Good tidings to you wherever you are—
Mom and Dad are sad again. Mom is, at least. Dad won't leave the room. Ricky's half glad that he doesn't, because Dad in the room means he's angry but won't take it out on anything other than the furniture around him. But Ricky is also sad that Mom is sad because she's made breakfast for everyone, and two plates at the decorated table grow cold.
There's a photo by the plate that isn't Dad's, because this is the first of every Christmas for the rest of their lives where they will be one family member short.
"You haven't touched your eggs," Mom says, but there are no eggs on the plate. She made chocolate chip pancakes and forgot to add the chocolate chips. "Go on. You need that protein to grow big and strong." She calls him by the wrong name.
Ricky cuts a triangle into the pancakes and glances into the living room, where half the ornaments are shattered on the floor. He's upset at the lack of presents and feels bad about it. There are other things to be upset about.
Mom says it wasn't his fault that it happened, but it feels like it was. His parents sure act like it was.
He angrily wipes a tear from his eyes and winces, the skin around them tender to the touch. At least it's not black anymore, the greens and yellows a sign that it has begun to heal. He wishes it would heal faster. Every day the bruise lingers is another day he's staying home from school. We understand a period of bereavement, his teacher had said, but it's been weeks.
It's only been weeks.
The bedroom door slams open and he winces, curling in on himself as best he can while seated at the dining table. He watches Dad pour himself a mug of coffee, then grab the bottle of whiskey from on top of the refrigerator.
"What you deserve is a fucking shrink," he's saying. "You think you deserve Christmas gifts? You think you deserve anything? Well, I deserve to get my boy back, but we all know that's not happening now, is it?"
Ricky looks at his mother, but she doesn't say anything. He wishes she would. He understands that she's grieving, they all are, but goddammit if only she'd say something. This was their fault to begin with, not his. Had they not been the way they are—
"You're the reason your brother's dead and don't you ever dare fucking forget that, you get me? It's always the good ones, the normal ones, that get taken away before their time."
Ricky clenches his teeth.
No. No, it is not his fault. He was only trying to make him feel better, to be a good older sibling. He took him down to Freddy's with what little of an allowance he had to make up for the cruddy day his little brother had had after Dad yelled at him for failing his math test.
The animatronic Santa Clause begins to dance when Dad walks by it. He yanks the cord free from the electrical outlet and uses it like a whip, sending the machine crashing against the wall. Santa's head comes halfway off, now broken jaw hanging by a chunk of fabric. He holds the pieces in his hands and stares at Ricky.
"We had a saying back where I grew up," Dad says, prowling towards the table. "An eye for an eye and all that. You wanna know what that means?" Big, meaty hands reach for him and Ricky ducks under the table, making a mad dash for his bedroom.
Thundering footsteps and a ferocious roar makes him want to vomit, hands shaking as he slams the bedroom door shut and turns the lock. Fists pound against the flimsy plywood as Ricky pushes his bookshelf under the handle and dives underneath the bed. He can still get in. He's a dad and dads always know their way around the house.
The world beneath his bed is vast and dark and filled with cobwebs. It feels like a stupid place for a teenager to hide, but Ricky doesn't feel his age; he feels like he's five and like he's better off taking his chances with the monsters under the bed and inside the closet.
Within the sea of VHS tapes and old sweaters, he finds the Freddy plush he won years ago when the animatronic band still charmed him. He feels blinding hatred towards the thing, but right then it is the loneliness that wins, that yawning hole in his chest where happiness used to live. Even during their darkest days, at least him and Jer could bike down to the pizzeria for a respite.
Ricky grabs Freddy and holds him to his chest. He was the least annoying of the mascots, he tells himself, but that was because once upon a time Ricky wanted to be a rockstar too. He wanted to hop on a bus and go on tour and see new places and hang out with cool people and wear weird clothes. Like David Bowie, or Prince. Away from his parents.
His fingers dig into brown fur, hiccuping sobs dying out before he sees it out of the corner of his eye.
This isn't right. This isn't how this goes.
Or maybe it is. Nightmares and memories all blur together into a hellish abomination.
A white face stares at him, with its eyes and grinning mouth black holes that eat the darkness under the bed. It's horrifying, like a ghost coming to take him away. He scoots away from it, but a long, slender arm moves to hold a finger up to its mouth in a shushing gesture.
The door splinters and Ricky slaps a hand over his own mouth. Of course he found him.
He reaches out for the marionette whose mask is streaked with painted tears, Freddy still tight against his chest, but it doesn't matter. There is no universe in which it will ever matter because a hand will close on the back of his shirt and yank him out of his hiding spot, and the only thing he can reach for is a ghost.
The sun has set and the lights are out. Ricky can only see in hues of purple and blue, like a film being held over his swollen eyes.
It wasn't his fault Jeremy is dead. It wasn't any machine's fault, either.
His head hurts.
The marionette leads him into the kitchen in the dead of night, crawling onto the countertop to wrap its spindly striped limbs around the knife block like a spider. It continues to look at him, expectantly, and he understands.
Of course he didn't want to do it. This sad little thing told him to. He didn't kill his brother.
As for his parents? That's an entirely different story.
—good tidings for Christmas and a Happy New Year!
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