Testing.
Christmas sucks.
My name is Dirk.
Uh… Dirk Burger.
I hate my name.
And also Christmas.
No. No,
that’s not true. I hate Saint Nicholas’
Day. It can totally go die in a fire.
Which isn’t funny, I guess, since that’s probably
what’s about to happen to me.
Actually, I’m going to be boiled alive, I think.
I’m running out of time here, so I should stop
messing around and start over from the beginning. If I’m lucky, someone will find this stupid
off-brand MP3 player and listen to it out of a sense of loss for the dead kid
and hopefully, heed my warning.
I sound so stupid.
I keep thinking it can’t be happening, but I’ve tried everything from
pinching myself to slamming my body against the bars of the cage, and I’m not
waking up.
I’m not waking up.
***
It was December fifth, which has very little to do
with Christmas. Or Saint Nick’s
Day. Or whatever.
Since I don’t know who is going to find this, I feel
like I need to explain that I’m part of a pretty boring, normal family. Most of the time. My dad’s an administrator at the hospital,
and my mom works part time at my school, which is super lame because the two
times I’ve gotten in trouble the principal didn’t even have to call my
parents. I had to sit in the lobby of
the office while my mom stared me down, and then when I went in he told me to
bring my mother with me, and mom didn’t even take my side. Didn’t even ask whether I’d done it or not.
People say you’re innocent until proven guilty, but
that’s not the case at all when you’re in high school.
Not important.
The fam was planning on going to Disneyland for
Christmas this year, so my mom thought it would be fun if we did what she
called “A Super Saint Nick’s Christmas” with my grandparents and my
great-grandma, who came over on a literal boat and is about a million and six
years old.
That might be true.
No one knows how old she is, because she was born in some backwoods
village in “the old country” and it supposedly was burned to the ground during
World War One.
Since my grandparents are alive, I was never sure
what to call her, not that it mattered.
So I always thought of her as The Great One. Because she’s old. And fat.
And has a huge hump.
Since the family was going to Disneyland, my parents
unilaterally decided that the trip was going to be our “big” gift, and my
little sister and I could each pick one other small gift.
I wanted an iPhone.
My parents and I had a ton of arguments about
it. They gave me the whole speech about
how I was lucky to have a cell phone at all, since I’m only fifteen and I’m not
paying any of my own phone bills, and I should get a job and learn about
responsibility and whatever.
I’ve told them both about sixty-million times that
I’ll get a job when I have a car, because having your mom drop you off at your
fast food minimum wage job is super-lame.
Not like that conversation ever goes well.
So this part, it’s the story of The Great One and
the iPhone.
The Great One, in addition to riding to elementary school
on a dinosaur, is barely aware of what’s going on around her ninety-nine point
nine repeating into infinity percent of the time. So it wasn’t like we could bring her to our
house and make some big delicious dinner that we’d all actually enjoy.
No. We got to
go to her old folk’s home and eat the food that school cafeterias reject as
being just too gross for humans to eat.
Mostly I pushed my food around my plate, trying to
make it look like I’d eaten any of it at all.
I don’t think anyone was fooled.
On the other hand, it wasn’t like any of my other relatives were looking
to join the clean plate club, either.
It was a quiet dinner. The staff let us eat off in some little room
in the corner of the complex, so we didn’t have to sit around and watch them
feed a bunch of barely-breathing invalids their daily mush.
It was totally awkward. My parents would make some comment to my
grandparents, and then my mom would turn and tell The Great One the exact same
thing, but louder and slower. Meanwhile,
The Great One would just sit there, staring straight ahead. If it weren’t for the slight shift of her
shoulders and the sway of her hunchback that indicated she was breathing, I
would have thought she was dead.
My grandparents asked about school, and my mom got
that look that says that she “doesn’t want to worry” anyone, so I kept my mouth
shut about my recent office visits and said everything was fine.
My sister, on the other hand, had just gotten some
ribbon for an art project she did, so they gushed over her for a while. Kid drives me nuts. Most days I suspect the only reason she’s
around is my parents wrote me off when I got suspended from the first grade due
to my inability to get along with teachers.
And kids. And
administration. And every other idiot I
meet.
After a too-long lukewarm meal of not-food, a staff
member came into the room and offered to take our plates, and we passed them
off to her as quickly as we could.
I figured the pain would end there, and we could all
go home.
But then it got weird.
My mom isn’t really into purses so much as she’s
into giant bags. Her current one is
totally ridiculous. Every color of the
rainbow, covered in unicorns, and probably large enough to stuff my sister into
it.
That seemed a lot funnier, yesterday.
Mom reached into the bag and pulled out two
Christmas stockings. “Dirk, Johanna,
since we’re going to be on vacation over Christmas, and that’s the big gift, I
figured that instead of giving you your one other gift for Christmas, I’d give
it to you for Saint Nick’s day.”
“Saint what now?” I said.
Then, like I said, it got weird, because The Great
One, who had been staring straight ahead at nothing the entire time we were
there, finally shifted a little bit, resettling her bulky weight into her
wheelchair. Like she was part of the
conversation, instead of a baggy-skin-covered statue.
“Saint Nick,” said my mom. She was still holding the Christmas stockings.
One was blue, the other one pink.
My sister’s stocking wasn’t really large enough to
contain her gift. It was some Disney
princess doll, still in the box. The one
with the hair and the dresses who sings that song about wanting a different
life.
Oh wait, that’s all of them.
“I thought Saint Nick’s day was the sixth,” said my
grandpa.
“It is,” said my mom, with that weird “I’m being
patient” smile. “But we’re all here now,
so…”
My grandma cut in, “Yes, but you didn’t tell us you
were going to do this. We could have
brought presents.”
“Mom, you don’t have to get them presents,” said my
mom.
My sister and I exchanged a look. We don’t exactly have a lot in common, but we
knew one thing: Take away all the presents, and grandparents aren’t worth
much. What are we going to do with them
otherwise? Talk about the price of milk
during the Civil War?
“I’m just saying a little warning would have been
nice,” said grandma. Grandpa and dad sat
back in their chairs, staying out of the fight.
They knew what was best for them.
“Well,” said mom, “I found the gifts in the clo-”
she stopped talking. Like my sister and
I didn’t already know where the presents were hidden in the house. “I mean, I found the presents, and I had the
stockings, and I thought I’d give them the gifts now so they could use
them. It was a very last-minute
decision.”
Grandma’s lips turned into a thin line, and I
thought I was going to go another twenty minutes not playing on my sweet, sweet
4G iPhone, except my sister spoke up then.
“Thanks, mama.
That’s really nice,” she said, in her best sweet suck-up tone.
My mom’s focus turned to Johanna, and she leaned
forward and handed her the pink stocking.
The box inside flopped out onto the table while my sister made a little
squeaky sound of joy.
“There’s more in there,” said mom.
Johanna reached into the toe of the stocking and
pulled out a couple of extra outfits and a bunch of foil-wrapped Christmas
candy.
I held out my hands to my mom, figuring she’d hand
me my stocking. But as it turns out, my
sister wasn’t done kissing up.
She hopped off her chair with a, “Thanks, mom!” and
hugged mom. Then dad, who also got a
thanks.
And grandma and grandpa, who both got a, “Happy
Saint Nick’s day!”
Even The Great One got a kiss on the cheek, which
was like watching her lips mush against a pile of Silly Putty.
The Great One didn’t move a muscle when that
happened. But when sis added, “Happy
Saint Nick’s day,” the woman who hadn’t even twitched when my mom was shouting
in her ear earlier moved her eyes for the first time in an hour, pointing them
directly at my sister.
By then, my sister was already back at the table,
opening the box that contained her new chunk of made-in-China plastic.
I cleared my throat, hoping my mom would notice me
again.
“And what do you say?” asked my mom.
I thought for a half-second. “What did you get me?”
My dad finally piped up for the first time. “How about please? Or thank you?”
I looked at him.
“How about I find out what I got, first?”
My grandma’s mouth, which had resolved itself into a
smile when her granddaughter hugged her, thinned back out.
Okay, so, maybe I’m a brat. But I didn’t deserve a lecture over it.
And I definitely don’t deserve to die.
***
Can you hear that sound? That clunking? That’s a paddle. That thing built a fire, and put water in a
tub on top of it. A washtub? Yeah.
Like in that holiday show with the otter and the puppets.
I don’t know how he’s keeping the fire from setting off
the smoke alarm in this place.
I don’t know where the security guards are,
either. You would think a mall would
have an overnight security guard. Or
those motion-seeking cameras. But I did
a lot of screaming and no one came.
So maybe there’s nobody.
Or maybe the guard was naughty, too.
Finish the story, Dirk.
***
“What?” I said.
“Well, why wouldn’t you say thank you?” said mom.
“Because I still don’t know what I got.”
“Neither did Johanna.”
“Are you kidding?
The doll didn’t even fit in the stocking. She was saying thank you because she already
knew what she had.”
“No I didn’t,” said Johanna.
“Whose side are you on?” I said.
Johanna shrugged and went back to work untwisting a
wire, still trying to free her doll from the prison-like packaging it was
trapped in.
I looked at my stocking again. There was a lump in the “leg” that looked
like it could be iPhone-sized. Even if I
was ungrateful, I wasn’t stupid. Right
now it didn’t matter who was right and who was wrong. What mattered was, there were apps to
download, music to blast through my earphones, and my own personal computer
with no one looking over my shoulder whenever I wanted to Google something that
was nobody’s business but my own.
“I’m-sorry-thank-you,” I said, all in one breath.
Mom moved as if to hand me the stocking, hesitated,
glanced at her parents, and then I guess she figured it made more sense to just
give me the stocking than it did to argue with the sincerity of my apology.
Considering how things turned out, it would have
been better if she had kept it.
The second the stocking hit my hand, I tipped it
over and out came a box, maybe twice the size of a deck of cards, with the word
iPhone carefully printed on it. I didn’t
think about it at the time, but the box was pretty light. I should have known what was coming.
I dropped the stocking on my knee and pulled at the
lid of the box and there, inside the box was… this thing I’m talking into.
It was tiny and boxy, and a pair of cheap earbuds
stuck out of the top of it. There was a
small hole in one corner, and a few unmarked buttons.
I looked up at my parents, both of whom were
smiling. It was a smile that didn’t
quite meet their eyes. They had punked
me.
“Nice,” I said.
“You’re welcome,” said my dad. He eased back in his chair and glanced around
at the table, I guess hoping for high fives from the rest of the family for his
most excellent joke.
“Where’s the real one?” I asked. I stuck my hand into the stocking and started
to dig. I came up with some candy. Chocolate, mostly.
“Real one?” said my mom.
“Yeah. The
real one. This is an iPhone box.” I held up my present. “This is not an iPhone.”
Dad sat back up, and I saw the tension push back
into his shoulders. He glanced over at
his in-laws, warily. “No, it’s not.”
“I asked for an iPhone.”
“You have a phone.”
“Yes,” I admitted.
“I have a phone.”
“And now, you also have an MP3 player. So now you can make calls, and listen to
MP3s, which is everything you needed from an iPhone.”
“Well, I can’t take pictures or video. I can barely text. My phone has one game that I don’t even
understand…”
“Dirk-”
“Dad…” I
sounded whiny. I hate it when I sound
whiny.
“Dirk, do you know how much an iPhone costs?”
I shrugged.
“A hundred bucks. That’s what I
heard this guy say at school.”
“Yeah, well, ‘this guy’ was wrong. A new iPhone is more like six hundred
dollars. And you have to keep in mind,
that’s just for the object itself. Then
you’ve got phone and data plans, which jack up your monthly costs by another
fifty bucks. Per month. Which I would
have to pay for, since you don’t have a job.”
I looked at the MP3 player. “You could have at least gotten me an actual
iPod.”
“They play MP3s.
So does the thing you’re holding.
At a much reduced cost. Which
meant we could jam an extra day into our Disney trip,” said my dad.
“But-” I said.
And then it got full-on freak show. Because The Great One turned her head towards
me. Her neck muscles crackled.
Everyone got really, really quiet.
“You…” said The Great One, and it was like you could
hear gravel and spiders spilling from her throat. Like she hadn’t spoken in years. Maybe she hadn’t.
Her eyes were directly on me, but I was so
shell-shocked by sound coming from her mouth that I could only say, “Me?”
“You will anger him.” It was like listening to two rocks scraping
against each other.
“Who?” I said.
“Dad?”
And then she said it. The source of all my nightmares and therapy
sessions. Assuming I get to live.
“Krampus.”
Talking about it now, even though I can see him in
front of me, it feels like something out of a horror movie. Something that happened to someone else, and
then I turned the lights on and the movie off and walked away and it was only a
story played by attractive actors slumming for rent money.
But then? I
thought I had heard wrong. “Christmas?”
“Kram-pus,” she said, drawing out the word.
“Father Christmas?
Like Santa Claus? You’re worried
I’m going to tick off Santa? Because I
know he doesn’t exist, I’m not five-”
“Dirk!” snapped my mom. I looked at my sister, who was still playing
with her doll. I rolled my eyes, and was
about to make an ironic remark about how my sister was going to have to learn
someday about the fact that some creepy dude doesn’t sneak into her house…
And then The Great One grabbed the table, and heaved
herself to her feet. “KRAMPUS!”
Standing, she looked more like a troll than a
human. She was hunched over the table,
as if she was preparing to pounce and grab one of us for her supper. Her entire face wobbled, as though her skin
was a cheap rubber appliance that wasn’t glued down correctly.
Everyone sitting at the table pulled back from it,
except my sister, who dropped to the floor and crawled under it towards
dad. As if dad was going to protect her.
The Great One began shuffling towards me, using the
table for balance. Her eyes never left
mine, even as her over-lipsticked mouth spat words at me.
“For every good thing, is also bad thing. Opposite.
Light and dark. Saint Nicholas
brings good things. Toys. Food.
Children cry when they get coal in stocking, but in old country, in my
home, coal would give warmth when there was no warmth.
“Bad children not get coal. Bad children get Krampus.”
By now, The Great One was standing inches away from
me, her face nearly touching me, her breath like something out of a hot,
steaming sewer. I tried to pull back,
but the chair was in the way and I couldn’t process the motions it would take
to slide it. As if my chair was hooked
to the table, and there was no escape.
She continued.
“You are not grateful for gift.
You are mean to sister. You are
not happy about time with family. These
are all presents, much better than some toy.”
She looked disdainfully at my MP3 player.
I didn’t think. I said, “But I wanted an iPhone.”
“Is toy!” she bellowed, and I felt the wind of a
thousand stomach ulcers crawl up my nostrils and set up camp.
I didn’t say anything else.
“You ungrateful.
Brat. You make amends. Become good. Or Krampus come for you.”
“Who-?”
She cut me off.
“Saint Nicholas is saint. Says so
in name. What is opposite of saint? What is not-saint?”
The only saint I could think of was Saint Peter, the
guy who was supposed to meet you when you died and went to heaven. The opposite of that? “The devil?”
“Not the devil, perhaps. But a devil.”
She offered me a hideous grin, and I looked at her black, stained gums. “With teeth.
No. Fangs. Rows and rows, like shark. Horns.
Naked, but covered in fur. Claws. Claws wrapped around a sack. For you.”
“I thought he didn’t bring presents.”
“No presents.
Sack is for you to go inside.”
I felt a giggle escape my mouth. It wasn’t real laughter. It was a kind of hysteria. “And then what?”
“He… tenderize you.”
“How?”
“Hitting.
Kicking. Until you are black and
blue. And bloody.”
“And then he takes me home?”
“No. He eats
you.”
“Kills and eats?”
“No. Takes
pieces. Cooks. While you watch. Eat you in front of you. Easy death too good for bad child. He…”
She trailed off, and her eyes opened wide, and she
swayed backwards, and forwards, and tilted, and fell into my lap, and her
weight pushed me over and we both fell onto the ground in a heap, her full
weight on top of me, and I screamed, and shoved, and punched, and kicked.
Staff members ran in from the hallway, and my
family, who had all acted like they were locked into their chairs, began to
move and shriek.
“Grandma?”
“Mom?”
The staff picked her up, pulled her away from me,
and I rolled over, trying to catch my breath, and then I heard my mom say,
“Grandma!” and my sister started to cry and I heard my dad tell her to look
away.
The Great One had finally drawn her last horrible
breath.
***
I can still see Krampus in the firelight. He’s got a huge pile of those special
chemical logs that are supposed to burn and burn and burn.
The washtub was boiling before. Now it’s almost churning. That thing broke one of the metal sprinkler
pipes to keep water flowing into the pot because it’s evaporating too quickly
it’s boiling so hard.
I need to hurry.
***
We spent hours at the former abode of The Great
One. None of us had really eaten, so in
addition to the fact that we were all traumatized by what had happened, we were
all starving.
Johanna and I finally just gave up and started
eating our Christmas candy, which actually made it worse. There’s a reason that dessert is always the
last part of a meal. It’s because too
much sweet stuff sours in your belly when you haven’t eaten anything else.
First the staff had a million questions for all of
us. Then the police came, because
someone had called them when they heard screaming and they had to file a
report.
Then the director of the place showed up and had my
parents sign a whole bunch of papers that, from what I could tell, were mostly
about making sure my parents couldn’t sue them for negligence, and closing out
The Great One’s account.
They were told they had two weeks to clean out all
of her belongings, and that they’d be charged for their disposal if it came to
that.
By the time we got home, it was late, and Johanna
and I both felt tired and sick to our stomachs.
I figured I’d try to work the trauma to my
advantage, and ask for permission to stay up a bit and at least load some music
on my totally lame MP3 player.
Yeah. That
wasn’t going to happen.
I brushed my teeth, threw on a T-shirt and some
boxers, and went to bed.
For a little while.
My parents aren’t much for the night owl thing. Dad is one of those guys who wakes up at five
AM every day to hit the treadmill before he heads to the office. And Johanna gets up every day at six whether
it’s a school day or not, so mom is always up and making sure she doesn’t
impale herself on something, I guess.
So somewhere around eleven, I decided it was time to
load the player.
The computer is in the downstairs living room, which
means that anyone and everyone can see what you’re doing. So if you’re supposed to be writing a paper,
and need a little social media break, well, good luck with that.
On the bright side, I already had converted most of
my music to MP3s in anticipation of my nonexistent iPhone. So it was only a matter of stuffing a cable
into the computer and starting the downloading to my player.
Files started copying, and I started clicking around
the web, bouncing here and there and everywhere I can’t go when someone is
watching over my shoulder.
So I thought I was the only one awake when I heard
footsteps upstairs.
I closed everything on the screen and checked my
copied files. I’d grabbed some tiny
percentage of my music, but having some and not getting busted was better than
having mom or dad come down and asking what I was up to.
I pulled the cables and shut down the computer, then
crept over to the stairs. I thought I
could still hear some movement, but it seemed to be at the opposite end of the
hall from my bedroom.
I figured if I could at least get to the top of the
stairs without getting caught, I could always say I had to pee.
I went up.
I could still hear shuffling, but as I was sneaking
up, step by step, I could mostly only hear my blood rushing in my ears as I
strained to time my ascent to the sounds from upstairs or outside.
I was trying to time everything just so, trying to
make sure I wasn’t wandering into a trap.
I’d attempted to sneak up the stairs after a late night computer visit
and had gotten busted before, and that was a whole conversation I didn’t feel
like having ever again.
Finally, I hit the top step, and looked around. I could still hear a faint sound of
something-or-other, but couldn’t figure out what it was.
And I was surprised to find that, thanks to an overactive
heart rate and a rising stress level, I really did have to pee now.
I touched the door to the bathroom, and it eased
open.
And there was Johanna, barfing into the toilet. The shuffling I’d heard was her padding
around, trying to clean up the chocolate-covered vomit that she’d created
before she’d made it to the porcelain collector of all things disgusting.
She needed new pajamas and a bath at least, and the
carpets on the floor were going to need to be washed. She looked a little freaked out, too, and
embarrassed, like she’d been caught doing something bad.
“Help?” she said, weakly.
“No way,” I said.
“This is mom’s problem.” I
figured it was only fair, since mom had sicced The Great One on me.
I turned towards my room and took a step.
Johanna screamed.
I turned back towards the bathroom door. I could feel angry words in my mouth. I was tired and cranky and there was vomit
everywhere and I had to pee and I didn’t even have a cool iPhone to play with.
And then it hit me.
Literally.
I felt metal smash into my mouth, and heard a loud
whump, like someone was striking a muted gong.
I flew backwards, directly towards the stairs, and
went down. I tried to grab at the
bannister, but I was at the center of the stairway and there was nothing to
latch onto.
I could feel myself moving backwards through space,
and tucked my head into my chest, hoping that whatever I hit would have some
give.
Then I rammed into the wall, and my head punched a
hole into it.
The only light in the house was in the bathroom at the
top of the stairs, and the night light down the hall on the right. Both lights flickered, but I couldn’t tell if
it was something to do with the electricity in the house or the blow to my
noggin bone.
I tried to sit up, but the pain in my head became
nausea in my stomach. The house around
me rotated twice.
I saw my parents’ bedroom door open, and the
silhouette of my mom appeared. Her mouth
moved.
I realized then that I couldn’t hear anything. Or rather, I could hear, but it seemed like everything
was far away and very slowly getting closer.
My sister was still screaming.
My mom said something else, but I couldn’t hear it,
and then she said something else, and I looked up, trying to focus on her face,
trying to read her lips.
But when I looked that way, something was blocking
my view. He was blocking my view.
Krampus was blocking my view.
I don’t know how to describe him. I’d say he was like something out of a horror
movie, but I’ve watched a lot of horror movies, and I can tell where the
zippers are and how the blood is made and…
And none of that will do this thing justice.
Because it’s not the big details that matter, it’s
the little ones. It’s not that his
entire body is covered in hair. It’s the
fact that the hair looks wet. Slick,
like it’s covered in some form of slime.
Like he came out of a giant birth canal just a minute ago.
It’s not that there are horns on his head. It’s that they’re ancient, and scarred, and
stained from centuries of existence and being painted in every form of animal
and human bodily fluid.
It’s not the teeth, or even the fangs. It’s the crust of blood between them, around
them, dripping from them.
It’s not just the smell, it’s the scent of
never-ending decay. Centuries of rot
free from the amenities of toothpaste and soap.
I tried to raise my body again, and felt the world
swim.
In one hand, Krampus held the washtub, and a giant
sack.
With the other, he grabbed me by the hair and pulled
me to a standing position. I thought he
was going to hit me with the washtub again, but instead, he twisted my hair
until I was standing up straight, looking down the remaining stairs to the
hardwood floor below.
Krampus let go, and for a moment I felt only
dizziness and nausea, and not incredible pain.
Then he put his foot on my backside, and shoved.
I had gone down the first set of stairs backwards,
unable to do anything to protect myself.
This time I was flying like Superman, but I could at least throw my arms
up to protect me from shattering my nose or skull.
I wasn’t in the air for more than a second, and when
I hit the ground I felt most of the air go out of me. While protecting my head, I’d left my torso
fully exposed to my landing, and I could feel my ribs and breastbone compress my
organs.
I couldn’t breathe.
I tried to push myself up onto my hands and
knees. Something inside me, my primitive
lizard brain, was telling me to get up and run, but the lack of air in my lungs
and the spinning sensation in my head made it impossible to get my limbs to
operate.
I tried to focus all my brainpower on moving my
right arm, just that one limb, pulling myself up and forward, and while I could
see my arm sliding just a tiny bit, I couldn’t really feel it. It was like operating a car by remote
control. I knew I was moving it, but
there was no sensation.
I didn’t realize it at the time, but that was a
blessing. It was the last time I’d stop
feeling pain.
I felt the temperature around me shift, and grow
warmer. I had a microsecond to wonder
what was happening.
And then Krampus landed on my spine.
I had thought all the air in me was gone, but I felt
the last whoosh of it pass my lips. The
claws on his toes scraped the scalp on the back of my head, and it was like my
nerves turned back on.
Air scraped itself past my throat as I brought air
in, and I tried to scream, and I couldn’t.
Krampus stepped lightly off of me. His hand came down, and flipped me over so I
was looking up at his face. Why did he
do it? Did he want me to see what was
coming? To increase my terror by a few
more degrees?
I’ll never know.
What I know is, I saw his foot rear back, and then
he was kicking me.
There was no rhyme or reason to it that I could
tell. I kept trying to get my arms and
legs to function, to block or deflect or at least weaken Krampus’ blows, but it
was beyond my abilities.
Each strike felt like a punch from a gorilla, or a
kick from a kangaroo. This is what
Krampus does, and this is what he is good at, and he knew where the softest
parts were.
My hearing continued to return. I could hear the wet-meat sounds of Krampus
smashing his foot into my body. I could
hear my sister alternately screaming and gasping. I could hear my mother yelling into the
phone. Something about an emergency, and
the police, and an intruder, and to just come, to come, to get here, to get
here now, her son was dying, was being murdered in front of her eyes.
In the same dim, faraway place where my limbs were,
I realized that she meant me.
How long did it go on? It felt like weeks, but it couldn’t have been
more than a minute or two. I could hear
a siren somewhere in the din of screaming and yelling and crying, and my dad
trying to comfort Johanna while mom screamed into the phone. My dad said, “It’s okay.”
Only it wasn’t okay.
As the siren pierced the din of my house, Krampus
stopped raining blows on me for a moment.
Then he held up the washtub, and smashed it into my
skull.
Everything went grey. All sound became a loud, piercing whine in my
brain, like microphone feedback.
Krampus dropped the washtub, and let the sack fall
open. He grabbed me by the shirt again,
and pulled me up, and stuffed me in, head-first.
I could feel myself sliding in, bending every which
way, could feel the bruises on my body rub against the rough cloth.
I heard a door open and felt cold air through the
cloth. The siren sound got louder. I started to call for help, with the meager
amount of air in my lungs.
Then a pressure against my entire body, as Krampus
swung his sack. Then pain, as I hit
something rough and unyielding.
Then darkness.
***
If you watch a thousand movies with magic in them,
the magic is always different. You’re
born with it. Or you develop it. Or there are books of spells and you can just
read them. Or there’s a magical object.
Of course, “magical” is one of those words with a
good reputation. Magic sounds cool, and
fun, and awesome.
Until you realize that something like Krampus is
magical.
That thing, that creature, the one out there
building up his fire, boiling the water in his washtub, watching the sides of
the tub turn bright red from the heat, he’s magical. He got into my house even though there’s an
alarm on the door. He came here from The
Old Country, which makes him as magical as Santa Claus is.
I wonder if this means Santa is real.
The sack he’s got looks like it would fit someone
half my size, but I slid into it like it was no trouble at all.
And he got us into the mall, without setting off an
alarm. He’s got a raging fire going, and
the fire alarm isn’t screaming and the sprinklers aren’t doing anything to stop
it.
And here I am.
When I woke up, I was locked in here. It’s a cage they use to keep the live reindeer
they bring in so Santa’s Workshop looks more authentic. I don’t know where that deer is right now,
but his smell never left.
I’m not sure how long I was out.
But when I woke up, all I wanted was water. I drank from the deer’s bucket. I’d worry that I’m going to catch something,
but I don’t see that it’s going to matter.
Now that Krampus’ water is boiling, he’s pulled out
a dozen axes of various sizes, and he’s sharpening them all, one by one.
The ironic thing, the thing that surprised me most,
was that through all of it, the falling, the landing, the beating, I held onto
that stupid MP3 player. Turns out the
hole is a microphone. Press a little
button and it records.
After I tried yelling and screaming and pushing on
the bars with my aching limbs, I figured I’d at least die with some music in my
ears. Which was when I found the button.
He’s taking a belt and running it along one of the
axes now. Making the edge as sharp as it
can be.
He’s coming this way. I’m going to the back of the cage now, so he
can’t reach me. Maybe when he unlocks
the door, I can run.
Yeah, I’m talking about you, you big stupid
animal. Come and get me. Come on.
Come –
***
He can-
He did-
Belt-
Leg-
Tourniquet.
He’s cooking it.
Them. Boiling.
Eat. Juices.
He’s coming back.
No.
He’s coming back.
Coming.
Be nice.
Be nice, kids.
Be-
***
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