www.danielirussell.com.

What is your best, funniest, or darkest holiday-season memory?

A BRAND NEW CHRISTMAS.

Growing up, Christmas was never anything special-though I thought it should be. I usually got new socks (I don't complain about that as a gift anymore). My parents were lower-middle cla.s.s, my mom a physical therapist for the state, my dad a tool-and-die man. We lived in an old drafty house and I always ruined whatever present I got by sneaking a peek while they were working at some point shortly after Thanksgiving. Then I grew up, my brother and sister grew up, and our family stopped celebrating it together.

Not too long ago my mom retired and three months after had a stroke that threw her into a coma. It rattled us. Hard. It put things in perspective. It effing hurt. The whole family pulled together, and then a brand new Christmas was upon us. We cried a lot because she was still alive and we cried because she was different and we cried because all those years of distance and anger we all shared were for nothing-nothing-and such a waste of time when we looked at her there, with her troubled eyes, unable to form a coherent sentence, and frustrated with herself because she'd always been so strong-willed. But that Christmas was special despite how awkward it was. Very special.

So Christmas hadn't been all that great when I was a kid. Big deal? Not really. Through my twenties it was pretty much nonexistent as a family celebration. I was to blame for that too. But the tragedy that knocked my mother down, as horrible as it was, brought us together like never before. It was one of the best Christmases we've had because we were doing more than standing in the same room. We worked as a team to help her, we learned to give each other the gifts of time, compa.s.sion, understanding and love.

Not even Santa Claus can give you that.

And he has a sleigh and a bunch of little slaves.

-Lee Thompson.

www.leethompsonfiction.com.

A KRAMPUS CHRISTMAS.

by Ryan Bridger.

Eric Errichson had been naughty this year.

He hadn't thought that stealing his sister's diary was all that terribly bad; and he had good reason to tape its pages to the lockers at school. She'd broken his bike first, after all, and on purpose.

Setting a tack on Sister Bridget's chair might have been what b.u.mped him off the "nice" list any other Christmas season, but this was different: he was double dog dared. At that point it became about family honor, and that's not naughty at all.

And it couldn't have been the time when he rode his bike up through the neighborhood, smashing mailboxes and breaking windows as he went-he'd brilliantly convinced everyone it had been Bryan Jacobi behind the spree.

Besides, all that happened back in September when the sky was still blue, but barely.

Maybe none of those things had done it. Or then again, maybe it was all of them combined, mixed with the other things he'd done and forgotten.

Whatever it was, Eric Errichson stood frozen in the living room, shaking and staring at the tall, goat-legged black thing that had emerged from the fireplace.

"h.e.l.lo," the thing said. Its long, red tongue, hung low to the knees, wagged while he asked, "Are you Eric Errichson?" He shook the rusty chains draped over his shoulders. Rusty bells attached to them sounded off in a cacophonic symphony.

Eric Errichson said nothing, but nodded.

"Good," said the thing. "Do you know who I am?"

He said nothing again, but shook his head. He felt something drip onto his bare feet, realized he'd wet his pants.

"I am Krampus," the thing from the fireplace said. It bowed, showing the full curvature of his spiraled horns. His s.h.a.ggy, black fur blew in a phantom breeze.

"Oof!"

Eric's eyes shot back to the fireplace. A plump, red suited old man had fallen there, struggled out with a large sack of toys.

"Saint," Krampus growled.

"Krampus," Santa Claus nodded, patted the beast on the shoulder and moved past. He began to fill Evelyn Errichson's stocking with all manner of toys and trinkets.

"Santa?" sobbed Eric. "Help me?"

"Can't do it, ho ho ho!" laughed Santa Claus. He wheeled around with a list in his hand, pointed somewhere in the middle. "See? Eric Errichson, not on the nice list." He quickly finished stuffing the stockings that didn't belong to Eric Errichson and disappeared up the chimney.

"h.e.l.lo, Eric," rasped Krampus in a voice better suited for something dead.

"h.e.l.lo."

Krampus swung a rusty chain, struck Eric in the jaw.

"Mom! Dad! Mom!" Eric tried screaming, but more blood spilled from his mouth than sound. Before he could count the teeth that fell on the floor, Krampus scooped him up and dropped him in an iron basket the giant goat-man had slung on his back.

Soon they were outside, and cold air helped put out the fire Eric felt inside his swollen mouth.

"Saint," Krampus rumbled. Eric could feel hatred reverberate through the iron. "Where now? Where next? Check your list!"

"Ho ho ho!" Eric heard through the howling wind.

"Check it twice!"

"Ho ho ho! Well, right over there! Another naughty one!"

"Good," replied Krampus, and they were off.

"Hey!" Eric mumbled, trying his best to speak through the sun-hot pain. "I want to go home!"

Eric didn't know how to describe Krampus' laughter, but he'd never forget it, as long as he lived-which he decided may not be very long.

"I'm taking you to h.e.l.l," Krampus chuckled, "Where they'll hurt you. Put things in your mouth and make you stand on things and fall off things. Stay in places and not let you in others. Say things to you or not say anything at all."

"Cause I'm not on the list?"

"Cause you're not on the list."

"Well, what about Bryan Jacobi?"

"Bryan Jacobi?"

"Yeah, the real a.s.s! Says mean things 'bout the sisters when they're not around. Poisoned a dog earlier this year, but he wasn't caught. Bragged to all of us about it, though! Beat up a first-grader, too. But he did it behind the dumpsters. Kid told his folks he fell or something. h.e.l.l, he even went around the neighborhood breaking mailboxes. Ain't that a federal crime or something? He on the list?"

"Where does he live?"

Eric popped his upper half out of the basket, pointed to a house at the end of the street. "That's his dad's house, he's there on the weekends-and it's Sunday!"

Krampus changed course, began to run on his goat legs, almost skipping. "Bryan Jacobi!" he screeched, "I'm coming to take you from people you love! I'm taking you to the place where they hate you!"

"See that? They got a gate that's locked. How you getting in?"

"Simple."

Krampus droned off a few words Eric didn't understand. He blinked and was inside Bryan Jacobi's living room.

"Whoa," whispered Eric.

"Yes, whoa," agreed Krampus. "Bryan Jacobi!" he screamed. Krampus tore through the house, knocking over chairs and kicking pictures off of tables. He ripped down stockings and punched holes through walls, running through every room until he reached the last bedroom on the left. Then he stopped, sniffed the air, and began jangling his chains and bells. "Bryaaaaan Jacooooobi?" he sang. "Wheeeere is Bryaaaaan Jacooooobi? Under the beeeeeed, I wageeeeeeer!"

With only a simple look from Krampus the bed flipped over, revealing Bryan Jacobi, trying his best to dig himself into the solid wooden floor.

"h.e.l.lo," rasped Krampus. He went to work with his chains, breaking Bryan's feet first, then the rest of his legs. That's when the screaming really started.

"Look how fat he is!" yelled Eric over Bryan's escalating cries. "What a fatty!"

"He will do well when they starve him and feed him to men that are dogs that are men but snakes."

"I ain't never seen a kid so fat! Or mean-looking!" Eric shouted. "Can you believe it, Krampus? Look how easy his fingers break! What a screamer!"

Krampus dropped his chains on top of Bryan's shrieking, broken form. He used his cloven foot to kick Bryan's ear a few times until it started leaking blood and other things.

The house fell silent "Krampus?" Eric asked quietly.

"What is it, d.a.m.ned man-boy?"

"Well, Bryan there is really fat. I don't know if he'll fit in this basket with me."

"I'll make him fit. I'll break his bones, and yours. I'll smash him until his eyes are gone and his guts are gone and he's nothing but hair and teeth. Then I'll take you where the sun never rises and never sets. Where the moon never rises and never sets. Where I laugh."

"Krampus?" Eric asked again, softer, "I mean, look at him. He's really fat. I really think you gotta make up your mind on this one. Me? Or Bryan Jacobi-poisoner of dogs and destroyer of first-graders. I mean, worst I did was steal my sister's diary, right?"

Krampus growled, stamped his feet on Bryan's knees. He reached inside the basket and hurled Eric to the floor.

"He's way worse than me!" Eric screamed and braced himself for a goat-leg to the face.

Krampus continued to stamp, threw his arms in the air. He grabbed one of his horns, cracked it and threw it across the room. "Very well, Eric Errichson! The naughty, mighty Jacobi is mine!"

Eric scrambled for the door, looked over his shoulder in time to see Krampus stuffing the twisted, torn remnants of screaming Bryan Jacobi into his iron basket.

"Merry Christmas, Krampus!" Eric called.

"Merry Christmas," replied the thing that crawled out of Eric Errichson's fireplace on Christmas Eve. He hoisted the basket securely on his back. "Merry Christmas."

And then Krampus was gone.

Ryan Bridger is the kind of guy who gets sad when somebody reminds him the dinosaurs went extinct. He's also the kind of guy who doesn't like focusing on the sad stuff, so he set out to write happy little stories about happy people where nothing bad ever happens to anyone. Unfortunately for Ryan's characters, most times he fails miserably. When Ryan isn't working on various projects of his own or with his writing group, The Illiterati, you might find him playing drums around Sin City or contributing to the horror magazine Shock Totem.

Ryan's blog, www.bewarethebears.com, is where you can experience his ongoing epic saga, 20 Bears.

HOWLING THROUGH THE KEYHOLE.

The stories behind the stories.

"Heartless"

"Heartless" is a story that I've had in my head for quite a while. While it is, of course, a play on Eros and Psyche, which is one of my favorite tales, it's more a tentative exploration of loss. Could a woman be so consumed by her depression, so mired in her apathy that she wouldn't care if a demon came to her every night? And what of this nameless demon, who is so lonely that he is willing to cross worlds in order to do nothing but sleep next to a broken slip of a human woman?

The story itself is quite brief, but I'm intrigued enough by the underlying motivations of the characters that I might follow their journeys, possibly separately, and see where they end up. I'm very drawn to dark things in love.

-Mercedes M. Yardley "Streamer of Silver, Ribbon of Red"

The catalyst for creation is often of an absurd nature.

Prior to the "light-bulb" moment that sp.a.w.ned "Streamer of Silver, Ribbon of Red," everything I'd come up with for a story was mined from that dark, emotionally thick vein I typically hack away at, and none of it was very appealing at that. I wanted to write something lighthearted, but was drawing a blank.

And then two words popped into my head: Santa Clown.

I couldn't begin to tell you why those words popped into my head, but they did. And I immediately saw a disheveled down-on-his-luck clown, walking the streets in a Santa suit. It was just the right kind of weird meshing of worlds I was looking for, so I welcomed the very ironically named Lucky the Clown into my head and set out to explore where he'd come from and where he was going.

The story itself came out quickly, in one sitting, and I thoroughly enjoyed writing it. More importantly, I think, when we prepared this special issue of Shock Totem, I enjoyed reading it again. After having not looked at it in a year, I didn't hate it, so maybe I did something right, eh?

I set the tale in Bridgetown, a fictional Ma.s.sachusetts town I've set a few other stories in. Jimmy and James, the son and father of this story, can also be found in "G.o.dd.a.m.n Electric," my zombie story from The Zombie Feed, Vol. 1. They fare much better in "Streamer of Silver, Ribbon of Red."

-K. Allen Wood.

"Santa Claus Is Coming to Get You!"

For many years, myself and several writer friends-including Kristine Kathryn Rusch, Dean Wesley Smith, Nina Kiriki Hoffman, Jerry and Kathy Oltion, and others-would each write a special story for Christmas Eve, to be read aloud and shared before opening presents.

What does happen to the kids who don't show up on the "nice" list anyway?

-Kevin J. Anderson.

"Tinsel"

This was a difficult tale to tell. I'd say about 95% of the details described in this story, mainly in the courtship memories, are true. They pertain to things my wife and I did. Our first date was to see the remake of Night of the Living Dead, we did leave love notes on time cards, I did give her a bottle of rain, and I still tell her stupid jokes.

So many memories. And then there were the ferrets...