SNM Horror Magazine

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The Pen

Brian Johnpeer

During the past twenty years Luke had watched his father make an exceptional living with pencils, pens and art paper. Luke admired his father’s work, staring at his drawings for many hours. He tried repeatedly to mimic his style; realistic portraits, the trees and the landscape that looked like a black and white photograph in the right light. He worked for countless hours, locked in the dark confines of his bedroom, and stroked pencil to pad, sometimes enjoying what he was doing, but other times discontent.

However, upon completion, when Luke would stand back and study the picture with an unbiased eye, he perceived his work to be haphazard and missing something. It was nothing even remotely close to what his father had accomplished and Luke, though lectured by his father time and again about proportion, pencil layers, the finality and the depth that the pen brought to life, just couldn’t seem to grasp it. 

Luke leafed though a couple of instructional drawing books at the local art store, placed one back on the shelf, then flipped through another. He found no drawings that could compare to his father’s talent and the instruction described was what he’d already learned from his father and two semesters of art class. He just couldn’t get his mechanics of his hands to do what his brain was asking. He had entered the art store for no particular reason that day. Perhaps it was an effort to waste time before class began at one. Luke knew the small Chinese man, Ding, who ran the store. He didn’t figure the frail man who reeked of cigarettes to be the owner, but he didn’t dismiss that possibility.

They’d have grand discussions about philosophy, politics and family, but never once had they discussed anything to do with art until that day. Luke saw Ding squatting at a rack at the end of a short isle, carefully arranging colored pencil packs, one in front of another. He found Ding to be quite meticulous about the store and its content. If he wasn’t ringing somebody up, he was sweeping a spotless floor, reorganizing a shelf, or dusting saleable items.

“Luke, I see you have come to visit me,” Ding said with a deep Chinese accent.

“How do you do that?” Luke said.

“Do what?”

“Know that I am here before you see me.”

“Luke, it is a steward’s job to tend to his master’s capital. I know everyone who enters this shop, when they enter this shop, and why they enter this shop.” Ding smiled, satisfied with the way he had rearranged the colored pencils, stood up and turned to Luke.

“I don’t even know why I am here, so how could you possibly know?” Luke smiled in a way that suggested he wasn’t trying to be a smart-ass.

Ding nodded graciously. “You,” he paused, searching for the words as he looked at the ceiling, “are searching for what is missing in your depictions.”

“Depictions,” Luke smiled shaking his head. “What exactly do you mean?”

“Every piece of art is a depiction of what is inside the artist’s mind. It has to flow from brain, to hand, to canvas, or in your case, paper, in order to capture what you feel at the time of your work. You believe that your depictions are fruitless and that your pictures are trying to break free from your mind, but something’s in the way.”

Luke laughed nervously, looked around the store then back at Ding.

“And how would you know this?”

“It is my job to know what the customer seeks,” Ding said.

“Okay, I’ll bite. What do I need?” Luke wiped his mouth.

Ding nodded and said, “Come.”

Luke followed Ding to the back of the store where he pulled a ring of keys from his pocket and opened a thick steel door. They stepped into the receiving area which was ripe with a musty attic smell. Several antiquities and unopened boxes were stored there.

Ding smiled and began whistling a pleasant tune, with which, Luke was unfamiliar. Luke followed the whistling China man through a maze of cardboard boxes and furniture, including a hand carved roll-top desk, an ugly green couch, and several bookshelves. Both whistling and walking Ding paused when he came to a dust-covered chest of drawers, squatted his butt all the way to the floor, and pulled the bottom drawer open. He pulled out a small mahogany box, held it up with two hands, and with a deep breath, blew a thick layer of dirt from the top. He waved one hand around his head to dilute the dust with air, and then stood up and faced Luke with a smile. Luke studied the small box that could have enveloped nothing more than a large tube of toothpaste. With a doubtful eye, he looked at Ding.

“It is this which you seek,” he said, offering the dusty box to Luke and nodded his head slightly.

Luke looked down at the box which was weathered with both nicks and time then accepted it. The box was much lighter than Luke anticipated, as he rolled it around in his hands looking at it from all angles. Ding folded his arms and grinned.

“What is it?” Luke’s eyes opened wide.

“It is what you are searching for,” Ding said.

Luke pulled the top half of the box from the bottom, spilling a bit of dust, and peered inside with lustrous eyes. They lost that luster when they saw a raven’s feather, black as night, lying beside an empty inkwell on red felt.

Luke smiled, figured the feather to be a joke, and looked up. “What’s this?” he asked, almost amused.

“This is why you come, for finality in your work, a pen that will complete, or correct me, if I may, your misappropriations of pencil strokes.”

“What’s wrong with my pencil strokes?”

Ding just raised his head and looked down the length of his short nose.

“This isn’t a pen. It’s a feather!” Luke chuckled, “I didn’t know that you had such a sense of humor, Ding.”

“I don’t,” he said, poker faced.

“Ding, come on, how’s this going to help me polish my work? I need fine lines, thick lines, light and shade. I don’t need ink splotches all over my drawings.”

Ding stood mute, staring into Luke’s eyes.

“What?” Luke asked and shrugged his shoulders.

“You don’t polish your own work. Pen does.”

Luke smiled again, nodding his head, “You’re serious?”

“Your work will come alive with this pen. Just one rule.”

“Now the feather has rules,” Luke said under his breath.

“Don’t draw anyone you know.”

“Why?” Luke’s smile fell from his face.

“Just promise me that you won’t draw anyone you know.”

Luke shook his head, “Okay, Ding, how much do I owe ya?”

Ding bent over again and retrieved a clear glass Pepsi bottle full of black ink from the drawer, and handed it to Luke, but didn’t let go, “You promise not to draw anyone you know, and it is yours.”

Luke rolled his eyes, “Okay, okay, I promise.”

Ding nodded respectfully and relinquished his grip on the soda bottle. Luke drew another picture which depicted a desolate forest with his subjects wearing clothes that suggested that they were in the same era of Romeo and Juliet; a young couple on a homemade swing built for two. Perhaps the young man in the depiction had slinked off to the woods to build the extra wide swing in anticipation of that one intimate encounter. They gazed into each others' eyes as they lazily rocked together. I just don’t like it, Luke thought, shaking his head. Shit. What the hell is it missing?  

He looked at the box and the Pepsi bottle full of ink on his desk and recited Ding’s words in his head. “This is why you’ve come, for finality in your work; a pen that will complete it, or correct me, if I may, your misappropriations of pencil strokes.”

Luke looked at his picture and shook his head. He couldn’t tell what was missing. It was as bland as a sunflower seed with no salt, but it wasn’t that simple. Luke took the box, opened it, and pulled the feather out. Immediately he felt a tingling surge make its way up from the feather to his inner being. He fondled the weightless feather, surprised at how comfortable it felt in his right hand. He looked back at his drawing and immediately knew what was missing.

Depth, that’s what’s missing. The Goddamn picture is missing darkness -- it’s merely an abyss of darkness. Deep shadows that command attention. It’s not all about the light, Luke’s revelation now came full circle. It’s about shading. With no darkness, there cannot be light.

Luke placed the box on the desk, and plucked the Pepsi bottle up, opening it easily and carefully dumped a small amount of black ink into the glass inkwell. Once satisfied, Luke capped the Pepsi bottle, sat down at his desk and dipped the raven’s feather in the black liquid. Luke saw everything that needed to be fixed on his drawing and raced about feverishly to finish it, without worrying about the dripping blotches of ink onto the paper. He darkened the shadows of the picture with a polished and skillful hand which seemed to be commanded by something other than his brain. At times, that’s what happens, another part of the brain takes over and the artist goes on without knowing where his piece is headed.

Luke stood back and studied the picture. It was without doubt his best work ever. Nothing he had drawn in the past had come to life like the couple on the swing. He picked up the piece, walked it to the large window, and studied it in the natural light, expecting to be humbled by inconsistency and disproportions or coarse texture.

It looks like a Goddamn black and white photo.

A slow smile soon emerged upon his face.

The next day Luke skipped breakfast and started working on a new drawing. He was so excited to begin that he couldn’t think of a subject. He stared out of the second story window, and watched as a squirrel gracefully leaped from one branch of a tree to another. That’s when it hit him. He would draw the oak tree outside of the window.

According to Merle, the old man who lived two doors down, the tree was a hundred years old if it was a day. Luke dragged his heavy desk to the window, adjusted it to his liking, and put a number two pencil to a one-hundred pound paper.

Eight hours later, he was tired and fed up. His fingers were sore and beginning to cramp from his marathon drawing. He didn’t realize that he hadn’t eaten all day. He stood up, threw his pencil against the wall in disgust, grabbed two fistfuls of hair, and pulled.

Luke sat in his chair, spun around once, stopped, and stared at the box Ding had given him. He wiped the corners of his mouth and figured that last night’s drawing was a fluke.

No, it couldn’t have been! Ding told me that this was what was missing from my drawings.

Luke opened the box and saw that the feather was clean and so was the bottle. It was just how Ding had given it to him, though he hadn’t cleaned them.

Luke carefully poured the Pepsi bottle into the inkwell wary not to spill a single drop, just like the night before. When he picked up the raven’s feather, his cramped hand was revitalized with one remedial jolt of electricity. Luke dipped the calamus into the ink, and started to deepen the shadows of the trunk.

Luke quickly worked his way up to the tree branches, the two squirrels, and the outsized leaves of fall, mindless of the sweat that was dripping from his face to the paper. He finished just at midnight, left the feather sticking out of the inkwell, which was almost empty, and collapsed down on his bed fully dressed. 

Luke awakened like he’d just emerged from a coma. Getting out of bed was next to impossible until he heard the clamor of a crowd outside his window. He struggled to his feet, stumbling like a drunk to the window, and peered down at the small, neighborhood crowd surrounding the oak tree. They were all looking at the tree in unison, gaping in wonder.

When he regained his waking wit, he thought the monstrosity of a tree was long dead. He blinked repeatedly, trying to rid a thin film of sleep from his tired eyes so he could see clearly.

The tree was dead and his elderly neighbor, Merle, stood with his frail arm around his cotton-haired wife on the sidewalk, both visibly saddened.

Luke took the stairs to the front room and stood on his front porch to take in a distressing scene. The mighty oak looked as if it had been dead for years, like the ground had sucked the water from its roots overnight, turning what were colorful autumn-touched leaves, dangling from the branches in the breeze into brown, crispy, dead leaves, spangled in piles about the tree trunk today.

“What the hell do you think happened?” Merle called in a voice which suggested he’d been crying.

Some neighbors stood around the tree looked at Luke, awaiting a response, but doubtful he had any logical answer to offer.

“I don’t know.”

The small crowd casually focused their attention back on the huge old oak. Suddenly, a thunderous crack had the crowd looking upward to discern which branch was about to collapse.

“Pop!”

One of the thicker branches snapped, launching dust and dried bark from the fracture. The limb began to fall in what appeared to be slow motion. The group that gathered was awestruck, scampering away like frightened mice from a hungry cat. The enormous limb slammed hard onto the ground, quaking the earth around it, splintering into millions of fragments from large rounded masses to toothpicks.

A woman’s loud scream jolted Luke from his reverie of the connection between the pen.

He watched the lady as she danced frantically, trying to avoid something on the next door neighbor’s lawn. Another woman saw what she was trying to avoid and screamed, too.

Luke walked across his lawn, across his driveway and looked at what had frightened the ladies so badly: It was two skeletons of small animals.

Large rats? Small cats? No, in between, what the hell could it? Squirrels! It came to him in a flash. Just like in my drawing! The two squirrels on the oak tree. Both of them are dead. What the Hell did Ding give me?

Luke raced back, into his house and up the stairs taking them two-by-two with the assistance of the handrail on the right. Out of breath, and standing on the threshold of his bedroom door, he saw that the feather and inkwell were not as he had left them the previous night. They were gone. Scrambling over to his desk, he opened the small wooden box, fumbling the lid to the floor.

The package was how he had acquired them from Ding; the feather was clean and unscathed. The glass inkwell appeared unused. Luke picked the feather from the box and examined it. The feather wasn’t ruffled in the least bit and looked as if it had never been touched, freshly plucked from the raven’s tail. He twirled it in his pincer grasp then looked through his window at the dead oak tree, back at the feather, then once more at his drawing.

It was incredible! The tree and the two squirrels on the paper were as precise as a black and white photograph with neither the proportion nor shading giving way to human error. Luke didn’t remember the drawing looking so vivid, so lucid, and clear last night; nor did he even remember washing out the inkwell and cleaning the feather. He was tired. Apparently, his brain had taken the reins and escorted his hands to a beautiful accomplishment -- one which would make his father proud.

Luke sat at his desk and gently stroked a number two pencil over a blank paper while resting his head in his free hand. He had no subject in mind and his father had criticized the aimless art calling it, “a waste of good paper.”

Luke stopped. Gingerly dragging the pencil over the page and frowned as he thought of his father saying those words. A thought evolved. The big oval he had sketched could easily be a portrait of his old man. Laughing in his mind, it brought a smile to his face as he pictured his father holding his drawing to the light, looking frantically for something to criticize. He looked at the clock. The drawing would just have to wait. He was late for work. 

Luke returned home just after dusk, with the weight of the day pounding at his temples and tired from his boss riding his back. He grabbed a cold one from the refrigerator and four ibuprofen from the medicine cabinet. He popped the pills into his mouth, swallowing them down with a bubbly, surf of beer. He sat at his desk. The picture of his father was further along than when he had left. He placed the beer can on the desktop next to the inkwell and studied the art more closely. He had only sketched out the oval for the head.

Now the drawing had taken on pits for eyes, a jut for a nose and two appendages which would most definitely be the ears. The proportion, though the drawing was still early was impeccable. The shading on the eyes took on profound depths which suggested his father’s deep eye socket indentations.

“RING…RING…”

Luke’s attention was diverted from the drawing to the phone ringing on his desk. He ignored it for a second then swiftly picked it up when it rang again.

“What?” he barked.

“Luke!” His mother was obviously distraught about something, and he was quick to decipher her crying voice, “Your father is in the hospital.”

“What?”

“He had taken ill this morning and I had to rush him to the emergency room, but the doctors can’t figure out what is going on. He awoke just like any other day, he had Grape Nuts and coffee, but before he went on his daily walk, told me he was tired. You know how your father naps once or twice a day; well by noon, he fell down face-first on the living room floor.”

“Is he okay?”

“I dialed 9-1-1 as fast as I could…”

“MOM! Is he okay?”

“The doctors can’t figure out what is going on, Luke!” she burst into tears.

“Where are you?”

Silence…

“…WHERE ARE YOU?” he implored after getting no response.

“Kaiser on Bruceville road,” she managed to say between deep, sobbing cries.

Luke hung up the phone, forgetting the headache, beer, and changes to his drawing, and was on his way without further pause.

When Luke arrived at the hospital, it was like nothing he would have ever imagined. His father was in the ICU with even more feeding tubes and wire monitors coming from his body than he could count.

His father was stretched out like an ironing board, his lips like cracked leather -- his thin skin losing hydration by the minute. He blinked his eyes twice and kept them open, revealing cloud-covered irises as he stared at his son. 

Luke backed up two steps as he stared into his father’s blank eyes, eyes that suggested the dead had a place among the living. Luke realized he was holding his breath, and sucked in a huge amount of air, but never blinked once. His father’s dry hand emerged from the blanket beside his waist and he pulled Luke near with a slow gesture from his forefinger. Luke cautiously bent over, putting his ear next to his father’s mouth.

“Get rid of it,” his father mumbled.

Luke studied his father’s eyes, “Get rid of what?” he asked.

“The pen.” He hacked a dry cough that sounded like something had broken loose in his lungs, then his dry lips split, spilling blood to his chin from the gash.

“How?” Luke stopped what he was saying and looked out of the hospital window at a tree across the parking lot.

All at once it clicked. The pen was killing whatever it drew! Luke raced out of the ICU nearly knocking over a nurse by the door and ran recklessly to the elevator forcing patience while he descended. His heart pounded like a mad hammer in his chest, knowing time was limited. His father was near death and if the pen had taken up where it had left off when he left the house, the picture might be close to completion. Luke tried to gauge how long it would take it to finish that drawing. But how does one figure the time it takes a pen to draw a portrait?

The elevator beeped and the doors slid open. Luke bolted like a racehorse out of the gate, sprinting to his car. He had a good ten minutes to drive home if traffic and stop lights were forgiving. As his mind surged with the possibility of his father’s passing, he slammed the accelerator to the floor and popped the clutch.

Perched within Luke’s open bedroom window was a raven, watching with concern as the dark feather danced feverishly on paper, breaking only to dip itself back into the inkwell. The raven waddled to one side then sidestepped to the other, looking down to the driveway in a nervous fashion.

The pen suddenly dropped to the paper as if it had fallen from a tree and the bird flapped its large, black wings, landed on the desk and studied the drawing with its head cocked. It shat on the desktop then bounced twice, scraping its long talons on the artificial wood, and leaped. It cawed victoriously and then shot out of the bedroom window like a succubus finished with its mating ritual of seducing a slumbering married man.

Luke quickly parked his car, locking all four wheels up in his driveway and escaped the vehicle, leaving the door ajar. He scrambled out of breath to the drawing. With trepidation, he saw his father had been depicted by the pen in a most recent, timely representation, just as he had appeared at the hospital.

Luke’s father was looking up with desperate eyes and blood spilling from his parched lower lip, just as he had last seen him. The phone on the desk rang loudly, scaring Luke enough to fumble the drawing to the floor. He snatched the phone from the receiver.

“Hello!” he barked.

“Luke,” said a sad voice. It was his mother. She was sobbing, “Your father is dead.” 

Luke let the receiver swing down to his side and took a deep breath.

“Luke. Luke, are you there? Are you alright?”

He lifted the receiver up to his ear slowly, as if it had suddenly taken on an enormous weight.

“I’m okay, Mom,” he muttered. “What about you?”

“Don’t worry about coming back to the hospital. There’s just nothing you can do here,” she sniffed. “Just please try and get some sleep and we’ll get together in the morning at my house.”

“Okay, Mom.”

“I love you, Luke!”

“I love you, too.”

Luke picked up the feather and inkwell from the desk and slammed them into their original container. He grabbed one of his work boots from the closet, pulled out the lace, wrapped it around the box three times and tied it into a knot three more times for good measure. He slammed the pen onto his desk and backed up to his bed, never relinquishing his gaze from it.

“Try and get out of that, you fuckin’ feather!” Luke said and sat on his bed. He thought momentarily of taking the pen back and feeding it to Ding, but the store was already closed for the day.

Luke had never actually been in shock before, but had a good idea he was experiencing it now. His body felt cold and numb and somehow detached from his brain. Luke was sad about his father, but it was like his brain hadn’t accepted his passing yet, and for that, he couldn’t cry. Afraid of the pen’s power, he debated with himself if the shoelace was enough to keep it contained until morning when he would pay Ding a visit.

His eyes were heavy with sleep and he rolled to his side, resting his head on a pillow. The breeze from the window felt good and an occasional car passing by was a hypnotic sub-audible sound.

He woke to a beautiful day with birds chirping and the aroma of coffee coming from his downstairs coffee pot. The pleasurable smell of bacon had also made its way through his window from one of his neighbor’s houses. Rolling out of bed, he stood up with the sun warming his floor through the open window.

He gazed outside. His father and mother were there.

It was a dream? Luke thought as he noticed the lush oak on his front lawn and the gray squirrels chasing each other, leaping from branch to branch. It was all a stupid dream! Then Luke laughed out loud. His parent’s made their way in by their house key and helped themselves to a cup of coffee while Luke threw on a pair of old  jeans. He made his way downstairs skipping a stair with each step and then stopped suddenly to behold the moment of his father and mother standing in his kitchen.

“Hey boy, how’s the hammer hanging? I brought something to show ya,” his father said as he pulled out a large portfolio. 

Only this didn’t sound at all like Luke’s father. He would never phrase it like that, ‘how’s the hammer hanging?’ especially not in the presence of his mother. His father plopped the large portfolio onto the small dining table and looked up.

“Are you sure that you are up to this, sonny boy?” His father grinned a toothy, yellow smile and shook his head as if this drawing was indeed the cat’s meow.

Luke nodded nervously. He watched his father pull a paper out of the black portfolio and place it on the table. Luke recognized the decrepit face in the portrait and immediately looked at his parents. The pleasant smell of bacon churned into that of a rotting corpse. The beautiful sunlit day had suddenly turned grim and dark; Luke looked through the downstairs window and saw the oak in his front lawn, all leafless and dead.

“Answer your father, Luke!” his mother emphasized, looking harebrained and maniacal.

“Do you think a fucking shoelace will save you from what’s in store, huuhhh, sonny boy?” His father growled, as one of his eyeballs jutted from its socket like a mad pirate. Luke’s father called him sonny boy now for the second time. He never called Luke, sonny boy.   

“Well you sure killed me with that last drawing, sonny boy.”

“Oh, Luke, why did ya have to go kill your father?” His mother squealed the words rather than spoke them. She approached Luke, as did his father. “Was it because you can’t draw as well as he can? Is that why you killed him? Is it, Luke? Is that the reason?”

Luke took two steps back and watched as his father’s facial skin began to dehydrate at an alarming speed. 

“Now I’m just rotting away, thanks to you, sonny boy.”

“You just had to go and draw your father’s picture with that godforsaken pen, didn’t you?”

Caw, caw.  He heard the raven as loudly as if the bird were standing on his head.

Luke’s father’s eyes shrank like blue and white raisins in their sockets. One of his cheeks tore from his ear to the corner of his mouth. The slab of dry skin flapped down to his jaw exposing the right side of his teeth and gums in a gruesome fashion. His thick, meaty nose was now dry and wrinkled, sharply veering to the left. His hair grew longer and grayed then shed to the floor like the patches were never even attached to his scalp. One of his father’s knees became unhinged and he fell to that side with all the grace of a large redwood that had been cut to the ground. He hit the ground with an audible clutter of snapping bones.

Caw, caw. Caw, caw.

Luke ducked from the loud bird and looked around, expecting to see the raven.

He didn’t.

Luke’s mother, mindless of the raven’s cawing, stared at her dead husband lying on the tiled floor with his limbs askew then stripped her lips from around her teeth, enraged, and charged her son with her nails out.

Caw, caw, caw.

Luke’s eyes sprang wide open to dawn’s first light. His throat immediately felt dry and parched, almost stripped of saliva.

It was a dream, he hoped.

He tried to rid himself of a light blanket, but his limbs didn’t respond the way he expected. He was riddled with arthritis and his joints refused to move due to excruciating pain.

Caw, caw, caw. The raven leaped off from the windowsill and scratched Luke’s cheek, leaving a streak of blood with a reckless landing and perched on the pillow next to his head.  

Caw, caw.

Caw, caw.

His brain sent a signal to swat at the large bird, but his muscles failed to respond, because they were cramped and numb. The raven remained fast, stubborn, and mocking, dancing about Luke’s head and shoulders in an effort to get him to look at his drawing desk.

Luke saw the pen hard at work, dancing in smooth strokes as it glided over the paper only pausing to replenish the vein of its calamus with fresh ink. Luke blinked hard at the sight he beheld and blinked again, hoping that the image would vanish.

It didn’t. When he finally opened his eyes, it was how he had first seen it: the same drawing his father had shown him in the dream in the kitchen. It was a portrait of a decaying, horizontal face, half-buried in a pillow spangled with bird droppings and a raven perched on his ear with a hunk of flesh dangling from its beak. A beautiful depiction of dark art with another gruesome image of an immobile, dying man: Luke.

The pen continued to dance, defining the contrast of light and shade on the paper. The raven picked at the scratches it had created upon Luke’s face with its reckless landing and gobbled the flesh contently. Luke’s mind was still alive, but his body wasn’t, and he felt every flesh-ripping peck the raven had to offer as his eyes watered with pain.

Luke watched in utmost agony as the pen stopped suddenly, falling down the angle of the desktop and sliding down an inch before stopping.

The pen had finished its deed and the last thing Luke saw was a large black beak zeroing home on his astonished eye…  

 *

Brian Johnpeer makes his "three times is a charm" return to SNM Mag  landing SOTM again. His first ever published story debuted here and this story will be in our BBB II anthology. "February 14th" appeared in our July 09 issue and Peek-A-Boo was published in the August issue. He has penned quite a few stories but has had only one other ezine publication. He hails from Elk Grove, California with his wife and kids. Readers may contact him and visit his Myspace page for more stories. He will be launching a website soon for his many followers very soon. "The Pen" will override "Peak-A-Boo" in the BBB II anthology. *Also check out his featured interview with Lilith in this issue! 

www.myspace.com/brian_johnpeer

                                       Brian Johnpeer

The Decoration

Lisa Strong

Davy had left the house that morning on the pretence of buying sweets and now he clutched the sticky and unwanted candy bar as tightly as a weapon. He took a big, deep breath and walked quickly down the garden path, keeping his eyes lowered. He knew that the decorations were up by the lurid green and red glow; reflected on the smattering of snow that lined the path. It was just past three but dusk was already well on its way and the garish display would soon be at its full glory. Davy planned to be safely locked in his room by then. The very thought of them made him shudder. He had felt differently last year but then everything had been different last year.

He remembered helping his father lug boxes of decorations up the wooden basement stairs. His mother made hot chocolate and, at just nine years old, he had been given the privilege of holding the ladder.

 “Now hold it steady, son.” His father had affectionately ruffled his hair before ascending.

And he had not a wobble, nor a twitch. Even when his hands became numb with the cold he had proudly gripped the ladder. “Good job” his father gave a huge hearty laugh and stood back to admire their work. Rows and rows of mass twinkling bulbs outlined the house leading up to the snowy scene on top. Two reindeer held their heads high as they stood frozen in time harnessed to the gold plastic sleigh loaded with presents. The place of honor, as always, reserved for the jolly plastic Santa Claus with his waving hand and cap of blazing light.

Davy’s father had always played Santa Claus later Christmas night. Creeping around the house in his bright red suit and chuckling softly as he hung a stocking on the end of Davy’s bed. Davy had known there was no Santa since he was seven and had easily seen through his father’s charade. He never had the heart to tell his father; knowing his confession would ruin the magic of the night somehow. It allowed them to enjoy the illusion and pretense for just a little longer.

Every year, that is except last year…that Christmas Eve marked the date of THE FIGHT; that was how Davy thought of it, in capital letters like someone was shouting at him. It marked a date so significant that a line could be drawn down dividing Davy’s life into two separate chunks; the normal life before and this, his life after. Only the before was becoming a more distant memory and the life after had stopped being a bad patch and was starting to stretch out in his imagination; a never-ending succession of days crashing down on him.

Davy didn’t know what caused him to look up; perhaps some odd sound or something simple as a flicker of light on the roof, but look up he did. He stood shaking with his mouth slightly ajar and felt a small warm tickle of urine escape into his pants and spread with warmth across his groin. In Santa’s place a large bulky lump sat. Its misshapen body was covered by a furry Santa suit and tight, white gloves had been pulled over its hands; parts of the fingers flaccid as though it had only stumps. Above the straggly white beard sat a grinning plastic clown’s mask. It was grinning down at Davy.

Davy stared intently and defiantly up at it. “You’re just a stupid plastic decoration,” he said quietly. It had been the shock of seeing the suit that had done it; Davy was sure it was the same one his father had worn, recognizing its large gilded buttons. He looked down at his pants and cursed. For the past year now, every time he felt upset, he soiled himself. He didn’t know why.

It all started when he had accidentally stole a pen from a shop; walking out to realize it was tucked into his pocket. Once it happened when he was in the supermarket and, though he was lost, during that panicky searching for his mother, and at night, it happened often when he dreamt; hot sticky dreams that left him with the harsh unpleasant taste of bile in the back of his throat and the chilled wetness of his shame soaking his sheets.

Davy zipped up his threadbare coat so his mother wouldn’t see and hurried the last few steps to the door. Quietly he clicked the door into its frame and slid the lock into place. He shrugged his coat off and headed to the stairs veering around the stacks of old newspapers that littered the hall. He was already half-way up when the voice stopped him.

“Davy what’s wrong?” His mother stood in the doorway with her chopping knife in one hand and a carrot in the other. She used the back of one hand to push back a stray strand of graying hair.

“Nothing Mom.”

She squinted at him in the dim light of the hallway and noticed the dark patch on his trousers.

“Not again.” She sighed.

Davy stood with his shoulders hunched, unable to think of a single word to say then he hung his head and slowly dragged his feet up the stairs to his room.

After changing Davy sat on the floor by the bed playing with a hole in his trousers and wondering about the fat, grotesque Santa. He wondered where his mother had got it from and why she had dressed it up in his father’s suit.

Davy, long ago, had accepted that there was something not quite right about his mother. It had been there even before his father had left them and become noticeably worse after. Davy liked to think of his mother’s brain like a clockwork train that ran around a track; most of the time it worked pretty well, but sometimes the cogs got caught up and clicked too slow or whirred too fast and caused the train to splutter or stream its way along. Of course you didn’t get to see the train just what it did to his mother. Some days his mother would lie in bed, too tired to do anything. Some days she would cry or shout at the postman or milkman. On the worst days her smile would be fixed on her face like a china doll. She would go through the day desperate to show him and the rest of the world just how happy she was.

After a while Davy went down and entered the warm glow of the kitchen. His mother stood at the counter, chopping her carrots. When he entered she turned round with concern in her eyes.

“You’re very pale.” She said laying her hand on his forehead. “Any nose bleeds today?”

“No. Did you get a new Santa?” He asked.

“No, it’s the same one as always. I had to tie him down to get him to stay on the roof. Isn’t that silly of him? I mean it is Santa’s job to be on the roof. I want you to keep an eye on him. Check he doesn’t get down for me and always lock the front door.” Her eyes darted to hallway nervously. “You did lock the door?”

“Yes.”

“Good.”

She shrugged the tension off her shoulders and continued on chopping carrots. They had a lot of chopped vegetables lately. Sometimes they had whole strange dinners that consisted of little else. Davy once asked his mother why she liked chopped vegetables so much. “I like the sound when I cut them. Crish, Crish.” She had explained very matter-of-factually as though that was a perfectly acceptable reason.

Davy noticed as his mother chopped she was murmuring very softly to herself “Crish, Crish,” each time she brought the knife down. At least she looked fairly normal today. She had all of her clothes on, her hair had been brushed, and there was a hint of makeup on her face. Davy could normally tell what kind of day his mother was going to have by her appearance; generally the more unkempt the worse the day. He hadn’t been sure about today; he thought she might have remembered THE FIGHT last Christmas Eve.

Soon dinner was ready and Davy scoffed hungrily down without really tasting or chewing it. It consisted of a small, overcooked piece of chicken, nearly hidden under a mound of raw carrots. Davy’s mother pushed a carrot onto her fork and nibbled on it. Davy knew that he lost weight this year, his elbows and knees had become bony and angular, but his mother had the anatomy of a skeleton. When he looked closely even her cheeks were sunken and she looked so tired and fragile. Davy suddenly felt sorry for her having to try so hard to keep that train on the tracks all the time and reached out his hand and placed it in hers.

“Thanks, Mom,” he said, “it’s a nice dinner.”

“That’s okay. You’re a good boy,” was her gentle reply.

She smiled a genuine smile at him and it warmed his heart to see it. For a moment he felt as though everything would be alright after all. He knew his life wasn’t quite the same as other boisterous ten-year old. He might be served odd meals and smell a little funky and wear clothes with holes, but mother tried so hard and loved him so much that none of it seemed to matter.

Davy was filled with a sudden bitterness in his chest for his father had left them here all alone. He swallowed the feeling of guilt; a weighing feeling like a lead lump in his throat as all the memories of his large jolly father washed over him.

After dinner his mother ironed while Davy sat on the floor watching cartoons on a videotape. “Davy will you go get the box from the basement so we can decorate the tree.”

Davy considered pretending he hadn’t heard. He had forgotten about the tree; thought his clever trip had let him escape. He felt a tight familiar sensation across his chest and realized that he was holding his breath.

“Davy did you hear me?” His mother’s voice had taken on a hard edge that warned Davy not to disobey.

Still he sat there, willing himself to move.

“DAVY!” It was just short of a shout this time.

As though a spell was broken by the noise, he jumped up quickly and all but ran into the hallway and stood in front of the basement door stumbling over his own feet as he went. He lifted the latch and peered into the darkness. Hardly daring to breathe he shuffled his feet just inside and pulled the light switch. The bulb slowly whined to life. The basement was a small, square room with a dirt floor; the wooden shelves his father had put up ran around its circumference. The shelves only break was a plain wooden door with a bolt lock across, behind which was a small closet. Bikes and fishing rods and broken vacuum cleaners cluttered the basement. Cardboard boxes lined the shelves. All were marked in black pen in his father’s scribbled writing on cardboard photos, baby clothes or winter boots.

Davy inched his way down the stairs and toward the closet door. The decoration box stood on the shelf next to the door tempting him to dart for it and run. Instead he stopped and listened more carefully.

Davy avoided the basement for nearly two months. He thought that by going shopping earlier, he would miss out hauling the decorations from the roof up. He had felt a pang of guilt leaving his mother to lift the heavy boxes all by herself but she seemed almost eager this morning for him to go out and his fear had over powered his lingering guilt.

Besides, his mother never seemed to mind the basement. In fact he knew she went down there most evenings for at least a few minutes once he was in bed. He would hear the bolt of the latch and her footsteps tread down the stairs. The walls were paper thin in the house and every noise carried its length and breath.

What she did down there Davy was not exactly sure, but he thought it was likely she smoked and looked at the pictures of him when he was small. His mother claimed she didn’t smoke but cigarette butts littered the floor and often the photo box was open when he was forced to come down here on an errand. He remembered when his father used to smoke she had claimed it was a ‘disgusting habit and ordered him out of the house and into the back garden. Perhaps the smell of tobacco was as strangely comforting to his mother as it was to him.

Whenever he heard his mother go into the basement Davy would hold his breath listening for her footsteps coming back up the wooden stairs. Only then would he breathe a sigh of relief and go to sleep. He wished he could tell her about his fears but it sounded babyish in the light of day. Besides, his mother could be strange about all sorts of things and he couldn’t be sure this wouldn’t be any different.

The truth was Davy believed something lived in the basement closet, a silly childhood fear, but one he developed only in the last year or so. It had started in February when it had snowed heavily and he had gone to fetch his Wellington boots to walk to school. He hadn’t even heard the noise until he was right by the closet. It was a frantic scrabbling, like something scrapping at the inside of the door with sharp and tiny nails. “Mice?” He thought and tore off to school thinking nothing more of it. A noise had awoken him later that night; a strange and frantic scrabbling followed by a series of soft taps or thumps. He lay in the dark a long while trying to rationalize what he heard as creaking furniture settling or clanging pipes.

Eventually, shaky but determined to show he was the man of the house, he crept down the stairs. No burglar had visited him and he noticed, in the pale moonlight, the front door was chained and locked. Then, heart in his mouth, he followed the noise down to the closet door and stood trying to tell himself a rat or other animal was trapped inside. Once a large rat had gnawed its way through the back door and left shavings and droppings and made strange echoing noises for months before his father flushed it out. Maybe the rat was back? Or a possum? It sounded as big as a possum or a raccoon, and equally as determined. Just as Davy was about to open the door, it spoke to him.

“Davy…”    

The shock of it whispering his name was enough to turn his blood to ice. Its voice was gurgled and deep as though seeping up through water pipes and slime. At that very moment Davy knew all his childhood fears of the closet monster had been true all along. The closet monster, he had heard, knew all children’s names. He ran helter-skelter from the basement and hid under the bed clothes until the safety of daylight filled the bedroom.

The next day he tried to write the night off as a bad dream but still, he avoided the basement only going in under protest. There were other signs too. Sometimes late a night he would hear scuffling and bumping and small animal cries, so he would stuff his pillow over his ears and pretend not to hear. Often when he was forced to go downstairs, the dirt at the bottom of the door was disturbed and scattered and he would cast his eyes at the walls and pretend not to see.

Most likely though he wondered; he wondered if something was really in there and more deeply than that he feared, that just maybe, he was starting to become ill. The kind of ill his mother was that made her believe and see strange happenings. Perhaps the craziest thing of all was that late at night, when his mother was safely tucked up in bed, he often felt compelled to creep down to the basement, rip open the bolt and let the thing there devour him when he opened it.

As he stood and listened intently he was relieved that he heard no sounds and shakily he reached out for the heavy box before beating a hasty retreat. He latched the basement door and sank down with a sigh of relief. When Davy carried the box into the living room he found his mother peering intently up at the roof.

“Mom?”

“Oh Davy! You scared me; I was just checking to see that he’s still up there. We don’t want him getting away do we? I know it’s cold but it’s his job after all. I mean it is Christmas Eve.” she spoke with conviction.

“Mom,” Davy began hesitantly. “I’ve got all the decorations,” he said, gesturing with the box.

“Excellent.” His mothers smile was large and fixed.

Together they hung the bulbs off the limbs of the small and sad looking tree in the living room.

The evening slowly agonized on. Davy’s Mom seemed edgy and continued to walk to the window and back. As soon as it was acceptably late Davy excused himself and went to bed. He lay in the darkness, listening to the sounds of the house settling. Soon he heard his mother’s slow footsteps creaking down the hall then pausing next to the basement door, but instead of her going in, he heard the chain on the front door jingle and it clicked open. Davy hauled himself up so he could peak out of the corner of the curtain and down the front lawn. His mother stood in a thin bathrobe with no coat on, shivering and peering up at the roof. “You just stay up there,” she called out. Davy prayed none of the neighbors heard. Soon enough she came in and her footsteps padded up the stairs to her bedroom.

Davy felt tired but rather than going to sleep he laid in the dark with tears sliding down his cheeks. As he cried he remembered the argument last year. There had been no father dressed as Santa that year, no gifts, no tree. His father had come in late, smelling of booze. He and his mother had been sitting at the kitchen table waiting in a tense and uneasy silence. His mother yelled and he had been sent to bed early. He knew from his mother’s tone not to argue with her. They closed the kitchen door as though it made any difference. He heard her cursing and screaming and her shrill voice accusing his father of going out with other women. Eventually his father shouted he was leaving her; that he couldn’t cope with her anymore. That was enough to shock her into silence. The argument ran over and over in Davy’s tired mind and eventually he drifted into a light and troubled sleep.

It was still dark when Davy awoke and he tossed and fidgeted in the darkness, trying to figure out what had woken him. The house was silent and still. With fear he listened intently for the smallest possible sound. The basement! The basement! His mind screamed at him. No sound issued apart from the blowing of the wind outside his window. His muscles had just started to relax and his eyes popped open again when the sound began; a faint tapping sound. Not from the basement this time but from on the roof. He jerked up in bed, pulling his knees to his chest and wrapping his cover tightly around him. His mothers words came back to haunt him.

“You stay up there,” she said and he was sure she had been talking to the grotesque Santa. “Please,” Davy softly whispered, clenching his sweaty hands over and over, “please, please stay up there.”

A soft voice, cracked and dry, drifted over the wind reaching Davy’s ears, moaning low syllables that repeated his name over and over. Sleep didn’t take him until it was already light. He slept pushed against the wall, trying to avoid the wet patch he made in his bed. He woke up late, almost at lunch time, and immediately felt out of sorts. He remembered the bad and vivid dream he had the night before. He went into the bathroom and showered under the thin lukewarm trickle that spurted from the showerhead. Then he got dressed in yesterday’s clothes which lay the floor and made his way downstairs.

His mother stood at the sink washing up.

“Merry Christmas, Davy.” She turned and smiled but her eyes were red and puffy as though she had been crying.

“Merry Christmas, Mom.”

Davy helped himself to cereal and sat down at the kitchen table. He unsuccessfully tried to stifle a yawn. His mother sprung around.

“Are you okay?” she asked almost venomously; her mouth pressing into a thin line.

“Yes, just tired. I didn’t sleep well.” His answer came fast, too fast to sound natural.

“Neither did I.” She cast her eyes upward. “He kept me up with his messing about. I was so glad he was still up there this morning.”

She giggled to herself. “Of course he couldn’t get away, not after I cut them off.”

She turned back to the sink and began crying. Her hair stuck up in matted clumps and Davy noticed that she wasn’t wearing shoes or slippers. Today was going to be a bad day. Davy gulped the rest of his cereal in the uncomfortable silence punctuated by his mother’s sobs. Quickly he rose from the table.

“I’m just going to clear out the back path.” Davy pulled on his Wellington boots and strode to the back door. His mother caught his arm on the way out. “You’re my good boy who’s always doing his jobs.” She planted a kiss on his forehead.

Davy escaped into the fresh, chilly air. The snow had fallen quite heavily in the night and he grabbed the shovel and set to work clearing a path from the backdoor to the shed. He felt better for the air and the excursion, both bringing life back into his tired body, helping to shake the cobwebs off from the night before. As he thought of his dream he instantly glanced up at the roof.

From the back garden he could see parts of the sled and the back of the grotesque Santa sitting in it. A hefty knot of rope showed. His mother had indeed tied Santa on. Perhaps she really was afraid he would escape. One of Santa’s gloved hands rested on the back of the sled. Again, the glove had been forced over the hand but the fingers were strangely limp and empty. His mother words echoed back to him, “I cut them off.”

Something red was congealing in the snow on the ground near the roof. Davy stomped over for a better look. It had the dry, dark stain of blood. Maybe an animal was killed out here last night, Davy thought; perhaps a bird or a squirrel. He scanned the garden for a body but could see nothing other than his footprints marring the fresh snow. Either the snow had fallen and covered it up or it had been eaten by whatever killed it, he thought grimly.

Davy stamped off his boots at the door and went inside, still clutching the shovel. He would clear the front drive as well he decided quite enjoying himself. When he entered the kitchen, everything was still and quiet. On the kitchen table a hastily scribbled note was tucked underneath a dirty mug.

Gone to the store to get carrots for lunch. Mom

Davy sighed loudly. The allotments were a ten-minute walk in good conditions. Davy hoped she remembered her coat. He hadn’t been to the allotments for months but he guessed nothing much would be growing there at this time of year. He remembered his Mom putting a bag of carrots in the bottom of the cupboard last week. He opened the door and saw the lumpy bag. He reached down, best to take them with him then, when he caught up with her. She was likely to come home without argument.

As he groped for the bag his fingers brushed something slimy and unpleasant on the bottom of the cupboard. He recalled wiping his fingers against his jeans. He lifted the bag by the top and peeked underneath. A cluster of large bloated maggots sat underneath the bag in a slimy puddle. Only they didn’t move. He grabbed a fork from the cutlery drawer and prodded at them. They didn’t budge. He studied them very carefully. They had long fingernails on them! “I cut them off,” Davy’s voice screamed in his head. He doubled over; his stomach heaved and retched undigested cereal and spittle in heaping splatters onto the kitchen linoleum. A wet patch spread across his groin, but for once he didn’t care.

No it can’t be, she couldn’t have…fragments of dark nightmares ran wild through his mind; thoughts that somehow connected the noises and the basement and the cigarette butts.

Stumbling and crying, Davy flew into the basement, pulled on the light and unbolted the closet door before it flickered to illuminate the room. A dark, fetid smell escaped from the closet, making him dry-heave. The dim light showed a rumpled blanket filthy with use, some chewed rotten food, and a dirty bucket that looked like it was filled with feces. His fingers lingered around the doorframe and traced the deep scratches filled with dried blood.

A terrible thought entered Davy’s mind. It was so terrible he almost shut it out but it screamed at him over and over and refused to let him ignore it. Still conscious of what he was doing, Davy opened the back door and extended the ladder. Without really knowing how he got there, Davy found himself on the roof. How he hadn’t fallen off the ladder he didn’t know. The blood on the snow had dripped from the roof. He could now see the trail that trickled from the sled and down to the roof’s edge.

Davy edged up the roof and pulled himself along the chimney until he was level with the sled. Santa sat tied up grinning at him with its grotesque clown face. Davy noticed the mask was the cheap kind that could be bought at any 99 cents store. Its thin, elastic string ran around the back of the figure. Slowly, with shaking hands he lifted off the mask and reeled backwards -- almost teetering off the roof.

“Dad?” he whimpered. Davy’s fathers face sat pale and still; cold blue eyes staring at nothing. There was blood under his chin and scars, as though someone had repeatedly sliced at his throat over a long period of time. Davy reached a hand forward to touch his father’s face. It was cold.

“Dad,” he babbled with tears streaming freely down his cheeks and dripping off his chin.    

It was a long time before he found the strength to climb down the ladder. His hands were frozen and he felt numb inside. Quietly, he crept into the kitchen and stopped in his tracks as he saw his mother standing at the counter. She had a knife in her hand and she was chopping carrots.

“Davy. Where have you been?”

He tried to speak but only small strangled sounds emerged.

“You’ve been up on the roof, haven’t you, Davy?” It was more a statement than a question.

Then, slowly his mother turned toward him with the knife.

Chrish, Chrish.

“What happened to your Santa?” asked the old man from down the road. He paused as he watched Davy’s mother clearing the snow from the front path.

“I didn’t like him much.” She waved and smiled.

“Daft old cow,” muttered the old man, shuddering then quickly hurrying past. The Santa had been grotesque, but it was better in the sled than that grinning green elf. That was downright creepy…  

*

Lisa Strong made her debut publication here at SNM Mag. This is the second story she has ever submitted to a magazine, although she has spent years locked away frantically typing and sometimes scaring herself by letting her imagination run away with her. Sometimes she has to check under the bed. She lives in Gravesend (she secretly likes that it has graves in the title!) in England with her new husband, working as a primary school teacher. She devours anything horror related and always tries to see the skull beneath the skin. You can contact her by email.

strong260@live.co.uk

The Choice Cut

Eric Grawe

The girl catapulted through the windshield head first into the telephone pole. The point where she hit was about fifteen feet up and when she came down it was backwards on her legs and they broke. She didn’t feel anything because by then she was dead and that was probably a good thing.

The boy who’d been driving -- both had been around sixteen or seventeen -- had bared the full brunt of the collision with the oncoming pick-up and we’d had to pry and cut the car apart to get out what was left of him. The driver of the pick up was fine, he had that big engine up front, which took most of the impact. He’d been wearing his seat belt, unlike the girl, and was sober, unlike the boy. This had been the last call of the night. Not the worst we’d seen. Sure it was sad and all, but still not the worst we’d seen.

We’d gathered with the other emergency medical techs from the bordering counties at Annie’s near the interstate at around 7:30 and finished our night with a couple of beers and some breakfast. I never knew that beer and pancakes tasted as good together as they do, but there’s a lot of stuff that I don’t count on which turns out to be true. Like Patrick being a good EMT or what happened after with Sara and that man Kane. But I’ll get to that in a bit.

We were together like we were every morning right before we headed home to bed we talked about calls we’d been on that evening or what the latest gossip was at the stations, that sort of thing. I started talking about the teenagers with the girl who’d been ejected and that, of course, got us remembering Patrick.

“He was such a sweet guy,” Amber said. She was my partner in the ambulance. She could start an I.V. with one hand and stick a Foley up your urethra with the other in about six seconds flat.

“Who’s Patrick?” asked Huggies. Huggies’ real name is Walter Schechter. He was the rookie and fresh from school and looked like he didn’t need to shave. So we called him Huggies because we’re sure that he still wore diapers underneath his blues.

“Patrick used to work with us,” I said. “He’s up near Portage doing 25 to life now. You know, that’s where they put Jeffrey Dahmer and that Governor from Illinois.”

“And you liked this guy?” Huggies asked Amber. He’s got a thing for Amber, but maybe we all got a thing for Amber. She’s one of those girls.

“I didn’t say I liked him, I just said he was a sweet guy, the way he loved that girl and all.”

“Listen, Huggies. Sit tight, finish your eggs, and we’ll tell you.”

*

Patrick’s father owned a butcher shop. Not just any butcher shop, but the best one in about a hundred miles. He not only sold the typical stuff you get at the grocer but he could take game you killed on the hunt and turn it into sausage or jerk or whatever you wanted. I remember they used to have this jar on the meat case filled with raccoon penises that you could use to floss your teeth. I thought that was the craziest thing and every one else must’ve too since the jar was always full.

Usually after deer season the shop was filled with fresh venison steaks, but one year the Anderson boys went up to Alaska to go Moose hunting and brought back eight. They let old James keep two and he sold Moose sausage for a year.

Patrick’s mother got Leukemia at thirty, right after he was born and died about two years later. James had to send the boy to the neighbor’s house until he was old enough to go to school. Then, once he was in school, that’s where Patrick went after school. It was there at the Brandenburns that he met the love of his life.

The girl’s name was Sara and, being the same age, they grew up like brother and sister with him around all the time. The two were always together to where it was odd to see the one without the other. As they got older, the usual happened and they were a couple from the second they had entered sixth grade.

By then Sara was starting to be one of the prettiest girls any of us had seen. She had sandy, straight blonde hair and these pale blue eyes that were piercing, yet kind. The whole shape of her face was sharp, but in the good way with high cheekbones. All in all, she was a very pretty girl, but that wasn’t the reason he loved her. He loved for the same reason anyone loves anybody: because they love back.

Time went on and there was the typical stuff with high school and everyone was sure that at the end of senior year the two were going to be married and settle down. But like I said, there’s a lot of stuff you don’t count on which winds up being true.

Sara was a bright girl and had big plans. In her junior year she started looking at colleges. She wanted a good one, but one not too far away because of her family and Patrick, so she settled on one down in Chicago. She’d always been good at science and liked taking care of people. When we all heard she was going to be a doctor, it wasn’t too surprising. Patrick was all set to go wherever she went. He’d follow her like a puppy until the day he died if he could. In their senior year, Patrick’s father suffered a massive heart attack. Patrick had to give up following Sara to school for the time being as they didn't have any money for anything after the funeral and paying off his father’s debts. He finished the last three months of school and set about working the butcher shop. The plan was for Sara to finish school then for Patrick to sell the butcher shop and go right after her. They had his father’s house that they could fix up then settle down and start a family. With his father and mother gone now, Sara became his entire life after he sold the butcher shop. 

All that summer he barely slept, working long hours at the shop and spending every moment that he could with Sara. But the exhilaration fading and the big scary adult world loomed upon them. In a matter of a few months she left for the University and Patrick’s world; empty of classmates, parents and Sara.

The shop was always busy as the autumn hunting season was in full swing. Sara was away at college and busy with her studies and a new set of friends. When they met on weekends he was always tired and complaining about something. Neither wanted to listen much to the other and gradually they started to fall out. The pair who had always been in "puppy love" was now always arguing. They couldn’t even pick a movie or a restaurant without blowing up at each other.

Patrick and Sara broke up for the first and last time in spring of her sophomore year. She wanted to; of course he didn’t. The demands of school and coming back every weekend to only return on Monday emotionally exhausted were taking a toll on her and her grades. She told him she still loved him, but for the moment they needed a break. For a week no one saw Patrick at the shop and when he returned he was pale and thin; his eyes red and sunken. He spoke to customers less, never smiled, and rarely showed any emotion. Except one time…

We’d been at the bar one night and Crawford, which was the name of one of the guys who helped run the shop (and then owned it for a while) tells me that before he finished up work that evening, Patrick had been in the back hacking away at a big piece of meat with a cleaver.

“So what?” I said, “Don’t you guys do that all the time?”

“Yeah, but it was weird, you know?” Crawford said.

“Meaning?”

“Well, it was violent. You need to be strong and rough to get some of the cuts right, but this was violent; almost without purpose.”

I didn’t press it much and Crawford never brought it up again, but looking back it made me think.

*

“I thought you said this guy was a tech, like us?” Huggies said, “so far it’s been some sob story about a butcher and his bitch.”

“Classy,” Amber said.

“We’re getting to that. You’ve got to know all of it to appreciate what happened next, that’s your generation's problem: too much mouth and not enough brains.”

“I am your generation so don’t give me that crap,” Huggies said.

“Not at this rate.”

“Screw you.”

“Screw YOU. You gonna listen or do I get to go to bed early?”

“Fine. Go on.”

“Good. Trust me -- you’re going to want to know.”

“Indulge me then…”

*

Thanksgiving came and went. Patrick and Sara had a bit of a make-up, but more like pity sex. She still invited him over for dinner with the family and then spent most of the weekend with him at his house. Things were pretty good -- or so he thought. After she headed back to the city he decided to take a chunk of change out of his savings and he headed over to the mall to buy an engagement ring. He was his old self after that. People noticed that he’d brightened up and he even ventured to tell a few of us what he was planning to do.

For Christmas every year Patrick would join the Brandenburns for dinner. Tradition was for him to take a choice cut of beef and dry-age it the old-fashioned way for about three weeks, in a cold room covered in salt to where all that connective tissue would break down and consolidate the flavor. You slice off the salt rind like the peel of an orange. That meat is the most tender and tasty you can get.

Along came Christmas and he got the usual cut of meat ready. He already had the ring and a bought bottle of really good Scotch for Mr. Brandenburn, Glen something, you know, the good stuff, because he was going to ask his permission to marry Sara. He showed up, gave the cured roast to Mrs. Brandenburn then went to talk to the man one on one. He laid out his case and asked the man’s permission to marry his daughter.

The man said no.

“Look Patrick,” Brandenburn said, “You’re a nice guy and I have no doubt that you love my daughter, but because I respect you, I’m going to have to be honest with you. You and Sara are on different paths. She’s going to be attending medical school pretty soon and you know what that entails. She’s going to be putting in long hours for her residency and that’s going to for be the next five or six years, at least. Consider that there’s no guarantee that she’s even going to be nearby when she does it. I hate to tell you this, but I don’t know even if I gave my consent that she would marry you. Think about it, Patrick, the both of you are very different people. You’ve been apart for two years in more ways than one. It’s as plain as daylight and now you come in here expecting me to give my consent? I just can’t do that.”

“What do I have to do?” Patrick pleaded.

“I can’t say. Just keep in mind, she’s going to be a doctor and currently you’re just…a butcher. There’s nothing wrong with being a butcher, I just don’t see the two going out together and working. She’s going to get bored with you if she isn’t already. I’m sorry. I don’t mean to be cruel, but I guess I have to be.”

Patrick was bitter and angry, but more hurt and disappointed than anything else. He told Mr. Brandenburn that he’ll do something to catch up. He’d always planned to go to college; the shop had taken things over. One day led to the next and he was where he didn’t plan on being. Patrick thanked him and told him that by this time next year he’d be doing something with himself and he would ask again.

“We’ll see, Patrick,” Brandenburn said, “We’ll see.”

Patrick told me that for the rest of the night he couldn’t get the father’s words out of his head: A butcher. A butcher. A butcher.

*

Crawford bought the shop because Patrick sold it for less than it was worth. He was desperate to get rid of it and took the money and started looking at schools. He figured if he was going to get Sara again and keep her, he should probably do the same as her, so he looked at medical schools. Patrick thought that since he had a good sense of anatomy and where things were in the body (him being a butcher) that he would be able to transition from one to the other. It was the same as the guy who works a wrecking ball, thinking he can be an architect because he knew what holds what up.

Every school needed a Medical College Admission Test but alas, Patrick’s scores were terrible. He took it five times and only got a point or two higher each time. He came to me to help him study and I told him to become an EMT, that way he could learn hands on while still taking courses over at the community college. He agreed and in three months he had gotten his EMT-Basic. He was working hard and was looking forward to seeing Sara at Christmas.

Keep in mind that during this whole time he had been plugging away at school and work thinking that Sara was a sure thing; that if he made himself worthy she was the prize to be won. I don’t know why guys think like this. That a woman doesn’t have a life of her own or can make their own choices or that because she sleeps with one guy, she isn’t going to want it from another. Patrick hadn’t even kept contact with her, but he still had that ring and this idea in his head that come Christmas time, everything was going to fall in place.

Patrick wasn’t dumb. He wasn’t crazy or some creep who was going to wind up stalking Sara or something along those lines. Sara was simply Patrick’s entire universe but outside of that, he didn’t have anything else to drive him.

I remember him telling me about it. It was going to be the same thing that he’d done the year before. Show up on Christmas Eve with the meat, the Scotch and the ring. I knew then all he could do was fail.

When Patrick showed for dinner that year at the Brandenburns he saw  an extra place setting and that Mr. Brandenburn was laughing with someone in the den. He sat on the couch in the living room with Sara’s grandmother who was partially deaf and had Alzheimer’s. Sara was at the mall because she’d forgotten to get a gift for someone but she would be home soon.

He waited, nervous as Hell, sitting there for almost a full hour before Sara came home and greeted him.

“Have you met John?” She asked right as the door to the den opened. Out walked Mr. Brandenburn and in walked this new handsome, dark haired guy. He was wearing a sweater and khakis, but he had this watch and ring on that made Patrick feel outclassed right away.

“John,” Sara said, “meet Patrick.”

“Patrick,” John said, “Sara said you grew up together. She tells me you’re like a brother to her. It’s nice to finally meet you.”

“Pat,” Sara said. “Guess what?

"What?" Patrick played along.

"…We’re engaged!”

She squealed and fluttered up her hand in his face like women do when they get the ring and the rock on their finger, nearly taking out his eye the way she whipped her hand up. She might as well have slapped him in the face.

He told me he didn’t eat dinner. He was there; he just didn’t eat. John and Sara were too busy reminiscing how they had met and were eager to tell Patrick and retell it to her parents. John was a doctor too and about five years ahead of Sara. He was undergoing a fellowship at the same university and he’d come up to her in the cafeteria one day and blah-blah-blah, one thing led to another.

All the while they’re talking John kept gesturing with his hands, (he was one of the hand-talking people) and on his finger he’s got that ring. Patrick was fixed on it and interrupted: “What’s with the ring?”

“This?” John asked adjusting the expensive gem with middle finger and pinky. “This is my class ring from Johns Hopkins Medical School,” and held out his hand in a fist toward Patrick’s face like he was going to sock him with it. Patrick looked at the ring unimpressed and John and Sara carried on. Of course, Patrick noticed that when John said ‘Johns Hopkins’ the old man smiled and winked at Mrs. Brandenburn.

*

Huggies finished his eggs and looked at me slightly bored; arms folded across his chest. His beer was half-empty and warm enough to have stopped sweating. Amber was looking out the window, the sun was out but not up. The sky was a pale gray and the traffic had slowed and thickened on the interstate. People were coming in for breakfast, mostly single men who were comprised of truckers, line workers and road warriors in general. The only women present there were Amber and the waitresses. No one was listening, but if they did, they would not have given a damn. So I proceeded…

“Patrick worked as much as he could, taking as many shifts as he could. Even getting the worst shifts, the ones no one else wanted because of all the drunks, especially on Friday and Saturday from 11-to-7. I knew he wanted to buy his dad’s shop back from Crawford and he knew Crawford would sell because he did know what he was doing and business was bad.

It was on one of those bad shifts when we got the call late in the summer. A car had wrapped around a telephone pole and there were injuries including one ejected. We got there and we could see the driver was a little banged up but otherwise okay. I went to tend to him and Patrick went out with the troopers where the passenger had been thrown. I put the guy in a C-collar and heard a horrible scream. I looked up and saw that Patrick dropped to his knees, grabbing at his head, then I heard him crying. I ran over and saw it was Sara lying there.

I’d like to say that they had something of a moment. I’d like to tell you that she woke up a little bit and told him that she always loved him and that they kissed. I’d like to tell you she wasn’t hurt bad and she made it through. But I can’t because it isn’t true. She was dead and Patrick had to see it all. No ‘good-bye’. No, ‘I love you’. Just dead. That’s the way it went.

There are times when you’re out on the road at night and the darkness is so pure that there’s no moon or stars, and it gets spooky. You sit there behind the wheel barely able to see the road through the farm fields stretching out on either side. Your high beams don’t even seem to matter. It feels like there isn’t another person in the world besides you. I remember us sitting there that night before I drove him home, the road seemed to lead to nowhere and the blackness could have just went on forever.

All I could see of Patrick was his profile lit up by the headlights. It was terrible. I kept my eyes on the road, both of us staring straight out into that night. It felt like we were headed into absolute darkness.

*

Patrick quit after that. He sold his father's house and bought back the shop from Crawford who was more than desperate to sell. He worked alone and spoke little to hardly anyone. I stopped by a couple times to get some steaks, but after a while I just stopped going. He didn’t say much to me.

Around Thanksgiving when the shop usually started picking up business wise for the holidays, he shut it all down. Windows papered up; lights out, doors locked. No one saw him until Christmas time when he showed up at the Brandenburns; this time with a meatloaf.

The family was broken in spirit. There was no tree or pretty decorations and only a few presents lay wrapped beside the unlit fireplace. All ate except for Patrick. His plate was full but he didn’t touch a damn thing on it. He just sat for a long time watching everyone eat like he was waiting for something to happen, only looking at Sara’s empty chair. He left before the meal ended, stopping only a moment to look at the urn in the living room.

The Brandenburns’ wanted to invite their son-in-law over for dinner, but Dr. Kane had been reported missing about three weeks prior. He’d recovered quickly after the accident; he’d been wearing his seat belt and the air bag had deployed. He had a broken collarbone and a few cracked ribs. Dr. Kane had a practice in Chicago and they were the one’s who first reported him missing since he’d not come in or phoned and had missed enough appointments that his secretary had to cancel out the rest of his calendar.

There were stories, though. One of the guys who works on an ambulance in MilwaukeeChicago on the weekends told us that there was stuff about Dr. Kane sneaking out of town before the cops got wise to killing his fiancée. The story wasn’t true, but where there’s smoke there’s fire, you know. Turned out that all wasn’t happy between Sara and John; they’d been fighting a lot and not civil toward each other. Turned out that John had been having an affair with one of the young female Residents, and picked up this girl the same way he had swooped up Sara. The affair was said and done, according to him, but are affairs ever done?

John went missing before Christmas then Patrick went missing shortly after. Around New Years Mr. Brandenburn was taken into the hospital with severe abdominal pain. His stomach had not been right since Christmas and they figured that he had appendicitis or something. The x-ray and C.T. showed he had a blockage in his intestine, something metal or bone because it showed up on the films. They went in, did a little exploring and what do you think they found?

Amber got up and headed toward the washroom or the exit, I didn’t look. Everyone was quiet and waiting.

“So you know what they found when they took a look inside Mr. Brandenburn?”

“What?”

“They dug around and there in this mans gut they found a ring from Johns Hopkins Medical School with the initials J.K.”

I looked at Huggies and he looked at me funny.

“Now,” I said, “you tell me what happened to the rest of him?”

*

Eric Grawe makes a harrowing debut here at SNM Mag. He lives and works in Chicago with his wife and two children. To everybody's delight, he will not be cooking dinner during the holidays this year. He has no previous publishing history and he marks the fifth new debut author in this issue. It's true, you always remember your first -- especially when it's called SNM. You can contact him by email or leave guestbook comments.

The Christmas Eve Slayer

Ray Prew

I stood at the bay window watching the storm drop a foot of snow on the city. The carving knife in my hand had stopped dripping blood. Over in the corner, the elderly couple made a final death rattle and expired. How cute, I thought to myself, they both died at exactly the same time. 

I have no use for their money or presents so I left them where they are. The pain the old couple went through and their deaths was entertainment enough. 

All the people in my life were mean to me. Guys wouldn’t shake my hand, girls laughed at date requests. I learned to be my own friend. After a few years, I learned I could talk things over with myself in two voices. The other voice is very mean but has very good ideas. It was his idea to kill the elderly couple. I looked the room over carefully before I left to insure I leave no trace of my identity.  

This makes the fifth killing this year. It’s a good thing he only wants to do this once a year. It’s the one night of the year I can walk down the street dressed like Santa and no one looks twice. Last year he had me kill 12 people; the year before that it was 10. The papers called me The Christmas Eve Slayer.

I exited the apartment building and began walking toward the lights of a busy intersection. I looked at the next name on my list. It was all the way across town. Maybe if I found someone closer that would be just as good. Just so long as it’s someone innocent, the other voice shouldn’t mind.

I crossed past an alley and saw a homeless man rummaging through a garbage can looking for something edible. He would be innocent certainly but he had nothing to lose. The voice only wanted us to kill people with nice things and happy lives.

I still remembered my worst Christmas ever. My father bought board games which would require finding someone to play with. No one played with me so the games were an insult. The voice told me the more these people enjoyed their Christmas, the more they deserved to die. 

I walked to the bus stop and passed a happy house with pretty Christmas lights. Through the front window I could see a family exchanging presents. A young father and a pretty mother, a young son of about five years and a little girl of about seven; a playpen held a small baby. They looked so loving and happy it made me want to puke. I found my next victims; the voice would be very happy with them…

I snuck around to the back of the house. I used my burglar tools to open the lock and quietly slip inside. They were all laughing so hard and having such a good time they never heard me enter the house. I took out my hatchet and braced myself for what was to come. 

With a hearty “ho ho ho” I burst into the room and buried my hatchet in dad’s head. As he lay there twitching in an expanding pool of blood, I picked up the fireplace poker and wrapped it across mom’s head as hard as I could. She  crumpled to the floor twitching like her husband. I took the hatchet from dad’s head and chopped off mom’s head with it. I tossed the gory severed head into the playpen with the baby. The little guy shrieked and jumped at the sight of mommy’s head in his playpen with him. I wished the children a merry Christmas and reminded them they had to be asleep on Christmas Eve or else I wouldn’t bring them any presents. Well, the kids wouldn’t be so happy now with their mom and dad gone, so no point in killing them. I had to be consistent and stick with my business model if ever I wanted to be a legacy like John Wayne Gacy. My motto was very simple and in keeping with a theme I firmly stood: Only. Kill. Happy. People. As the kids wailed “Mommy, Daddy,” I left.

As I resumed my stroll down the sidewalk, I thought to myself that was fun. I was certain the other voice would be proud of me. We often discussed that as a grand finale I should kill myself, but I objected to that as I had more presents for people.

I remember a Christmas party for a company I worked for years ago. I had asked a pretty co-worker to be my date. She smiled condescendingly and explained she wasn’t going to the party, but wished me a good time. She showed up at the party with a date and laughed at my dismayed expression.  She declined to dance with me but danced with five other guys; some of whom she clearly met for the first time that night. I considered looking her up and giving her a present. 

Christmas was such a hard time for me. I have no family and no friends, just my other voice for company. The voice wants me to kill other nights of the year, but I only agreed to Christmas Eve. And I only agreed to kill people with nice lives.

I decided to call it an early night. To hell with "the voice" if it didn’t like it. I just wanted to go home and change my blood spattered clothes. I’m cold and hungry, I wanted something to eat. I entered my one room apartment. It always smelled damp and musty. The fridge was empty and the voice didn’t remind me to buy more food. If it only told me more things I needed to do, we would be much happier together.  

My family has all passed and friends always deserted me. Mine was a sad and dismal life but the killings perk me up a little. I sat on my roach infested chair, wondering if next Christmas would be as sad as this and as sad as all the others have been. 

Perhaps the voice was right; perhaps it was my time to die. But how do I go about doing it? I’ve tried before with no success. The voice tells me to do it, but not how to do it. 

I could try to cut my wrists but that takes too long and I am a slow bleeder. I could stick my head in the hot oven but that wouldn’t work. I cook with electricity instead gas. I wondered if it would hurt much to take a bath with the toaster. I decided to try and overdose of pills. I knew a drug dealer two blocks away he would have what I need. 

I changed from my Santa suit into my ordinary clothes. He had no idea that I was the Christmas Eve slayer. I needed it to stay that way. As I walked down the sidewalk to the dealer’s house, I heard the wailing sirens. Apparently, they found the mom and dad. It seemed like everybody was having themselves a busy little Christmas Eve. 

God, I want my death so fucking badly. I’m tired of the voice and the horrors it made me do. I remember Christmas Eve two years ago, that poor family. It was right about the time the voice went from making suggestions to giving instructions. It told me to kill that farmer and his family, Friday the thirteenth style. We compromised and settled for a quick hack em up job rather than a one at a time. It would have been very time consuming. Unlike Jason or Mike Myers, I was not indestructible; I’d rather take my victims by surprise.  

I reached my friend’s house and he lets me inside. I showed him my money and asked for all the sleeping pills and pain killers he had. He brought out his supply and started to fill a baggy. He wasn’t even aware I had moved when I brought the edge of my blade across his throat. I pulled his head back and sliced his throat all in one move. 

As he lay there bleeding out, I put my money back in my pocket and took his money as well. I took all of his pills and all the weed I could find.  All this was done without the sound of an argument or a struggle. It would be days before anyone even looked for him. He fit the criteria for a present. He had a happy life and nice things. In this case, however, it was a public service. The guy was a discredited doctor that sold phony drugs to blind people. Even I don’t like him and I’m a serial killer! 

I walked back to my home. I had all the things I needed to kill myself.  One final conversation with my other voice and I was on my way to the spirit world.

As I continued on my way I passed a darkened alley where I saw some punk had a lady up against the wall. He was pulling off her clothes with one hand and brandishing a knife with the other. The lady saw me and called for help.  Oh well, what the hell, what’s one more I thought. 

I walked into the alley shaking my head at the clumsiness of this amateur. He lashed out at me with his knife. The punk picked himself up slowly. I took out his eyes with my left hand. I gave him a full minute to realize he was blind.  With my right, I cut his throat.

The lady shrieked and fell to the ground at the sight of my actions. I wished her a very merry Christmas. Wait…was he happy in his attempt at killing her or did I just violate my one sacred rule? All of a sudden I started doubting myself, a vivtim of my own hypocrisy. That's it, this was the last year, I thought to myself as I left the alley. Once I got home, I would take my pills and be gone. I wondered what Charles Dickens would say about my night tonight.

For most of the evening I remembered the ghosts of my past Christmas’. I also saw the underbelly of Christmas and the happiness I could never have. Hence, this was the spirit of my Christmas present. Now I sought to end my life to determine my Christmas future.

I returned to my bleak little shithole of a home. I put down the pizza and bottle of vodka I picked up on the way home. I might as well have a decent last meal.  I looked around as I thought how it was going to suck to die alone. 

I downed the first handful of pills, took a big swig of vodka and began munching on my pizza. I think those were sleeping pills, the next would be pain killers. The pizza tasted good; it would help to absorb the drugs so I wouldn’t puke them back up. The vodka was a top shelf brand that went down smooth. I downed a handful of pain killers and washed them down with another drink. I started on my second slice of pizza. I wondered if it was legal to die without a suicide note.  I could have admitted that I was the Christmas Eve slayer but that would take all the fun out. 

I started to feel the effects of the pills. I downed a handful of each and ate my third slice of pizza. The bottle was half-empty now, depending on how you look at things. My father and his Goddamn board games; that bitch from the old job, the girl who refused a dance, they have all ruined my life. My other voice hated them too. It’s one of the few things we agreed on. How many pills has it been now?  Probably about thirty or so; I lost count. 

I tried to turn on my radio for some goodbye music but the batteries were dead. Dead like I’ll be soon. The voice didn’t remind me to buy more.  Not even music for company. Even the voice won’t come back now. I felt so miserable and the end couldn’t come soon enough. 

I poured the last of the pill bags in my mouth and ate another slice. My head was light, I was sleepy and the room was growing dark. I downed the last of the vodka. I could see trails swirling before me. I could see the faces of all the people I had killed. They were still laughing at me, at my weakness in taking my own life.  People have always laughed at me like this, right up to the end. 

I’m lying on the floor now and my limbs are too heavy to move and it’s hard to breathe. This is it, I’m…

 *

Ray Prew makes his big debut publication here at SNM Mag. He works as a security guard and also as a psychic hotline teller. He has been published once before in AlienSkin. He hails from Florida by way of Rhode Island. Ray is just releasing his first self-published novel called The Creature, which is almost done. You can contact him by email or leave guestbook comments. He has no recent updated photos, but he did offer us this photo

Crimmy@hotmail.com