Phone Home Alone

They were following me again. Of that much, I was positive. The jolting jingle of their feet made the little fuckers hard to miss, even if they half-heartedly dodged around corners.

It was like they wanted me to see them. Afterall, what could they fear from being caught? I could shout until my voice was hoarse, just a wisp of manhood left to it, and they’d be gone in a blink of an eye. The cops wouldn’t believe me, they’d scoff like Heather did.

“They’re following me again,” I’d told her. And what did she do? She laughed.

She’d laughed and said, “It’s all in your head, hon. You always get like this around Christmas.”

No shit, I’d wanted to say. But I’d kept my mouth shut. I wouldn’t give her the satisfaction of looking at me like I was the crazy asshole she got stuck with. She would’ve just checked my temperature like she did the first time and tell me to stop smoking so much.

It wasn’t my fault she didn’t notice them. It wasn’t hers either. They were meant to blend in. To lure you into a false sense of security. A patchwork quilt of Christmas joy and good will towards men that they’d shove down your throat until feathers sputtered out your ass.

Those goddamn elves.

Not the post-pubescent fucks that lounge around the mall, smoking joints in the defunct Sears while Santa was off “feeding the reindeer.” No. These fuckers were the real shit. Two feet tall, black eyes, pointed ears, floppy hats and shoes with stupid little fucking bells. It’s what they were wearing when I first saw them, and it was the image that I kept catching in the corner of my eye. They’d gotten closer. Best estimate, I had four on my ass, and knowing these guys they had two waiting in front of me. Probably waiting just around the corner of that green Jeep Cherokee with the mud drenched reindeer antlers. I quickened my steps. The playful trinkle of bells were closing in, a monotonous wall of sound in the barren Rite-Aid parking lot. They were everywhere, and the little fucks were getting faster.

I knew too much, that was really it. I knew what they really were, what they were doing here. I saw them that night with my father. My wife said that was in my head too. That it couldn’t have been real, that I was a kid who put a Christmas spin on a traumatic memory in order to cope.

“They were two feet tall, Heather,” I’d told her.

“You know you’re Father was always adventurous,” she’d said. “And he and Jerry had only been together for a few months.”

My hands had stung from how hard I brought them down on the table, “Dad and Jerry were fucking happy,” I’d said, “He wouldn’t… not with those things.”

I still remember that disgusted look on her face when she told me that I was a bigot.

The jingling was louder now. Too loud. I could hear them laughing. They were laughing when I saw what they’d done to my father.

“They probed him,” I’d told Heather, I even cried, remembering their sharp teeth and shrill voices singing “O’ Come, All Ye Faithful.” It was five years ago, the first Christmas after my dad died, and they had just started to follow me. My eyes were sore, I was higher than that fucking long note in that terrible Mariah Carey song, but when I looked at her, she was trying not to laugh.

“Aliens?” She had asked, her voice was always mannish when she was covering her chortles. I only glared at her, and had thought, for the first time in those months of newly wedded bliss, about what I would actually lose if I asked for a divorce. She’d then patted my cheek and apologized for being insensitive, but I never forgot how far I’d gotten in my imagined settlement.

My car, a black sedan that only cost me my twenty-five-hundred-dollar Christmas bonus, was within sight. Just past that fucking Jeep. I walked faster. The jingles drowned out the sound of my raspy pants. They were swarming, I could hear them all around me.

I ran so fucking fast the friction of my shirt burned my nipples, and my thighs chaffed in ways they hadn’t experienced in a decade. Fuck high cholesterol.

I passed the Jeep and the jingling stopped.

Nothing. Nothing popped out from behind it. Nothing tried to bite my ankles or lure me in with cherubic cheeks.

It was quiet.

No jingle nor jangle. No gremlin-y laughter. Silence.

I made it to my car. It unlocked as I furiously clicked my fob, I felt like an ass as the sound echoed in the abandoned parking lot. I opened and closed the car door, my ankle almost getting caught in the process.

My head rested on the steering wheel as I caught my breath, every exhale sounding like a deflating balloon. Blindly reaching forward to start my car, I tried to collect myself. That’s when I heard it. The radio stuttered to life, rasping out in an unidentifiable static. Until clear as day I heard the words:

“Merry Christmas ya filthy animal.”

And my car was flooded with light.