Together at Christmas
by Ken MacGregor
Horrific Scribes Extremity Rating:
They hadn’t been back for a few years. The sky was the color of an ancient, well-used chalkboard. Jack kept the Camry at five over: the thrum of the tires was liminal under the Christmas song on the radio. The car had 210K on it and was still going strong.
He and Sue sang along, while Kaylie, in the car seat in back, hummed. She knew the words to some but not this one.
“Mayfield: five miles!” Jack cried, reading the sign aloud as he did every time they came back. Soon, they were pulling past the Post Office, Carl’s Grocery, and the mayor’s house. No one was out. No cars on the road. No carolers. No movement.
“Now, that’s new.” Sue pointed at the life-size display before the church.
Kaylie shuddered. They had a Nativity at home, but it was smaller than the cat. This one was too big.
“Let’s take a look,” Jack said. He pulled over.
Snowflakes hung suspended in the air, buffeted by a frigid gust.
Walking over, Jack saw that something was off, the general shape of Mary and Joseph, Baby Jesus and the Wise Men, Ox and Donkey. But they were all glonked together, pretending.
The family stopped several feet back and stared.
There! Jack’s mother’s face, in the donkey’s belly.
There! Sue’s sister Darcy: half her face and one arm protruding from Joseph’s chest.
There! The deputy mayor, whose whole head was the baby Jesus.
All of Mayfield nightmarishly mashed together into one sacrilegious mockery.
Kaylie shrunk behind her parents’ knees. “Stranger danger.”
Jack scooped her up and, with a glance at Sue to make sure she understood, burst toward the car. Manger danger, he thought.
Tentacles of flesh shot from the mass and caught the three of them.
Kaylie screamed.
Jack said a word he promised himself he’d never use around his daughter.
Sue bit down on the thing holding her. Hot human blood flowed into her mouth.
They were dragged back, incorporated, their flesh added to the creche.
Kaylie heard Christmas songs in her head, and—suddenly— she knew all the words.