Gift-Wrapped & Toe-Tagged: A Melee of Misc. Holiday Anthology

by Dr. Freud Funkenstein, ed.

  The room was silent as we all looked at each other. Then finally, Carmen said, "Can we eat now?"

  As hard as we tried, none of us could hold back a smirk, which soon turned to laughter. Pretty soon, we were acting just as normal as any other day. When my mother began carving off pieces of meat from Father's torso, and placing them on our plates, we took them willingly, and then began to eat as if it were normal to be feasting on your father for the holidays. It had turned out to be a good Christmas, after all, and we still had gifts to unwrap.

  I later found out that Father had been stricken down with a heart attack, and died several days earlier while on his way home from delivering gifts to some of the neighbors in the outlying area around us. Mother had found him in the woods on the edge of the property, dead in the snow and all dressed up in his red suit and shiny black boots. I was unsure whether to be more sad about Father's heart attack, or the fact that Santa really was make-believe.

  Anyhow, she told me she had thought she had heard someone calling her name off in the distance, sometime earlier that morning. She thought she was hearing things, but had finally decided to go investigate, just in case. Then when she found his dead body, quickly made up her mind what she was going to do about Christmas dinner.

  That was four years ago, just shy three days. And, what I think happened was that Mother had finally cracked. True, we all ate from our father, but I have a feeling his death was no accident. Three years ago, we had Willy for the holiday meal; the next year, Billy. And I saw mother take the axe to his head from behind, though she had told Carmen and I that he had slipped and fallen on the ice, cracking his head clean open, dying as a result. Last year, however, I took the initiative, and got to Mother before she could get me, or my little sister.

  When she least expected it, I snuck up behind her and smashed the back of her head in with an iron skillet. I made sure she would never get up again before I stopped pounding her pulverized skull with the heavy pan. With Carmen's help, I dragged her body into the smokehouse, and hoisted her onto the big hook hanging from the chain fastened to the rafter above.

  By the time Christmas Eve came around three days later, we had the feast of our lives. With Mother's head propped upon a plate so she could join us, Carmen and I gorged ourselves on her steamy cooked flesh.

  I knew that once this winter had come, that I was going to dread the coming of this day. There are four days left. And as I clutch my little sister's hand tightly, my mind is on tomorrow night, when I must stick her lifeless body inside the smokehouse, hoist it upon the hook, and secure the door shut. She will be ready in two nights’ time, after that. And just in time for Christmas Eve dinner, too. So now, a Merry Christmas to you all, and to all, a good night.

  Mike Young

  ISN’T NEXT TO THE REST

  WE HAD A room of zombie Christmas ornaments. It wasn't so much a room as a cabinet. Nor that so much as a little drawer hidden behind the water heater. Every year our friends were pretty impressed. "Your gingerbread man talks," they said. "Ours just sits around and listens to Bright Eyes."

  It was both a parlor trick and practical. Our worst relatives we just sent into the gazebo with tiny Zombie Santa and a bottle of Jim. They all passed out and let us watch Ernest Saves Christmas in peace. The next afternoon, in a parade of butt scratching and moaning, they showed up in the kitchen looking for tomato juice, red-nosed Zombie Santa waddling out front.

  Zombie Rudolph let the kids ride. Zombie Frosty turned out to be a pretty good marriage counselor. There was the year Cousin Eiken took Zombie Drummer Boy into the bathroom with him, but that's all in the course of growing up.

  No, the trouble really started when a box of Quaker Oats disappeared. "Weird," we said, and forgot about it. Other stuff started to go: Aunt Jemima syrup bottles, cans of Jolly Giant Green Beans.

  But we'd all gone baccalaureate. We tempered our allegiance to consumer society with whimsy and irresponsibility, never paid much attention to the price of canned goods. One gone? Grab another. Maybe this time organic.

  Then December rolled around and Santa comes out of the water heater closet holding hands with fucking Zombie William Penn, Mr. Quaker Oats himself. "Just because you're way up there," Santa says, "that doesn't mean what's in our hearts!"

  "Isn't," prompts William.

  "Isn't next to the rest of the stuff that's in our hearts! Right in there! A ventricle-" Santa's struggling. Then he stomps a jolly boot. "Ho ho hell no!" he cries. All the other Zombie ornaments join the cry and together they march around the kitchen floor. They tie themselves to a chair leg. Zombie Frosty sets himself on fire and the rest catch.

  The chair leg itself was mostly flame retardant varnish. Cleanup consisted of sweeping up dust, mostly. But we had trouble for weeks. We'd turn on a light and forget why. We'd be having sex in the car and something would smell weird. Then the kids in the backseat would wake up and complain of vague intestinal blah. "Where does it hurt?" we'd ask. "Forever," they'd say. We'd be driving to work or miniature golf and no music would play, nothing, none of the usual atmospheric soundtrack stuff that used to follow us around. We hired cellists to dress like real people and hide near ATMs. They quit after a week and skipped town. No one knows where they went. We write to them every day. All the things we want to say sound spongy, so we just write about our day. Each letter we end by signing love, then we scratch that out and write please.

  Nick Ozment

  THE EVOLUTION OF CLAUS

  STEALTHILY, LIKE A special forces soldier on a secret mission, Tommy crept down the hall in his pajamas. His mission: spy on Santa Claus.

  Like thousands of boys and girls before him, Tommy was not content with "visions of sugar plums dancing in his head"--he wanted to see with his own eyes.

  Because of the timing involved, few have ever been successful in this Christmas quest. Santa comes late and stays less than a minute, a very small window of time to catch him in the dead of night. Drooping eyelids usually don't hold up that long. Soon, Tommy would be one of the few who knew the awful truth.

  Flannel pressed to rug, he peered out from behind the banister. He was focused on the fireplace, its once cheery Christmas Eve embers now cold--the jolly old fellow's alleged point of entry.

  Tommy had the benefit of caffeine--and lots of it--but an hour had come and gone, the caffeine and sugar rush had worn off, and he was struggling to keep his eyelids at half-mast. The wall clock ticking off the minutes had a strange, hypnotic effect that would have lured a less determined child right into Dreamland. Tommy began to drift off into a light sleep then jerked awake. Perhaps a quick dash down to the kitchen for a pop and a snack would help.

  But what if Santa arrived while he was downstairs? He might turn around and leave! Tommy didn't want to frighten Santa off! After wavering for another five minutes, he gave in to his suddenly revived sweet tooth. He slipped down the stairs on slippered feet.

  He opened the fridge, releasing the light and a pent-up waft of chilly air. He grabbed a cold pop and some candy from a jar then quietly started back through the kitchen, his eyes readjusting to the dark.

  That's when he heard the noise--a slurping, plopping sort of noise, like someone pouring a full jar of jelly onto a tile floor.

  Oh no! Santa was here, and Tommy was trapped in the kitchen. But he couldn't pass up this opportunity, not when he'd held out so long, and have to wait another year.

  Quickly dropping to the floor, he wormed forward and peered cautiously around the archway into the living room. What he saw, by the wan glow of the multicolored sparkling lights of the tree, was not human. Nor, for that matter, was it elfin.

  It had come in through the fireplace and stretched over the hearth like a giant slug. Its length he could not guess because part of its body was still backed up the chimney. The visible part was elongating toward the tree. It was a slimy, gelatinous mass with no apparent limbs or eyes or sensory organs.

  Tommy stared mesmerized, his scream choked up in his throat. He
couldn't force out more than a rasping wheeze that no one would be able to hear--except maybe that thing in the living room.

  When the slug-like creature was within a few inches of the tree, it began to disgorge something. Tommy strained to make it out and realized with horror what the square objects were--presents being left under the tree!

  Two tentacles snaked out from the thing up to the stockings on the hearth and began filling them like a snail depositing its eggs. Then the tentacles withdrew, and the whole creature retracted like a night crawler into its hole, back up the chimney.

  A moment passed, then suddenly a black shape slid back down into the fireplace. It had not left. One slimy edge, like the head of a slug, protruded from the fireplace now, wavering, as if sniffing the air with an unseen nose. Tommy's heart pounded so hard in his chest, he was afraid the thing would hear his heartbeat. A slimy tentacle emerged with a sucking orifice at its end. It whipped forward and hovered over the table near Tommy. Then it dived down onto a plate of cookies and glass of milk. It sucked up the milk and cookies like a vacuum, then curled back up into the body crammed in the chimney. The thing shot up the chimney and away.

  Tommy lay there a long time, numb to the cold kitchen tile. Was Santa some sort of alien?

  The following morning, Tommy was the last to get up. His parents thought it an odd reversal that they were the ones who had to coax him out of bed. His mother felt his forehead. He said nothing about staying up half the night, or about what he saw. The only reminder came when his mother picked up the empty milk-glass. "Oh, I hope we didn't leave a dirty glass for Santa," she said.

  "Why's that?" his father asked.

  Holding up the glass to the light, his mother answered, "There's some dried-on jelly or something on the lip. Tommy, be sure you rinse off the dishes before you put them in the sink." Tommy didn't reply.

  Tommy opened his gifts with an uncharacteristic lack of enthusiasm. Even though he got many of the things he'd asked for--a Dr. Creepy Edible Slime Lab, the Roach Motel game and a Gamma Gore-Master action figure with removable limbs and exploding chest--he seemed somewhat ambivalent toward them all.

  Tommy was never quite sure if it had only been a dream. He later learned that in the past, St. Nicholas had been a real person. Whatever the case may have been, Santa is now a bloated, amorphous mutation, Tommy will tell you with a hint of anxiety in his eyes.

  A.P. Fuchs

  HOME FOR THE ZOMBI-DAYS

  THERE WAS NO other tree like it.

  Roy Davies swore up and down it had been reserved just for him. Or, at least, a guy like him full of Christmas cheer, blood pumping with hot cocoa, images of his family and their smiles dancing in his head.

  Ol’ Sammy Dean said he had something special for him when Roy called in to Sam’s Treetop Top Trees Christmas Lot early that morning. The plan was to get a jump on all the other tree-buyers by hitting the place early, even wait outside the fence a few minutes before the lot opened with anyone else who was crazy enough to get there at 7am, and forfeit a Saturday’s sleep-in.

  Except Roy didn’t count on Old Man Winter sending a dilly of a blizzard, covering the town of Dellisburg with two feet of snow. The white stuff came down in sheets for most of the morning, but the sky had cleared by early afternoon.

  Roy’s truck wouldn’t budge out of the driveway, so he spent an hour shovelling to clear it up. Sure, after that the truck moved, but only got to the bottom of the driveway before hitting a snow ridge that it couldn’t clear.

  Roy had no choice but to wait.

  The afternoon wore on. He sat on a fold-out chair in the landing of his house, looking out the window of his screen door, waiting on the town to send a few street cleaners through.

  The first showed up around two.

  Roy got in the truck and headed out to Sammy’s lot, hoping to snag a tree before anyone else did, wanting to get it home in time for when his wife and kids returned from visiting his mother-in-law in Alberta. He just hoped the storm had been localized and they’d still make it through on schedule, getting here just after midnight tonight.

  It was slow-going getting to Sammy’s. Most of the time Roy was stuck behind a street cleaner, waiting for the big bulk of a machine to clear the road before he could even drive on it. It didn’t matter. The wait was worth it and he had plenty of time.

  He checked the rear-view mirror. No one was behind him. Either no one else was coming out to claim a tree or they were taking an alternate route. According to his GPS, he was taking the fastest way.

  Suckers, Roy thought. See you at the finish line.

  Twenty-five minutes later, the street cleaner turned off at the yield. Roy continued in a straight line, the road still covered in snow but packed down. Looked like dozens of other cars had already been up this way, having come in from the south.

  Mr. GPS had lied. At least, in terms of time. It was still the fastest route but the street cleaner slowed Roy down a whole lot. “No matter,” he muttered. “Another ten minutes and I’m there.” He drove on. Only a few minutes in and the sky went gray. A few minutes more and the snow came down. Another minute and there was nothing but white in front of the windshield.

  Roy had to pull over almost immediately the snow was so bad. He tried his cell to call ahead to Sammy’s and let him know he was coming. No signal.

  So he waited, running the heater intermittently, hoping the snow would die down soon.

  It didn’t. Roy got out of his truck and hit the road, toes frozen. So were his fingers. His nose, well, he lost feeling on that hundreds of meters back; same with the tips of his ears. He was never one to dress for the snow. Car heaters, he figured, had a job to do and he was more than glad to let them do it. Besides, he hated all those layers anyway. Now he regretted not listening to his wife’s naggings about dressing for the weather and even wearing an extra layer “just in case,” especially since his heater conked out on him as if it knew he was counting on it to stay warm in this stupid blizzard.

  Sam’s Treetop Top Trees Christmas Lot had to be up there just ahead, somewhere behind the veil of white that made it near impossible to see more than five feet in front of him.

  He just hoped he’d get there in time and get warm before he became a Roy-sicle forever.

  * * *

  They say that mirages only happen in deserts. Something about the heat draining all the moisture from your body, even drying up your brain so you start seeing things that aren’t there. No one ever said you started seeing things in the cold, namely a blizzard where there was only white, white and more white.

  There was a shadow up ahead, looking something like a fuzzy rectangle with a spotted triangle made from mozzarella. There were other triangles as well, fluffy and somewhat transparent behind the snow.

  Roy, forehead frozen, pressed on against the cold wind, hoping to God he’d make it to … to … He didn’t know where he was supposed to make it to.

  Tree Samtop Christmaslot Tree Stop or something. Fuzzy, fluffy mozzarella. Fuzzy, fluffy toes; numb and fat. Fingers that were probably very well blue. Treestop Samlot StopChristmas Tree. Roy blinked – then couldn’t open his eyes, the bits of frost from the wind-caused tears freezing his lashes shut. He squeezed his eyes, hoping the skin-on-skin from doing so would be enough to melt the ice so he could see again. It helped, but only a little.

  Stoplot Tree ChristmasTop Trees. Too cold. So cold.

  * * *

  A sharp rod of pain spiked through Roy’s heels, drove right through his shinbones and slammed into his knees. His thighs ached just above the kneecaps as warmth blasted through his system.

  “Yaaaahh!” he shouted. “Hold it steady, mate,” an old, pebbly voice said. “No, no fries for me, thanks,” Roy said. A flashback to the mozzarella. “Two slices for a buck? Okay, but hold the chocolate.” “Love to, friend, but I don’t think you’re thinkin’ straight. No, surely not.” Roy’s head went warm, then fuzzy, then warm again. His legs pounded from the knees down. There was no way he wa
s walking. The old voice again: “Hurts, I know, but you’ll thank me later. This here ain’t just hot water. If I did that I’d probably ensure you’d lose a toe or something. Maybe more. What you got here is what I called ‘The Blend’. At least, that’s the name I’m thinking of giving it. Never made it before, but have thought of it for years. Call me crazy, but warm water and some of the sap from my trees will make you just fine and dandy. Sap’s supposed to have magical properties, so says some legends I heard. I don’t buy it, but it sure is fun thinkin’ it.”

  Roy groaned.

  The old voice went on. “Maybe I should call it ‘Sam’s Warmer Upper Before Supper’?” He let off a whooping chuckle then followed it off with an old-timer’s cough. “Nah. ‘The Blend’ works just fine for me. Listen, you’re blue in the legs, my friend. This stuff’ll help. Sap’s supposed to be good for all sorts of things. You know, kind of like honey – syrup stuff – and killin’ colds is one of honey’s big things. So Mama used to say back in the day.”

  “I don’t …” Roy started but the words slipped off his tongue and a moment later he forgot what he was trying to say.

  “Anyway,” Ol’ Sam said, “I know you came for the trees. Saw you hobbling up the road. Saw you fall. ‘No good weather to be out in,’ I said. So I come and got you. Still blowin’ up a snow cone out there. We’re gonna have to just wait ’er out till she’s done. Then I’ll take you home. Know where you live?”

  “Manersh sha blin errr …” Roy said.

  “No matter. I’m sure you got a wallet on you somewhere.”

  * * *