Hidden Holidays
A Monster Haven Short Story
by R.L. Naquin
Edited by Sara E. Lundberg
Copyright 2013 R.L. Naquin
License Notes
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Dear awesome reader,
More books are on the way. Thanks for reading!
Rachel
While I’d been busy at work helping a bride who’d gone over budget, the ghosts of Christmas Past, Present, and Future had vomited themselves across my living room. The mess left me nowhere to step without crunching a glass ball underfoot. My head spun from a sensory overload of color, sound, and texture.
I stood on the threshold, wondering if I should go around back and enter through the kitchen door instead. Or maybe get a hotel until Christmas was over and Maurice, my closet-monster roommate, put everything away.
Maurice leaped out of a mound of lights, and the grin on his face was so large it took up half his head, dwarfing his big yellow eyes. “You’re home early! I wanted to surprise you!”
“Surprise.” I gave him a half-hearted smile. “I could leave and come back later.”
Brenda Lee belted from Maurice’s iPod, insisting that everyone should be rocking around the Christmas tree.
He shook his head, and several loops of colored lights slipped to his shoulders. “The tree will be here in a few minutes. You can help me decorate it.” Shuffling his legs through the piles of decorations so he didn’t step on anything, Maurice reached the chair closest to me and cleared it of boxes. “Sit, sit, sit. I’ll get you something to drink.”
I waved my hand at the mess around us. “I’m fine. The living room isn’t. I’m not going to dehydrate and blow away.”
As it stood, I couldn’t imagine where the hell a tree was supposed to go.
The floor had no path to the kitchen or to the hallway. My options were few. Or rather, two—leave through the front door or have a seat. I stepped around a three-foot tall nutcracker in a Santa hat and sank into the chair, clutching my purse to me as if it were a shield.
A strand of tinsel puffed into the air and floated past my head.
“Maurice, where did you get all of this?” My eyes and face felt as if they’d stretched into an expression of shell-shocked horror. I did my best to force the muscles to relax.
But there was so much of it. Piles of gold and silver and red garland. Boxes of ornaments in individual compartments. Three electric angels sat side by side on the mantle, their wings squeaking open and closed in tandem. Nutcrackers in all sorts of designs and sizes. I counted six nativity scenes around the room in various materials—cornhusk dolls, ceramics, carved wood, and even LEGO bricks. A stack of wreaths covered the coffee table, and the sofa was a mass of tree skirts, stockings, Christmas-themed throws and pillows, and no less than five stuffed Rudolphs.
Maurice, looking satisfied with his haul, put his hands on his hips and winked at me. “I got it all out of the closet.” He flipped a wall switch and the lights trailing around the room all went on at once, nearly blinding me.
Multicolored lights, white lights, strands of all blue, all green, and all yellow. Tube lights. Neon lights. Dripping icicle lights. Old-fashioned outdoor lights with enormous bulbs. Glowing, flashing, twinkling, chasing in every pattern possible. A family of lawn-ornament deer in the far corner came to life, their heads nodding, white lights glowing from their wire frames.
I groaned and closed my eyes. My eyelids were far too thin to block out the bombardment.
My resident closet monster had gone on a closet raid.
“You stole all this stuff?”
Maurice puffed out his chest in indignation. “Borrowed. Only from people who won’t need it this year. I’ll put it back.”
I opened my eyes in alarm and regretted it. “Oh my God, Maurice. Turn those off. Please?”
He flipped the switch, leaving us in blessed early-evening light. “You okay? You don’t look so good.”
“It’s just a lot.” I smoothed my fingertips over the crease that appeared between my eyebrows. “I think I need some air.”
Maurice’s grin downgraded to a bewildered smile. “Yeah. Okay. Go take a walk.” His smile grew an inch. “Iris will be here with the tree soon, and Molly and the kids are coming over to help decorate. We’ll have it all fixed up by the time you get back.”
I pulled myself to my feet. A motion-activated snowman ensemble rang tiny bells and sang Frosty the Snowman. “I’m sorry, Maurice. I don’t mean to bring down the merriment. Christmas hasn’t really been my thing for a long time. I’m a little overwhelmed.”
He reached across the coffee table, knocking a few wreaths aside, and grabbed my hand. “I understand. We’ll save you a few ornaments to hang when you get back.”
Even with my empathic walls up, Maurice’s disappointment leaked through my filters, squeezing my heart and giving me a good dose of guilt.
On my way to the door I managed not to break anything, and the only thing I knocked over was a mesh-covered kangaroo draped in colored lights and red ribbons.
Once my feet hit the gravel on my driveway, I took a deep breath to clear my head.
A lot had happened in the last six months or so. A lot had changed. I’d lived alone in my quiet house by the bay, mostly only social when my business partner and best friend, Sara, forced me into it. I hadn’t known I was an empath, that the world was full of magical creatures, and that I was an Aegis whose job it was to take care of them.
I didn’t mind. I embraced the change. I was happy. I even had a boyfriend who, though a soul-collecting reaper, was still the most stable and normal guy I’d ever gone out with. I had a closet-monster roommate, a skunk-ape bodyguard, and a family of brownies living in a mushroom in my backyard. My life was pretty awesome these days.
None of that meant I was prepared for a ginormous family Christmas with all the trimmings and over-the-top celebrating.
I turned toward my backyard and let the breeze coming from the nearby water blow through my hair and coax away some of the tightness in my chest. My scarf and gloves, while excessive farther inland in Northern California, were necessary for a December walk along the water. I looped the pink and green knitted fabric around my neck, pulled on the black and yellow-striped fingerless gloves, and buttoned up my wool coat.
As I made my way through the grass toward the tree line, I mumbled to myself like a crazy woman, paying little attention to my surroundings. Still, I’d lived in the same house nearly my whole life, so I knew the way to the beach and made it there mostly on autopilot.
My green skirt fluttered around my ankles and caught on the rubber soles of my Doc Marten boots. I tripped and took a nosedive into the trees.
I rolled over. From the pine-needled floor, I gazed through the canopy at the grey, darkening sky.
That’s what you get for being a sour Scrooge when people are trying to be nice.
I snorted and sat up. In the distance, twigs snapped and bushes rustled in rapid succession. Iris, my skunk-ape bodyguard, burst into the clearing a few feet away. He towered over me in all his shaggy glory.
Iris squatted beside me, his brown eyes filled with concerned. Although I cou
ldn’t understand the exact words for the clicks and grunts he made, I understood his meaning.
“I’m fine.” I unhooked my long skirt from where it was caught on my low heel. “Just clumsy.”
Iris held out two huge hands covered in dark hair. Despite his size, he was gentle and tugged me to my feet without any jarring movements. He growled low in his throat and released one of my hands, then pulled me through the woods past towering eucalyptuses, stubby bushes, and thick oaks. A few yards in, he came to an abrupt halt. I bumped my nose into his upper arm.
Even up close, he smelled like a florist shop.
His thick lips pulled into a grin, not unlike the one Maurice had been sporting earlier. He chuffed and waved at a pine tree a few feet away. A small axe leaned against it, as if someone—Iris—had been preparing to cut the tree down before being interrupted.
And that’s where I came in with my ninja ballerina moves. If my lack of enthusiasm doesn’t kill Christmas for everyone, my lack of grace will