“By the purple horn of Nigoth, I command thee to boil!” screeched the Warrior Babe. What good was a higher power, after all, if he wouldn’t help you cook your ramen noodles? Molly stood over the stove, naked, except for a wide sash from which was slung the scabbard for her broadsword at the center of her back, giving the impression that she had won honors in the Miss Nude Random Violence Pageant. Her skin was slick with sweat, not because she’d been working out, but because she’d chopped up the coffee table with her broken broadsword and burned it, along with two chairs from the dining-room set, in the fireplace. The cabin was sweltering. The power hadn’t gone out yet, but it would soon, and the Warrior Babe of the Outland dropped into survival mode a little sooner than most people. It was in her job description.
“It’s Christmas Eve,” said the Narrator. “Shouldn’t we eat something more festive? Eggnog? How about sugar cookies in the shape of Nigoth? Do you have purple sprinkles?”
“You’ll get nothing and like it! You are but a soulless ghost that vexes me and stirs in my mind like spiders. When my check arrives on the fifth, you shall be banished to the abyss forever.”
“I’m just saying, hacking up the coffee table? Screaming at the soup? I think you could channel your energies in a more positive way. Something in the holiday spirit.”
In a momentary flash of Molly, the Warrior Babe realized that there was a line she could cross, when the Narrator actually became the voice of reason, as opposed to a niggling voice trying to get her to act out. She turned the burner down to medium and went to the bedroom.
She pulled a stool over to the closet and climbed up on it so she could reach to the back shelf. The problem with marrying a guy who was six foot six, is you often find yourself scaling the counters to get to stuff that he placed there for convenience. That, and you needed a riding steam iron in order to press one of his shirts. Not that she did that very often, but if you try to get a crease straight in a forty-inch sleeve once, you’re as likely as not to give up ironing altogether. She was nuts already, she didn’t need help from trying to perform frustrating tasks.
After feeling around on the top shelf, brushing over the spare holster for Theo’s Glock, her hand closed on a velvet-wrapped bundle. She climbed down from the stool and took the long bundle to the couch, where she sat down and slowly unwrapped it.
The scabbard was made of wood. Somehow it had been laminated with layers of black silk, so that it appeared to drink the light out of the room. The handle was wrapped in black silk cord and there was a cast bronze hand guard with a filigreed dragon design. The ivory head of a dragon protruded from the pommel. When she pulled the sword from the scabbard, her breath caught in her throat. She knew immediately that it was real, it was ancient, and it had to have been exorbitantly expensive. It was the finest blade she had ever seen in person, and a tashi, not a katana. Theo knew she would want the longer, heavier sword for working out, that she would spend hours training with this valuable antique, not lock it in a glass case to be looked at.
Tears welled up in her eyes and the blade turned to a silver blur in her vision. He had risked his freedom and his pride to buy her this, to acknowledge that part of her that everyone else seemed to want to get rid of.
“Your soup is boiling over,” said the Narrator, “you sentimental sissy-girl.”
And it was. She could hear the hiss of the water hitting the hot burner. Molly leaped to her feet and looked around for a place to set the sword. The coffee table had long since gone to ash in the fireplace. She looked to the bookshelf under the front window, and in that second there was a deafening snap as the trunk of a big pine gave way outside, followed by lighter crackles and snaps as it took out branches and smaller trees on the way to the ground. Sparks lit up the night outside, and the lights went out as the entire cabin shook with the impact of the tree hitting in the front yard. Molly could see the downed power lines out by the road arcing orange and blue through the night. Silhouetted in the window was a tall dark figure, standing there, just looking at her.
Although a lot of single people attended, the Lonesome Christmas party was never supposed to have been a pickup scene, an extension of the holiday musical chairs that went on at the Head of the Slug. People did occasionally meet there, become lovers, mates, but that wasn’t the purpose. Originally it was just a get-together for people who had no family or friends in the area with whom to spend Christmas, and who didn’t want to spend it alone, or in an alcohol-induced coma, or both. Over the years it had become somewhat more—an anticipated event that people actually chose to attend instead of more traditional gatherings with friends and family.
“I can’t imagine a more heinous horror show than spending the holidays with my family,” said Tucker Case as Theo rejoined the group. “How about you, Theo?”
There was another guy standing with Tuck and Gabe, a balding blond guy who looked like an athlete gone to fat, wearing a red Star Fleet Command shirt and dress slacks. Theo recognized him as Joshua Barker’s stepfather/mom’s boyfriend/whatever, Brian Henderson.
“Brian,” Theo said, remembering the guy’s name at the last second and offering his hand. “How are you? Are Emily and Josh here?”
“Uh, yeah, but not with me,” Brian said. “We sort of had a falling-out.”
Tucker Case stepped in. “He told the kid that there was no Santa Claus and that Christmas was just a brilliant scheme cooked up by retailers to sell more stuff. What else was it? Oh yeah, that Saint Nicholas was originally famous because he brought back to life some children who’d been dismembered and stuffed into a pickle jar. The kid’s mom threw him out.”
“Oh, sorry,” Theo said.
Brian nodded. “We hadn’t been getting along that well.”
“He sort of fits right in with us,” Gabe said. “Check out the cool shirt.”
Brian shrugged, a little embarrassed. “It’s red. I thought it would be Christmasy. Now I feel—”
“Ha,” Gabe interrupted. “Don’t worry about it. The guys in the red shirts never make it to the second commercial break.” He punched Brian gently in the arm in a gesture of nerd solidarity.
“Well, I’m going to run out to the car and grab another shirt,” said Brian. “I feel silly. I have all my clothes in the Jetta. Everything I own, really.”
As Brian walked toward the door, Theo suddenly remembered. “Oh, Gabe, I forgot. Skinner got out of the car. He’s rolling in something foul out there in the mud. Maybe you should go with Brian and see if you can get him back in the car.”
“He’s a water dog. He’ll be fine. He can stay out until the party is over. Maybe he’ll jump up on Val with muddy paws. Oh, I hope, I hope, I hope.”
“Wow, that’s kinda bitter,” Tuck said.
“That’s because I’m a bitter little man,” Gabe said. “In my spare time, I mean. Not all the time. My work keeps me pretty busy.”
Brian had skulked away in his Star Trek shirt. As he opened one side of the double doors, the wind caught the door and whipped it back against the outside church wall with a gunshot report. Everyone turned to watch the big man shrug sheepishly, and Skinner, muddy and wet to the core, came trotting in, carrying something in his jaws.
“Wow, he’s really tracking in a mess,” Tuck said. “I never realized the perks of having a flying mammal as a pet before.”
“What’s that he’s carrying in his mouth?” asked Theo.
“Probably a pinecone,” Gabe said without looking. Then he looked. “Or not.”
There was a scream, a long protracted one, that started with Valerie Riordan and sort of passed through all the women near the buffet. Skinner had presented his prize to Val, dropped it on her foot, in fact, thinking that because she was standing near food, and she was still the Food Guy’s female (for who could think of food without thinking of the Food Guy?), she would, therefore, appreciate it, and perhaps reward him. She didn’t.
“Grab him!” Gabe yelled to Val, who looked up at him with the most articulate glare he had ever seen. Perhaps it was the weight of her M.D. that gave it eloquence, but without a word, it said: You have got to be out of your fucking mind.
“Or not,” Gabe said.
Theo crossed the room and made a grab for Skinner’s collar, but at the last second the Lab grabbed the arm, threw a head fake, then ducked out of Theo’s reach. The three men started to give chase, and Skinner frisked back and forth across the pine floor, his head high and proud as a Lippizaner stallion, pausing occasionally to shake a spray of mud onto the horrified onlookers.
“Tell me it’s not moving,” shouted Tuck, trying to cut Skinner off at the buffet table. “That hand is not moving.”
“Just the kinetic energy of the dog moving through the arm,” said Gabe, having gone into a sort of wrestling stance. He was used to catching animals in the wild and knew that you had to be nimble and keep your center of gravity low and use a lot of profanity. “Goddammit, Skinner, come here. Bad dog, bad dog!”
Well, there it was. Tragedy. A thousand trips to the vet, a grass-eating nausea, a flea you will never, ever reach. Bad dog. For the love of Dog! He was a bad dog. Skinner dropped his prize and assumed the tail-tucked posture of absolute humility, shame, remorse, and overt sadness. He whimpered and ventured a look at the Food Guy, a sideways glance, pained but ready, should another BD come his way. But the Food Guy wasn’t even looking at him. No one was even looking at him. Everything was fine. He was good. Were those sausages he smelled over by that table? Sausages are good.
“That thing is moving,” Tuck said.
“No, it’s not. Oh, yes it is,” said Gabe.
There was another series of screams, this time a couple of man-screams among the women and children. The hand was trying to crawl away, dragging the arm along behind it.
“How fresh does that have to be to do that?” Tuck asked.
“That’s not fresh,” said Joshua Barker, one of the few kids in the room.
“Hi, Josh,” said Theo Crowe. “I didn’t see you come in.”
“You were out in your car hitting a bong when we got here,” Josh said cheerfully. “Merry Christmas, Constable Crowe.”
“’Kay,” Theo said. Thinking fast, or what seemed like it was fast, Theo took off his Gore-Tex cop coat and threw it over the twitching arm. “Folks, it’s okay. I have a little confession to make. I should have told you all before, but I couldn’t believe my own observations. It’s time I was honest with you all.” Theo had gotten very good at telling embarrassing things about himself at Narcotics Anonymous meetings, and confession seemed to be coming even easier since he was a little baked. “A few days ago I ran into a man, or what I thought was a man, but was actually some kind of indestructible cybernetic robot. I hit him doing about fifty in my Volvo, and he didn’t even seem to notice.”
“The Terminator?” asked Mavis Sand. “I’d fuck him.”
“Don’t ask me how he got here, or what he really is. I think we’ve all learned over the years that the sooner we accept the simple explanation for the unexplained, the better chance we have of surviving a crisis. Anyway, I think that this arm may be part of that machine.”
“Bullshit!” came a shout from outside the front doors.
Just then the doors flew open, the wind whipped into the room carrying with it a horrid stench. Standing there, framed in the cathedral doorway, stood Santa Claus, holding Brian Henderson in his red Star Trek shirt, by the throat. A group of dark figures were moving behind them, moaning something about IKEA, as Santa pressed a .38 snub-nose revolver to Brian’s temple and pulled the trigger. Blood splattered across the front wall and Santa threw the body back to Marty in the Morning, who began to suck the brains out of dead Brian’s exit wound.
“Merry Christmas, you doomed sons a’ bitches!” said Santa.