Gentleman Unafraid

Writer’s Note: Posted this in LiveJournal a long time ago. Wow, I forgot how gross it gets. Also: this is not really about my family. It’s about my secret family across the country.

Joyous Winterbludgeon

We did not celebrate Christmas when I was a boy. My parents hated it with every fiber of their being. “How we hate Christmas!” they would say in unison. “Ach! Gott Himmel!” they rasped and belched in their native Gaelic, “Verdammt Christkindl!” Then they would launch into a “Hate the Khristmas, Hate Hat Hate” anti-carol composed specifically for the event while we burned all the Nativity scenes in the neighborhood, leaving the flaming heads of the shepherds and three kings on spikes as a warning.

Then, one year, we had the best Christmas ever, with gifts galore, stuffed stockings, figgy pudding, the Euphoric Mallet of Transgression, kissing under the mistletoe of Damocles, and playing the traditional game of Catch a Ha’ Penny, Hurtful Implications, and Russian Roulette. My parents allowed this single celebration to only one of us every four years, so we would know what we were missing and hate the holiday with a puckered acidity that would dwarf Scrooge’s rough, violent metasexual violation of the Christmas spirit.

In their brilliant cruelty they made a practice of letting each of my sisters enjoy one and only one perfect Christmas—usually in the month of March—while the rest of us gazed through the keyholes of our individual steel crouching boxes. A single tear dripped from my rheumy eye the year I saw Eunice gobbling down Christmas goose until she grew large of belly, and unwrapping her gifts of oatmeal, wolf dander, and sandpaper. This, of course, rusted the lock to my cage, and kept me entrapped until Ash Wednesday. It is the very reason why I bear a hideous hump on my head and walk with a lisp. Not a limp. A lisp.

One year my parents slipped up and left the security system and vibrating ghost dogs disengaged. Come midnight we “enjoyed” a visit from the Suckling God. Disembarking from her earwax sleigh, she greasily slid down the chimney with a fetal pig under each arm before being struck dead when her head hit the flue. Her lifeless body slid obscenely across the fireplace bricks.

“Intruder! Intruder! I KILL!” shouted Father as he fired his shotgun over our heads at the festive interloper. But it was too late. The Suckling God was deceased, and by rights we rifled through her pockets for bacon, ham, ribs, rock salt, loose change, peep show tokens, and the dagger bandolier we knew she had hidden somewhere.

My second eldest sister Gertrude was the first to grab hold of the Suckling God’s arm, yanking and twisting it with gleeful abandon and a hideous demon’s strength. I grabbed another arm while my other sisters teamed up and seized the legs and THIRD ARM. Father, of course, as head of the household, had the privilege of pulling at the head while mother swiftly swept up the Euphoric Mallet of Transgression.

“Heave! Heave, me hearties!” Father yelled, laughing madly and singing a black as pitch Irish devil song, “Dreck and maggots to this horrible season of  monkeyhogs and STOAT BLIMPS!”

He brought his face close to the Suckling God’s blank face, already pulling into a rictus grim.

“YOU SHALL NOT HAVE THESE LITTLE ONES, MONSTER!!!! EYAAAAGGGGGGGHHHHHH!”

And then all of Father’s sweat-besoaked decades in the Gristle Mill paid off as his gargantuan gorilla-man strength ripped off the otherworldly creature’s head while we rent the limbs from its unclean form!!

“BARRRROOOOOOOOOOO!!!!” bellowed Mother as she slammed the Euphoric Mallet of Transgression into the Beast’s belly with her powerful washerwoman’s arms, causing a rupture that split its torso in twain, forcing a mountain of jellymeats and sweetcornchunklets of whimsy to blast forth volcano-like from the Suckling God’s gutstumps.

“Yayyyyy!” we all cried, stuffing pork into our mouths and pockets.

Surely it was the best Christmas ever. God bless us, everyone.

Except YOU.

Wrote this about six years ago. Its message, however, is ETERNAL.

The Gift of the Magi by Way of Mr. Dan Kelly

Biff and Muffy married against their wealthy parents’ wishes and were subsequently disowned and left to survive on their own devices. Still, though they had little but a few sticks of furniture and the clothes on their backs and survived on generic brand gruel, they were in love.

Muffy was famed for her fine black hair, which she had grown since childhood into a long flowing mane. Biff too had a single treasure: his grandfather’s gold pocket watch, which he carried wherever he went. On Christmas Eve, wanting to give her husband a lovely gift, Muffy went to the village wigmaker and had her hair cut off and converted into toupees for the town fathers. Afterwards, she popped by the jewelery store and used the money she’d earned to purchase a platinum watch fob that would look spanking fine on Biff’s watch.

For the purposes of this story’s plot twist, assume that Muffy is wearing a hat and that Biff doesn’t immediately realize she’s as bald as an egg.

“Darling, here is your present. Oh, I love you so very much,” said Muffy.

“A watch fob?” said Biff, “Why, this is wonderful! It will look so smart on my grandfather’s watch”

At that moment, a Christmas partridge flew through the room and knocked off Muffy’s hat, revealing her bald cabeza. Biff gasped.

“My darling, what happened to your hair?”

“I… I… sold it, to buy your present!”

“Gasp! Such sacrifice! Oh you DO love me!” said Biff through tears of joy. “I only wish I had as fine a gift for you as this watch fob.”

“Oh… I see… So, you don’t have anything for me?”

“Good Lord, no. We’re poor, remember? Ah well, it’ll grow back. And hey! I have a new watch fob!”

And he happily attached it to his grandfather’s watch.

The End