All characters © their respective owners

-SILENTNIGHT.

Akuma: -grumbles- On the twenty-third day of Christmas my true love wrote for me.

Warnings: These people have no names. Well, except for Allen and Timcanpy. Predictable cliché horror.

-DEMONS'NIGHT.

"What a lively town." Allen commented as he walked through the streets. Holiday lights were strung up in every space imaginable, poinsettias were in rows around the buildings, and there was a huge, decorated fir tree in the center of the town. "I wonder where I can get some food…" He continued on his way peacefully before his left eye flinched. He clenched his teeth, and put a hand over it. Where…?

"Would you like some flowers?" a voice asked him from behind. He turned around to see a small girl in a dress holding a basket of wilted flowers. She was smiling brightly, but there was a person behind her. Another girl, probably not even three years older than this girl with the flowers. But why was that girl behind her transparent and crying? The girl with the flowers' smile seemed to crack as a giant sphere with cannons lodged into it took her place.

"No, thank you." Allen said as he cut into her with his left hand before she could fire one shot. The creature died, and the crying transparent girl smiled at him before she floated away into the air. "Hm…" He said quietly as he left to find a place that sold Christmas logs, his master's golem resting on his shoulder.

.x-lXl-x.

Some time earlier…

It wasn't a luxurious life, but it was a life. It wasn't so bad so long as the flower girl could sell flowers. Even if she couldn't, she could always go out into the woods to harvest the wild berries there. The house was never very warm during the winter, but she didn't have a problem keeping the cold at bay so long as her older sister was there with her. They didn't have much to eat, but she and her older sister could always break bread together.

Santa Claus never really visited the house, but they never had problems finding a small gift for each other. Her older sister was all she had. Their mother had left them after their father had died from illness, so at least she didn't have to worry about trying to get more than one small gift. Flowers weren't hard to find in town, but they bloomed much prettier in the woods. She could get some good income from them, but flowers died in winter, so she wouldn't make much in time for Christmas.

Her older sister would always smile despite that. She would tell her that things would be okay so long as they were together, and that it didn't matter if they wouldn't have gifts.

Her older sister would always smile. Her older sister would always tell her that things would be okay.

So why did her older sister cry and complain about how she couldn't even take care of the only family she had left? Why did her older sister ever think that she'd be better off supporting herself?

Why did her older sister hang herself one fateful evening?

She didn't know if Santa Claus never visited them because they were poor, but she wished that he would visit her now. If he could perform Christmas miracles and give gifts, then she really wanted him to give her back her older sister. Being good all year long wasn't ever an issue. She was nothing but a poor flower girl. How much more good did she need to be?

And finally, she supposed, Santa Claus visited her that night. He was just as fat as the stories said, but he didn't have a white beard. He had big teeth, though. He came through her door, dressed in red, with a big sack of something. She didn't care for toys. All she wanted was her older sister. He showed her this strange…metal skeleton thing that would have been about her older sister's height when she had died. She didn't want the skeleton, though. She wanted her older sister.

"It shouldn't matter what she looks like so long as she is back, right? Call to her with all your heart and soul, and you will have your older sister." Santa Claus explained.

Could she really have her older sister back? Sure, she couldn't braid her older sister's hair anymore, but the skeleton wouldn't need to eat or anything. Her older sister wouldn't have to worry about not being able to support her if she still didn't have two mouths to feed. It wasn't perfect, but she was desperate. Christmas was nothing but a joyless day if she was all alone, after all.

Raising her arms up, she called her older sister's name with all her heart and soul.

.x-lXl-x.

"W-where…?" she asked herself. Someone yelled out her name in delight. It was…no. She was dead, wasn't she? Why did her little sister look so happy? How was she hugging her? She looked down at her now skeletal body, wrists and ankles bound by iron cuffs, her metallic back against some kind of wall. She looked to see a man dressed up as Santa Claus in the room. But, he didn't have a beard. He had huge teeth, though.

"Sister… I missed you so much!" Her little sister cried against her. About to test out her metallic jaw, she tried to say her little sister's name, but could feel her skull turning to face the Santa Claus-like man. He was grinning so widely to her. He took his hand, palm parallel to the floor, and made a knife-cutting gesture to his neck. She could feel her wrists and ankles breaking free of the cuffs, as if they were made of clay rather than iron.

"No…no!" Against her will, she had thrown her little sister against the wall. "You didn't have to be worried for me!" She yelled angrily as she walked towards her. "You should've been happy with what you had! Why did you wish for this?!" Her little sister was crying again, a scared and confused look on her face. She felt so angry now. Angry that her little sister made her into this monster. Angry that she had no control over this horrendous body. Angry that she now had to kill the only family she had.

"I don't understand…" her little sister said, tears like a never-ending waterfall. "Why are you…? I just wanted to see you again!"

"Like this?! You wanted me to be a monster?!" She took her little sister's forehead in her palm and smashed the back of her head against the wall. It wasn't enough to make her bleed, but it'd make her too disoriented to stop what was eventually coming. There was a strange sensation around her eye sockets. It felt hot, something really hot was trailing down to her jawbone and dripping off of it. (1)

"It doesn't matter what you look like. You'll always be-!" Her little sister's voice stopped as her bony hand had plunged through the flower girl's chest. She pulled out her hand from the now dead body. Her poor little sister…tears still falling.

"Don't worry too much about that wound." The Santa Claus-like man told her. "The skin will heal eventually when you wear her skin." He bandaged up her little sister's corpse around the chest. "You'll just need to wear another dress to cover up the bandages as well."

Like a puppet, she was still not given control of her body. She walked over to her little sister's body, putting a hand on the upper jaw and another on the lower jaw. She shoved her skeletal foot down her little sister's throat, the sickening sounds echoing in the little room that no one lived in now. She had stopped caring that this was her little sister, an uncontrollable hunger overtaking her. She needed to put this skin on and get to work.

"We wish you a merry Christmas. (Another foot down her little sister's throat)

We wish you a merry Christmas. (Now in goes the hipbone)

We wish you a merry Christmas. (Now in goes the ribcage)

And a happy New Year." The Santa Claus-like man sang as she shoved her skeleton deeper and deeper into the skin.

-ALLISDEADWHATASIGHT.

Akuma: So, I discovered this series. And these monsters are called akuma. My creator better not have named me after these mindless ball-shaped machine guns.

Holiday moral: You can't reclaim lost lives.

(1) – Yes, I tried to describe crying.