Crooked Christmas
This is a short story I wrote coming back from Christmas diner. For once, this isn’t horror.
There was a bit of luck involved in having a good time during Christmas. First, you had to pick the good building. The Crooked Man would have told you that Xmas 07 was proof you could spend an entire night in one apartment complex and see no door ever granting you access.
There existed a trick, though. One cheat taught by the ever-distant dimension of the work place and its slave wages. Be early. The sooner you would get your cold body behind the wooden gate of a lonesome building, the more chances you had that someone would leave their door ajar, sorting out rubbish or discarding garbage before joining their parents for the annual meal.
Here was the problem, you needed someone young and preferably air-headed. An unknown naive figure who would grant you access to their intimacy before prepping themselves.
All there was to do then was enter behind the owner’s back and remain hidden until they would leave. Such activity always reminded the Crooked Man of his younger years, when the sun was high and they would hide with Simon in the tujhas. At first it was to play, then it was to blaze. Progression and regression so tight-knitted you could not tell one from the other.
The Crooked Man used to be name Marc in those days. House was clean, although mom sometimes got violent. It was before the voices. Before the Crooked Man realized he could talk to God.
He had left when he realized his addiction rendered him violent. Like her. Through the fumes and the fury, he knew he didn’t want to hurt his parents, specifically not his dad. In the hallway of some yellow flat he just entered, the Crooked Man stopped and wondered how they were doing. The Old Ones.
Girl who lived there was pretty although too thin to his taste. The man who was once a boy named Marc would never see her again if all went well. He would simply drink her wine stock, maybe grab some to eat and sleep on her couch.
He would have thanked her but knew he could not.
The Crooked Man would tidy everything up before leaving, though.
Next week, we will adress Guy De Maupassant’s fantastic tale The Horla!
