Santa Killer

By Raff Minzer

A thirteen-year-old boy against a serial killer who has kidnapped his girlfriend.

A psychopath terrorizes the city, slashing the throats of men dressed as Santa Claus.

A wild race against the clock until Christmas Eve.

 

A THRILLER NOVEL SUPERCHARGED WITH UNEXPECTED TWISTS
YOU WON'T BE ABLE TO PUT IT DOWN!
 

• JACK KENNETT IS A THIRTEEN-YEAR-OLD TECH GEEK WITH AN AUTOIMMUNE DISORDER that confines him to a bedroom bounded by a glass wall. Health and getting better was his only concern until his girlfriend is kidnapped by a serial killer who seems to hold a particular grudge against Santa Claus.
• DETECTIVE RACHEL VANS LEADS THE EFFORTS of a desperate police investigation while she fights her own demons and struggles to keep an ominous heart condition at bay. Can she stock the so-called "Santa Killer" running amok in her city?
• ERICK DAYTON IS AN EX-MARINE WHO UNWILLINGLY finds himself entangled in the Santa Killer plot, helping Jack hunt down the killer and save his girlfriend. He'll never get his hearing back, but maybe he'll restore his honor.

Who's the Santa Killer?

Join the heart-pounding hunt!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Raff Minzer
• Release date: Nov 20, 2022
• ISBN: 9789564140698

Raff Minzer

Raff Minzer mostró desde pequeño una inclinación especial por degustar lasañas y libros en similar proporción. En un día normal, es posible encontrarlo con una buena novela en la mano y un tazón de medio litro de café negro en la otra (endulzado con miel), o imaginando que juega al tira y afloja con el cachorro de perro que sueña con adoptar (eventualmente).

Book preview

SANTA KILLER

Raff Minzer

If you want to know more about the author, you can visit:

raffminzer.com

Copyright©2022 Raff Minzer

All rights reserved.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the author, except as permitted by U.S. copyright law. For permissions contact: [e-mail].

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events, and incidents portrayed in this production are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

ISBN: 978-956-414-069-8 (ebook)

Cover design: Raff Minzer

First edition: November 2022

To Liat y Allan

PART I

DECEMBER 21, 2018

1

It was 07:00 AM when Jack Kennett’s peaceful sleep transformed into an inferno of electric guitars reverberating at full power. Rage Against the Machine’s Wake Up was his chosen alarm, and the rap-metal band seemed to take that challenge a little too personally.

Lying on his stomach, eyes still closed, Jack reached for the Bluetooth earbud on the nightstand.

Fuck.

The hellish rumble of electrical strumming kept him from concentrating as he fumbled. The relentless plucking of the bass and the furious screaming of the vocalist were both reasonable arguments his father had brought up when suggesting a more pleasant alternative for his awakenings, but the fact that the song belonged to the soundtrack of The Matrix—and was called Wake Up—was too tempting.

Sleep plays a fundamental role in proper preadolescent development, his father had taunted, imitating the voice of an expert in a toothpaste ad.

"I’m not ‘pre,’ Jack always countered, unable to refrain from taking the bait. Thirteen is thirteen, okay? It ends in ‘teen.’ Not in ‘preteen.’"

Hence now, his bed appeared to have teleported him to the center of a monstrous cathedral where the howls of sinners burning for all eternity were the choir during a mass officiated by Zach de la Rocha.

At last, he found the tiny piece of high-tech gear, fitted it into his left ear, and silenced the rock concert with a tap of his finger.

One more tap.

Call Liz, Jack ordered, allowing himself a couple of extra seconds to ponder. "Use Jingle Bells ringtone… the one with all those—"

2

Farts.

A succession of farts emulating the classic Christmas melody of Jingle Bells escaped from Liz’s cellphone.

Liz grunted, cranky to wake up.

The farts echoed off the four walls of her small room, like an army of men relieving their bowels after a bountiful feast of rotten beans.

Fuck. That’s going to wake up Bob.

While this gave her the right to imprecate Jack with colorful profanities, she inevitably smiled at his ridiculous idea.

With her eyes still closed, she groped under the bed for her hands-free. She’d learned to keep it under the protection of her bed after her foot had crushed the first earbud Jack had given her.

Here you are.

She fit the earbud into her left ear and pressed it.

Really?

What? Jack’s voice sounded in her ear. Can’t you smell Christmas in the air?

Smart-ass.

Resigned to start her school day routine, Liz opened her eyes, and there was Flip, a pocket-sized origami bird hanging from a thin string attached to the moldy ceiling with the same duct tape she’d used to repair the cracks in the minuscule window. Liz had neglected to tell Jack that the tiny bird had a name. She had also neglected to tell him Flip was the first thing she saw when she woke up—Jack could get quite cocky if she opened that door for him, and she wasn’t about to open doors for anyone.

The morning she’d received Flip had been one of those mornings. Jack had probably sensed something was wrong, because when Liz went to visit him in the afternoon—as she did every day after school—she’d found him waiting for her with a bright smile and a cute paper bird flapping its wings every time he pulled on its tail. It had not been necessary for Jack to explain the reason for the proverb written on one of the tiny bird’s wings:

The cuckoo sings, even if the branch creaks, because it knows it has wings

Liz had forgotten to lock the bathroom door that morning, and Bob had used the chance to slip in while she was in the shower.

Get on with it, kiddo. Mind your own biz, and I’ll mind mine, Bob had said before he started to take a leak.

Although the cheap plastic curtain kept them from seeing each other, it was no real protection if the man her mother called a boyfriend decided to peek. Or something worse. With sons of bitches like Bob, you could never rule anything out. And sons of bitches like him knew it.

Naked and powerless, Liz’s first instinct had been to cover her privates with her hands and stand as still as a deer—too weak to flee or face the predator now demarcating its territory—but she knew better than that. She was not going to give that pleasure to motherfucking Bob. She had forced her hands away and resumed the task of lathering her body as if nothing had happened, as if Bob were just a fly of insignificant presence.

The memory of the endless urine stream shamelessly splashing against the toilet bowl still nauseated her.

Flush or—?

Yes, she had managed to mutter.

She didn’t have enough room to avoid getting scalded by the sudden surge of water temperature that accompanied the flushing, but she hadn’t cared. Just imagining the animal’s fetid, brown urine stagnant in the toilet made her feel embarrassed. She wouldn’t have thought twice about taking a boiling downpour to avoid it.

Rise and shine, baby, rise and shine, Jack cheered in her ear, rescuing her from that disgusting memory.

What? You know I don’t speak movie-nerd as well as you, she replied, getting up from the bed and putting on her slippers. She couldn’t identify which movie this quote belonged to, but baby, she did understand that. "So baby, huh?" she sneered at his expense and imagined Jack’s pale face reddening.

That’s the movie quote, okay?

Liz walked down the hallway of the cramped apartment toward the bathroom, wearing a frayed nightgown and carrying a scratchy shower towel under her arm. The carpet was swarming with stains of untraceable origins; the beige wallpaper was opaque from so much dirt; half the lightbulbs were burnt out. If the maintenance of her room fell into the range of moderate neglect, the rest of her apartment definitely qualified as perfectly maintained filth.

3

His thick layer of fat and the Santa Claus suit that old Walt-Yes-Sir required him to wear kept Edgar at a comfortable, almost refreshing temperature. Last week it had occurred to him to show up bundled up in the vermilion red coat with white polyester trim he’d borrowed from his day job at Dawkins Mall, and Walt-Yes-Sir didn’t miss a beat.

Nice coat, Edgar, Walt-Yes-Sir had commented at the time. Perfect for getting the clientele into the Christmas spirit, right? Even got the age and looks right, the old geezer had decreed, glancing at Edgar’s chubby belly.

To anyone else, Edgar would have replied that it wasn’t exactly fucking Christmas spirit that the clientele was looking for at a strip club, but Walt-Yes-Sir tolerated only one answer.

Yes, sir.

Now, disguised as the most famous morbidly obese man in the world, he finished his shift at the entrance of the Aphrodite nightclub at dawn. Snow lurked around his eyes, spreading like an albino shadow, and the air buttressed his lungs with icy thrusts after each breath.

And he was in a hurry.

His mouth was dry thinking about the cans of Bud chilling in the fridge. Still, Walt-Yes-Sir was taking his time counting the measly wad of crumpled bills that represented Edgar’s weekly paycheck, projecting an air of affable grandpa more than the asshole he was. When Edgar was a brat too young to be sent by Nixon as an errand boy to Vietnam yet too old to continue polishing his penis with the sole assistance of his right hand, Walt-Yes-Sir was already running the late kingpin’s club and already offering his famous ‘special discounts.’ It was to one of those ‘special discounts’ that Edgar could credit his own loss of virginity with Worse-Than-Nothing.

A nude figure was projected onto the curtain of his mind, sitting on top of his nervous manhood like one of those black-and-white erotic scenes from the silent movie era. Two breasts hanging like empty leather canteens over the awkward expression of Edgar’s teenage face. The crinkled corners of a reassuring, motherly smile hinting a nearly full set of teeth.

He wondered what name was engraved on Worse-Than-Nothing’s tombstone, but nothing came to his mind.

Except for the strippers themselves, not much else had changed. Not the club owner’s last name, not the beatings of troublesome employees old Walt-Yes-Sir organized with a phone call.

Everything remains the same, but worse, he concluded. A rough, worn hand continues to do all the polishing work.

He thought of Dora. Years ago, his wife’s appetite had shifted from what she put between her legs to what she put in her mouth. The only whores Edgar could afford to make up for his involuntary withdrawal were the ones at the club, but fucking Walt-Yes-Sir had taken it upon himself to make the ‘company policy’ crystal clear on this subject.

Ed, Mr. Lanotti doesn’t like it when his employees are also his customers. Don’t shit where you eat and all that. I understand you might be tempted, Walt-Yes-Sir had explained in his grandfatherly tone, but if you have to, I suggest Heidi-Moans. Average tits, tremendous ass; by far the best tipped, and you know what that means. And what the hell, I’ll even offer you a special employee discount. He had flashed a wicked grin. Say farewell to your dick with the proper honors, right?

Yes, sir. Edgar was well aware of Capo Lanotti’s collection of cocks.

....Ed?

Walt-Yes-Sir planted dirty bills in front of his face.

Yes, sir, he replied automatically.

He took his pay, rendered a respectful goodbye, and brisked away, perfectly capable of murdering someone rather than being forced to utter another fucking ‘yes, sir.’

4

Jack straightened up, propped a pillow against the headboard to support his back, and pressed his fingerprint to the little LED reader that jutted out from the side of the nightstand. This action activated his immersion system, dubbed by him as SHUMM: Super-Hyper-Ultra-Mega-Max.

SHUMM. Like the buzz of a Formula One car, he had explained to Liz.

Thanks to a system of gears, pulleys, and brackets screwed to the ceiling, the dream of every tech geek between the ages of nine and thirty-nine descended to the foot of the bed until it was parallel to his eyes: a seventy-inch curved screen with ultra-resolution, the newest PlayStation video game console, an audio system with 5.1 surround sound, and a wide-range subwoofer. It also contained an Intel CPU with so much RAM that it processed faster than Sonic the Hedgehog on amphetamines, and a GeForce RTX 3090 graphics card that would have been the envy of Jack’s friends if he indeed had any. The gadget trays included a Corsair K100 RGB keyboard, a controller with a built-in mouse, the Oculus Go virtual reality headset, and two PlayStation controllers that unfolded from under the sides of the bed over his legs. In short, it was gear that Nolan’s Batman would be proud of (the only Batman that really mattered).

As soon as the structure settled around and in front of him, he used the keyboard integrated into the tray spread out on his legs to turn on the humongous screen, which was wider than his bed and so high it began at the height of the mattress and almost touched the ceiling.

The screen image was digitally subdivided into three equal parts. The left split of the screen showed, with no active audio, the continuous feeds from the four-camera CCTV. They were laid out in a two-by-two grid, giving him just about a complete view of what was going on in the living room and dining room, outside the front door, the kitchen, and the bottom of the stairs leading up to the second floor.

Only the first floor, his father had authorized during the tense negotiation later titled The Battle of the Nosy Child. And no audio. I have no interest in you invading the privacy of my guests and the private phone conversations I have with my clients: Sick children and parents who are going to lose sick children. So don’t go poking your nose into things you shouldn’t.

The rightmost area of the screen showed a set of app icons arranged in a grid and playing silent previews of their recommended content. The Boomerang app, a vintage cartoon channel, broadcasted a preview of one of The Flintstones Christmas specials. Jack had watched a couple episodes out of curiosity to find out what cartoons had been like in his father’s childhood. While the animated sitcom didn’t stand out as a remarkably accurate portrayal of Prehistory, Jack had to admit he’d dreamed of having a pet dinosaur on more than one occasion. On the local news app 24BRIGHTNOW, the highly nip-tucked Decca Newman hosted the Bright Morning newscast. Beside her, an image of a blood-spattered binocular toy was interspersed with a photograph of a guy dressed as Santa Claus with a digitally superimposed inset that distorted the corpse’s face and neck area.

5

How’s my Rapunzel? Liz asked, noting with disquiet that the door to her mother’s room was ajar.

Just as bored as Bran the Broken before becoming the Three-Eyed Raven, she heard Jack through her earbud.

I’m convinced Bran the Broken would have sacrificed one of his three eyes in exchange for an immersive ultra-resolution display system like yours.

As Jack prattled on about a supposed psychological defense mechanism called ‘projection,’ Liz couldn’t help but stop to peek inside her mother’s room. Three empty whiskey bottles were scattered on the floor, and beside these, the reeking Santa Claus costume that Bob wore for his morning shifts at Dawkins Mall.

On both bedside tables were ashtrays brimming with mounds of ashes and cigarette butts. On Bob’s side, there was also a brazenly flaunted opaque package the size of a brick, with a small slit that revealed the crack pebbles inside.

Lying on the far end, her mother seemed asleep or too drunk to keep her eyes open. And Bob… Bob slept like a white angel. A fluffy, white angel with yellow teeth and forearms pierced by sinful syringes.

6

Brighton traffic was not yet fully awake. Edgar didn’t need to wait for the green light to cross the city’s lofty main square that also doubled as a roundabout. He hustled across it, still hoping to enjoy a few Bud beers before Dora woke up.

After so many years on duty at the Aphrodite, he had calculated to the minute the time it would take him to travel from the bronze statue of General B. Peterson, located in the middle of Main Square, to his humble abode: a two-story rusty house. It was indistinguishable from the hundreds of two-story rusty houses that were part of the neighborhood that the artificial voices of the GPS applications referred to as Goldenton and that the human voices referred to simply as The Butt, alluding to the fact that the buttocks of the honorable general pointed in their direction, while the face pointed to the City Hall building—supposedly, in order to monitor the immaculacy of the government institution.

Edgar had his own misgivings about the immaculacy of what went on inside that concrete complex that took up an entire block and shared offices with the police headquarters. The objections were even greater regarding a vigilante general who was not even aware of the layer of pigeon droppings he was covered with. Erect and solemn, General B. Peterson rested one hand on the pommel of his sheathed saber and, with the other, pointed his forefinger in warning in the direction of the highest window of City Hall: the mayor’s office.

Neither the pigeons nor Mayor Bosch seemed to produce fewer excrement because of this warning.

The sun had not yet risen over the horizon of snowed rooftops. While crossing the street, Edgar noticed that the city had already set up the traditional Christmas tree. A handful of workers were using a special crane to hang the colorful lights and decorations over the six-story-high artificial pine tree. Brighton had a strict municipal restriction that prohibited any construction of more than three floors, so the luminous five-pointed star that crowned the majestic and frosted pine tree was visible from nearly anywhere in the city.

Beside the Happy Wish Foundation banners, a few young volunteers set up the tables to receive gifts and donations. Edgar quickened his pace and warmed his hands with his breath, taking advantage of the excuse to bow his head and dodge their impertinent glances, lest they beg him for some bills with the dexterity of a seasoned mugger or have the gall to sign him up as a volunteer without his knowledge.

The evasion maneuver was not free of charge. The haste took an extra toll on his heart. Not as big as the effort that signing up as a volunteer would have required, but enough to make him wonder if it would have been worthwhile to pay those onlookers and avoid the sweat that now covered his back.

Edgar’s generous body mass, fermented for fifty-seven years of a sedentary lifestyle, matched perfectly with the coat and iconic beanie topped with a furry pom-pom ball that kept his sparse gray hair warm. A kid would surely have taken him for Santa Claus if he still had the false beard on top of that coarse, three-day stubble.

He forced himself to admit that the old geezer who ran the whore club hadn’t been wrong regarding his appearance.

Fucking Walt-Yes-Sir.

Edgar scratched his itchy chin as he reached the roundabout edge and crossed to the opposite sidewalk. He remembered noticing the traffic light when he was already halfway there: the thin silhouette against the overhead lightbulb seemed to be specifically mocking the potbellied pedestrian who ignored it, blaming him in a garish, throbbing red.

Damn beard.

He couldn’t help but think of Bob Reynolds, the guy who played Santa in the first block. Although each had their own suit, they had to share the false beard. The shift change was at four o’clock in the afternoon when Bob would transfer that damp, cigarette-stinking filth to him. Junkie-Bob had burned his own false beard in a stupid attempt to light a cigarette with the beard on, and the asshole from Dawkins Mall Management Department had insisted that ultra-realistic beards were high-priced since they were made with human hair. The prick had informed them they could choose to share it or buy a new one for a modest sum equal to half their wages.

Walt-Yes-Sir did not require him to put it on. He might be an old-seasoned thug, but all things considered, he was a good deal more reasonable than that management kid and the pathetic fuzz he sported for a mustache.

Why don’t you ask Santa for a fucking ultra-realistic mustache, you wimp?

7

Jack divided the central third of the SHUMM screen into two blocks. The upper half was left with a message:

WAITING FOR LIVESTREAMING

The Chrome browser was displayed in the lower half, preprogrammed with the first query:today’s weather.

FRIDAY, DECEMBER 21, 2018

37F° MINIMUM / 39F° MAXIMUM

CHANCE OF SNOW: 12%

Jack’s gaze drifted to the 24BRIGHTNOW app. The caption reported a third murder and an alleged serial killer.

It’s going to be a cold day out there. Frosty the Snowman’s white balls are already turning icy blue, Jack announced, mimicking the generic voice of a morning slot radio host. Put those sexy panties away, and get grandma’s long johns.

8

Once inside the bathroom and having secured the door with the latch, Liz brushed her teeth viciously, as if the bitter aftertaste accumulated in her mouth during the night was indistinguishable from her despair.

....also, we have a serial killer in-tha-house, Jack continued with his spiel, now mimicking the voice of a sports broadcaster. And that’s right: He’ll even leave you a Christmas present if you’re lucky enough.

Liz spat out the foam and rinsed it off, listening to Jack with the same disdain as when Bob and her mother screamed at each other.

"And you’re missing The Flintstones Christmas special. I’m not quite sure how they knew about Jes—"

Have to go. Liz sat on the toilet.

Why?

Girl stuff.

Girl stuff?

Taking a—

9

—dump.

Boys also— Jack replied and stopped midsentence, realizing Liz had already cut off.

Silence.

Not an absolute silence, but a silence wrapped in a torrent of continuous and subterranean noise that one becomes aware of in elusive moments of solitude.

Outside: cars, buses, kids laughing on the sidewalk, probably having snowball fights on the way to school.

Inside: silence. As if time itself had slipped out of the universe to hibernate in its room.

To make sure he didn’t hear a single drop of that desperate silence, Jack turned on the local news app and even activated the sound of The Flintstones cartoon. The noise of both transmissions intermingled with the purr of the special fan that purified the air he breathed inside his voluntary prison of thick, insulated glass walls.

A glass bubble with an ensuite bathroom, Liz would say whenever Jack commiserated about his confinement. Boo-hoo, my poor ensuite-boy.

Technically, his room was a rectangular prism and not a bubble, but Liz was right about what the wall that separated him from the rest of humanity was made of. And no matter how ensuited his bathroom was, Jack was beginning to think that after almost a year of confinement doing his own cleaning, the risk of catching an infection was greater inside his cage with a private crapper than anywhere else in the whole unbubbled world.

The walls to his left and the background were lined with shelves and racks overloaded with toys as long forgotten as his innocence. Figurines from Marvel, DC, and a collection of Transformers resembled dusty corpses more than intergalactic superheroes. A dozen board games and an additional dozen magic trick kits shared space with the collection of dinosaur picture books his father used to read him when he was little.

As for the board games, the fun diminished proportionally to the glass thickness between the players. Liz had insisted on giving those board games a try during the first few months of lockdown, only to discover that playing UNO wasn’t the same when the players couldn’t stack the cards in the same pile. Monopoly was exasperating. Since they only had one board, one of them was in charge of moving the pieces for both. The fact that they couldn’t share the same dice set made him feel that even his luck was isolated.

From time to time, his father would borrow one of the archaic magic kits to make the children of his foundation smile. Gone were the days when Jack would invite Theresa and her father to come to shows in the living room: The Great Jackolini, in a top hat and a black velvet cape loaded with secret pockets, dazzling his audience with feats as incredible as turning two foam balls into four, or swallowing a quarter and then making it appear, to everyone’s surprise, inside a clenched fist.

He still remembered his father’s and nanny’s expectant faces when The Great Jackolini proclaimed he would use an ‘ordinary’ knife to cut off his finger. The audience gasped in shock as it watched Jack’s thumb being chopped off, soaking everything with viscous blood (the same blood Theresa helped him prepare before the show with a mixture of corn syrup, chocolate syrup, and dark crimson food coloring). He had hidden it in a bottle inside one of the secret pockets of his cloak, connected to a thin hose that ran the length of his arm under his clothes to the edge of his sleeve.

He wondered what had happened to that blanket of innocence and the waves of excitement that caused him to surprise the grown-ups while completely disdaining the fact that they were also complicit in these feats.

He couldn’t complain. He was a fortunate boy, and he knew it. His SHUMM not only allowed him to enjoy movies and series but also to embark on dangerous missions in fantastic and dystopian lands, spend hours watching videos on YouTube; and, above all, stay in touch with Liz, and, through her, the real world.

It was infuriating, and it always happened the same way. Being disconnected from Liz threw him back into suffocating reality. It had been more than a year since his involuntary conviction on SCID charges: Severe Combined Immunodeficiency, or as Dr. Holly named it: Super Charged Invitation to Diseases, because of how easily his deficiency exposed him to host distinguished microscopic guests.

On the left third of the screen, the CCTV showed Theresa leaving her bedroom (located in the basement) and heading for the kitchen. She put a couple slices of bread in the toaster and renewed the water in the vase on the kitchen table, adorned with the white lilies his father religiously replenished every two weeks.

Jack heard his father’s voice in his head: It’s the small gestures, Jackie.

On the CCTV, Theresa picked up the frying pan and started scrambling eggs. Jack prophesied that, as always, they’d end up overcooked.

He pressed the button of the intercom on the nightstand.

Good morning, Theresinha. Blessed the day. Blessed these eyes that marvel at your magnificent—

Good morning, Jackie. Theresa raised her head to the CCTV camera as she kept scrambling. Cut to the chase, please. Lots of things on my mind today.

In haste, Jack decided to omit the part where he feigned outrage.

Liz is going to pick up Roger’s Secret Santa gift, and I’m pretty sure she—

Yes, yes. I understand, I understand.

If there’s any blackberry jam left—

Got it, Jackie. Oh dear, I think I overcooked these eggs.

Jack had no memory of the moment Theresa arrived in his life. Precisely the same amount of memory that he had of his birth mother. Before he was old enough to process that his mother had abandoned him to his fate in a laundromat, he had been told the somewhat more pious story about how she died when he was still a forgetful baby. His father had never well specified the details, and when Jack had reached the age of daring to ask certain questions, everything was revealed, including the police report of his abandonment.

The fact was that Theresa had always been with them, and it still made him crack a smile to remember the explanation his father had given him when he was little: Theresa is an angel that fell from heaven and lives with us.

Jack had taken that story literally. For years. He recalled the countless times he sent her messages, trusting his nanny had special access to the place where his late mother supposedly resided. Theresa was never short of messages sent back to him from heaven. All loving and well-informed, mentioning details of Jack’s life as if his mother was indeed looking down on him: Honey, you’re too good to be fighting over a marble with Andrew at school .... honey, don’t go to bed too late. I like to visit you in your dreams .... my love, take your face off the phone. You are missi—

The customized ringtone for Liz’s calls barely managed to reproduce the voice of Elvis Costello longing for a woman. Jack tapped his earbud faster than a Clint Eastwood standoff.

10

Edgar put the key in the door lock and turned it with extreme caution to avoid announcing his arrival to Dora.

He heard the shower and decided to take it as good news. If he had caught Dora sleeping, he wouldn’t have been able to relax for fear of waking her up and would have had to mute the TV. Now, at least he knew he had about five minutes of quiet left, maybe ten, depending on how long she had been in there.

He mentally cursed his wife for taking showers every day as if she lived in the damn Buckingham Palace and had a cleaner pussy than the fucking queen of England. Hell, he didn’t understand Dora’s eagerness to wash her bodywork if she never took it out for a ride. Not that it was the bodywork of a luxury car that eventually becomes a classic that everyone wants to ride. People get old, and that is that. The old ones are old, and nobody is telling them that they are classics and trying to ride them. In Ferrell Willis’s unsolicited opinion (one of the mall dwarfs), Dora spent half her time in the shower fondling under the hood, but Edgar didn’t think that was possible. It caused him a kind of giggle, almost childish, imagining her excited with the head of the hose between her legs in the same shower in which he urinated when he was too lazy to hold it in.

Edgar sneaked in but didn’t turn the deadbolt as he closed the door. He didn’t want to risk making any more noise than necessary. He would secure it once Dora was finished with her mysterious shower time.

He went straight to the fridge to get three cans of Bud beer. The contact of his skin with the chilled aluminum sent a shiver of pleasure through him, and he felt a desperate urge to moisten his parched lips with the golden liquid.

The feline eyes of Licky, the long-lived Bombay kitten, floated in the living room like two streetlamps above the coffee table.

Edgar took off his pom-pom bonnet and hung it on the coat rack. It was cold. Not so much that he needed to warm his ears inside the walls of his own home, but enough that he’d rather bask in the protective warmth of Santa’s fake coat. The real one wasn’t supposed to be made of wool and synthetic fur. He wondered how the fuck Santa had managed to stay off the radar of the scandalous animal abuse organizations and how many polar bears his elves would have to kill to make trims like those.

But no. Christmas was off limits. No one in his right mind or sick delirium would think of questioning its highest representative. Santa had diplomatic immunity. He could wear a fur coat without fear of one of those wacko animalists pouring a bucket of polar bear blood on him.

Edgar leaned back on the couch. His paunch overflowed the edges of Santa’s wide belt, and he finally unbuckled it.

He searched for the TV remote among the cushions and found it amid leftover stale popcorn in the nooks and crannies of the lining. The TV was smart enough to turn on and off with a voice command. Not for him, though. His failure to use this feature made him feel stupider than an appliance, despite his efforts to convince himself that using the remote was his choice. No, sir. He wasn’t about to grovel like that. Talk to the TV? What came next? Thanking the toaster for kindly defrosting the slices of bread? Apologizing to the refrigerator every time he left the door open, weighing whether to add pickles to the cheese sandwich? No, sir. He had to set the limit somewhere.

He pressed the power button, and the TV lit up with the grid-like icons of all the available apps, leaving the top third for a rotary with featured shows, movies, and series. He used the remote to set it on the ESPN app. He didn’t get to click, and the app was already expanding to broadcast the announcements