My face etched in Holiday glee, I approached my cup of grace: the Christmas village I erected on the mantlepiece. Houses and shops of authentic plastic in German half-timbered-style lined Dickens Avenue. The haberdashery, the cylinder hat shop, the Stargazy Piemaker’s, and the farthing stores were all lit from within, as were the cozy homes. Yuleboroughe breathed Christmas!
Real fires smoldered in real brick fireplaces. Marshmallows on sticks browned and melted into the floorboards.
Snow dusted the entire scene and pine trees weighted under cottony boughs glowed with bands of Christmas lights. Both reflected a wintry, natural atmosphere in stark contrast to the cornered and mathematical town.
Despite the heat in my sitting room and the fires in the miniature fireplaces, the snow was melt-proof thanks to a built-in refrigeration system. This system and all electrical wiring were hidden, and observers, had I entertained guests or family, might have wondered how everything worked.
Suddenly my heart thumped like the Ghost of Christmas Future down Scrooge’s hall. My mailman Tilgathpilneser lay in a snowbank…headless! Bright crimson painted a Pollock on my precious pure snow.
Frantically searching the village, my eyes found Tilgathpilneser’s beautiful thinktank: my jovial soccer players no longer kicked a ball through the boulevard.
“What manner of beast would so harm Tilgathpilneser?” I wondered.
Not long after finishing the mailman’s burial ceremony, I spotted the empty sled halfway down Mount Crumpit. The Cratchit twins were gone.
Yet another frantic search revealed both children impaled on a candy cane hammered into the back door of their own home.
“O Lorde,” I oathed.
Christmas River in the springtime gushed from my eyes. I hesitated to perform a ceremony for them, fearful of another attack. Yet both children deserved a decent Christian burial; I exhaled audibly afterwards after ensuring myself that all was well in Yuleboroughe.
A quick phone call proved to be a mistake: no policeman heard my implorings without laughing or a snide, ironic, “Keep your eyes on Cupid, stupid. He’s never to be trusted.”
I ran to the kitchen and threw open the fridge, took some beef jerky and loaded my gun collection, preparing to guard the remaining pantaloon-garbed figurines with my life.
At some point I nodded off, and woke to find a bloodbath upon my mantle.
For a while I played Sherlock, intent at finding the warped lunatic guilty of cutting down my hand-painted effigi like wheat. I soon had a revelation, however, which struck me as being more momentous than the exposing of a serial killer.
After tearing down Yuleboroughe, I erected an Mexican Christmas village in its stead. A Turkish, a Norwegian, a Japanese one. No matter what village went up the results were always the same. One by one the settlement’s citizens were slain in brutal fashion.
It seems the one cannot abide without the other.
Photo by Roberto Nickson on Unsplash