes. We probably coulda made bank without checking the rest of the place out (though of course we would, I mean, why waste such an opportunity?)

I mean, yeah, it seemed a little weird at the time that they spent the time decorating this place and left everything on if they were gonna leave for the holidays, but who were we to argue with something so sweet?

There were footsteps on the floor above us, I remember that, and I remember almost telling the guys, but before I could, Chuck picked the safe.

That’s when everything went to shit.

There wasn’t any cash in there, but there was a blowtorch tied to some string. It opened up full blast on Chuck’s hands. I could hear him screaming, see his gloves and skin burning right off his hands. Marty stopped cold, but I had to help. I grabbed a flower vase and poured it on his hands. Water put out the fire, but his talented hands were gone.

Something tapping at the window. I couldn’t block that in time. Is it… no, just the wind. Just a tree. Relax… Relax…

Chuck was in a bad way and I knew we had to get out. Even Marty agreed. Chuck was blubbering, screaming, I knew he’d pass out soon. I tried to joke with him, tried to say how this was like one of those movies with that kid alone in his house, fighting off the burglars. Chuck didn’t remember it then, but maybe the pain put him past that.

We went for the room with the open window, but it was shut now.

Nailed shut.

And then we heard that little shit for the first time.

“You’re gonna have to try harder than that to escape, mister!”

I could only see him out of the corner of my eye, short, blonde and wearing pajamas. Couldn’t have been more than eight.

Didn’t want to deal with him. We just wanted to escape. But we couldn’t. He’d thought of that. All the windows were made of shatterproof glass and nailed shut, the doors reinforced to stop an invasion.

And the traps…

You see, it was just like the movies, but not like them at the same time. There were things in there you wouldn’t think would hurt a man but did. Like the marbles on the floor that made Marty slip and break his hip. Or the paint can dropped from the second floor that broke in Chuck’s skull, gouging him so deep I could see brains. Or the wire that sliced in my thigh, or the glue and plastic tarp the kid threw on Marty’s face, suffocating him.

Every time something happened, the kid was there, laughing but out of reach, always saying some cheesy line even when we shouted for him to go away or when we begged for him to let us leave.

By the time I barricaded in the kid’s room, I’d lost two fingers, busted some ribs and my collar bone I’d think on some brick-throwing machine he’d made, and sliced my leg so deep the blood comes in spurts.

The room’s covered in posters for those movies about the kid and his burglars, and I think he’s got them playing ‘round the clock on a flat screen in here. I locked myself in in time to see the end where the kid meets his parents and gets the swell of happy music that says Christmas has been saved.

But it hasn’t been saved. Not for me. Not for my kids. Not even for this kid, I don’t think, because I’m not sure he’s even a kid now. There’s no family pictures in this house, just pictures of him. Him and his black eyes, and his smile with the pointed teeth, and the skin that doesn’t look like it fits him right.

Tapping at the window again. I don’t look at it.

I know it’s him.

I just sit here wondering. Wondering just how long he’s done this.

How many other mooks like us fell for this.

How-

For more horrors from F.J.R. Titchenell and Matt Carter, find us on Facebook and Twitter, or check out our other works!

FJR: Facebook, Twitter, Books.
Matt: Facebook, Twitter, Books.

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Holiday Horrors: The Stroke of Midnight

Holiday Horrors: Bindley

Holiday Horrors: Where Gran Hides Her Presents

Holiday Horrors: What's Eating Mall Santa?

Holiday Horrors: What the Movies Don't Show

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