by Tim Curran
Susan moved slowly and calmly to ease herself into the chair at the head of the table. The chair was always reserved for her husband, where he barked orders and dribbled complaints onto all her meals the entire forty years of their marriage. She folded her hands over the place setting and stoically watched her children splatter her perfect staging in their haste.
Jared wobbled up from his chair for a second and popped his eyes wide. He shook his head, somewhat befuddled, then continued scraping food from the dishes.
“What’s the matter, Jared, honey? Are you feeling all right?” Susan asked, expressionless.
“Yeah, I think so.” Jared paused and licked his lips clumsily. His gaze roved over the feast before him as his eyes dropped in and out of focus. He shook his head again in a small jerk. “Yeah, Ma, I’m totally fine.”
“Are you sure? You look a little peaked.”
“No, just hungry. Or that strong nog.”
Jared pressed his hand to the tablecloth and lowered himself down gently into his chair, still attempting to fix his gaze. Yet he snatched up his fork just the same and began shoveling the food into his mouth.
“If you say so, dear.”
Susan turned from watching Jared struggle and looked to her daughter. Samantha started to waver as well, focusing hard to gorge herself on the spread.
“Samantha, you look a bit flush as well.”
Samantha froze with an oversized portion of mashed potatoes hovering on the spoon in front of her, dark circles sprouting under her floating eyes to glance at her mother. Her eyes bounced past her mother before snapping back to focus.
“No,” Samantha crooned. “I’m fine. Wait, Mom, where’s the ham?”
“And where’s Dad?” Jared asked, chewing messily.
“Oh my goodness, you’re right.” Susan tossed her hands up mockingly. “How could I forget the main course? How ever could I forget the every desire of my two ungrateful children? I gave them the past thirty-seven years of my life, but they could not be troubled to even give me a grandchild. Or call me on my birthday. Or carry a dish from the kitchen after I cooked since dawn.”
Samantha and Jared halted mid-pillage and both turned to finally look their mother in the eyes. Their expressions hung slack from their skulls with shock as a putrid pallor crept onto their cheeks. Chunks of food clung half masticated on their molars as their jaws dangled. Even as they stared blankly at their mother, their heads appeared to grow heavy and tug down toward their overflowing plates. Susan basked in their confused, falling expressions.
“I’ll be right back.” Susan smiled cheerily and popped up more quickly than she had moved all night.
Susan returned from the kitchen with a large serving dish stretched between her hands. Her entire day, all her preparation had been leading up to this reveal. She clung to the platter lovingly, feeling an unfamiliar sense of freedom spiral out into her fingertips. She practically beamed as she heaved the dish up to place it at the climax of the feast between her children.
“Oh my God,” Samantha breathed, pressing a hand to her mouth.
Samantha had started to sweat and glistened under the low lighting. The terror momentarily snapped her back, and her eyes began to well with fat tears. Her lips twitched and wiggled in unformed words.
“Mom, what is that?” Jared gaped.
Jared leaned forward to try and see through his failing eyes then slammed himself back in the chair in horror. Susan could hear him gulping in breaths as he struggled to speak. He stuttered sloppily before finding the words.
“It’s a heart! Oh my God, it’s a heart. Mom, whose heart is that?”
Samantha began to tremble. The quivering began at the fingertips over her mouth then reverberated down her arm into her trunk. Her entire body shook in subtle, frozen panic. Jared looked down at the roasted, bloody flesh. His eyes went wide before falling distant again. He began to heave, his whole body contracting down around the reflex.
“Your father finally decided to help with dinner this year,” Susan said calmly.
Susan’s smile illuminated her entire face. She seemed to float on her aching and exhausted joints. Samantha managed to turn her face up to her mother in sheer dismay before her eyes involuntarily rolled back into her head. Her traumatic shaking ascended into a violent seizure. When her body fell limp, it dropped her face squarely into her heaping plate. Blood poured out of her mouth and nose, spreading rivers of red through the gravied-mountains of mashed potatoes.
Jared’s face grew more pale. His eyes sunk deeper into his cheeks, flitting between his mother’s sneering grin and his immobile sister. His fork clanked against his oversized plate as the tremor started to vibrate in his hand, eerily tapping in time with the Christmas carols still floating on the air around them.
“Would you like some more egg nog, dear?” Susan said with the most genuine smile he had ever seen on her lips.
The End
About the Author
Colorado‐bred writer, Christina Bergling, sold her soul early into the writing game. By fourth grade, she knew she wanted to be an author. In college, she studied English with a Professional Writing emphasis.
Her creative nonfiction class yielded two pieces that were later published—Tell Me About Your First Time in the college literary magazine riverrun and How to Kill Yourself Slowly on denversyntax.com.
However, with the realities of eating and paying bills, the survivalist in her hocked her passion for dystopian horror for a profession as a technical writer and document manager. Bergling published the short story Death and Other Disappointments while working as a technical writer for a Department of
Defense contractor. That job took her to Iraq for one rotation, which cracked her mind open to a whole new perspective and started infecting her writing. She blogged from Iraq and during pregnancy and now continues another blog centered on running.
Her debut novella, Savages, was released in December 2014 and followed by her second, The Waning, in July 2015.
Bergling is a mother of two young children and lives with her family in Colorado Springs.
christinabergling.com
facebook.com/chrstnabergling
@ChrstnaBergling
chrstnaberglingfierypen.wordpress.com
pinterest.com/chrstnabergling
The Veil
By
Rose Garnett
“Deck my balls with boughs of holly,” sang a leering passerby to his ugly female companion as he brushed past me in the crowd, gripping the body part in question. Bloody disgusting if you asked me - she looked old enough to be his grandmother.
I had made the mistake of going to Edinburgh’s Christmas market on the Mound in Princes Street and was hating every seasonal second. The press and crush of the drunken, jovial mob was doing my head in -and that was the best I could say about the whole hellish experience. The stalls, smothered in strings of lights and intricately crafted crap destined to be bought for Christmas and binned by Boxing Day, covered the city centre like a vivid rash. Worse, it had begun to snow; big fat, fan-dancing flakes that froze my face and flattened my hair.
Sour violated sweet as the stench of fried food dry-humped the sugary taint of candy floss into submission, overpowering my stomach in the process - although to be fair, the nine pints I’d sunk last night might have had a little something to do with that. The barrage of noise from different fairground rides fought an ear-bleeding battle with a maudlin, yet top-volume, medley of eighties Christmas ‘classics’. Last Christmas won it by a nose, fracturing the night air with a love-lorn whine-fest about some irreplaceable bint or other. They were all interchangeable as far as I was concerned. Every single one.
I say night, but actually it was only late afternoon. It got dark in this godforsaken neck of the woods at 4pm in December and stayed that way until sometime after 9am, when it was replaced by a leprous twilight that leached colour from the world and joy from the soul.
And it wasn't as if the history of the place wasn’t
any cheerier. The Mound was an artificial hill constructed in the nineteenth century from tonnes of refuse excavated from a wealthier part of town and dumped where the poor no-accounts lived. And that was only the half of it. The artificial ice rink in Princes Street Gardens had been the site of the Nor’ Loch, a sewage pit where they used to dunk old women to prove they were witches. I was betting the revellers had no idea they were partying on what had once been little better than a murderous cess-pit. As for me, I liked to see things as they really were - no rose-tinted, shit-denying glasses for me.
My current girlfriend, Louise, was just ahead of me with her best mate, Mia, and they were running, giggling, from one stall to the next, pointing at the more bizarre offerings for sale. I lost sight of them in the crowd, but not before I had exchanged a meaningful look with Mia. An innocent kiss and cuddle last November had mutated into a full-blown, raging affair and Mia was now putting pressure on me to leave poor, fat Louise.
Okay, so she wasn’t fat exactly, but she had put on a few pounds this last year and I was concerned, for her own sake, that she had been letting herself go. Just as well I wasn’t the superficial type.
Louise and Mia couldn’t have been more different. Blond, curvy, sweet Louise just couldn’t compete with brunette, willowy, hot-sex-on-legs Mia. Those honey-brown peepers of Mia’s could melt a man to mush in under ten seconds. At least that was what I had told her in what proved to be a successful leg-over exercise. I was more interested in her surprisingly fulsome breasts than I was in her face, but that just meant I wasn’t really cheating on Louise because it was only a physical thing. You couldn’t exactly tell women that, though, could you?
Not if you wanted to get any. And blow me, because I did. I always had done, to the exclusion of everything else.
Something pushed past me with great force, small enough to be a child, but too fast to see. It wouldn’t have registered with me in the touchy-feel fest of the heaving crowd, had it not left a rank stench like rotting meat spoiling in the sun.
Mia pursed those full, glossed lips, distracting me again. Though truth to tell, I was becoming a little bored with her, too, and had my eye on someone else who as yet hadn’t responded to my boyish charms. This was still, however, a little inconvenient, given I was living with Louise and she was picking up all my bills.
“Derek,” laughed Louise, popping up out of nowhere and tugging on my arm. “Go see Mia - she’s got a surprise for you. I’ll be over in a sec, I just want to check out a Rudolph glow toy for my godson.”
Like the good-natured fool that I was, I walked over to Mia who was standing by a little stall, different from the rest. Lit only by four old-fashioned gas-lamps, it appeared gloomy and threadbare compared to all the others. Hanging from the roof were strings of drab, cloth dolls with buttons for eyes, interspersed with badly made wooden decorations each of which had a five pointed stick figure at the centre. There was a sign in the dingy interior that bore the legend:
Caveat Emptor
Buyer beware? Louise aside, who the hell fell for this demented, sub-standard goth shit? And while I hated the whole Christmas vibe, its absence in this stall irritated me even more. It also sold ugly-looking jewellery, as I found out when a prime example was thrust into my face by Mia, a small smile threatening to evict her usual sulky pout. Eyes bright, cheeks flushed with the cold, she gave my arm a furtive squeeze and there it was - that familiar little tingle that had gotten me into this in the first place. Maybe I wasn’t through with her after all. Not yet, anyway.
Taking the item from her, I saw it was a necklace - a dull, grey pendant with a horned goat’s head carved into its rough surface, hung on a discoloured chain.
“This is horrible,” I laughed, handing it back, “just horrible.”
“No,” Mia hissed, pushing my hand back with some urgency. “It’s for you. From Lou - I don’t know why she wanted me to give it to you,” Mia shrugged. “She got one for all three of us. Look, here’s mine,” she said, rolling her eyes and opening the palm of her other hand.
And so it was. An identical necklace, featuring a badly carved goat with tiny, indecipherable writing all the way around the edges, lay in centre of her palm.
“Lou’s already wearing hers,” said Mia as Louise returned laden with parcels and bags and beaming from ear to ear. “They’re for good luck. Apparently.”
“I see,” I said, going over to Louise and taking her in my arms. “Well, what I meant was, I’ve always wanted to wear women’s jewellery and now that my dream has come true, I might just go for a matching dress. And shoes. High heels, obviously. What do you think babes?”
I grinned down into Louise’s upturned, trusting little face, taking in the neat, wheat-coloured hair held back with a red, silk bow. I always could literally charm the pants off birds and Louise was a particular sucker for what I had to give, even if I did say so myself. She looked at me with an indecipherable expression and, for a moment, I got the fear. She wasn’t going to propose to me when we got home, was she? Her sister had died at this time of year and it always made her maudlin and needy.
“Put it on for me, sweets. We could really do with some good luck, couldn’t we?” Louise said.
I hated it when she called me that.
“Couldn’t hurt. Here, help me. will you?”
The seller, a sallow, sour-faced old bag I hadn’t noticed until that instant offered to help, but was drowned out by Louise who, squealing with delight, beckoned me to bend down as she struggled with the clasp. I thought of my massive visa bill and did as I was bid.
“There.”
“And, just so you know,” said Louise, “It’s an amulet, not a necklace.”
The I-can’t-believe-it’s-not-a-necklace lay cold and heavy against my breast bone as though it had attached itself to my skin.
“Thanks babe. Wait till you see what I’ve got you.”
The truth was I hadn’t got her anything and wouldn’t - not until she gave me some dosh.
Mia’s mouth tightened, but she said nothing.
“Derek, why don’t you help Mia put hers on,” said Louise, smiling.
Mia turned around and moved the lush spill of her dark hair so I could fasten the damned thing. What had possessed Louise to buy this shit? My cold fingers brushed the warmth of Mia’s neck and I inhaled that damned perfume of hers that always drove me wild. I had just started to concoct a plausible reason to get away from Louise so I could be with her tonight, when I pricked my finger on the stiff clasp.
‘”Fuck,” I muttered discovering a few drops of blood and sucking my finger.
“What is it, sweetheart?” asked Louise, face clouding.
“Nothing. Clasp’s stiff, that’s all. I think I need a drink.”
She smiled. “I’m going to look for something for my nephews and then I’m done Christmas shopping. Why don’t you go get some gluhwein and put your feet up ’til I’m finished, sweetheart. Do you fancy coming Mia?”
“Sounds like a plan,” I said.
“I’m knackered Lou, I think I’ll just stay here and have a drink with Derek,” said Mia.
I gave her one of my looks. We had discussed this and I had been very clear about the affair protocol.
“That’s fine. It’ll give me time to get your real present, too,” laughed Louise.
Mia gave her a playful shove. “It better be a car, that’s all I’m saying. With a big bow.”
“It’ll be much better than a rotten old car,” said Louise, turning to wink at us as she disappeared into the crowd.
We walked toward the mobbed gluhwein stall which, unbelievably, had a ringed off area of seats festooned in fairy lights. Sitting outside to enjoy a Scottish winter was for the suicidal and lunatics who wanted to say cheerio to their extremities, but as I took my first sips of the mulled wine concoction, bought and brought to me by the fair Mia, and the alcohol-fuelled warmth kicked in, I decided there were worse things.
“What the hell, Mia,” I said, in between slurps
. “I told you - I don’t want Louise getting suspicious.”
“You’re never going to leave her, are you?” said Mia, sipping her drink and twirling a lock of hair between her fingers. “I don’t know why I bother with you, I really don’t.”
“Yeah, you do,” I said, giving her the full-on Derek McVey experience, which consisted of gazing into her eyes as I moved my ungloved hand up her thigh to hotter climes under cover of the table.
She brushed it away.
“No, Derek. I don’t. And there hasn’t been a lot of that in the past few weeks.”
“I’ve been busy, babe.”
“Don’t. That’s what you call her. Maybe we should just end it. Right now. I mean it, Derek.”
She took out a powder compact, gazing at her reflection. “Look at the state of me. Jeez.”
I leaned in, risking a kiss full on the mouth just to shut her up. A woman leaving me was just not an option.
She tasted of spiced wine and the heat of her mouth on mine made me linger longer than was safe. Louise would be coming back any minute.
“Ouch! You bit me, you bastard! You actually bit me,” yelled Mia, thrusting her chair back and springing up.
“What? I did no such thing,” I protested, reaching out to her.
“I’m fucking bleeding!” she shouted, the smear of blood running down her chin, black against her pale face. “I’m going to tell Louise just what an animal you really are!” she screamed, whirling round and running into the crowd.
I absolutely had not bitten her, but there was a coppery taste in my mouth. Silly bitch probably had bleeding gums and wanted to blame me for her embarrassing lack of dental hygiene. I sighed, making a mental note that I was done with women.
I slid my chair back, noticing that the the lights had dimmed. Except that wasn’t quite right, it was as though all the brash colours that I’d enjoyed hating so much had been dimmed.
