DECEMBER 26
“You ignorant slug. I hate your tuna breath. And I hate your horse face.”
This was Melissa Summoncommon, kitchen doorway, clad pastel purple in her brand new bathrobe, the tags still dangling from the lush plush of her terrycloth sleeve. She was glaring at her husband Eduardo, teeth-clenched, as he sat reading the morning paper at the kitchen table. The headline: "Holiday Over- Get Back To Work'"
“I mean it. I hate you, Eduardo. And I despise your face. You look like a palomino."
Eduardo blinked.
"Also I thought you were going to make breakfast this morning. Where’s breakfast? No breakfast. No breakfast anything. You pigbucket.”
Eduardo smiled soft and sweet, tossed a fork at Missy's forehead. “You selfish sack of turkey filth! There is no food in this forsaken house, no food nowhere for nobody! The refrigerator is naked-empty, you don’t shop or cook you just complain.”
He kicked the kitten, who emptied her bladder and flew dutifully into the foyer to crack her spine on the radiator.
Eduardo turned back to his wife: “Let me add additionally: I hope your Mother has a pulmonary embolism while she’s straining on the toilet and I hope your Father is struck by lightning and it leaves him paralyzed from the nose down.”
Melissa ducked, avoiding the cat and the fork, tossing the family dog Fuffles at her Ecuadorian husband’s horse face. The beagle varmint sink his angry teeth into Eduardo’s chest, gnarling pink meat and drawing red plasma, the barking and howl waking up Eduardo & Missy’s two children Milky and Steven, asleep beneath a pile of shredded wrapping papers and candy wrappers.
The children awoke from their comas at the foot of the majestic Christmas tree, their jammies clad in congealing puddles of their own hot sick, their pillows stacks of holiday sweaters they would never acknowledge or wear.
The Christmas lights blink bright and brilliant between the branches of the Balsam.
“Eat garbage and die,” said Steven, the nine year-old boy, coming to, wiping the encrusted vomit off the bottom of his chin. He spoke to both his parents: “Your souls are black with stain and motor oil.”
“Eat rat mucous and punch each other in the throats,” added Milky, the little girl in footy pajamas. She was searching through the piles of garbage for an uneaten Candy Cane or stray Pez. Sugar was required to maintain. "You're the worst parents a human could be sentenced to"
“I should have aborted you both at birth,” said Missy, giving her kids the finger.
“If I had known you two children would be ugly on the outside and the inside I would have shot my seed into the toilet instead of your Mother’s -” Eduardo burped, a belly full of room-temperature Alpo acting up. “Instead of your Mother’s succubus womb.”
He made hot spit-up, but only a little bit.
DECEMBER 25
Things had been different yesterday. Different to be sure. A little different but different is different, yes?
Yesterday was Christmas Day, a day so full of brightness and sparkles that the four Summoncommons had been smiling. Smiling and making shine. Smiling so wide they were almost shitting sugarplums.
There had been happiness yesterday. And Christmas carols on the radio.
“Have a gift, sweet Muffinbutter,” Eduardo had said to Melissa, handing her a wrapped package, “and know that it comes bundled with my love.”
“The joy! The joy! I see the goodness and I raise you the wonderful one!” Melissa had handed her husband a present with a bow as Johnny Mathis warbled glad tidings: “Inside is just a token of my eternal affectionability. And all the loving goodables of my happiosity!”
“Mother! Father!” this had been Steven, the boy, cheeks aglow, speaking for both himself and his younger sister, “we have secretly taken up work as bootblacks as is allowed by state labor law! Milky and I have been skipping school, slaving on the daily, and we have both been verbally abused and beaten in our efforts to earn monies… monies with which to buy you both Christmas presents… Christmas presents to show our appreciation at having been born to the two most wonderful persons ever to make the Yuletide ride! Savor the fruits of our trauma!”
With that the children had handed gifts to their parents, who handed bigger gifts back to the children.
Then the children gave even larger gifts back to their parents, who responded by unloading even larger presents off of a palett jack. There was smiling, uncrating and unwrapping, glee, and with it gleefulness, and euphoriousness, and happy snuffles full of goo-goo juice, and kisses! Also involuntary genital leakage. Oh, yesterday the Summoncommons had rejoiced in the bright light of winter solstice, and giggled and glowed, and promised one another that they would make every day Christmas Day.
Every day!
every day
{{{ every day }}}
“Get prostate cancer and keep it,” said Melissa, dumping the carton of expired eggnog over Eduardo’s fevered head. Chunky dairy don't go smooth.
“I hope your pancreas 'esplodes in the middle of the night,” said Eduardo as he stood up, gouging out his wife’s juicy eyes with his thumb, “and I hope I’m awake to hear the ‘esplosion.”
The children made a solemn promise to shit in the holiday fudge, and sealed the vow by tossing their brand-new gift socks onto the roaring fire.
Socks make excellent kindle.
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