Little Miss Santa Claws

2. Nicole

CHAPTER 2

Nicole

I sit cross-legged in the living room on top of my mother’s pristine faux fur rug. All month, she has been adamant about keeping food away from it, but she’s not here to gripe at me tonight. I have an array of cheap gas station snacks laid out on top of it: chips and chocolate and a full lemon meringue pie. I’m eating it straight out of the tin.

Bran muffins, you can eat my ass.

A feel-good Christmas movie is playing on the tv. Turns out, I’m just not capable of pretending this holiday doesn’t exist. Half a bottle of peppermint schnapps in, I caught myself humming Jingle Bell Rock , and it was all downhill from there. The tears won’t stop flowing.

I’m blaming it on the somewhat surprising emotional depth of the movie and the fact that the love interest looks a little bit like Matt.

“… don’t you see? I love you. All I want for Christmas is you…”

I’m right back at the altar, my hands in Matt’s and our entire future ahead of us. I believed every word of his vows, even though there had been a certain apathy in his eyes I chose to ignore. There were a dozen red flags I buried during our marriage. Little did I know, I was preparing a graveyard for “us.”

My sadness bleeds into rage, and I chuck the half-eaten pie across the room. It hits the center of the screen in an explosion of lemony cream. “ YOU LIAR ,” I sob. The characters continue kissing each other under the smear of pie, unbothered by my outburst.

I crawl to the remote and quickly turn off the television.

“Stupid,” I murmur to myself.

The living room falls deafeningly silent. It’s worse than the movie. My head spins as I look around the room, lit only by the Christmas tree. The world outside is dark; one tiny bulb on the right side of the tree is flickering, and my eye twitches as I stare at it. I should have told my mother no. I shouldn’t have let her talk me into it. Decorating the tree with her has sent me spiraling, and I’m more worked up now than I was earlier.

The divorce weighs on me.

It’s not that I’m losing Matt. It’s that I’m losing years of my life to what turned out to be the wrong person. How could I have thought he was right?

I bet my mother’s plane touched down already. I bet she’s setting out cookies and milk for Santa and helping my sister tuck my niece and nephew into bed. She’s going to wake up in the morning surrounded by laughter and excitement and joy. My father is too. Even Matt is with his parents and siblings right now. Everyone has somebody to share Christmas with—everyone except me.

The decorations and food and music and movies are all worthless. They mean nothing.

Before I even realize I’ve decided to do it, I push myself up off the floor. I retrieve a storage tub from the garage and start tearing every ornament off the tree. My tears are flowing again. I can barely see through them.

When the tub is full, I pick it up and waddle over to the front door, pausing in the kitchen to toss the rest of the bran muffins in. Then, I drag the ornaments around the side of the house, out of view of the street, and dump them out on the grass.

I’m wearing nothing but flimsy sleep shorts and a tank, but I’m not even cold.

I hate that. It’s the middle of the night on Christmas Eve. I should be freezing my ass off, but no, the air is barely cooler than it is during the day. It almost feels like a summer night back in Cincinnati. I’m reminded of the first summer Matt and I spent there as newlyweds, when the I love you s were innumerable and we both meant them. The memories solidify my drunken resolve, and I stumble my way through the back door of the garage.

Grabbing a metal rake, I return to the ornaments and don’t hesitate to start smashing them.

I swing the tool with all my strength, bringing it down over and over. I work up a sweat, continuing to smash the beautiful hand-spun glass, delighting in the crunch. Some of my dark brown hair slides free from my bun, but I keep going, even after every ornament has been destroyed. Minutes or hours could have passed when I finally stop, letting the rake fall on top of the wreckage.

I’m sober again.

Sober enough to regret what I just did to my mother’s ornament collection. They’re barely recognizable. All the little metal tops are dented, and the glass shards are covered in brown pulp from the muffins.

I raise my trembling hands to my face, fingernails digging into my forehead as I cover my eyes. “ Fuck. ”

There’s no fixing or replacing them. My mother has spent most of her life collecting those ornaments. She probably loves them more than she loves me—not an exaggeration—and I just…destroyed them.

Holy fuck, I am a total loser.

Maybe Mom’s right. Maybe everything is my fault. Maybe I sabotaged my marriage without even realizing it. That’s how it always happens, right? Self-destructing tendencies override conscious thought or whatever? Maybe I pushed Matt into distancing himself, into a job that kept us apart, into affairs that made him feel the love I couldn’t give him, the love he needed. Maybe I was the problem all along.

I’ve never needed my therapist more in my entire life, but I’ve been avoiding our sessions all month and I certainly can’t call her with my problems now. Not on Christmas.

Besides, she’d probably just tell me not to be so hard on myself.

But she doesn’t see this side of me. No one does.

My knees feel like they’re on the verge of giving out, so I crouch, sitting on the back of my heels as I stare hopelessly at the mess I’ve made. It makes sense now—why my family didn’t want me in Wyoming. Why my father didn’t want me. Why they all turn away. How could anyone want someone like me when I do stupid shit like this?

I can’t fix these ornaments, and I can’t fix me .

I’m sinking deep under that torrential storm of emotion when I hear a thud above me. My head snaps up—because I think it…came from the roof. The sky is pitch black with a faint speckling of stars, a cloud moving across the moon, making it too dark to see much, especially from this angle.

I stand and back up a couple of steps, but that isn’t quite enough to see onto the roof.

Another loud thud echoes, accompanied by strained hissing whispers, and I nearly leap out of my skin. That’s when I realize I’m standing outside in my thin nightclothes with nothing but a rake to defend myself with.

A woman hearing strange noises on the roof when she’s home alone over the holidays? It sounds like the beginning of a really strange horror movie.

I snatch the rake and press it to my chest as I sprint back to the front door.

When I’m inside, I turn the deadbolt before I run through the kitchen to do the same thing to the garage door. It makes me feel the tiniest bit better, but for some reason, my fingers tighten on the rake anyway. Something feels different in the house…like I’m not alone.

The back of my neck tingles.

My ragged breathing feels too loud in my ears, and it takes me an agonizing few moments to realize the sound isn’t my breathing at all. It’s rustling.

Something is rustling in the living room.

For the first time since I arrived in Florida, my body feels like a block of ice. I’m frozen to the spot, my thoughts racing as I try to figure out what I should do. It couldn’t be a person, could it? I didn’t see another vehicle on the street next my mother’s. Maybe it’s just an animal. Mom warned me about that—the animals that get into houses around here. I might have left the front door open, but I can’t remember.

If it is an animal, particularly a dangerous one, then I’ll need my phone to call someone—which is sitting on the decorative table near the entrance to the living room.

I force myself to take a step forward, then another.

Walking slowly, I make my way to the edge of the kitchen, nearing the arch into the living room until I can finally peer around it.

What I find knocks the breath out of my lungs.

It’s a person. There’s a person in my mother’s living room. They’re wearing an oversized red coat with the most beautiful brown fur lining the collar. A red cap sits on their head, with a long tail and a brown puff hanging at the end made of the same fur. They look like Santa Claus.

My mother’s house has been broken into by a goddamn Santa impersonator.

A surprised gasp leaves my lips before I can stop it, and the person turns toward me. That’s when I see that it’s not a man—it’s a woman. A beautiful woman with straight silver hair and piercing blue eyes. And she’s clutching the bag of cookies I left on the rug, her mouth full of them.

Her eyes bulge, and she swallows hard before whispering, “Oh, sugar plums.”

The woman’s voice snaps me out of my daze, and I stagger back, spinning around to make a break for the door. But as I do, I trip over one of the fake plants my mom left at the corner of the archway, and I’m suddenly falling face-first toward the floor, the pointed tips of the rake staring me down. I scramble to catch myself, throwing the rake away, but that only makes me trip again on the handle.

And the last thing I hear before my head collides with the wall is a stampede of tinny bells chasing after me.