It has been a long time since I produced a horror short for this blog. The following short hit me like a train in November. Obviously, it is a direct result of my trauma from my son being bit in the face by our dog the month before. So, this season, I give to you a glimpse at one of my demons.
The bubbling Christmas music sounded out of place against the rolling chatter and peals of laughter filling the house. The college party throbbed around me. I perched on an uncomfortable plastic chair by the coffee table, surrounded by strangers in ugly sweaters, crowded by a sloppily decorated tree.
I poured another drink down my throat to sedate my nerves.
I glanced around the circle of the gift exchange. The boy across from me balanced the small, wrapped box on his fingertips, like he didn’t know how to hold it. The drunk sorority girl beside him on the battered couch swayed into him.
“It’s just a present,” she said over his shoulder. Her red velvet skirt was too short for winter. She knocked her bare thigh against him, melting snow slicking from her tall, black boots.
He looked down to the box, awkward in his grip, then suddenly right at me. I stifled a gasp. His eyes were startling, some kind of hazel reflecting the Christmas lights hung around the room. I almost flinched, but for an instant, he looked childlike, lost. Something about the connection soothed me, made me forget that I knew no one at this party.
“My family doesn’t do Christmas gifts,” he said to the blonde, offering the green box with shining red bow back to her. “I didn’t bring one for the exchange.”
“But it’s a Christmas party.” Her intoxication elongated her words. She butted her leg against him again, but he did not lean into the touch. She pushed against the gift, pouting. “Everyone gets a present.”
“Don’t worry, Tyler,” the plaid-clad guy in the armchair said from the end of the coffee table. “I always keep a couple spares for the lame-asses who forget their gift.” Popping up from the chair, he vaulted over the coffee table.
Plaid grinned as he retrieved a larger box covered in snowman paper and pushed it across the table. Tyler watched the present slide to a stop before Blondie snatched it up. I looked at the red gift bag dangling from my fingers, glittered paper stabbing up at me.
“Why doesn’t your family do Christmas gifts?” My question startled me, the alcohol loosening my tongue, blurring my thoughts into clumsy speech.
I winced before looking to him, flush burning through my cheeks. What business was it of mine why his family didn’t celebrate Christmas? Maybe he wasn’t Christian. Embarrassment pounded in my veins enough to dilute the alcohol, but he smiled at me, soft and gentle, a glint in his striking eyes.
“I don’t know if it’s a very festive story.” He dropped his eyes, tilted his head, but his resistance felt hollow. He passed the present between his hands, waiting. “Kind of a buzzkill.”
“No, tell us!” Blondie straightened on the cushion, gripping his bicep.
He didn’t look at her. He looked at me. I stopped breathing and hurried my plastic cup to my lips. His mouth quirked.
“Well,” he began. “If you insist.” He planted his present in front of him on the table and eased back on the cushion to address the circle. “When I was a kid, I got bit in the face by a dog. And it was bad, real bad.”
Blondie gasped beside him, pressing her painted fingernails to her mouth.
Tyler turned his face, exposing his cheek. “Part of my cheek was ripped down. I was hospitalized for over a week, had over 120 stitches. It got infected,” he said. He traced a faint line down his cheek and through the break in the stubble along his jaw. Once he pointed it out, the healed skin winked white in the light.
“You can barely tell.” My thoughts spilled out again.
He smiled fast, running his hand over the faint scars. “My parents could afford good doctors. Young skin heals well,” he dismissed. “And my mom made sure I kept out of the sun and used every cream and treatment they recommended.”
“Did it happen on Christmas?” Plaid interrupted, leaning forward on his elbows, clutching his beer.
The circle contracted around Tyler, the festive chaos around us fading into the background.
“No, no.” Tyler waved the question away. “This happened before Christmas. I was pretty healed by Christmas, out of the hospital, stitches out. We were getting back to normal, except my mom.” He paused a moment, wet his lips. “My mom was messed up about it. It was her dog who bit me. Her rescue. And she loved that dog. Sometimes, I worried that she loved him more than me.” A pained smile twisted his face. “But when we got home from the hospital, she put him down herself. Didn’t even take off her shoes, just took him straight out back, and he was gone. Never shed a tear in front of me.”
The entire circle fell silent. All gifts had been abandoned to the table or the floor around us. The party had ceased to exist as we all leaned in for his words.
Tyler ran his palms down his thighs to his knees, exhaling before resuming.
“So Christmas came around. Our family was big into Christmas, made a thing of it. My parents had this big party every year with their siblings and close friends. The main part was this asshole gift exchange. Everyone got a name and bought that person a joke gift. But not like white elephant.” He poked at the box in front of him. “Like well thought out, personal, and often kind of mean.” He chuckled to himself, smiling at the present. “It was only the adults, and we kids were always so jealous. We wanted to buy asshole gifts too, but our parents said we weren’t ready.”
“Asshole gifts?” Blondie asked, cocking her head like a puppy.
“Like, how mean?” Plaid asked.
“It was about being funny,” Tyler said. “But you had to have thick skin. Like, if you hated something, you were getting that for Christmas. If you did something stupid, you were getting that for Christmas. My aunt fell on the ice one year and got a concussion; my dad bought her ice skates and a helmet.”
The table giggled uncomfortably, unsure where the story was going, not knowing if it was inappropriate to laugh. A smile broke my face, but I took a drink to disguise it, feeling the liquor hum through me.
“So, the Christmas after the bite,” Tyler resumed, “my uncle decided to include me in the exchange. He got me this, like, Phantom of the Opera type mask that covered all my scars, and he painted it to look like a werewolf. Honestly, it was kind of badass.” He smirked, shrugged.
Blondie placed her hand on his forearm, but he didn’t meet her wide, blinking eyes.
“So, your mom was pissed about the mask?” Plaid eased to the edge of the armchair, legs bouncing.
Tyler exhaled in a whistle. “She was so upset.” His tone lowered with his eyes, back to the gift in front of him. “I wanted to be involved so bad. I was the only kid. Even if the mask hurt my feelings, I felt special to get it. I tried to tell her it was fine. I told her it was funny and I loved the mask. But she was livid.” He took a deep breath and let it out slow. “Then my dad made it worse. He told her to calm down.”
We took a collective gasp.
“Oh no,” Blondie said.
He looked directly at me again, and that boyish demeanor surfaced. A boy healing back together after the gnashing teeth of a dog. A child listening to his parents fight. Then it receded behind how handsome he was. My stomach flipped.
“So, what happened?” Plaid encouraged the words with his hands.
“She did not calm down.” Tyler grinned sourly at the present. “She left.” He shrugged, shifting on the cushion. “She messaged that she was taking an uber. But—”
His voiced trailed off, and he found me again. As his eyes watered and glittered, it felt like he could see through me. When his eyes caught mine like this, it felt like he was talking only to me. The intimacy of his sharing. Or it was the rum in my egg nog.
He kept staring into me when he continued. “We never saw her again. She never came home, never called, never got any of her things. Just gone.”
My heart sunk with each word until it burrowed in my belly.
“Wait, what?” Plaid shot to his feet, mouth agape.
“Oh my god.” Blondie grabbed her face.
“I’m so sorry,” I said without thinking.
He kept his eyes on me, calm and clear now. “After that mask, we never exchanged another gift.”
Tears pricked the back of my eyes. The urge to hold him overwhelmed me. My arms insisted I clear the table between us, sweep Blondie from the cushion, and comfort this wounded boy. Yet I just gaped at him with the others.
“Holy shit, bro!” Plaid shouted, swiping fast at his cheek. “What a downer. Now, open your damn present.”
***
The cold walk across campus cleared the echo of the party from my ears, but my brain still thrummed from the cups I had nervously drank after the story. And my proximity to Tyler. Looping my arm through his, he held me close to guide me over the icy sidewalks.
His story had dispersed the circle. Blondie took the hint and stopped slapping her thigh against him, turning her attention to Plaid instead. We rushed through opening the awful gifts unceremoniously.
Our gifts now sat purposefully forgotten on the coffee table at the party. I received a set of straws shaped like veiny penises. He never opened his. The crisply wrapped box remained where he placed it during his story. The story that circulated through me faster than the rum.
I tried not to stare at the side of his face, searching for the scars in the dim light, as he brought us to his room. He kept the lights low, half-hiding from me, except for those shining eyes.
Closing the door behind him, he gathered my face in his hands. He ran his thumbs over my unmarred cheeks, banishing the chill from the night. His eyes, green or gold or maybe blue, caught the light from the window. He kissed me, slow, deep, until my knees wobbled.
“I didn’t finish my story,” he said, low and soft against my lips. “At the party.”
I leaned back to take in his face. Something behind him, something in the shadow by the door shifted. Or I thought it did.
“What do you mean?” I murmured, staring over his shoulder.
He guided my face back to his, drew me closer. “I lied before, when I said I never saw my mom again.”
Anger flared in me, betrayal in how much I had trusted his words and how they felt meant for me, and I jerked back again. The shadow behind him moved, took shape. I closed my eyes, blinked hard, tried to force my vision into sobriety and focus. Taking a step back, I bumped into his bed.
“No, no,” he soothed. Stroking his fingers down my face, he pulled me into him. “It was the first Christmas after. It’s how I knew she was gone, how I knew to stop asking questions.”
This beautiful stranger embraced me, his hands foreign on my back. I saw it behind him. The figure hobbled from the darkness, broken and jerking. Eyes like his found the light and gleamed at me from a mangled face. The flesh of the cheek had been ripped, torn away to expose a line of white teeth. Like it had been attacked by a dog.
“She comes back every year,” he breathed into my ear. Then, still holding me close, he turned to greet her. “Hi, Mom.”
Christina Bergling
https://linktr.ee/chrstnabergling
Like my writing? Check out my books!
- Followers – You never know who is on the other side of the screen. Followers is a mystery and thriller that blends women’s fiction with horror.
- The Rest Will Come – Online dating would drive anyone to murder, especially Emma.
- Savages – Two survivors search the ruins for the last strain of humanity. Until the discovery of a baby changes everything.
- The Waning – Locked in a cage, Beatrix must survive to escape or be broken completely.
- Screechers – Mutant monsters and humans collide in the apocalyptic fallout of a burned world. Co-authored with Kevin J. Kennedy.
- Horror Anthologies
Fiery Pen 