Thank you for opening my story! I hope you enjoy. Just a warning- chapter two and the first half of chapter three will contain physical abuse, and the whole fic deals with triggers and unhealthy coping mechanisms (murder is in the title, after all...) so please be warned. The chapters will also get longer as the story progresses, but hopefully the trigger warnings will grow fewer. Hopefully.
Oh, you'd better watch out,
You'd better not cry,
Better not pout, I'm telling you why,
Santa Claus is coming to town!
I tried to calm the panicked feelings clawing at my chest. The voice on the radio seemed so cheery; it made me sick.
Ron, best friend extrordinairre, quickly leaned over the seat to flail at the radio switch until he brushed it off. He was always in tune with my triggers, but he never made a big deal about it, for which I was grateful.
"You could have asked me to turn off the radio, Ronnie," his mom said from the driver's seat. smiling at us in the rearview mirror.
"S'ok, mom, I didn't want to bother you," Ron said. Didn't want to embarrass me, more like, but he didn't say so.
He waited until his mom was focused on the road again to hunker closer, whispering in my ear. "He's not really in league with your Dad, you know. He can't be. Santa's all about joy and love and all that jazz."
"That's not even true," I snapped back, also keeping my voice low. "He puts coal in the stockings of bad kids. That's in all the stories."
"That's just a scare tactic to get us to be good," Ron started, but then he realized what he was saying. "Raich…"
"I don't want to talk about it any more," I said, turning to look out the window. Beside me, Ron sighed.
We rode in silence until Ron's mom turned down a familiar, dingy street. I took deep breaths, trying to stay calm as we pulled up in front of my house.
"Here we are!" Ron's mom sounded too bright and cheerful compared to the dark weight in my gut.
"Thanks for the ride, Ma'am," I said, grabbing my backpack and jumping from the car as quickly as possible.
"Merry Christmas!" she called.
"Yeah, goodbye." I closed the door and headed for the house. When I looked back, Ron was peering through the window, concern on his face.
I went inside and closed the door softly. It didn't matter, though; Dad still heard me come in.
"Who was that?" he demanded. He hated when I got a ride home from school - or anything else - because it brought people close to the house. To him.
"Just a friend from school," I said. "Their mom didn't want me to walk home in this cold." I'd learned long ago to leave out any details about my friends, including gender, for fear that my dad would take exception to something. The way his brows knit told me he hadn't missed my vagueness, but he let it slide.
"How was your mother?" he asked. It was always 'your mother,' as if he'd never met her.
"Fine," I said. "She would've liked to see you, I think."
Dad grunted, a 'drop it' sound. I went to the closet to take off my coat, mind shifting back to my afternoon visit. Mom was in a mental institution, and had been for three years. She'd been crazy before that, but it wasn't until she'd OD'd on heroin (again) that they finally committed her. Since then, I only got to visit her occasionally. That's where I'd gone off to today. What I didn't tell dad was that the visit had been pretty short - it was depressing when your own mother had a younger mental age then yourself - and I'd spent the rest of the afternoon in the woods with Ron, talking about anything but Christmas.
"You don't have plans for tonight, right?" When I went into the kitchen, I noticed dad was making caramel popcorn - one of his favorite treats, which I despised; who ever thought sweet and salty together was a good idea? - and that there was egg nog on the counter. I liked egg nog the way Ron's mom made it, fresh on the stove with no liquor having ever come near it; hot, thick, sweet, and chunky with cooked egg before she strained it. Dad's store-bought junk would be filled with rum, whiskey, bourbon, or vodka, and as thin as skim milk.
"Nope." Last week, I'd been out every night. I'd told my dad I was at holiday parties, and I was, but what I didn't tell him was that I'd gone to a friends house for all eight nights of Hanukkah. Ron, sweetest of best friends, had come with me, even though he'd missed two or three Christmas parties because of it.
I could never tell my dad, of course, that Christmas parties triggered me. Not when he was the reason for the triggers.
"Good," dad said. "We can watch some christmas movies, spend some time together."
I tried not to flinch away from his words. After all, the last time we'd 'spent time together,' I'd ended up covered in welts and bruises, losing far too much blood. I'd given up telling myself that 'maybe tonight would be different' long ago. It wasn't like I couldn't see him pour extra rum into his own glass of egg nog.
It wasn't like anything had changed.