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In the dark kitchen, I open the refrigerator and reach for the milk. As I turn to set it on the counter, a shiver traces up my back and the scent of cigarette smoke wafts around me.
“Hi.” A male voice makes me jump as I spin around to find the tallest of the three guys. He was sitting at the table, wearing a sad, stained Santa hat when I walked by, and I thought he hadn’t noticed me. He’s been here before, but proper introductions were never made.
“Hi,” I answer, keeping my voice flat.
In the dim light from the refrigerator, his bulbous red nose, pock-marked with scars, looks sickly-pale. An overgrown white beard, nicotine stained yellow around his mouth, frames lips that are wet with saliva. Either that or lip gloss. Both those thoughts make my stomach sour as I take a step back, gripping the carton of milk.
“You look cute in your robe. You changed your hair too…blondes have more fun, right?”
His words come slow and strained, like his tongue is swelling from some anaphylactic shock, and his gray eyes are glazed. The creep factor hits the red zone when I see the left eye has an exploded blood vessel just below the cornea, but that’s not what alarms me the most.
It’s the sick smile that exposes some much-needed dental work, and the hand that is now touching the side of my face, making me wince as I slap it away.
“You thinking Santa needs some milk? And coochie?” He lets out a self-satisfied chuckle. “I mean cookies.”
“I’m thinking you need to get yourself back in the other room.” I step back again, but he steps forward as I bat his grasping hand away.
“Awe, come on. A little kiss under the mistletoe is all I want.”
My stomach turns as he leans down, and I get ready to deliver a swift kick to his balls when his other hand darts out and grabs my wrist.
The milk carton falls, hitting the faded green linoleum floor with a thud and spilling white liquid into a puddle around my feet.
“Perfect,” I snap. “What you’re going to get is a kick in the balls, and then a mop to clean this up.”
I give zero fucks right now, and if he plays his cards right, I may just beat him to death with the mop handle. After he cleans up the mess.
His eyes narrow on a sneer. “Wow, you’re a nasty thing aren’t you? I like nasty.” His grip on my wrist tightens as I try to wrench it free, but his thick fingers are locked in place so it’s time for the kick in the balls I promised him.
I jerk my foot back, tightening my muscles, ready to unleash the fury when the milk on the floor seeps under my balancing foot at the same time as asshole Santa jerks my arm toward him, and before I know it I’m slipping around and gravity takes hold.
I scream as my head hits the hard floor, kicking and swearing as he stands over me smiling, and I realize my robe is wide open exposing my red and white striped panties.
“Got what you deserved there, didn’t you? I’ll take a lick of that candy cane…” He lets out a wet, coughing sort of laugh, but before I can land an upward kick into his sad man-sack, the backdoor crashes open, banging against the wall with the force of someone kicking it in.
For a second, I’m sure it’s one of my father’s debt collectors. They usually knock, but who knows, he could have upped the ante and we are now getting middle of the night in-person collection calls.
But a second later, I make out Martel’s face, his massive frame bathed in the light from the open refrigerator. He’s lost the suit he was wearing earlier and is back in jeans and a white t-shirt, covered by a tan, canvas sort of workman’s jacket, with a look on his face that tells me he’s not here to deliver gifts. And I’m not sure if this is a Russian Christmas miracle or nightmare.
All I hear are my own screams as I crab-crawl backwards until I’m out of the way of the fury being unleashed on sad Santa. It doesn’t take long before the two other poker players and my father are in the mix, and for a minute I’m sure Martel will be pummeled going four against one.
But I’m wrong.
So very wrong.
There’s crashing and grunting and the sound of punches landing as the party spills into the living room. Bottles break, there are a couple loud thuds, then the sound of my father and some other guy pleading and begging like little girls.
I scurry on my hands and knees around to the doorway and peek in to see the biggest guy’s face a barely recognizable, bloody swollen pulp. Another guy is face down laying perpendicular to the first while my father and a short, roundish guy with a bloody lip hold their hands up like they are in some old western bank robbery scene.
