Christmess Girl

Act I

"... Now it was really no longer a joke, and Gregor forced himself, come what might, into the door. One side of his body was lifted up. He lay at an angle in the door opening. His one flank was sore with the scraping. On the white door ugly blotches were left. Soon he was stuck fast and would have not been able to move any more on his own. The tiny legs on one side hung twitching in the air above, the ones on the other side were pushed painfully into the floor. Then his father gave him one really strong liberating push from behind, and he scurried, bleeding severely, far into the interior of his room. The door was slammed shut with the cane, and finally it was quiet."

Barry, too, went quiet after that.

"Go on!" Natalia urged him.

"Nah... I think that's enough craziness for today, honey," he said. "Since when are you so interested in Franz Kafka's works? Do you really like creepy stories about men turning into giant bugs? Haven't you had enough of those on Zabytij Island?"

"I don't know... There's something interesting about it, don't you think? And there's a lot of truth in this story as well. People only like you as long as you're someone they know. But as soon something bad happens to you, as soon as you change... they quickly let go even of their dearest friends."

"And you fear someone could actually turn into a giant bug?"

"After everything we've been through, do you not? It's happened before."

Barry shook his head, laughing. "I would never let go of you, Natalia. Or any of my daughters. But you should really go to sleep now. We have a long day ahead of us."

"Thanks, Barry."

She still had trouble calling the old man her father, even though that was exactly what he had been to her since he saved her from that horrible island. He and his wife Kathy had become parental substitutes to Natalia, who had been orphaned at an age too young to actually remember her real parents. They had died in a floating city overrun by bioterrorism, and an entire island overrun by bioterrorism was the place she had encountered Barry for the first time when she was nine.

Now, two years later, she was a full-fledged member of the Burton family. Moira and Polly were her big sisters, and they took turns at reading bedtime stories to her like Barry had just a minute ago. Everyone was so nice and welcoming, it was like she had lived in this house since forever.

But something wasn't right about all this, and she had yet to come up with a way of explaining it to her new family.

"Do you want me to leave the small light on?" Barry asked as he walked out of the room.

"No, thanks. I'm a big girl now. And if I do get scared, I still have Lottie to take care of me," Natalia explained, clinging to the stuffed brown bear in her arms.

"Alright, then. Good night."

It was the night before Christmas in the year 2013, and tomorrow would be a special day. Not just because of the occasion, but also because Natalia would get to meet Barry's, and in a way also her own, extended family. Claire Redfield was already friends with Natalia, but they hadn't seen each other in ages. On the other hand, Claire's brother Chris and his partner Jill Valentine were people she had only heard stories of – quite exciting ones to say the least – but never met in person. That was going to change, because they were invited to join the Burtons on Christmas Eve.

And that was the "long day" Barry had been talking about. There was a lot to prepare, and Natalia was eager to help, so she figured it would really be best to fall asleep quickly.

Despite everything she had experienced at her young age, the traumatic memories of living without parents, Zabytij Island and other horrors, she usually didn't have trouble sleeping. But that had changed recently. There was a part of her that just wouldn't stick to the rules she and other members of her family had established. And that was the big secret she couldn't talk about to anyone.

"Why are you closing your eyes, Natalia? You're not going to sleep now, are you? You're not even tired."

"Go away..."

It always started like that.

"Are you going to waste time in bed just because the old fart told you to? Come on! There's so much more exciting stuff you could be doing right now."

"Not interested!"

"Really? So you wouldn't like to find out what your Christmas gifts will be a day early?"

Natalia opened her eyes and rolled them before sitting up. There she was, sitting in front of the mirror, or rather, in the mirror, staring at her from the other side. She always appeared in that same dark purple dress, her hair in a braid, the way Natalia herself preferred to wear it, but blonde. Her skin was also paler, her eyes brighter, she basically looked like a scary ghost version of Natalia, an effect further emphasized by the dim, white light of the moon falling in through the window.

"Come on, hurry up!" she said. "Let's find out what's under the tree for us."

"You mean, for me," Natalia corrected her. "You're not part of this family!"

The girl in the mirror that wasn't really her mirror image rolled her eyes. "But I am you! The sooner you accept that, the sooner we can stop arguing and start having fun."

"You and I don't have the same definition of that word. And you're not me!"

"Fine! Whatever you need to tell yourself."

Natalia's condition was the result of an experiment she had unwillingly taken part in back on the island. A scientist called Alex Wesker, obsessed with the idea of becoming immortal by transferring her mind into the body of a younger, healthier vessel, had chosen her to be that vessel, and succeeded despite the combined efforts of Barry, Moira and Claire to stop her. Alex had long since passed away physically, blown up by Claire after transforming into a horrible monster, but her mind was still there, living on in this new body and constantly trying to take control over it. So far Natalia hadn't succumbed to her influence – hell, she hadn't even realized anything was off for almost eighteen months. But then, half a year ago, Alex had started talking to her, first in her sleep, then only at night, and now she could do it whenever she pleased. And she never stopped, getting more and more intrusive as time went by. She was also the reason for Natalia's sudden interest in the disturbing works of a certain late European author.

But as annoying as she was, sometimes she actually had useful ideas. No matter how much she tried to deny it, Natalia was curious. Not only about what she herself would get, but also the others. Even after two years in this household where people were gifting each other on every possible occasion – Christmas, birthdays, Valentine's Day, anything really – the concept of giving and receiving presents was still new to her.

So what was she going to do? Go back to bed and try to sleep even though she wasn't even tired? Or go outside and take a peek? There was nothing wrong with a little peek after all, was there?

"What do you think, Lottie?" she asked her stuffed bear.

Lottie just looked at her with those big, black eyes, not saying anything. For some reason she was unusually quiet tonight.

"That's what you get for asking a toy's opinion," Alex mocked her.

Of course that stupid ghost would never understand the connection Natalia had with Lottie. But the bear never broke its stubborn silence, so Natalia decided for herself and quickly got out of bed.

"I knew you couldn't resist!" Alex said triumphantly from beyond the looking glass.

"Just as I knew you couldn't keep your mouth shut. Now don't say another word! I'm already doing what you're asking."

"Good girl. Next time ask me right away instead of that stupid bear. You know, I think it's actually a good thing he doesn't talk too much. If memory serves me right, the last thing he ever said to you was something along the lines of Gosh-arooney, you little bitch! What does that even mean? Not a very educated bear, is he?"

"Lottie is a she." Why did Natalia constantly have to remind everyone of that little fact? She didn't remember the last time she had run into a boy named Lottie.

"Whatever," Alex said dismissively. "And then it dropped dead... how sad! Then again, it had been suicidal before, which doesn't surprise me at all. I would be too if I had to spend my life with a boring girl that deliberately misses out on all the fun... But that's what I'm doing right now anyway, isn't it? And it's not like I can just kill myself like Lottie."

"Oh, I wish you would!"

"But then you would die too. We don't want that, do we?"

"Well, I'm not missing out on any fun right now, so there's nothing for you to complain about. Come along if you have to, but be quiet already!"

Being the baby of the family and as many as eight years younger than the person closest to her in age, Natalia was, of course, the only one in the household who had to go to bed that early. Her room had been a guest room before she moved in, and was the last door in a long corridor on the upper floor of the house, which meant she had to get past everybody else's open bedrooms without being spotted.

Due to her adventures on Zabytij Island, she did have quite some experience in regards to being stealthy, but it wasn't quite as easy with normal humans as with BOWs. People that hadn't been infected with any artificially created viruses didn't have that colorful aura around them that she usually saw on monsters, even through walls. So when she got close to the rooms of her sisters, which were on opposite sides of the corridor – both doors wide open, of course – she had to stay still for a while and rely on her normal human abilities, especially her sense of hearing.

"Have you seen my phone, sis?" Moira shouted from her room.

"No... Want me to call you?" Polly asked.

"I already tried that, but the fucking thing must be out of juice. Just when I misplaced it... ugh, fucking technology!"

Polly laughed. "How did you manage to always find your hunting weapons back on that island when you can't even remember where you put your phone?"

But Moira didn't stop whining. "How am I supposed to send Christmas greetings to my friends without my phone?"

"Maybe you could write cards?"

"Maybe you could stop making fun of me and help me look for it?"

"Alright, alright! I'm coming."

"That was your cue to hide!" Alex unnecessarily warned Natalia, her reflection in the window at the end of the corridor overseeing her every move.

Thank God Kathy was an interior designer who couldn't stand boring, empty corridors, so there was a piece of furniture here and there for Natalia to hide behind. It was the first time since she had moved in that she was glad about the presence of the useless cabinet between her door and Moira's, the only purposes of which usually were to look pretty and get in the way. Thanks to it, Polly didn't see Natalia when she left her room and walked over into her older sister's.

It was quite amazing how well those two managed to get along, despite their diverging personalities. Moira was a rebellious tomboy with short, dark hair who took after her father in many ways, swearing a lot and generally distrusting strangers, a major difference being that she didn't share Barry's enthusiasm for guns after one of them had almost gotten her sister killed in the past. Polly, on the other hand, was kind and very girly, interested in aesthetics and a healthy lifestyle, just like her mother, who she had also inherited her blond curls from. She usually straightened her hair, though, sometimes colored it as well, which was no surprise considering that she had just begun her training to become a hairdresser, already dreaming of setting up her very own beauty salon someday.

Moira and Polly really didn't have an awful lot in common, but they were known to stick together in the most difficult of times, such as when one of them was desperately searching for her phone. Natalia left them at that and sneaked by their rooms while they were busy trying to find Moira's most prized possession in the most unusual places.

Next was the master bedroom, the place where presents were usually stored... at least until last year, when curiosity had gotten the best of three sisters, resulting in them spontaneously deciding not to wait for the evening. So it wasn't the first time in this house that someone was sneaking about in their pajamas looking for something to ruin their own surprise. Of course, Barry and Kathy had taken precautions to assure it wouldn't happen again anytime soon, so this year they had moved the presents to another location. Too bad for them, however, Natalia knew exactly where that was, and it was a pretty good hiding spot, leaving her to wonder why they hadn't always kept the presents there.

But before she could go there, she had to get past her parents' bedroom first, and that wasn't going to be an easy task, because Kathy was inside. Kathy Burton, the woman who had never gotten involved with any viruses that could cause her body to mutate, but still seemed to have eyes everywhere, seeing everything.

"You could always throw a smokescreen bottle, you know..." Alex whispered into Natalia's ear.

"Sure! Because I just unlocked the skill to make them magically appear in my hand, and it wouldn't be suspicious at all."

"Oh snap! How sarcastic! I didn't even know you had that in you, Natalia."

"Hush! Listen... Do you hear that?"

Someone was snoring softly in the master bedroom. It definitely wasn't Barry, though, because when he snored, it sounded like a chainsaw next to a bullhorn. Natalia carefully leaned forward to take a look – and there she was, on the bed, fallen asleep over reading a book.

"Great! Katwoman is asleep. Now all you have to do is get the old fart's keys and make it to the storm shelter," Alex said.

"I know," Natalia said, walking past the door and towards the stairs. "But... where is Barry? If he catches me..."

"He won't," Alex reassured her. "You know how many times that ugly old monster version of me sneaked by him when he was looking for the militant lesbian on the island? No? Neither does he. That's how blind he is."

Even after all those months, Natalia still rolled her eyes at the way Alex kept making fun of her family, especially with her mean nicknames. Polly, the one she hated the most because she thought of her as stupid, had been given a whole bunch of them over the last few months, until Alex had finally settled for Poo. She had justified her decision by pointing out that she called Barry an old fart, and sometimes, when you fart carelessly, a little bit of poo comes out as well; that was how she said Polly must have come into existence. Then there was Moira, who she called a militant lesbian just because of the short hair, and Kathy was Katwoman. Natalia was already wondering how Alex was going to defile the names of the guests they were expecting the next day.

But for now she had bigger problems. The staircase led directly into the living room, and Barry was down there, watching the sports channel on TV.

"Don't worry about it," Alex said. "He's already very inattentive when he's not concentrating on anything, let alone when he's distracted by gay porn."

"It's not porn. It's football."

"It's a bunch of sweaty men leaping at each other and grabbing balls. I don't care what you want to call it, just keep moving!"

"But I can't! Don't you see his keys on the table? I need them to get inside the storm shelter! He'll see me if I take them."

"Then get him out of the living room, duh!"

Natalia went down as quietly as possible, minding every step because the stairs were quite old and noisy. Thankfully, Barry was a very enthusiastic football fan who started bawling whenever his favorite team scored a goal, or got close to doing so, so his powerful voice often drowned out the creaking of the stairs.

"Ugh, men can be such simple-minded creatures!" Alex scoffed. "How can you get this excited about some dude throwing a ball? What a freak!"

"... says the woman whose hobby is stitching together dead body parts to create undead abominations and sending them out to kill humans until only one survives that she can transfer her soul into," Natalia retorted. "You of all people should be very careful who you call a freak!"

"Well, if I could do that right now and place a revenant in the garden, that would at least give the old fart a reason to leave the room and you an opportunity to get his keys, so don't undermine the usefulness of my hobbies."

"If it wasn't for you, I wouldn't be all doing this in the first place!"

"See? My positive influence is noticeable in every little thing you do. You should be thanking me instead of complaining, you ungrateful brat! But if you don't like my idea, here's another one: Go to the kitchen."

"Why?"

"Shut up and do as I say!"

The kitchen was easy to reach without entering Barry's field of vision.

"Look under the table," Alex instructed Natalia as soon as she got there.

Due to the darkness in the room, it took Natalia a while to see what Alex wanted her to find. It was a black smartphone with pink stripes that she recognized at once.

"That's Moira's! How did it get there?"

"I wouldn't know..." Alex shrugged her shoulders in the kitchen window.

But Natalia saw right through her. "It was you! You hid it here, and now you're silently laughing at Moira looking for it upstairs! I'm going to give it back to her..."

"No, you're not! Or do you want me to take control again?"

That was a threat Natalia couldn't ignore. Alex had done this before, and she could do much worse by taking control over the body they were sharing. Natalia had yet to figure out if Alex could do it at will or if certain requirements had to be met, probably the latter, but sometimes it just happened, and she couldn't always remember everything afterward. Likewise, she had no memory of how Moira's phone had gotten under the table, and why Alex would put it there of all places.

"Take it and call your house phone," Alex said.

"But you heard Moira, it's out of juice!"

"No, it isn't, I just switched it off so she wouldn't recover it all too quickly. Now switch it back on and call. Old fart thinks you're asleep, so is Katwoman, and the girls are busy. He's the only one who can pick up the phone."

"And you think he will? While there's football on TV?" Natalia was skeptical.

"It could be his friends calling to cancel on him. That's something he would want to know, even if it means missing a few seconds of his gay porn. Long enough for you to get in and out with the keys."

"Fine! But after that we're giving Moira's phone back."

"Don't even think of it! If you do that, I will take control again and smash it against the wall!"

Whatever plan Alex had come up with that she needed the phone for, she wouldn't let anything get in her way. Natalia sighed, but there was nothing she could do, so she called the right number and waited.

The house phone was in the lower corridor next to the front door, so Barry had to leave the living room to reach it. After shouting the entire house down, unsuccessfully trying to get someone else to take the call, he finally got up from the couch, swearing under his breath while hurrying outside. There was no one on the phone, though, so his efforts were in vain, and when he returned to the living room, he was so busy catching up on what he had missed of the match that he didn't even notice his keys were missing.

Opening and closing the front door was no issue, it was yet another sound drowned out by the TV and Barry's very vocal fanboyism. It was pretty cold outside, so Natalia decided to hurry. Opening the hatch in the garden, she finally gained access to the storm shelter where Barry and Kathy were keeping the presents for their children, friends and each other, only two of which were already wrapped. But even with those that weren't, it was quite easy figuring out who was going to get what.

"Let's see..." Natalia took a closer look. "Polly is into fashion, so I'm pretty sure the pink designer purse is hers. This chocolate box and that book called History of the Motorbike must be for Claire, since she loves both sweets and bikes. I'm not sure about the sandwich maker and the collection of comic books about boulder-punching superheroes, but Moira is probably getting these discs."

"Discs? What does the militant lesbian need discs for?" Alex wondered.

"There's rock music on them. Moira likes rock. And Polly hates it!"

"Okay, so now we know what everyone else will be getting. But where is our present?"

That was indeed a legitimate question. There was nothing in the storm shelter that looked like something they were going to give to Natalia.

"They probably wrapped it already," she assumed, looking at the wrapped presents. That didn't seem very likely, however. One of them clearly had the shape of a bottle, so it probably contained alcohol for Barry's adult friends, the other was small and square-shaped and had a tag reading Kathy stuck to it.

"Don't fool yourself!" Alex said. "They've probably forgotten about you. Not surprising, considering that you've only been with them for two years, and they love their other daughters a lot more."

"That's not true! I'm sure there's a logical explanation."

"I just gave you that logical explanation. Now you just have to accept it. Well... Maybe you should go back to bed and huddle up to your stupid bear. It seems to be your only friend after all."

Natalia couldn't help feeling disappointed. What if it was true? What if they had indeed forgotten about her? She didn't want to let Alex know what she was thinking, but of course that foreign conscience in her already knew.

"You know what we will do? Ruin Christmas for your so-called family! That will be your revenge. They don't care about you, and now you're going to show them how little you care. The right to be happy is not theirs if it isn't yours as well."

"No, I'm not going to do that! Shut up already!"

"Make me!"

But Natalia wasn't strong enough to fight with Alex tonight. She had gotten tired after all and decided to go to bed, hoping she'd wake up tomorrow and find the logical explanation she couldn't find right now. But of one thing she was sure: No matter what happened, she would not let Alex ruin Christmas!