Merrily We Go to Hell
Merrily We Go to Hell
After The Feast, Before The Cannibals
November 27, 2020
Santa Parts
Santa Claus looks at her olive skin reflecting in the muddy puddle on the Chicago sidewalk. It’s cold this night after Thanksgiving and because of the cold but mostly because of the pandemic there are few people out.
Santa touches her once hopeful face, gently caressing her cheekbones knowing they were once high and smooth but now, like so much else, are a victim of time as her cheeks sag and dark circles have long ago found a home under her dark, doe-like eyes.
She pushes herself up from the stinging, wet pavement and wonders how long she has been passed out and her pupils protest as she looks into the light given off by Chicago’s skyline.
Luckily, the bottle has not broken and she gulps from it, savoring the peppermint joy of drunkenness, which is now starting to once again overtake the ache of age and the cold of night.
Santa is such a beautiful girl in her red dress and dark boots, her mane of raven black hair falling down her back. Old, yes, but still enchanting, becoming, to be sure and Santa knows this about herself as her dark skin and full lips absorb the late November freeze. She feels better as she walks and sips and, after a block or two, remembers she must get back to the orphanage. She must return to the children of Chicago who have no family, who have no home, who only have her and her magic.
She knows she will return to the children and stumble before them and let them pull off her fingers, her toes, and cut off her raven mane before also depriving her of her feet, hands, legs and arms, kidneys, lungs, blood, and heart. They will disassemble her quickly but methodically, observing the nightly ritual to carry her body parts to every corner of the city as she disappears. --TK
Friday, November 27, 2020