by Chris Morey
As Greasy Steve sits down hard, the thing leaps from him to the blind skinhead. Streaking down his back, the thing whips the branches into a bloody silver blur, shaving Cyclops’s face off. The polished, gleaming skull screams for something nobody can make out because he has no lips.
Amid the bedlam, who can spare a second to glance at Greasy Steve, trying to spit out the lump of coal, now glowing a merry cherry-red between his jaws? Cheeks cooking away like bacon fat, smoke and teakettle steam shooting out his tear ducts, and the luminous reindeer beacon of his sizzling nose.
The hideous, snickering thing rides the dying skinhead the regulation eight seconds and springs off to land just within spitting distance of Dewey Snodgrass.
Dewey looks around and sees that even the kids with concussions have been dragged into the cells and they’re all yelling to be locked in, to be saved by Jesus or Saint Nicholas or Harry Potter, and he’s all alone again, holding the bag.
Under slightly different circumstances, he might have turned out to be a good, good boy. Dewey backs away from the Krampus, up against the door. He’s going to miss Christmas, either way.
He waves the card over the sensor and mashes the ten-key with his palm.
Lockdown.
The cell doors slam shut. Nine kids in two cells cheer, then rush the plexiglass walls to watch him pay for saving them.
Growling in some guttural grandparent of German, the Krampus painfully flexes its claws and limbers up the bloody switch.
“Hold up!” Raising his open hands, Dewey lowers his voice. “I’m sorry, OK? Look … I’m sorry I hurt Guard Persons I was just horsing around… and I’m sorry I kicked that cop in the balls when they arrested me, but he pulled my hair… and I’m sorry I smoked that joint, but it was just that one time, and I was selling them my dad’s stuff, so they made me do it to prove it wasn’t oregano…”
Eyes half-lidded, the creature hears him out as long as he can bear, then cocks his arm to whip Dewey’s face off.
Dewey smacks the ten-key. “You kill me and you’ll never get the other nine! It took me a month to memorize the passwords.…”
The Krampus cocks his ponderous head. Probably no computer camp in Niflheim, but he seems to get basic math.
Dewey leans back against the door, feels the insistent pounding against it. Wonders how long before they figure out Persons’s PIN number or override it without blacking out the whole jail.
“Face it, dude. Even if I opened these doors, you couldn’t take all of us at once. And they’ll catch you. They’re just outside. You’re fucked up, dude.
“Nobody believes in Santa Claus anymore. Wal-Mart killed that tubby bitch stone-dead. And nobody even remembers you. You’re just a scary story from the Kentucky of Europe, Grampa Ballsniffer.”
Krampus lashes out with the switch. The skin comes off Dewey’s forearm as easily as his sleeve, the wound so hot it smokes. Dewey makes his move, lunging sideways to grab Persons’s baton and brandish it to block the birch switch.
“You got in here, you’re gonna get out of here, right? You get stronger when people know you and fear you, right? You can get at anybody who’s been bad on this night, right?”
Finally showing some sign of comprehension, the Krampus growls.
“What do you do the rest of the year?”
If there’s a word in the noise, the lewd expression, or the protean obscenity of what his lolling tongue does by way of an answer, then it’s probably something pretty dope.
“You only got three hours, man. And you know who’s been bad?” He punches a button opening the door to one of the cells.
The Krampus grins.
“Everybody.”
§
Somebody is going to pay.
The chocolate was missing from behind Door #5 on Judge Vickers’s advent calendar this morning. Not that he’s supposed to eat chocolate, it’s bad for his complexion and his blood sugar is too high, as it is. But in its place, there was a tiny little black rock. The judge put it in his mouth before he tumbled to what it was. His ex-wife’s sense of humor: she always threatened to leave coal in his stocking, but she hated to shop for other people…
Heh. Let it snow— He bends over the mirrored glass coffee table and snorts another line of fine, uncut flake. Something startles him, a reflection of something behind him. His gasp of breath blows the coke all across the table. Fuck. Of course nobody’s here, but they soon will be. His annual holiday party always kicked off with his little video holiday card from the people over at Vision Quest.
Every year around this time, a bunch of the facility’s rottenest kids got a little special holiday party, and while the cameras were offline, they still fed to corporate, who generously included the password along with his holiday bonus.
They got the kids wasted and then a guard came in dressed like the Krampus and sprayed and clobbered them. A good scare was good for them; hell, it was good for him, if not for his Nana and her boogeyman stories. Fucking senile bitch.
He’s especially looking forward to this year, because a couple of the little turd burglars he packed off to Vision Quest actually deserve it. One of these kids, they only got him on pot possession, but he mauled the arresting officer, bit his finger off. Kicked him in the balls so hard one of them got crushed, they put in like this little silicon thing so it’d feel normal; it’s called a neuticle. What a world …
Hookers are coming in an hour. Vickers punches the wifi up on the big screen and leans forward to do another line. A big dollop of blood slips out his nose and splatters in the midst of his cocaine maze. Grumbling, he picks up the Onyx card and scrapes the pink slush away from the fluffy lines as he looks up and then his nose is flowing freely, but he doesn’t notice.
The guy who’s supposed to be whipping their asses lies sprawled across the floor and two more kids beside him, one with a naked skull for a head, the other apparently on fire. And this thing comes out of one of the cells, and it’s like the camera’s trying not to see it. A blurry pixel smear, it stoops over to get out of the cell and it has horns like a fucking ibex and its tongue hangs down to its belly and its cock practically drags on the bare concrete floor as it lurches over to the next cell, where it licks the glass in anticipation of getting at the four hysterical kids inside.
His jaw drops. His heart pirouettes in his chest and bangs into his sternum.
Someone else comes over to the ten-key, punches a button to let the blurry thing in, then charges in after it. He’s black with blood, only his eyes and his grin showing through on the grainy monitor, but Judge Vickers knows that grin, that flippant angle to his head; for a few minutes, Judge Vickers almost felt sorry for the little shit.
He doesn’t even know what he’s feeling now. His hand goes for the straw, but doesn’t find it. Likewise, the card …
But then he hears it clicking against the glass. Insistently, trying to get his attention.
He looks down into the mirror.
Something is very wrong. He can’t see his reflection. Beneath the half-demolished furrows of cocaine and the fizzing droplets of blood, he can’t see himself at all.
But he can see somebody …
A hand tapping the glass with his card.
That smile—
The horns …
The glass cracks.
THE SHITTIEST GUY IN THE WORLD
(A CHRISTMAS FABLE)
The shittiest guy in the world is curled up in his bed on Christmas Eve, plump and rosy in his satin pajamas. He's an investment banker whose specialty is toxic mortgages, so it's a very, very nice bed.
In fact, pretty much everything on his thirty-acre gated Malibu estate is nice but him. His swimming pool. His tennis court. His Hummer H1, his Tesla, his Porsche, the other seventeen sets of wheels in his collection. The private movie theater in which he screens the Adam Sandler and Michel Bay flicks that make him an extra couple mil per year on the side whether anybody goes to see them or not is state-of-the-art. Because he can afford it. H
e can afford almost anything.
He likes owning nice things. As many as possible. And doing whatever he wants to them, whenever the fuck he wants. Far as he's concerned, he owns everyone and everything. They just don't know it yet.
The stunningly exquisite, submissive high-end escort he just spent the last three hours abusing and tormenting was substantially— substantially—nicer than him. “Merry Christmas, whore!” were his parting words. He tipped her a ten-dollar bill, which he tossed on the marble floor, so she had to stoop to retrieve it before heading home to her very nice daughter and entire reason for living.
And there he is: sleeping like a baby, snoring like a moose, ripped on coke and thousand-year-old cognac. Far as he's concerned, he's the king of the world. Ain't nothin' gonna touch this guy.
He doesn't see the creeping shadows glide across the Picassos that adorn his walls. Doesn't see the pint-sized shapes who cast them, creeping ever closer. His expensive alarm system is entirely untriggered. His security crew—all brutal goons, but still a trillion times nicer than him—goes entirely unalerted.
It isn't until they jump onto the bed that he stirs in dull, semi-comatose surprise.
But when the first one kneels down and punches him right in the kisser, that definitely gets his attention. He goes “YAUGH!”, sinks into the pillows on impact, three teeth dislodged and aimed straight down his airhole.
His bleary eyes flicker open, see a bright pointy cap on the top of a small whiskered shadow. Another beside it. One red-capped. One green. Both with eyes that blaze rage in the darkness.
The second one stomps on his copious gut, and the shittiest guy in the world sits up, blinded with pain, whooping for air, teeth draped in a thin red halitosis spray as they sail onto his lap.
He doesn't see the bright green sack being swooped over his head until it's already smothering him, pulling down and down, rough hands lifting his ass up the way he removed the escort's panties, then pulling it all the way to his feet and beyond. Until he's entirely encased. With a knot at the end.
Next thing he knows, he's being dragged off the bed, falling, hitting the marble hard. Then he's dragged across the room, into the hall, and down the stairs, one pummeling thump-thump-thump after another, squealing and bellowing to no avail.
Through the fabric of the bag, he can see the bright lights of his enormous Christmas tree come into muted view. A twenty-footer, every inch of it coated in pure gold flake and festooned with $10.5 million in shimmering bling. He does a new one every year. It is his Christmas tradition.
When they come to the fireplace, he instantly regrets having lit up a fire inside it. It cast great shadows on the whore's ass as he flailed and nailed it, yes. But now the flames are down to coals.
They flare for a second, as he is tossed upon them. Screaming.
And then up the flume he goes.
Five whooshing seconds later, he lands like a sack of meat on the rooftop. A couple seconds after that, he hears thuds to either side. The animal whinny of a species he doesn't recognize is directly ahead. He is dragged toward it. Can smell the wet fur.
He hears the moaning of others, then; growing closer, muted as his own. He feels himself lifted, hoisted up by strong angry hands. Then dropped onto something that wriggles beneath him.
Twenty seconds later, they begin to fly.
From there, it's all fierce, freezing wind and vertiginous momentum that seems to last forever. He can barely hear the moans of the dozens that surround him, all encased in their own festive kidnap bags.
He is numb long before the chill grows authentically arctic. And at last they land.
The shittiest guy in the world is one of the first yanked off of the back, slammed to the ground, and dragged through the clanking dungeon door to an ugly, dim-lit stone enclosure, where the stink of despair is only slightly more vibrant than the nonstop ululations of the damned.
It isn't until he hears the chink of steel gates opening, then closing behind him that he is able to, at last, pull the bag off his head.
He is in an enormous medieval prison. There are easily a thousand others there that he can see. Every single one of them as terrified as he is. Every single one unable to comprehend how they could have possibly come to be in such a terrible place.
“What the fuck did I do? DON'T YOU KNOW WHO I AM?” howls one captive after another. No one louder than the shittiest guy in the world.
That's when a distant metal door clinks open, and a dowdy, adorable little old lady comes down the corridor, sporting a Christmasy apron and dress. She is flanked by a security force of short, pointy-hatted, fierce-eyed elves. Two of whom he thinks he recognizes.
“That one,” she says, pointing, working her way down the aisle. “We do love our uncaught serial killers. Oh, and that one might turn out nice. I like his Saudi corporate oil deals, his pay-for-terrorists and exploit-all-women spice.”
When she gets to the shittiest guy in the world, though, her grandmotherly eyes fire up. Nailing him like spotlights.
“Oh, but THIS little fellow!” she laughs out loud.
And that is the seal of approval.
Next thing he knows, he is being dragged out of the cell and harshly propelled down the corridor, past thousands and thousands more. Until he comes to the mouth of the grim, gray stairwell, is poked and prodded up, up, up, away from the increasingly echoing howls of despair.
And toward the mounting sound of warm and boisterous laughter.
And, oh, the smells that beckon from above …
The door at the top of the stairs opens into a vast, expansive and utterly charming old-fashioned fairy-tale kitchen. The kind of kitchen dreams are made of, expanded unto near-infinity. Divinely lit. Both humbly quaint and frankly magnificent.
Hundreds of glimmering pots hang in rows on ceiling racks that go back and back to the vanishing point. Burnished wooden cabinets as far as the eye can see. Ovens the size of morgue vaults line the walls, one after another. So many stove tops a-simmer that it boggles the mind, all decanting olfactory delight.
And the smells are breathtaking. They are the smells of sweetest heaven.
The shittiest guy in the world goes “Whoa.” Taking it all in. Instantly desirous. Calculating how much it would cost to own this, too. Already negotiating the deal in his head.
There is a long, long prep table as the kitchen's centerpiece. Fifty feet? A hundred feet? A million feet? Who knows? Like the kitchen, it stretches out beyond beyondness.
“Hey!” he says. “Who's in charge here? I think we can work this … AWKKK!”
Abruptly, he is hustled forward and lifted aloft like a deli tray, back and skull slamming down onto the tabletop so hard he barely remembers who he is until the little old lady is hovering above him, butcher knife in hand.
He starts to scream, and someone shoves an apple in his mouth. It catches in his teeth, stays there like a ball gag.
Elf hands peel off his satin pajamas, lift his ass up, leave him naked, on display. There are at least a dozen elves holding him down, stripping him down, or standing back with razors at the ready in their hands.
Once every hair on his body has been shaved, the adorable little old lady guts him from dick to Adam's apple, methodically pulling out every unappetizing organ as she goes. Cancer-riddled intestines. Atrophied heart. While he screams and screams and screams.
They then anoint him with a rich honey glaze, add some zesty secret spices, and toss him in the oven for what seems like a million years.
He is awake and alive for every microsecond of searing pain. And every speck of it is monumental. Like burning in hell. Forever and ever.
Only then does the oven door open, and he finds himself slapped back onto the table. Carved to the bone. And carried out on a platter, in slices and hanks, to the source of the warmth and laughter.
His head is intact. And his eyes, though baked, can blearily see the immense banquet table upon which he has been placed. It is lined with hungry, cheerful elves, clinkin
g their goblets to either side.
At the head is the adorable old woman and her equally adorable, cherubic husband. With his classic red suit and immense white beard. Chuckling with delight at the feast to come.
“Let us pray,” Santa says. And all the rest bow their heads.
“Every year, on this day,” he continues, “we nurture the spirit of giving. Giving is what we do. It's a beautiful thing.”
Applause, around the table.
“But there is no bounty without balance. No reward without sacrifice. No gift without a price.”
The shittiest man in the world desperately tries to name his price. But he can't. There's an apple ball-gagging his mouth. He has no guts left, and not a limb to stand on. He is sliced meat on a table.
The most ignominious end of all.
“So tonight, once again,” Santa says, “we eat the sins of the very worst among us. Take their unjustness, their profound self-centeredness, their endless and arbitrary abuse of power, and transmute it to good. Take it into ourselves. And spread just a little bit of it to every struggling person on Earth who could use a little pure love tonight.”
The glasses clink, in support of pure love.
And then they dig in, one dripping slice at a time. He is awake for every screaming bite. Until the last one. Then over and out.
But somewhere in North Hollywood, the lovely daughter of a very nice high-priced escort who has repeatedly eaten all the sins of the world—one ruthless man at a time—gets a hug, and a couple more presents than she might have otherwise dared hope for.
Along with everyone else he ever screwed. Everywhere. All over the world. Making their lives just a little bit better. Not remotely fair, but every little bit helps.
Christmas. Yes, it's a dirty job.
But somebody's gotta do it.
