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Ray angled the flashlight expertly into the fuse box. It was as if he’d majored in flashlight handling. He could bring home the goddamn gold medal for best and most efficient illumination of a fuse box. But all his flashlight finesse in the world couldn’t really fix the fact that Brad didn’t seem to know what he was doing beyond the time-tested tradition of ‘flip the fuses on and off’.
“Brad, would you let me look at it?” Ray asked, sagging a bit under the weight of the cold chill in the garage. About an hour ago a real storm had kicked in. Ray was talking storm storm, like if he didn’t know any better he’d assume they were about to get a call from Dennis Quaid telling them to take shelter and to stay warm as the ice cyclone descended. Obviously he was Jake Gyllenhaal in this situation. Ray had mad main protagonist vibes.
The storm was bad enough that their power had been kicked out. Nate had bundled up to step outside and do a quick neighborhood recon while Brad and Ray fussed with the fuse box. Well, while Brad fussed with the fuse box and Ray bounced from foot to foot because his socked feet against the garage floor were about to fall off from frostbite. “Seriously homes, let me look at it, I’m an electrical savant .”
Brad sighed heavily and rested one big hand on the top of the box. “I can handle a fuse box, believe it or not,” he muttered, but then continued to flip buttons, so Ray thought that he might not be able to.
“Oh yeah. Good job. Hey, babe, flip that one again and maybe you’ll get lucky. Fifth time is the charm right?” Ray said, and then steeled himself for the withering look Brad shot him. It didn’t last long though. For some reason Brad’s dissatisfied looks always made him smile. He just had such an air about him. His prissy duchess. “Sorry, sorry. Keep going. We’ll figure it out.”
The look of critical suspicion Brad treated him to should have been in a museum. It was a work of art. Ray flashed the light up to his face playfully before Nate appeared in the doorway of the garage, pulling off his gloves and dropping them off on the washing machine.
“I don’t think this is a problem we can solve here. Looks like it’s the whole block,” Nate said, and Ray reached forward to bop the tip of his nose, red from the cold. Behind Nate, the hallway opened up into a swell of darkness illuminated by a few candles they’d hurriedly lit on their way down.
“Yeah, looks like a bad blizzard coming in,” Brad said, finally giving up on the fuse box. Ray wanted to step forward and take a whack at it but…well, Nate was probably right. No fuckin’ reason to waste time on it if it was the whole block, or even the whole town. Brad rubbed his hands together swiftly and shut the fuse box. “No heat, no hot water.”
Ray nodded forlornly, because the most critical aspect of the lost power had not yet been discussed. It was Christmas Eve, after all, and he had traditions to uphold. “No Grinch, no bitch ass Charlie Brown, no bullying Rudolph…”
Nate grinned as he stepped back into the house, hair a little wild and mussed from the hat he’d now pulled off his head. “I don’t know how you’ll ever make it, that’s the real tragedy of the evening,” he said. Brad rolled his eyes and stepped past him into the house, but Ray stopped to put a hand on Nate’s shoulder in solidarity. Nate patted his palm over Ray’s fingers. Even through the gloves he’d caught a chill. “I’ll help you get through this.”
“What would I do without you– will you reenact the Grinch for me? Brad can be little Cindy Lou Who.” Ray laughed as he walked into the house and Nate’s chuckle followed after him. “You know, he’d make a great who from who-ville. Can’t you see him singing that song, hand in hand with all the other–”
Ray almost walked right into Brad’s back, but he’d turned around just in time to brush the tip of his nose to Brad’s soft blue sweater. Cashmere.
“What’s that?” Brad asked, and Ray peaked around his body to see the big brown sack sitting right in the entryway, still shedding some white snowy remains on the floor.
“It was on our doorstep,” Nate said, coming around Ray with his own flashlight. Between the three of them, they had enough light to be comfortable. Brad was practically prepared for nuclear winter with all the gear he kept down in the basement. “I assumed it was some kind of delivery,” Nate continued. He hefted the brown sack, easily up to his waist, over to the side where a big label was woven into it. “It has our names on it.”
Suspicious. This was a suspicious package. They were about to get blown the fuck up on Christmas Eve. Cold shit. Nate must have seen Ray’s squinted eyes, because he opened the bag. “It’s presents,” he said, and sure enough right inside were a bunch of nicely wrapped gifts with big red bows and shiny ribbons. “Maybe from one of our parents?”
Ray snorted. “My mama sent me some fireball whiskey and a book on the joy of cleaning up which is fucked up because I got my cleaning habits from her I don’t know what she’s trying to say.” He settled his hands on his hips while Brad knelt down to inspect the packages. None of them seemed to have labels on them, beyond the sack they came in. If someone had sent them presents, they probably would have labeled them. “Who would leave us a bag of unlabeled presents in a brown sack like we’re the fuckin’ homeless shelter.” Ray paused. “Oh shit maybe these were supposed to be for like sad little orphan kids or something and we’ve fucked up their Christmas.”
Brad straightened up and nodded. “My parents sent us gifts over Chanukah, and even if they had …my mother is a better wrapper than this.”
Nate checked the label on the sack again, which did very clearly say all their names. “It’s probably not from my parents either so—” He lifted it up with a slight grunt and nodded to Brad to open the door. “I’ll put it back outside, it’s possible whoever delivered it will realize they made a mistake and come back for it.”
Brad opened up the door and Ray stepped to the side to avoid the blast of cold air. He really needed to put on something warmer. This t-shirt and boxers get up was no longer cutting it. Where was a onesie with an ass flap when you needed it? “I’ll be right back.”
Upstairs, he found one of Nate’s sweaters and pulled it over his head. Nate’s sweaters always smelled a little woodsy and damp. He’d yet to identify where that smell came from, because as far as he knew Nate used the same detergent as the rest of him. Maybe Nate secretly exuded his own cologne. He escaped from a lab where scientists had been working for decades to create a serum that would make your sweat smell like old spice.
Alright, he was being a little too nice. Nate’s sweat definitely smelled like sweat. But his sweater still smelled good. After he fished a pair of his own sweats out of the laundry basket and pulled them over his legs, he grabbed his flashlight and started to head back downstairs.
That was when the whole house shuddered and a horrendous, loud thumping sound made it feel like Superman had flown overhead and dropped a sperm whale on their roof. Ray even ducked down and tucked his body close to the wall. He expected the roof to come down.
But it didn’t. It was just one, heavy thump.
“What the fuck was that?” Ray called down, and over the banister Brad flashed his light up at him.
“Come down here. You okay?” Brad asked, and Ray didn’t answer but immediately bounded down the stairs. Nate was pulling on his boots again, and Brad grabbed his hat and then tossed one to Ray. “Something fell on the house. Sounded like a tree.”
Oh, great. That would be all they needed. No electricity and a big gaping hole in the house. Ray preferred the only gaping hole in the house be on his person, thank you very much. “Fuck homes. Seriously? I didn’t even think we had a tree that close. You think it was that one in the back?”
Ray had to face the cold head on this time, and the blast of freeze made him dip his head down. He hated the cold, he wasn’t built for it. He was small and was likely designed for a more tropical climate because this weather was unacceptable. Even so, he dutifully followed Brad and Nate out, wind full-on mauling his face, to try and see what fell on the roof.
He couldn’t see anything. He could barely see the house itself with all the snow flying around. And if he hadn’t had the ears of a Golden Retriever, he might have even missed the distant scream he heard.
Ray turned out to face the street, trying to clock where the scream had come from, or if he’d even heard a scream at all. Brad and Nate were talking between themselves, hardly hushed, but Ray could barely hear them through the wind. He was busy anyway.
From this direction, he could see the shapes of the houses that stood like gravestones in this blizzard lining down the street. His eye clocked movement, something dark and shadowed on a house a few down. Large and shadowed. He blinked.
“Hey, we don’t see anything but we’ll give it another check when this storm lets up,” Nate said, suddenly beside him. He must have caught Ray’s concentrated expression because he immediately tried to follow his gaze. “What do you see?”
“See? Uh…” Ray shook his head. He didn’t see anything anymore…and he couldn’t even be sure he saw what he saw in the first place. “Nothing, but I swear I heard someone scream. And it wasn’t a shit scream either. It was definitely an ‘I’m being actively murdered’ scream.”
Nate seemed to focus in, and Ray did as well, trying to see if he could hear anything above the battering of the wind. He did hear some whistling that sounded like screeches, so it wasn’t surprising when Nate suggested it could have been the wind. “Might be the wind, but—Brad, did you hear anything?”
“No,” Brad said, now standing behind them in his puffy jacket like a giant Nordic snowman. “But it probably was the wind. Can we go inside? We can come back out later to assess the damage. I’m sure something fell on the roof.”
As they turned to step back, Ray felt a shiver fork up his spine and into his shoulders. “We should move back to San Diego. Yeah, sure, it’s home of a bunch of hippy liberal pussy fucks and legalized whale torture, but you know what San Diego doesn’t have? Blizzards.”
He was so goddamn cold.
Ray woke up to a rat in the kitchen.
The goddamn nerve of this rat, taking shelter from the blizzard in their home and helping itself to their cabinets of food. It was in there for sure, he could hear it rustling around, clattering over pans and tearing packages open with little rat teeth. He was about to turn this sucker into a very violent non-vegetarian ratatouille.
They’d all bundled up by the fireplace and ended up falling asleep on the couch, tangled up in each other after a few beers and some leftover Chanukah treats from Brad’s parents. Ray liked to combine them with candy canes and gingerbread so he could manifest his Chrismukah dreams. This was a blended household, they played for all teams.
But the fire had gone out, and even entangling himself in the limbs of his men wasn’t enough to keep him warm. And now, on top of everything, a motherfucking rat.
Ray tried to get up carefully, but that was nearly impossible. Nate stirred awake and dutifully removed his leg from where it was tossed over Ray’s waist, but Brad just pulled him in harder. “Piss in the morning,” he mumbled, clearly not willing to give up his Ray blanket.
“I’m not taking a piss homes, there’s something in the kitchen.” Ray said, and before he’d finished the last syllable, Brad’s eyes were wide open. He let Ray go and got up himself, and then Nate sat up as well, rubbing sleep out of his eyes and looking over his shoulder to glance at the kitchen, visible only from the flickering light of the candle in there.
Then the rat made another clatter, and another, and…it was probably more than one. “Well, shit.”
Ray reached for his flashlight and padded into the kitchen, socks sliding on the cold hard wood as he moved as quietly as he could so he could catch the rat in the act and there would be evidence usable in a court of law.
Only when he flashed the light into the kitchen, swiveling like he was about catch Shaggy red-handed banging on the bathroom floor– he did not see a rat.
“What the fuck .”
Ray only had about two seconds to process the scene in front of him before it became a combat zone. Their kitchen island was littered with the contents from their cabinets and fridge, like a fraternity had rolled through, and dancing around in the debris was…
Gingerbread men?
Gingerbread men.
Cookies.
….Actual cookies. Moving. Moving cookies.
The cookies and Ray seemed to see each other at the same time. Ray’s eyes twitched.
Then the cookies screeched a war-call and scrambled toward him, sharpened little candy canes in their weird, gingerbread hands.
“Oh shit !” Ray ducked just in time to avoid an on-coming gingerbread, but the second one slammed right into him. It didn’t hurt, but the sharpened candy cane sure did. It stabbed right into his chest, only about an inch deep near his collar bone, but it was definitely in there. He was definitely just stabbed by a candy cane-wielding Christmas cookie. “Motherfucker!”
He grabbed the cookie off his chest with such force that it crumbled in his hand, and then he chucked the remains on the floor. The candy cane still stuck out of his chest, but he didn’t have time to register it before the rest of the cookies charged.
But this time, they were whacked out of the air. Nate was next to him, both hands wrapped around his old lacrosse stick that he must have grabbed out of the hallway closet as a makeshift weapon. You know what? Worked pretty well on cookies. Definitely did the job.
“What the fuck is going on?” Ray shouted, but he didn’t have too much time to delve into the new reality. He needed a weapon because he was being assaulted by sweets, and not in the fun way.
So he ended up grabbing the closest thing to him, which was…a pasta strainer. Hm. Not the best choice. But you know what? Ray could kill a man with his bare hands. He could definitely fuck up a cookie with a pasta strainer.
The next cookie that screeched with a maniacal little laugh and charged him got absolutely obliterated with his strainer. It took a few whacks…and Ray maybe ground the shit out of that cookie more than was necessary, but what the fuck ? He didn’t know what they were dealing with. Maybe they’d just all reanimate into one giant cookie, like a reverse-hydra situation. Kill all the heads to get one head.
Nate whacked the last one out of the air with what Ray found to be a very seductive cradle and slam. The cookie got caught in the basket of the lacrosse stick and then Nate flung it to the ground and smashed it with his heel, out of breath and bewildered. Was it inappropriate to get turned on mid-cookie brawl?
Brad swept into the kitchen, small gun in hand. He must have gone to retrieve it when he realized there was an issue, but Ray and Nate had destroyed them by the time he came back. Ray, slightly out of breath, now fully realizing the sharp pain of a candy cane in his collar bone, turned to Brad and waved the pasta strainer at him. “Don’t worry, we handled it.”
“Handled… what?” Brad asked, looking at the wreckage before him. Ray understood. It probably looked weird, what with all of their food strewn about in the midst of what looked like a gingerbread massacre.
“I don’t know, there were—the cookies.” Nate seemed to have a hard time articulating, and that was something Ray had only witnessed a few times in his life. He was still at the ready, lacrosse stick raised, heel pressed down on that ground-out cookie.
Ray sucked in a sharp breath when he moved his neck, causing the candy cane to twinge right below the bone in his collar bone. Brad’s eyes lit on the wound and he set the weapon down to pull Ray into one of the bar stools. “Sit down, let me see it.”
“Yes mother,” Ray intoned, still a little dazed. As Brad carefully inspected his stab wound, Nate bent down to inspect the cookies. Ray had the brief thought of tasting them, which was weird, but also..pretty logical he’d argue. I mean, they were cookies.
“...What the fuck.” Nate said, and Ray nodded slowly because he had the exact same sentiment. What the fuck.
Then Brad pulled out the candy cane. “Ow! What the fuck , Brad?” Ray jerked back, but Brad quickly pressed one hand to his back and the other on the stab wound. It really wasn’t terrible– not too deep, nothing vital hit, and…it was candy cane. Didn’t mint have some healing properties or some shit? Ray took over putting pressure on his battle wound while Brad absent-mindedly rubbed his arm and then stepped over to give the carnage a closer look.
That was when something swooped down at Brad from the ceiling in a flurry of white.
“Fuck!” Ray slipped off the bar stool, almost twisting his ankle as he landed wrong on one of the discarded candy cane weapons. Brad went down with something latched onto his face, screeching and clawing like an angry badger. Before Ray could get to him, Nate was there trying to pry the thing off with both hands.
…It was an angel.
The kind you would top a tree with. The kind his mother used to have. Except, you know, his mother’s was not made of porcelain and weird, stretchy flesh with jagged teeth and giant, demonic eyes.
You know what? He preferred the cookies.
Ray reached out and grabbed one of the flapping wings. It felt real in his hands, like feather and bone, and along with Nate he put all his strength into pulling this thing off of Brad’s face.
They’d almost gotten it off when a fanged teddy bear bit into Nate’s leg.
Nate shouted in pain and whirled around to dislodge his own attack, and Ray took over in trying to control the angel. They’d pulled it off enough that Brad could pull his hands away from his face. In an ingenious move, Ray saw him grab one of the gingerbread man weapons and stab the angel right in the big googly-looking eye.
It screamed in pain, distracted enough that Ray was able to slam the thing into the cabinets and then again into the wall. For good measure, he smacked the thing twice against the ground until a gross, green slime burst from it’s busted head and the thing went limp in his hands.
Oh my god he just killed an angel. Damn. How was he gonna explain this one to God?
Where was Nate?
“Nate,” Ray said to Brad, who was scrambling to his feet after being face-fucked by an angel. They both shared a look that lasted a second before charging into the living room where Nate was still wrestling with a teddy bear, which would have been hilarious if it wasn’t biting him all over like a rabid raccoon.
Brad grabbed his gun, but knew better than to aim it at Nate mid-tussle with a stuffed animal. Ray launched himself over the couch and tried to grab it like he did with the angel, and quickly realized his mistake.
It seems the teddy bear wasn’t the only monster in their living room.
He’d tumbled right into the coiled, waiting body of a living garland. The festive greenery looked like a snake, and sure acted like one as it quickly wound around Ray’s legs and tugged him off his feet. Ray fell, unable to stop, and caught himself on his hands right before his chin smashed into the coffee table.
Then it started dragging him.
Where? Fuck if he knew. It looked like it was dragging him toward the garage, but he couldn’t see the end of the long twisty garland, dotted with twinkling Christmas lights. When he tried to pry it off his legs, it only tightened, so Ray moved to plan B and grabbed at whatever his hands could catch to stop his drag.
Fuck. Fuck! Why didn’t they train you for this in the marines? This was clearly an actual threat. New course idea: Christmas Attack 101, when your decor becomes devilish. His fingers locked around the edge of the door frame that separated the hall from the living room. It was a mostly open floor plan, aside from that one hallway by the staircase. You know what? Right now, he was so goddamn thankful for walls. Why did everyone get rid of walls?
The garland was stronger than he expected. He had to grab hard, and his muscles strained to pull himself back to get a better grip. Holy fuck. Was he about to get out-played by a literal… vine? Some stupid fake pine bitch? He could feel it winding up his body, reaching around his waist, and a real spike of fear stabbed at his stomach. “Guys!”
Was Nate even okay? Did he get the teddy bear? Where was Brad? What the fuck was going on ?
It was wrapping around his chest now. The bristling pine needles actually hurt a little, but more pressing, his grip was starting to slip. Was he about to be yanked into his own garage by a garland? Is that what was happening?
Nope! No. Not today! He had death plans already. He was gonna drop a mad cocktail of drugs when he was ninety in a nursing home and go out in a blaze of high-as-fuck glory. He was not going to go out like this. Ray put all his strength into curling his forearms, and as soon as he could hook his arm over the edge he tried to kick his legs, but the thing had a damn good hold on him.
Smash .
Their front door splintered open, like someone took an axe to it. And someone had. A giant, horned and hulking form stood at their entryway, dressed in dark robes with a hunched back. It bellowed like something between a fog horn and a wolf howl, which managed to distract Ray from the chaos in front of him.
Nate was being dragged as well, right up the chimney. Half his body was already inside, but his one hand gripped the side of the fireplace hard. Brad had his other arm, gripped at the elbow as securely as possible. It looked like he’d been shooting—Ray could see now. It was like first recon tore through a Toys-R-Us. Toy robots, stuffed animals, and what looked like a really disgusting jack-in-the-box were all slain on their living room floor. They must have come from the bag of presents, that brown sack that had somehow ended up back in their living room.
Brad had shot them all. But now that there was a giant demonic entity at their literal doorstep, he was out of ammo.
Which was really some great strategy from Team Christmas. What a play. He hadn’t seen that one coming.
Ray was looking at the demon, but Brad was looking at him. And right as Ray finally looked back at him, his wild eyes looked like a dog backed into a corner. “Just hang on. Do not let go, I’m coming. Do not let go, Ray!” He shouted, and was still locked into a death grip on Nate’s arm, even as Nate’s grip started slipping.
And Ray, unfortunately, hadn’t noticed the garland creeping higher and higher up his chest, until those bristles were tightening around his neck and mouth.
In a panic to breath, Ray had to let go of the wall to get the constricting garland off his neck. Fatal move, he fucking knew it. But what was the alternative? He didn’t want to be strangled. That was a sure fire way to end up motherfucking dead. Being dragged into his garage still meant he had some time.
But the thing pulled him fast. Faster than he could really judge. He knew when he was pulled over the lip of the house into the garage. The cold air told him the door was open. He could hear Brad screaming after him as the thing bellowed again.
Then he felt nothing but cold as he was pulled under the snow.
He woke up gasping for breath, jack-knifed straight in bed.
It was a peaceful, sunny Christmas Eve morning. The light streamed in through their bedroom window and Ray could see the blanket of calm, beautiful snow lining the rooftops of the houses across the street.
Brad and Nate bolted awake moments later.
Brad was out of bed in a heartbeat, muscles tensed, still in battle mode. Nate looked a little shell-shocked, confused as he looked down at his own body and then over to Ray, eyes widening. “Are you okay?”
Ray nodded slowly, because…yeah. It seemed like he was. Nate pulled him in close and pressed his lips to Ray’s skin, right before his ear, because that’s where they’d landed when they collided.
“So we all…we all definitely just had the same dream, right? With the cookies and the big horny motherfucker and the angel and shit?” Ray asked, a little slow as the words tumbled out of his mouth. Nate pulled down the neck of Ray’s t-shirt to run his finger over where the candy cane wound would have been. Nothing there.
“—Yes.” Brad looked unsettled, still on alert as he quietly left the room. Ray didn’t hear him go downstairs, but he knew he was, swift and silent, full recon-mode to verify that their home had not become a wasteland of murdered toys.
“I saw you get dragged away, we couldn’t get to you,” Nate mumbled, and checked Ray over one more time before he got out of bed as well.
Ray figured he should probably do the same. You know, just in case it was time for round two. Better not be late to that party. “I saw you were up the chimney so clearly you were already spoken for and very busy.”
He didn’t feel very fine. He still felt vaguely…dream-like. Was this real? Had he actually died and now he was in heaven or…you know, some other weird limbo space where souls go to fuck off to? Why wasn’t he moving so fast. Shouldn’t he be…on the move? Following Brad?
But the longer he was awake the more the panic was wearing off. It started to feel distant and silly. Just a dream, right? It had just been a dream.
By the time he made it downstairs, Brad and Nate were talking in the kitchen. Ray slid in on the bar stool next to Brad and gave him a big smooch on the cheek, loud and obnoxious as possible. Brad’s arm slipped around his waist. “That was fun. Maybe next time we all have a shared nightmare we can try to be more tactical and shit. I’d like to survive, like, at least an hour.”
“It was an ambush,” Brad said, clearly suffering some wounded pride by being bested by holiday sneer. He was looking at Ray with a strange look, and Ray reached out to flick his nose, prompting him to speak. “I came after you but you got pulled under the snow, I couldn’t find you.”
Well that must have sucked. Ray chewed on the inside of his cheek for a moment. “Hey, don’t worry. It’s fine. It wasn’t real, and I’m okay.” He paused. “...you left Nate to get eaten by our chimney?”
Nate laughed a little under his breath, like a release of tension. “I got a better grip, I was okay.”
Brad turned around to pull some coffee mugs from the cabinets and Ray hummed his approval when one of the selected mugs was his cherished penis mug. The one with the giant dick for a handle. Best mug in the world.
The morning started to feel normal. Brad was making the coffee. Ray got up to start some bacon and eggs and Nate pulled out his laptop to check some email.
Then the power went out.
The wind whistled outside, picking up from the previous bright and sunny calm. Clouds seemed to move in fast, swept in by the wind.
They all looked at each other. Brad calmly set down the coffee pot and closed his eyes in a bid for patience.
“You know what? This shit doesn’t happen during Chanukah.”