"But the dream, the echo, slips from him as quickly as he had found it and as consciousness comes to him (a slap and not the gentle waves of oceanic tides), it dissolves entirely. His muscles relax as the cold claims him again, as the numbness sets in, and when his grey eyes open, there’s nothing but the faint after burn of a dream often trod and never remembered." --Brigade, written by Laura
Wet. Everything is wet.
When he wakes up, he is covered in a cold sweat. Why? Was he ill? He had so been hoping he would avoid a winter cold this year too. DRAT.
That sound though, that noise. The loud thumping coming from the roof, the scuffle on the wood floor downstairs. Cackling, crazed cackling leaking up the staircase.
roof. wood floor. staircase?
Weir opens his eyes in surprise, when had he acquired a roof? He stares up at the ceiling wondering how this had come to pass. He was certainly in a house, a human house. How odd.
Wasn’t he just in the Dale? Everything is jumbled in his mind, like one half is pushing against another, trying to claim they are the right reality. My, my, this is an odd dream.
Another sound joins the commotion coming from below. A tapping, something rapping against glass. He rises in his bed, pulling from himself sheets and blankets that he has burrowed under. Underneath he finds things he expects will be there, but he has only ever seen them depicted in books.
Pajamas. Red, flannel pajamas- and bare feet.
He rises to a sitting position, throwing the blankets aside to the floor. He wiggles his newly discovered feet, stretching the oddly shaped phalanges. They wiggle, scrunch, flex and bend in all sorts of manners. Too far one way and..oh! Best be careful Weir.
The tapping continues, almost in distress, and he remembers what had caught his attention just moments before. He squints his eyes, then rubs his fists into his closed lids. Across the room is a simple tank, and against the glass a small turtle can be seen. “Darwin?” He croaks, throat dry from the moisture-sucking winter air. He’s sure it’s Darwin, though it’s a bit off. Much smaller, and Darwin was a tortoise- not a turtle. He scratches his head in confusion, regaling at the delight it brings his scalp.
“You big idiot! Get up, get up!” Darwin cries from his tank, entirely too upset for such an early hour. Weir chortles, lets go a hurumph, and then he stands - albeit clumsily. “My, my Darwin. You are in rare form this morning! Say, where are we ol’ chap?” He looks around, steadying himself with the bedpost. The room is, in a sense, tidy chaos.
The floor is clear, but the shelves, chairs, and dressers have items both on and in them. Books, lots of books, line the shelves and sit in stacks along the dresser. Brass bells, a croquet mallet, a set of chisels in a velvet lined box- all have a place. Clocks, several of them, tick against the walls, or make their home among the books. Rolls of parchment, quills, stacks of modern paper, cups full of pens are shoved anywhere there is room. In one corner there is a slate table on the verge of overflowing with bottles, beakers, and vials filled with all manner of things. Another crash from downstairs solicits a jump from Weir, he stumbles forward latching onto the nearest armchair.
“Where are we? I do not very well know! Look at me Weir, I’m a turtle for Tiphon’s sake!” A thud against the glass to somehow prove his point. “Look at you? Look at me! I’m a human Darwin.” Weir smiles brightly, thrusting his arms forward. “I have fingers Darwin. Fingers!” He flexes his hands, staring at each bend, studying the movement.
“Just come get me out! Change me back too! I do not like being a turtle.” Darwin calls sadly from his tank, his little turtle eyes staring pleadingly.
“Change you back? Can’t you change yourself back Darwin? I know you can. You’ve also been awfully testy this morning, I don’t think I should.” He folds his arms across each other in front of his chest, and giving Darwin a sassy stare.
“I’ve been trying to change myself back you buffoon. I can’t.” A webbed foot slaps against the glass, sliding back down with a whine.
“Can’t, you say? Why, that is a dilemma indeed.” Weir frowns, bringing a hand to his chin to rub it in thought. “I’ve always wanted to do that you know. Look Darwin, do I look museful?” Darwin returns a flat stare, his beady eyes looking absolutely unamused. “Yes, fine I will change you back.” The red-headed man crosses the room, lifting Darwin from his terrarium. He waits a spell, then he purses his lips and hums. A determined look takes his amber colored eyes, he looks at Darwin intently before releasing his breath in a sigh. “I-I..I’m afraid there’s no magic here Darwin.”
“WHAT DO YOU MEAN THERE’S NO MAGIC?!” Darwin is obviously upset by this news, yelling in a tiny turtle voice. Flailing his limbs while Weir holds him firmly in his grasp.
“Not to worry! I shall figure this out Darwin, now don’t squirm.” Weir chides, looking apologetic and then curious. “Darwin, if there’s no magic here, then how did you get here?” “Well, essentially I am your soul Weir. Where you go, I go too. Lucky turtle I am huh?” ”Oh stop that, you’ll be fine. Turtles aren’t so bad, could be worse.” He comments thinking of all the animals Darwin could have ended up being. “I think you have a point though,” He relents, looking at Darwin, the room, the terrarium.
Another crash breaks their conversation, the rise of insane laughter sets Weir at unease. “What in the blazes is going on out there? I think I’ll have a look. Darwin, you wait here.” Weir announces, placing Darwin on the floor because he refuses to return to his ‘cage’.
He makes his way out of the room, finding himself in a hall that is open along the entire far side, lined with gleaming wooden railing. On the far end, the railing opens to a staircase that curves its way down to the first floor. The noises that emit from below are gurgles, and gibberish. An expulsion of menacing, doom-laden laughter follows this foreign speech. Curiosity finds the better of him and Weir creeps towards the staircase. Coming to a frozen stop on the first landing, he is horror struck by the scene that unfolds before his eyes.
Everything, ruined.
Christmas, he had worked so hard to put up those decorations. The garland lies strewn across the wood floors, wrapped around hideous, antlered demons that run amok- ripping and smashing anything in their wake. Ornaments are merely shattered pieces of ceramic and colored glass. He’d spent hours hand-painting acrylic names across their surfaces. Whittaker, Camrynn, Elysteria, Ramiel, Warshyshippy, Phaedrus, Fynnegan, one for each of his friends and kin. The star sits precariously atop the tree, blinking on and off from a short in the stretched wire. The stockings that he had hung by the chimney with such care, were now unraveled bits of yarn and string. Lights slap against the wood floor with a crack, trailing in knots from the little green gremlins.
Weir stands with his mouth open, bringing his palms up to his stubbled cheeks and running them down his face. How could this be? Then he realizes, he sees, that the presents have not been destroyed yet. There is still hope, a small shred of it, that he can save Christmas. Save the gifts that are jammed under the bent tree. He would need to be quick though, his presence had already caught a pair of gleaming eyes, surely they would be after him soon.
Away to his room, he flew like a flash, taking the flight of stairs 2 or 3 steps at a time. He slammed the door shut and turned the lock with a click, before pushing a book filled stand in front of the door.
“What in the Dale is going on Weir?”
The red haired man stands huffing from his hurry, hands on his hips as he catches his breath. “Demons, Gremlins, creatures of the dark surely. Darwin they are destroying everything downstairs. We can still save the gifts, I won’t stand for them to ruin Christmas!” He barks, amber eyes alight with conviction.
“You’re joking.” Darwin protests, thinking little of Weir’s decision, but when he see’s the man is serious he gives in. “Fine, fine, but your on your own you know. I can’t help you here, but don’t think you’ll leave me in this room alone.”
Weir is already flitting about the room, snatching up items he deems useful. “We’ll fight them off! I’ll send them back to the realm from whence they came!” His voice is charged, his hands are quick, his eyes find their targets but it is clear his brain is running furiously with thought. The bedroom door rattles while dark things squeal, and rake their claws against the wood. A coat with several pockets finds itself on Weir’s back, and he wastes no time to fill the pockets with an array of objects. He grabs a canvas messenger bag, throwing it over his shoulder, and adjusting the strap. The bag he fills as well, though not as full as he would like, there is still one more very important item it must hold. The boots take the longest time, Weir fumbles as he has never actually tied laces before. He manages to knot them enough to stay and then he retrieves Darwin- tucking him into his bag last.
“You better make sure I am not smashed.”
“Absolutely, absolutely ol’ friend. Wouldn’t dream of them smashing you.” Weir assures Darwin, grabbing the croquet mallet before he stands facing the blocked door. The wood rattles, barely holding to the frame, Weir’s eyes harden and he shoves the stand away. “For the Dale! For Christmas!” He shouts before he surges into the fray.
It is a blizzard of green, of claws and gnashing teeth. Weir strikes at the demons with his mallet. Blasting them with thwacks against their bones, their faces, anywhere he can manage. He bashes them, just as much as they lash out with their sharp teeth and claws. With the mallet handle he jabs their ghoulish eyes, a weak spot for many a foe. One he picks up by it’s fake antlers, tossing it out the bedroom door where it smacks against the wooden rail. An ominous thud strikes the roof, the beams creak against the movement of something above them. Something is coming, something much bigger than what he battles now.
In the latest hours of the day you still can’t be sure that you’ll ever see the sun. It’s dark - impenetrable and suffocating. There’s a stillness that fills your ears and sinks into your lungs and weighs heavy on your dreaming mind. It’s that exact stillness that causes Astri’s eyes to part open and make sense of the dark room around her. It’s Christmas, she knows this without having to know it. The air around her is warm, she’s laying quite comfortably on her back … her back? With minute effort the woman slides her hands softly from underneath her covers, holding them open, splayed in front of her face. Fingers. Arms. She was human, but she was not human. There’s a sudden wave of nausea that overcomes her, the sense that she’s been out all night binge drinking.
Astri swings lucidly out of her bed - an empty, too large sort of thing - and stumbles over to her vanity. With cautious eyes she peers into the mirror and sees something that has her head tilting nearly to her right shoulder. She’s herself, but not the same as the way she remembers. Her hair is cropped short in a severe bob, hovering just below her jawline. It’s a halting shade of viridian that clashes with her pale skin tone. She’s all angles, all sinew, crows feet just beginning to show themselves at the corners of her bi-colored eyes. A tentative left hand rises into view to stroke her jawline. She looks fierce.
There could have been time here for Astri to admire the woman in the mirror, time for her to wander and make sense of her surroundings, but she’s out of time because a clatter above her has her gripping the edge of her dresser in shock. “What the shit?” She thinks, darting nimbly to her frosted window. Her house is roughly ‘L’-shaped, with her room being near the top of the letter. From where she stands she can see the short jut of the bottom of the L, and what waits there nearly stops her heart.
A creature - no, surely a demon - lingers there, eyes slitted on a face that could have spoiled milk. The overreaching incisors that spout from his mouth glint in the hard moonlight. He’s surrounded by other vermin, and they scurry on top of her roof, searching for something. Astri’s eyes narrow, her brows coming together to form a hard line. A cry arises in the night, a sharp scream. The demon swings about, festering hind claws digging away at her shingles. When Astri sees what he’s clambering towards, her stomach convulses.
“Mom?” A soft voice calls, and Astri pivots to view the young girl [Dacia, it’s Dacia!] standing in pajamas at her doorway. With a forceful leap across her room Astri swings the young girl into her arms and flies down the hallway, terror gripping her. “Where’s your brother?” She asks, holding the green-haired child to her tightly. “Lupei!” She screams, and her cry sends a feverish howl through the gremlin bastards. Down the stairs, into the kitchen, Astri is fumbling for anything she can use, flinging open cabinets and drawers in order to secure a blade. Poor Dacia waits near the fridge, trembling.
A noise behind her has her swinging around, a serrated bread knife wielded in her hand. But it’s not the demon lord that awaits her - it’s her son. She’d forgotten that he’d come home to visit for the holidays. Lupei is staring at her with wide, blue eyes and a shock of teal hair, his hands raised in defence. “What the hell is going on?” He asks. His question is answered by a snarl, and then he cries out on his own. A mutated little gremlin has shimmied his way down the chimney and snuck up behind him. The creature clings to his back and bites hard. Dacia screams and Astri follows suit, jumping across the kitchen so that she can wrestle the spawn of satan off her son. With a heated cry she swings the knife down and sends it straight through the shoulder blade of the assailant and it does the trick - the beast screeches and falls to the floor, scurrying away much faster than Astri would have given it credit for.
“WHAT THE FUCK WAS THAT?” Lupei yells, his shirt torn and bloodied. Astri holds him, trembling from the effort of her attack. “I don’t know, and I don’t want to wait around for another one. There’s a much bigger one - their leader - he’s here and I’m not sure for what.” She explains, motioning for Dacia to come close. Another screech quiets them, a resounding howl followed by the feral sound of something ripping. They wait, motionless, but a large, black creature pads around the corner with the wounded [now dead] gremlin in it’s fangs. “Mongrel?” Astri calls the dog. “Good boy.”
They’re together now - the lot of them. The three humans and one dog against God’s own nightmare. Astri thinks and Dacia begins to quietly sob. “Think Lupei - is there anyway to defend ourselves?” Astri asks, her hand on his shoulder. The blue-haired man turns to her with an almost incredulous look. “Mom,” He says, as if she’s gone crazy, “We live in the south - we have a whole gun rack in our basement.” There’s a moment of silence then, and Astri finally nods. “To the basement it is.”
The three stand, Astri gathering Dacia once more into her arms while Lupei grabs Mongrel’s collar, they fly across the house, past the living room where the heads and claws of the demon’s workers are already beginning to pry their way in - “Run run!” one squeals, and Astri can feel an overwhelming sense of panic begin to set in. The group swing around a corner, and Lupei flings open what seems to be a closet door, hiding a set of stairs that lead down to the basement. They file in and Astri slams the door behind her while locking it. Down the stairs, into the far corner of the game room where a rack hangs along the wall, sporting a black .12 gauge, a semi-automatic hunting rifle, and a weathered-looking .10 gauge shotgun.
Astri deposits Dacia on the couch, covering her with blankets and pillows until she’s nearly hidden. She rises then, striding over to where Lupei holds the rifle, already beginning to load the chamber. He watches as she lifts the .12 gauge, a rather sinister-looking beast, before handing her rounds from his own pockets. “What do they want with us?” He asks her, and Astri can only shrug her shoulders. She loads the gun out of habit, a strange memory that makes sense but also doesn’t, before keeping the extras in her own pockets. “They’re not getting it without a fight.” She says with finality, her words halted by a thundering sound. The door from the top of the stairs breaks free and flies down with force, like an ominous projectile. The demon descends, claws raking against the wall as he lowers himself to view them.
“That’s the Grinch…” Lupei whispers, terror evident in his voice. “He steals children as a sacrifice.”
The nightmare chuckles, head turning slowly so that his eyes can pinpoint Dacia. His mouth stretches, yellowed teeth run over by a forked tongue. Mongrel snarls, and Astri raises her weapon, cocking the gun with determined badassery. “Not tonight, motherfucker.”
12-02-2015, 06:07 PM (This post was last modified: 12-02-2015, 07:07 PM by Oakheart.)
She was drunk again.
The holly-fucking-jolly season always put her in the mood for some tasty adult beverages with even tastier adult activities. But wait-
The creak of tiny feet snap the woman out of a drunken lullaby. She is covered in slick sweat, the faint drift of bourbon is on her skin and on her tongue. A hand lifts and fingers spread to catch the dark headed woman as she clutches her skull. She is shaking gently, unstable. "I'm never drinking again..." She slurs under her breath. Dark eyes glance to catch 2:03 am on the alarm clock. "Huh." Oak remarks with a bit of confusion. Typically after a pisser like tonight she sleeps till around at least eleven the next morning. But something woke her. Oddly, the woman feels strange as she swings her legs out from the cotton covers. She feels too bare in her red flannel pants and shirt.
"I must still be fucked up."
The words are muttered as she feels the urge to urinate and makes her way to the bathroom. It's as she sits down that a smash from the living room pops like static through the house and Oakheart quite literally pisses herself on the toilet...that is mildly comical to the dark haired girl for a fleeting second before she realizes she isn't dreaming...no her dreams were of meadows and water falls. And horses.
"And horses." The words uttered absentmindedly as she wipes herself and pulls up her bottoms. There was something downstairs...down-FUCKING-STAIRS! Oak panics and darts from her bedroom toilet to the bedroom door. Gently she lays down to crawl flatly towards the banister that overlooks the living room.
Her tree laid on the ground. The presents were scraps of plastic and paper. Oakheart briefly wondered if she had done it herself while she was blacked out till she saw little black shadows moving among the shattered remains of gifts. She slaps her hand over her mouth to keep from shrieking.
As quietly as possible, Oak crawls back to her room. It's a wonder how she missed him but there was the guy of the night snoring softly away in her bed.
Fuck.
So to break this as gently as possible, Oak clamps her hand over Mister No-Name's mouth and brings a finger to her lips in a shushing manner as his eyes snap open and bulge only briefly before she hurriedly explains.
"Uh, hi...hello. There's someone in my house. Look, I'm not sure who it is so be quiet." She's nervous. Her skin is prickly and her "spidey" sense is going batshit crazy. Dark eyes dart around the room to find some sort of a weapon as Mister Tall Dark and Handsome finally gets to his feet...still confused. Obviously it wasn't his brain size that Oakheart had been after when she noticed he was nude when he stood. She can't help but smile a little.
Focus, Oaky.
She grounds herself again as she digs through the closet in hopes of some sort of defense...her hands feel weird as they open and close as she grips but she shakes the feeling...but then her hands close on something hard and cold.
With one swift tug, a long crowbar emerges from the pile of clothes. Oak looks over her shoulder to see her companion blinking at her. "Can't be too safe." She smiles as the man looks back at her and nods with a confused, crooked smile. Oak stands prepared. She moved silently to her nightstand and pulls out a small flask from the drawer. Nimble fingers loosen the lid and she tilts the metal bottle up as she takes a long, hard swig before passing it to loverboy. They were going to need it.
It was going to be a not so silent night after all.
His eyes snapped open, met with nothing but darkness broken by the faint edges of furniture catching moonlight. Dread crawled up his throat, the sensation of inevitability reminiscent of walking down a hallway in the dark and imagining something was coming up behind him, or how he always expected something to walk around the corner as he was closing his bedroom door in the dark. It seemed misplaced. It was so deep – something primal, an emotion that wrapped a choke-hold around his brain-stem and screamed at him to run. But he was just in his bed, he’d just been drea—
What was a bed? How did he know that word?
In his confusion he shifted under the covers, gripping the edge of the mattress in his hands.
His hands.
He scrambled to a sitting position, jostling the entire bed. Raising the mysterious appendages, he rotated them, studying them with a mix of horror and fascination in the weak moonlight.
A woman he’d never seen before, but somehow knew as his wife, rolled over on her side of the bed with a bleary blink in his direction.
“What’s wrong hon—”
“Shut up!” he snapped back, on edge with his discoveries.
Bending his fingers, Arka marveled at the fact that they were familiar and alien at once – as if he hadn’t just woken up in another world void of even the comfort of his usual form. His mind felt split right down the middle, divided in to a past and present unforgiving in their contrast. He understood he was something called a ‘human’, that the woman in bed with him was his wife, that he was lying in a bed in a house, and that it was the night before Christmas. And despite straddling a fine line between sanity and otherwise…he recognized it all somehow.
And even if he hadn’t there was no time for despondency. The same noise that must have interrupted his sleep sounded again, a sound like the house settling, some of the ‘popcorn’ ceiling crackling and heaving a cloud of dust as something massive traversed the roof. Where his instinct caused him to freeze, brain going in to hyper-drive to analyze the situation, fear drove his wife to speak. Incessant, insufferable. He already hated her.
“Arka, what about the kids?” she asked, reaching out to wrap a hand around his arm. Her touch felt electric for all the wrong reasons – like a spider crawling up his pant leg, it was unwanted and unnatural, a place it shouldn’t be. He shrugged her off.
Children. A boy and a girl. Alison & Waker.
Just as in the life before, he despised them. As a horse he’d had no use for his pathetic offspring. Each had been a means to an end: Alison, a way to exact revenge on his Mother for not appreciating him for what he was. Waker had been an attempt at something worthy of carrying his genes, but ended up being an undeniable failure. He ‘knew’ that these children were not the product of origins quite so depraved, but that they were just as much a burden.
“What about them?”
For a second he saw disgust in his wife’s face, revulsion for the thing she’d somehow married and now forced herself to stay with for the good of the children. Arka wondered if this version of him had always been this way, or if he’d brought his distinct brand of slime with him when he ‘woke up’. There was surprise mixed in with her distaste, so he thought perhaps the human Arka had been different before this moment.
Existentialism aside, he wanted to get away from her, and even the wastes of skin called his children were a good reason. Pushing himself up off the bed, he moved towards the door, surprisingly sturdy on two legs instead of four.
Opening the door slowly, he let his eyes adjust to the even darker hallway of the second floor. There were no windows, just an expanse of carpeting leading to the other end of the second story where his children’s rooms were. The staircase was just a ways off, leading down in to near pitch-black darkness…a darkness filled with the sounds of rustling, thumping, and crashing that sounded like an invasion. He’d had no intentions of going to check on his children as it was – maybe go downstairs, check the fridge, scratch his armpit with a yawn and grab a beer at three in the morning before going outside to see what’d fallen on the roof – but the rustling required immediate attention as it was.
He knew he had a gun.
Turning back in to the master bedroom, he ignored the silent accusations of his wife’s gaze as he made a beeline for the closet. As quietly as possible he shoved aside a few boxes on the shelf lining its walls and pulled down the one with the pistol inside. He didn’t believe in keeping it in his bedside table, citing the thought that one of his moronic children might get hold of it and shoot him by accident someday. It was close enough in the closet. Shoving the full clip in, he made for the staircase, ignoring his wife’s suddenly frantic questions. (Arka, why do you need a GUN? Are the kids out of bed?) Useless.
The steps were wooden, cold and smooth under his bare feet as he crept down the staircase. One hand was wrapped around the banister to keep him steady in the dark, the other holding the pistol, finger resting along the trigger-guard.
He could see almost nothing but shadows as he reached the first floor, the same sickening sense of dread clawing at his mind again. Something crashed to the floor with a sound loud enough to make his ears ring, causing him to slam his back up against a wall for cover from the direction it came from. Sliding along the wall slowly, he kept his breathing as even as possible, focusing intently. Fear and panic would get him nowhere. He tracked the nearly constant sound of rustling to the front room where all the presents were nearly stacked by his wife around the tree. Almost without warning his apprehension was replaced by white-hot anger. Whomever had the balls to break in to his house also had the balls to destroy – or steal, noisily – the things he’d spent his precious money on. The money he hadn’t even wanted to spend in the first place because what had his stain-on-humanity children ever done to deserve it?
Quietly, quietly, quietly he reached around the edge of the doorway to flick on the light-switch just on the other side of the wall, unwilling to relinquish his cover in case the intruders were armed.
He wasn’t prepared for what he saw, not even that part of him that used to be a horse and had watched all sorts of so-called ‘unnatural’ magic.
Beasts, four-legged, skin like an oil slick black and iridescent in the light of the Christmas tree, traipsed through the presents. They didn’t necessarily seem concerned with what was inside each brightly wrapped box so much as destroying the contents, crushing plastic toy cars and Barbie dream-houses in webbed, clawed fists. As soon as the light went on they froze, each turning their head at the exact same time as the other to look at Arka. They did not have faces, but he could feel what their expressions might have been.
For a moment they were at a stalemate, gathering of demons staring down a lone man...until the lone man took a step forward and every single one of the creatures shivered with hunger, inky faces seeming to pull on themselves until mouths ripped open. Tough, rubbery skin snapped as flesh pulled apart and rolled back on itself, revealing rows of teeth like nails, long and serrated and covered in drool.
“Woah, woah!” Arka yelled, taking a step backwards and holding up his hands to stop the creatures in their advance. Much to even Arka’s surprise, they did, hackles high though they waited for whatever he was that the foolish human had planned. And what did he have planned? In the face of seemingly imminent and incredibly painful death he could choose to fight. He was not the sort to go down without one. But he was calculating, and even confronted by the group of shivering, slavering hell-beasts, he saw a second choice.
“If I let you have my family, will you take me with you?”
THUD. The broad-shouldered man barely stirred at the first rumblings of commotion outside their window (or was it the roof?), racket and rumpus were pretty much commonplace in the Kry (is that their last name? it must be) household. With a set of hormonal teenage twins, a moody preteen and a curious toddler – clamor was just background noise most of the time. Memories dueled In his mind, both horse and human alike and everything felt slathered with a warm dreamy haze, but perhaps it was just the alcohol. They had been up late after all, he and his wife, drinking liquored eggnog (more liquor than eggnog in his) beside their adorned real (it had to be real, their earth-conscious middle child had insisted) Christmas tree and reminiscing on the days when they were electric and free. He knew their wood floors would be cold on his bare feet and all that covered his bare skin were his thin, every-year-on-Christmas-PJs, he really didn’t feel like getting up. So, clutching his golden-haired wife tighter he runs through the mental list of what-ifs before actually disturbing himself from his warm bed.
Lets see, Raiden was still too small to actually climb out of his crib (although valid attempts have been made) and there were no dreaming whimpers or demanding cries for attention screaming at him from the baby monitor. Roman, his eldest son and the older half of his twins, was most likely still up playing video games or Facebooking – but he wouldn’t be up rumbling this late. Not on Christmas, at least, he still wasn’t big or brave enough to risk his father’s wrath. Alexandria and Natalie were in the room next to theirs and at the end of the hallway, they would have had to walk past their parent’s open bedroom door to get out into the living room or more likely of Alexandria, out the front door. Which is exactly what got her evicted from the split-bedroom garage they had converted for their boy-girl twins sixteenth birthday. His wife had woke one night (a mother’s intuition, she had said) to find Alexandria’s bedroom door locked with no Alexandria inside. They had been waiting when she returned back through her window at 2am.
So she had been especially pissed off at her parents since not only was her beloved cell phone confiscated but she was made to move in with her tattle-tale little sister, at Rachel’s demand. Rachel, his wife – that was her name, even though it felt wrong on his tongue at first he knew it to be true. Rachel was his wife’s name. And it wasn’t until her hard elbow found it’s way into his ribcage that he threw back his part of the downy comforter and growled out from beneath the covers, “fine!” Long legs swing out from the bed and he is across the cold cherry wood floor and into the hallway in two strides, so help me God I will make her sorry, he promises himself as he turns the knob to his daughter’s room, hoping for her own sake he wasn’t going to have to lose his shit on Christmas. A quick scan of the room where both girls asleep, one tucked under the covers and one sprawled out like a starfish. THUD, CRASH, SNARL. It was loud and strange sounds were coming from the backyard and roof alike. He hadn’t even bothered to check out of the bedroom window and into the backyard, it was so heavily wooded and Bear was back there.
”Motherfucker!” He curses, pulling the door back and twisting the knob shut, Bear was barking pretty steadily now which meant there was probably a raccoon (or trash panda as Natalie called them) or opossum in the garbage bins. Their mutt, some kind of Akita mix he had always thought, was now going absolutely nuts as he crossed the top of the hallway and reached the top of the stairs. The second his foot hit the top step, a garbled, insidious warbling cackled up from downstairs, accompanied by the crash of what sounded like a glass ornament. The hair on his arms stood up and a tremor of instinct shuddered through his body, this was not right at all. That was no fucking raccoon and his pistol was downstairs in the lockbox and his shotgun was back in the master’s walk-in closet. He was turning back towards the bedroom when he heard a larger shattering, perhaps the window this time and he is sprinting to the bedroom now. Rachel is at the doorframe before he gets there, “what the hell is going on?” She asks, dressed in her snowman nighty. “Go check on Raiden,” he says, rushing to the window as Bear’s yelps rise up from the backyard and the sight from below gave him gooseflesh and his blood run cold.
Several little antlered abominations had slushed through the snow and through, presumably, his backdoor or a bottom-floor window. Several others were hopping around Bear, cruelly pulling on his tail and ears as he scrambled back into his large dog house. But when he moved his eyes and briefly locked eyes with the Grinch below, the hideous unending green of its gaze seized his heart and moved his feet almost simultaneously.
It was a riot downstairs and he could hear the girls’ door opening on the other side of the wall as he reached into the closet and grabbed his 12-gauge Remington Model 870. He heard the tumbling of the tree downstairs and the frenzy of ripping paper, “stay in your room!” He yells out, striding to the top of the stairs within a few steps. He could see Rachel cradling an unimpressed toddler out of the corner of his eye as another huge BANG clattered the roof, The demons are scrambling up the first couple steps of the stairs, “COME CLOSER AND I’LL BLOW YOUR FUCKING HEADS OFF.” He bellows, pointing the shotgun and peering down its barrel at the cluster of little monsters as a great thump shook the house a cloud of smoke billowed out from the chimney – he was in the house now. Gasps and squeals of horror come from his left as his daughters, disobeying him, peered out over the railing and down at the clusterfuck of a Christmas scene below. “Shoot them!” Rachel screamed as the Grinch shimmied his disgusting way out of the chimney crevice and then he racked the chamber of the shotgun and they would be nothing but splatters of flesh and blood if they came any further up the stairs. And they’d all be getting a new house for Christmas.
