Page 1 of Happy Krampus Xmas & the Meet Not Cute
one
Malls are Hell’s waiting rooms
Ah, December. This is the time to be jolly and merry.
It makes me sick.
I slurp loudly on my banana smoothie with extra chocolate sprinkles and a double dollop of whipped cream. It doesn’t help my foul mood one bit. The sugar rush is probably fueling the murdering thoughts, while getting me closer to unleashing all my inner demons. And when I sayallI mean even the skanky bitch with a screaming disposition.
“Why do you still have the long face?” Michael asks very stupidly.
I hiss at him. Perhaps a tad over the top, but after what I went through, he promised to cheer me up. I went along only to be dragged to this bloody mall—which is the size of Tanzania—to buy presents for the whole Illinois state population.
I can’t believe Raph came as well. The rest of the bros—a.k.a. the sausage fest—think he’s the boss in the relationship, but Michael just made him carry a hundred and one bags while skipping like a joyful, blitzed spirit from one shop to another.
Raph is buying some burgers and fries—I need my comfort food after what happened…again—while Michael and I are sitting at one of the food court tables with Offspring One and Two, Ash and Ren. They were close by and decided to join us. I should have known they just wanted to fuck with me.
“Come on, Lori. Gabe let you work on his donor after—” Michael’s useless attempt at making me feel better is cut off by Ren.
“His catastrophic inauguration.”
“Initiation, you prick,” I snarl at him, stabbing my to-go cup with the straw.
Myinitiation in the evil-dispatching family business. I technically already killed a couple of maggots a few months back, but I never did the whole A to Z donor routine. Starting with the maggot’s acquisition, their sedation, and transportation to the base, the torturing bit and then finishing with their death.
“Amateur,” Ash scoffs at me. I’m surrounded by dicks! And not the let’s-do-the-dance-with-no-pants kind, but the I’ll-chop-’em-off kind.
“Kids, earmuffs!” I yell toward the Offsprings. Ash lifts his hands toward his ears, pretending to cover them, but instead flipping me a double middle finger at the last minute.Classy as always.
Hunter and Rami don’t want them to be part of the evil-dispatching family business. But with their triplet brother Darebeing a very skilled hacker, they end up knowing everything.Bloody tattletale!
“I couldn’t even go all Lori over the maggot’s arse. I didn't use the potato peeler.” I whine a little because, fuck, that would have been cool.
I see Ren’s blond eyebrows lift over his mirrored sunglasses. “How do you even use that?”
“Why are you asking him?” Ash shoves at his brother’s shoulder.
“Well, if he sharpens it enough—” Michael stops only to smile at his husband as Raph places two trays filled with food and drinks on the table. Then he continues, “He could use it on the donor’s testicles; the skin there is quite thin and sensitive.”
“Shut it!” Ash yells, covering his groin with a scrunched-up expression.
Raph glowers at him, his inner psycho shines even brighter when defending his husband. Ash doesn’t look scared by him one bit, the devil-may-care moron. I know what Raph does to people that cross him, I have my TRB (torture record book) to remind me.
Just two days ago he impaled—arsehole to head—a donor with a wooden pole. He was a sommelier who had been rude to Michael in a restaurant. He also liked to follow some of the customers home and rob them. He killed two of them when caught in the act. So an excruciating, vampire-slasher-movie death, he got. Probably because of the disrespect he aimed at Michael more than anything else.
Raph pulls Michael off his chair and then drops him on his lap as he sits. “You’ve been huffing all afternoon,” he tells me in his usual bored tone.
“Look around you, Lori. It’s that magical time of the year.” Michael beams at me, waving his arms toward all the Christmas decorations surrounding us. It feels like Santa himself thew up all the way to the several floors stretching above us. Shiny tinsel, metallic stars, red bows, and plastic wreaths cover every inch of the place.
The overly colorful setting is makingmefeel like vomiting. The absence of windows and fresh air might be increasing my annoyance—it’s like being in a casino in Vegas without all the debauched fun.
“Magical? That’s bonkers. Krampus time is appalling!” I sniff with irritation. Christmas is the worst time ever. The most horrific events in my life happened around this hatefully cheery holiday.
“Krampus?” Ren asks.
“Santa’s evil brother,” Raph clarifies.
“Exactly. Gran used to tell me all about Santa’s demonic-looking bro and how he punishes naughty kids.”
