Page 94 of Serial Killer Games

I stare at her in horror. She stayed because ofme. Because of some misguided, traditional notion that I needed a father figure. How many times did Andrew make pointed comments within my earshot aboutunwed mothersandboys being raised without fathers, and howat leastnow Jake could be raised in an environment with proper family values.The whole time I lived here, she tried so hard to facilitate that relationship.He does care about you in his own way, Jake.

She looks my way, a smile in place, but it drops from her face when she sees my expression. I hoist my own smile into place, too late.

She watches my face for a moment with a regretful air, then sets her empty mug down and stands.

“I’m going to bed, Jake.”

She drifts up the stairs, leaving dissatisfaction and disappointment suspended in the atmosphere like a scented holiday candle. I remain downstairs, alone with the Christ-child music and the blinking Christmas lights. It’s the perfect Christmas tableau: tree, stockings, nativity scene perched on the coffee table—all perfectly coordinated like a homeware catalog—and it’s all an elaborate facade to a deeply rotten family. I always wanted a different sort of family.

I pull the creased Santa photo from my pocket. Santa’s in the center, of course, wholesome and jolly, with red cheeks and a white, whiskery smile, but Dodi and I aren’t smiling so much as baring our teeth in big, fake, psycho smiles that don’t reach our eyes. I’m spattered in my own blood, clutching that kitchen knife in such a way that my hand is positioned overthe handle, the clear plastic housing vanishing against my coat and leaving just the blade visible, and Dodi is holding that aluminum baseball bat. Santa looks like he’s about to get his head caved in and his joints disarticulated. And Cat—Cat sits primly on his lap, ankles crossed, hands folded, her hair ribbon in a perfect bow above one ear, as she gazes solemnly at the camera with eyes deader than blown-out candles.

I think of Cat with her duct-taped tree and tin of beans. She deserves something like what Laura’s put together. Not me, a cynical old person army-crawling my way through another holiday season. The song on the radio changes to “Silent Night,” sung by Elvis of course, and I don’t think of Dodi. I definitely don’t think of the way her face twisted strangely when she saw Cat garroting me in a piggyback ride, before it abruptly settled out again, like a rumpled blanket yanked straight. I’ve been leaving her alone so she can be happy, but she didn’t seem very happy.

I pick up the mugs to take into the kitchen, and now I think of Laura, and how alone she is. She’ll be even more alone soon, with me gone, although I don’t kid myself I’ve ever been much of a consolation to her. On the way I stoop to pick up a wrapped gift and prop it up higher onto the pile, out of the way of foot traffic, when my thumb rips right through the paper and into the squishy contents. I flip the present over to read the card:For Jake, Love, Andrew, written in Laura’s loopy handwriting. I rip open the package and inside I find an expensive robe of bamboo silk, soft and warm-looking.

Bill needs something like this.

Fuck Andrew. Fuck Andrew, and fuck Christmas, and fuck—

Elvis trills his last, and a stupidly familiar song comes on. Horns flare, strings skip jauntily up the scale, a percussive burst, and—

You’re a mean, one, Mr. Grinch

You really are a heeeel…

I’m instantly calm.

In the kitchen I pull a yellow glove over my bandaged hand and wash and dry the mugs, whistling along to the tune, and then, instead of putting them in the cupboard, I wrap them up in paper and set them in their original box, the one they’re stored in every year between Christmases. I locate the other six in the set and pack those too. I pack up the Christmas dishes and cutlery in their boxes, the tablecloth and table settings, and then I remove the prepped ingredients and the cookie dough from the fridge, everything already neatly stored in Tupperware and Ziploc bags.

In the living room I take down the severed head ornaments and all the others one by one, pack up the garland, the presents, the throw pillows, and Christmas blankets. Everything goes into the front hallway in a big pile, and from there it goes to the car. Andrew keeps an old spool of nylon rope in the garage. It takes a blundering half hour, but I manage to hoist the tree on top of Grant’s car—the branches making some interesting grating noises against the paint job—and tie it in place with rope fed through the cracked windows.

My final move is to creep up the stairs and shake Laura awake.

“Come.”

41

The Nightmare Before Christmas

Jake

I smile at the littleold lady tugging her shopping cart up the walk to Dodi’s apartment building, and she narrows her eyes at me suspiciously, as if she, out on an icy walkway at midnight on Christmas Eve, isn’t ten orders of magnitude more out of place than I am. Her wheel catches on the lip of the step and I reach down to pick it up before she can stop me.

“Thank you,”she says pointedly, but I don’t let go. I continue to blast my pure-of-heart church-boy smile at her, and she flounders for a moment before reluctantly letting me into the poinsettia-infested lobby. She stabs me with her eyes in the elevator and shoots several wary glances behind her when she leaves me on the second floor. I beam at her and carry on to the third.

The lights of Dodi’s apartment were on when I stood in the street below, but she doesn’t hear the first knock or the second. I’ve raised my hand to rap again when the door jerks open to rest against the full length of its chain.

“What—” Dodi says, and stops and scowls.

I smile.Merry fucking Christmas!

“You always look unhinged when you smile like that.” She’s fully dressed, but there are creases in her cheek from whatever surface she fell asleep on. Her hair is mussed and her eyeliner smudged.

“Open the door.”

Her response is to make the opening narrower, until she peers at me with one eye. “No. This is exactly what these bolt-and-chain locks are for: creeps knocking in the middle of the night. What do you want?”

What do you want? What do you like? What makes you happy?

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