A year later—a year after the best Lonesome Christmas ever—a stranger drove into town. His name was William Johnson, and he worked in a cubicle inside a great glass cube in Silicon Valley, where he moved thingies around on a screen all day. He lived by himself in a condo off the interstate and every Christmas he took two weeks off and traveled to a small town where no one knew him to practice his own special holiday tradition. This year he had chosen Pine Cove for his little party and he was especially excited because it was the closest to home he’d ever done the deed. He allowed himself to be reckless because this was his twelfth consecutive Christmas trip—an even dozen—and he felt he deserved a treat. Also, his vacation had been held up for a week by a late push on a project, so he didn’t have time to do the research he normally did—he just couldn’t afford more travel time.
William had never looked deeply into why he’d chosen Christmas to practice his hobby. It just happened that it had been Christmastime when he’d had his first celebration—a trip to Elko, Nevada, to meet a woman he’d met on a Usenet, and when it turned out that she not only did not live in Elko, but, in fact, was not a she at all, he took his frustrations out on a local truck-stop prostitute and found that he quite liked it. Then again, it could be because his mother (the whore!) had never given him a middle name. You were supposed to have a middle name, dammit. Especially if you were going to be a collector like William.
As he drove the rented cargo van up Cypress Street, he began humming the “Twelve Days of Christmas” to himself, and smiled. Twelve. In a cooler in the back of the van, vacuum-packed between sheets of clear plastic in a single row, lined up across the dry ice like little pink pillows, he kept his eleven human tongues.
He pulled into a space in front of the Head of the Slug Saloon, adjusted his fake mustache, fluffed up the fat suit he wore under his clothes that made him look twenty years older than he was, and stepped out of the van. The rustic, out-of-time, generally run-down look of the Head of the Slug made it seem like the perfect place to find his twelfth.
“And a partridge in a pear tree,” he sang softly to himself.
There had been a meltdown of themes for the Christmas for the Lonesome that year.
“It’s fucking Christmas,” Mavis had growled. “Tack up some tinsel, cut down a pine tree, throw some rum in the eggnog, and you’re good to go. What do you want, the Second Coming?”
In retrospect, everyone felt a little uneasy about that perfect Lonesome Christmas. There had been dreams, nightmares, even flashbacks to things that no one could remember actually happening, and strangely enough, rather than discourage them from attending this year, the revelers were compelled to go, to make it a great party, as if they somehow had to fix something that wasn’t broken. People had been talking about it since Halloween, which put a great deal of pressure on the planners.
“How about we do a Mexican Christmas, a posada?” Lena Marquez suggested. “I’ll make enchiladas, we’ll have a piñata, we can get…”
“A burro!” Mavis interrupted. “With a dick like a whiffle-ball bat.”
“Mavis!” Lena said adios to her posada as it sank into the cesspool of Mavis’s Tijuana sex show imagination.
“A costume party,” Molly said, with great gravity, as if she were, indeed, announcing the Second Coming, or perhaps channeling a message from Vigoth the Worm God.
“No,” said Theo, who had been sitting down the bar that day and was really trying to stay out of it. “People are weird when they are in costume. I see it all the time at Halloween. It’s like a license for them to act like assholes.”
The women all looked at Theo, and for the expression they gave him, he might have just squeezed a skunk into their root beers.
“Great idea,” said Lena.
“I’m in,” said Mavis.
“Everyone loves to put on an outfit,” said Molly.
“Yes, you do,” said Mavis.
“And she should,” said Lena, a little elbow in her friend’s ribs.
“I like the outfit you wore last year,” said Theo.
And they looked at him.
“Oh hell, what do I know?” said the constable. “Me here with my XY chromosome, I don’t know anything.”
“Tucker and I stayed in on Halloween,” said Lena. “The bat was sick. So this will be a fun opportunity to dress up.”
“And I might still be able to put together something with a burro,” said Mavis.
“I’m outta here,” Theo said, sliding off his stool and heading toward the door.
“Don’t be such a fucking pilgrim, Theo,” Mavis said. “There’s one in the nativity scene down at the Catholic church.”
“But they’re not doing it,” Theo said, not even pausing to look back.
And then he was out the door.
“You don’t know what happened after they took the picture they made that from,” Mavis called after him, as if that made perfect sense. “There were shepherds, for Christ sakes!”
“I have a Kendra costume I haven’t worn since the movie,” Molly said. “Full plate armor, only—you know—girly.”
“That’s Christmassy,” Mavis said.
“We could decorate it,” Lena said.
“Yeah, Mavis, we can put holly and fake snow on the death spikes,” Molly said, miming festive holiday death spikes that would protrude cheerfully from her forearms.
“I want to come as Snow White,” Lena said. “Do you think Tucker will wear a Prince Charming costume if I get it for him?”
“No way,” Mavis growled. “He’s too worried about ruining his image as the nitwit who talks to a fruit bat.”
“No one appreciates your sarcasm, Mavis.”
“Well, costumes can be optional, as far as I’m concerned, because I’m making fruitcake this year.” Mavis winked and her eyelid stuck shut until she gave herself a little thump in the temple. “Special fruitcake.”
A middle-aged man in a trucker’s hat and generic work clothes had somehow slipped into the bar and onto one of the stools without anyone noticing, but Mavis saw him staring at them when she unstuck her eyelid.
“What can I get you, sweet cheeks?”
“Just a draft,” said the stranger.
“Everything alright?” Mavis asked. The guy seemed dazed. Not that she wasn’t used to that, but she didn’t like it when people were out of it and she didn’t get to profit from it.
“Just couldn’t be better,” said the stranger, tearing his gaze from the back of Lena’s neck.
William Johnson felt that he must have been leading a charmed life. Not since the very first time (and there’s really no repeating that, is there?) had he been lucky enough to stumble over the “intended” so quickly. She was perfect, just perfect. Delicate and sexy, proud and determined—the kind of woman who wouldn’t give him a second look. She hadn’t, had she? And that neck and jawline, just exquisite. He shuddered at the thought of touching her there, caressing that lovely neck and feeling the satisfying snap of her vertebrae. And then he’d have her, any way he wanted her, as many times as he wanted, the dirty little whore. It would be the best Christmas ever.
He drank his beer, left the money on the bar, with just enough of a tip to not be memorable, and waited outside in the rental van, pretending to be studying a map, until his Latin beauty left. He watched her get into an old Toyota pickup and when he was a block away, he pulled out and followed her through town.
A costume party. Perfect. Where else could he blend in, move among them, listen to their conversations, then wait for his moment, then take his prize, right under their noses? He was truly blessed, or cursed maybe, but cursed in a wonderful, wonderful way.
…Had a very shiny neck.
And if you ever snapped it
You would even say it …uh …glows.
“Stupid song,” he said.
“I think Val wants a Chinese baby,” said Gabe Fenton. He was drinking beers with Tucker Case and Theo Crowe in the tower of the lighthouse on a limited-edition windless Tuesday before Christmas. They had lawn chairs set up where the light used to be and were watching a pod of dolphins playing in the bay below.
“For Christmas?” asked Tucker Case. “That seems like a pretty expensive gift. What do those things go for, ten—twenty grand?”
Theo gave Tuck a dirty look, which had never ceased being his reaction to the pilot, but sometime during the year, since it didn’t appear that Tuck was going to go away, Theo and Gabe had accepted him as a friend.
“The question is,” Theo said, “are you ready to be a parent?”
“Oh, she doesn’t want to share it. She just wants one for herself. She says she couldn’t stand to have me around the house all the time, because I live like an animal.”
“Well, you are a biologist,” said Tuck defensively. “It’s kind of your work.”
“Truth,” said Gabe, raising his fist and offering the pilot a righteous pound for truth.
“Truth,” said Tuck, taking and returning the pound (the more weighty, clinched version of the high five, generally less flamboyant than its open-palmed brother, but no less awkward when performed by geeky white guys. Can you dig it? Right on.).
Theo rolled his eyes and shoved a pretzel into the waiting Labrador retriever at his side. “She doesn’t even like you, Gabe. You said so yourself.”
“Yet she allows you regular boning privileges,” said Tuck. “That implies, oh, a certain lack of judgment on her part. I like that in a woman.”
“She does smell nice,” said Gabe.
“That’s no reason to have a child with her,” Theo said.
“Or buy her an expensive present,” added Tuck.
“So what are you going to be at Lonesome Christmas?” asked Gabe, desperate now to change the subject.
“I’m thinking Pirate,” Theo said. “I still have the eye patch from when I got conjunctivitis last summer.”
“How about Law Man?” said Tuck, snickering.
“So what are you going as,” asked Theo, “a human being?”
“I’m not going. I have to work,” said Tuck.
“You dog!” said Gabe, “How did you manage that?”
At the mention of “dog,” Skinner moved to the Food Guy’s side, just in case there was a pretzel over there that he might be missing.
“Christmas Eve is a huge drug holiday. It’s supposed to be cold tonight. We’re going to fly around looking for heat signatures from meth labs. I’m hoping that some tweeker will put a newbie in charge of the cooking for the holiday and we’ll get an explosion. Nothing says Christmas like a burning meth lab.”
“Does Lena know?” Theo raised an eyebrow.
“Not yet. I’m going to get called in at the last minute.”
“She’ll be furious,” Gabe said.
“You really should go,” said Theo. “It’s important to her.”
“Maybe I’ll show up late, forgo the costume. Women love it when they expect the usual disappointment, then at the last minute you surprise them with something romantic, like showing up.”
“God, you’re a weasel.”
“What, I said I’m coming.”
“Actually, weasels don’t deserve the negative reputation they’ve acquired,” said Gabe. “They are, in fact—”
“Do you think you could take Roberto?” Tuck said to Theo. “He could be, like, your pirate parrot.”
“I hate costume parties,” Gabe said. “It’s as if you reveal your true nature through your costume, no matter how hard you try not to.”
“So, Tuck,” Theo said, “you should have a weasel costume lying around.”
Mavis Sand believed that a truly great fruitcake should contain only enough fruit and flour as was required to get the pharmaceuticals to stick together. This year, that meant about a handful each of maraschino cherries and Gold Medal unbleached. She did break down at the last minute and use a half a cup of sugar, because the Xanax was adding a bitter aftertaste that fucked up the one-fifty-one rum burn. She’d also traded out drinks all night for twenty hits of Ecstasy (XTC) from a kid with a shaved and tattooed scalp and so many facial piercings that he looked as if he’d been bobbing for u-bolts in the nail bin at the hardware store. He felt pretty sure that the tabs were X, but even if they turned out to be animal tranquilizers, the party would be a success. Mavis had always disliked the teetotaling tone of the Lonesome Christmas and just wanted to see some people lose control in a church environment without trying to take any of her rights away.
Now, the afternoon of the party, the cake of oblivion had been cut into harmless-looking little cubes that nested in red and green waxed-paper candy cups, arranged on a silver tray like the petals of a friendly Christmas blossom. Mavis cackled to herself as she placed the last one, then went to start the oak wood in the barbecue behind the chapel.
“Smell that?” said Marty in the Morning (all the dirt-nap hits that you wanna hear). “We’re talkin’ barbecue, kids!”
“Well, I for one thought that the lasagna last year was a mistake,” said Bess Leander, who was suspicious of all food after having been poisoned by her husband. “That’s not Christmas party food. That’s just lazy.”
“I do hope they sing ‘Good King Wenceslas,’” said Esther.
“You’re on the Wenceslas express, by request, with Marty in the Morning, right here on W-D-E-D, Dead radio for Pine Cove and the entire Central Coast.”
“You’re not on the radio anymore, Marty,” said Jimmy Antalvo.
“I know that. You think I don’t know that?”
“Hey, do you think the two docs will do it in the graveyard again this year?” asked Jimmy, getting in the Christmas spirit.
“Oh yes, we can only hope,” said Malcolm Cowley, sarcastically. “For I would love nothing more than to, once again, listen to the awkward gropings of lustful reprobates while banal Christmas carols drone in the background! Oh, be still my heart!”
“Good one, Malcolm,” said Marty.
By that evening, when the party actually rolled around, the tri-tips were barbecued medium-rare and encrusted with rosemary and garlic, the punch bowl lay like a great Day-Glo pond among a field of potluck casseroles, salads, and hors d’oeuvres, and pieces of Mavis’s fruitcake were lined up like tiny soldiers ready to march into the breech for the glory of Christmas, Country, and the Baby Jesus, Goddammit!
The partiers, once resistant to the idea of a costume Christmas, had finally surrendered and allowed themselves to revel in the humiliation of a festive defeat. Gabe Fenton had fashioned a killer whale costume out of papier-mâché and spray paint, but had forgotten to make flippers with sleeves, and instead was trapped in a black-and-white shell with his arms pinned down, his face inside the orca’s mouth, covered with a black stocking with his glasses on the outside, giving the appearance that the killer whale had just eaten a biologist and was burping up the indigestible wire rims.
“Gabe, that you?” Theo asked.
“Yeah, how could you tell?”
“Well, your hiking books are showing under your tail, and I think you’re the only one who would know the actual proportions of a killer whale penis.”
“Yeah, they’re prehensile,” Gabe said. The pink appendage, nearly two feet long and as thin as a garden hose, whipped against Theo’s leg. “They can actually do it around corners. I’m working it with a drain snake.”
“That’s lovely,” Theo said, pushing back his ten-gallon hat. “Wait until you see Mavis’s outfit. You guys should do a dance or something.”
“So you’re supposed to be a marshal, right?” asked Val Riordan, whose arm was intertwined with Gabe’s limp flipper.
“Yeah, well, I had the badge,” Theo said.
“I thought you were going to be a pirate,” Gabe said.
Theo winced. “Turns out that Molly has some bad history with pirates.”
“Sorry,” Gabe said. “You guys fighting?”
Theo nodded dolefully.
“Is she here?” Val said, doing a little curtsy in anticipation of showing off to Molly. Theo had been trying to avoid looking at the psychiatrist, but there she was, drawing attention to herself.
Valerie Riordan wore a black vinyl miniskirt and high spike-heeled red hooker boots, a silver crop-top see-through blouse with a plunging neckline, and external shoulder pads fashioned from the cerebral cortex lobes of the model plastic brain that used to grace the coffee table in her office. Down the outside of her right thigh she had henna-tattooed the words EGO, ID, and SUPEREGO; down the other were the words DESIRE, DENIAL, and OBSESSION. Up the inside of her right thigh and disappearing under the micro-miniskirt was the word LUST; up the inside of the other thigh in equally provocative placement was the word GUILT. With the clever application of false eyelashes, glitter, too much rouge, and tramp-red lipstick, her makeup gave her an expression of perpetual surprise associated with inflatable sex dolls.
“I’m a Mind Fuck,” Val said.
“Yeah, but what’s your costume?” Theo asked.
Theo heard a snort come out of the killer whale as the psychiatrist spun on a spiked heel and strutted toward the punch bowl.
“I’m going to pay for that,” Gabe said.
“Sorry, spreading the misery,” said Theo.
“It’s okay. It was worth it.”
Then Gabe paddled off to find Skinner, who was jingling around the room dressed as a reindeer. Theo cased the room for an estranged warrior babe.
Gabe encountered Estelle Boyette and Catfish Jefferson by a tray of cheese and crackers. Estelle, an artist in her sixties, had come as Mother Nature. She wore a diaphanous gown and had leaves and glitter fastened into her long gray hair. Flower petals were tacked to her face and arms with Superglue. She looked like what might have resulted if Stevie Nicks had mated with a Rose Bowl float. Her date, Catfish, the blues man, wore his usual leather fedora, his everyday gray sharkskin suit over a work shirt, and his usual gold tooth with the ruby chip in the middle. A single jingle bell hung on a silver thread from the neck of his National Steel guitar.
“What are you supposed to be?” Gabe asked.
“Cheerful.”
“How would I know that?”
“Ain’t wearin’ my shades.”
“Word,” said Gabe.
“Don’t do that.”
“Sorry.”
“Have some fruitcake,” Mavis said to Lena, who was dressed as Snow White. Tucker Case had wanted to come as one of the Seven Dwarfs until Lena informed him that while Grumpy, Sneezy, and Dopey were indeed members of the original diminutive seven, Horny was not, and no amount of padding the package of his dwarf shorts was going to change that, so Tuck faked a call from the DEA on his cell and pretended to head off to work.
Mavis was manning the carving knife, slicing off great slabs of bloody beef and forking them onto the plates of passersby, whether they wanted them or not.
“I’m a vegetarian,” said a woman who was dressed like a fairy.
“No, you’re not. Eat it. You look like Death eating a cracker, and I know from Death, I been tossing his salad for twenty years just so I could keep drawing breath.”
The woman scampered off, holding her roast beef like it was radioactive waste.
“Jeeze, Mavis,” Lena said, pausing as she bit into a cube of the psychoactive confection.
“What? You make a deal, you follow through, right?”
Lena nodded, looking a little sad now. “You’re supposed to.”
“You got stood up?”
“He had to work.”
“Dirtbag.”
Just then a dashing version of Zorro appeared at Lena’s side and offered her a glass of punch. “Refreshment, my lady,” Zorro said.
“Thanks,” Lena said, trying to figure out who was behind the mask. “The fruitcake is a little—” She shot a glance over her shoulder at Mavis, who brushed a long black hair out of her eyes. “—I’m a little parched.”
“And our lovely hostess’s costume is…?” asked Zorro.
“A burro with a dick like a whiffle-ball bat,” Mavis growled, like it was perfectly obvious, especially since she’d sewn an actual whiffle-ball bat into the furry black costume.
“Of course,” said Zorro. He grinned as he watched his Snow White drink the punch that he’d spiked with the powdered Rohypnol.
Oh, she was perfect, his little Latin Snow White. The Zorro costume had been a stroke of genius. He didn’t even have to conceal the saw-toothed dagger that he used to take his trophies. There it hung, right on his belt next to the fake saber. He liked the feel of the tall Zorro boots as well. He was going to wear them while he had his way with her.
Just a few short steps out the back door, then through the graveyard and the woods to his waiting van on the next block. If he played his cards right, no one would even see them leave. He checked his watch, figured five, maybe ten minutes at most.
“Would you like to dance?” he asked Lena. An eighties New Wave song blasted from the boom box.
She seemed reticent at first, looked down at her blue frock, as if she expected bluebirds to come to her with the answer.
“C’mon, it’s Christmas Eve,” William Johnson said. “Cheer up.”
“Well, okay then,” Lena said. And she let him lead her out into the center of the chapel.
The Warrior Babe of the Outland had come through the door with her sword drawn, wearing gunmetal armor that perfectly conformed to the curves of her body. Wicked spikes jutted from the forearms and shoulders and gauntlets, the helmet was crowned by a grinning gunmetal skull with ram horns. At the last minute, after her argument with Theo about whether his choice to dress as a pirate was made simply to irritate her, she’d decided to forgo any Christmas decorations. Instead, where her skin showed, at her midriff, face, and thighs, she’d painted herself shiny black with Kiwi shoe polish. If Satan had commissioned Smith & Wesson to build him a stripper, something that looked like Molly would be swinging on the headliner pole in Hell’s Own Booty Lounge.
After a brief visit to the buffet table, where she’d wolfed down a pound of roast beef and a handful of fruitcake, she retreated to a spot by the Christmas tree, near the Nativity scene and the bat, and avoided making eye contact with her husband. Oh, she would forgive him before the night was through, she knew it, but first he would have to suffer.
That was before the fruitcake kicked in. When someone has the delicate constitution and borderline personality disorder of a Warrior Babe, medications do not always affect her in the same way they do others. A balanced cocktail of Xanax and XTC, which might induce a lazy euphoria in the average person, which was what Mavis had been banking on, instead sent Molly dipping into the guacamole of unreality, which first manifested in her finding the three wise men and the shepherds mildly threatening.
“I could take them,” she said.
“Well, I hope so,” said the bat, who was hanging upside down on the Christmas tree. Roberto had returned as General Douglas MacArthur, mostly because he shared with the dead general an affinity for aviator sunglasses, but also because Tuck had gotten a deal on a tiny corncob pipe and an officer’s hat with the ear holes already cut out on eBay.
“They’re only nine inches tall,” the furry general pointed out, with just a hint of his Filipino accent.
“I mean if they were real, I could take them,” said Molly, who was sure she saw the nearest king make a move for the frankincense.
“So have you seen Lena?” asked the bat, casually.
“No. I looked for her. She went with Snow White then? Tuck gave in on the dwarf?”
“Tuck’s not here. She just left with another guy.”
“You’re kidding.”
“She looked a little tipsy.”
“Lena doesn’t drink.”
“That’s not how it looked.”
“Should I go find her?”
“She’s your friend. Would you grab me one of those pineapple slices if you pass the buffet table?”
“Get it yourself. You can fly.”
“I would, but that donkey with the giant schlong kinda freaks me out.”
“Okay, I see your point there,” said the Warrior Babe, not at all nonplussed that she was talking to a flying mammal who was smoking a pipe.
“What’s it doing with the killer whale?”
William led Lena to a tall monument in the middle of graveyard and leaned her against it.
“Oh, poo,” said Lena, noticing that she’d gotten some dirt on her Snow White dress. Her head lolled a little, then she giggled. “Not Snow White anymore.”
The drugs had done their work, but she was more alert than his Christmas treats usually were. Still helpless, but more awake. That would be good. Really good. As long as she didn’t scream.
“Just be still,” William said. He put his hand on her throat and pinned her to the monument. He thought, given her level of alertness, that he should take her to the van to finish this part, but she was so hot, so deserving. And when would he get another chance to be Zorro in a graveyard?
He pulled his knife from the sheath just as he lost his grip on Lena and she slid down the gravestone to a sitting position.
“Oops,” she said.
Why was she still talking? They were never talking at this point. He’d seen her drinking some coffee earlier in the evening while eating some fruitcake, but one cup of coffee shouldn’t counteract the dose that he’d put in her punch.
“Tuck loves me. He can’t help it he’s a rascal,” Lena said.
“Shut up, bitch.” William thumped her on the head with the butt of the knife, and when she opened her mouth to say ouch, he grabbed her tongue between his fingers and pulled.
Strange. Amid all the amazing sensations that were nearly driving him into a frenzy—the feel of her tongue, her skin, her hair, the knife, the anticipation—among them he thought he smelled the odor of shoe polish. Strange.
“Thi, Tha tha,” said Lena, by which she meant, “Hi, Molly,” but, of course, there was a serial killer holding on to her tongue so she wasn’t enunciating as crisply as usual.
The killer looked around and something cold and very sharp pressed against his cheek. He felt the skin break and blood run down his neck.
“Let go of her tongue,” said the black apparition before him. All he could really see was a long blade that disappeared into gunmetal outlines around the shadow of a woman. He let go of Lena’s tongue and flipped the knife around so it was hidden by his forearm.
“Up,” said the shade. She kept the blade against his cheek as he stood up, which hurt like hell. He kept his knife hand at his side and waited.
“Ouch,” said Lena. “Molly, I’m not feeling good. Fruitcake, I think.” She tried to stand and tumbled off to the side of the gravestone.
Molly stepped past the killer to try to catch her, and that’s when he made his move, bringing the knife up in a quick arc toward her chest.
Molly felt a sharp blow against her sternum, heard a sharp crack, then swung around with the sword at neck level, but as she came around, the killer was already falling. She saw a tiny red flower blooming on his forehead as he hit the ground, his eyes wide to the stars. Coming out of the mist, with light from the chapel window throwing a halo around his head and shoulders, was a tall drink of water in a ten-gallon hat, a Glock 9mm held at his side.
“You guys okay?” Theo said. “I told you that costumes make people act weird.”
Molly looked at the dent in her armor, the black finish marred and showing the steel plate beneath it. She grinned at the Constable, and in the dark, painted black, she appeared very much like the Cheshire Cat. “Oh yeah, that was the problem: his outfit.”
“Where is she? What happened?”
“Hey, everybody, check it out,” said Jimmy Antalvo. “A new guy.”
“Hey, new guy,” said Marty in the Morning. “I’m Marty, coming to you direct from Pine Cove, with all the hits you love to push up daisies to.”
“Where—where am I?” asked William Johnson. “It’s dark.”
“You’re deceased, you imbecile,” said Malcolm Cowley, who hated change, along with most other things.
“Oh, a new fellow,” said Esther. “How exciting. Do you know the words to ‘Good King Wenceslas’?”
Molly and Mavis ministered to Lena, giving her coffee and sympathy over by the piano, while, over by the front doors, Theo explained what had happened to a brace of detectives from the sheriff’s department. They’d already found William Johnson’s van, with the various instruments of torture and the blister pack of human tongues, so the consensus was that Theo was going to be regarded as a hero, which irritated them to no end.
An emergency medical technician had taken a look at Lena, pronounced her healthy but definitely wasted, and recommended that she go to the hospital just to be safe, but she would not leave, insisting that Tucker Case would come to get her. And a few minutes later, as Mavis was reminding Molly for the thirty-seventh time that she was, in fact, a retired actress and not the Warrior Babe of the Outland, and therefore not duty-bound by a blood oath to take the man in the ten-gallon hat home and have sex with him until neither of them could walk, Tucker Case walked through the doors.
“What happened?” asked the pilot. He was dressed as Amelia Earhart, curls from a blond wig peeking out from under a leather flying helmet and goggles, wearing a silk scarf, riding boots, and jodhpurs, and a big badge with wings on it that declared “Amelia Earhart” in big brass letters, just in case someone missed the other clues.
“Tuck,” cried Lena, and she ran into his arms. “I knew you’d come.”
“Yeah, well, you know, I thought about it…”
“And you missed me?” She sort of slid down the front of him.
“Are you—uh—Lena, are you intoxicated?”
“I’m sorry. I had a bad night.”
“No, it’s okay. My bad. I should have been here?”
“A serial killer tried to cut her tongue out,” said Mavis, casually, brushing a donkey ear away from her eye. “Theo shot him.”
“Wow. Okay, then, I’m not the villain of this story,” said Tuck.
“You’re my hero,” said Lena, sort of oozing to the floor.
“Can one of you guys help me get her to the car?” Tuck asked Molly and Mavis.
“Sure,” said Molly, pulling her friend to her feet and bracing her under her shoulder while Tuck took the other side. “Why Amelia Earhart?”
“You know, the pilot thing. And I was hoping for some hot girl-on-girl action under the Christmas tree if Lena forgave me.”
“That would be lovely,” said Lena.
Tuck blinked. “Okay, let’s get her to the car.” He looked over his shoulder to Mavis, nodding to her sewn-on appendage. “Nice unit there, Mavis.”
“Right back atcha, flyboy,” said Mavis.
And as Amelia Earhart and Kendra, the Warrior Babe of the Outland, assisted the heavily medicated Snow White to her car, and a Mind Fuck with an MD shagged a killer whale with a PhD on the grave of a DJ back in the cemetery, General Douglas MacArthur, the fruit bat, flew to the top of the Christmas tree, did a half-swing around it as he grabbed the star, and said:
“Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night.”