The Twelve Gauge of Christmas Read online

  “You are not saying that... that’s... impossible.”

  “You idiot. How do you think they reproduce?”

  “I don’t know, we are told they are immortal. At least until collective belief sustains them.”

  “Well, this one wasn’t, was he? What did the autopsy say?”

  “I don’t really know, the CSI, the Christian Science Investigations team still has the body, and they haven’t told us a thing yet. You know bureaucracy...”

  “Yeah, wait and hope... They’ll never tell you anything. No one ever says anything. At least the ancient Greeks freely admitted it, but since you people took over, it was all virgin births and celibate saints.”

  “Look, I’m just a Religious Officer, I don’t write the Doctrine, I enforce it...”

  “They are just like us, understand? Well almost like us, but if you shoot them do they not bleed? And not that this info will ever be of any use to you at this point, but when the old man got a little drunk he used to say that the Tooth Fairy was a total slut.”

  “Look, now, let’s be reasonable. Yes, you might have committed a murder. Maybe you had a good reason for it, it’s not really for me to decide,” I blabbered at random, turning slowly around to face her. She would not shoot somebody who was looking her straight in the eyes. I hoped she wouldn’t.

  Corinna was there, on her knees. Right behind her a small door hung open. The opening wasn’t much bigger than a fridge but I saw it had no floor, and a series of rungs disappeared in the darkness below. That’s where she had come up from, probably some closet... no, I realized, it was the tool shed in the patio. Why build something like that, anyway?

  She had some old relic of a shotgun in her hands, but unfortunately I knew for sure it worked quite well. She didn’t flinch, repositioned the gun to point directly at my face. I tried to keep my cool, I was sweating profusely.

  Keep talking, I told myself. “Let’s not compound what you have already done with more bloodshed.” I was moving, carefully, until I felt the plywood against my back and I couldn’t get any farther. I rose slowly to my feet, still keeping my hands in the air. “Now, you claim to be his daughter. That might even buy you some credit with the jury.”

  “I claim nothing! This is just how it happens. Except this one was quite the screw-up, wasn’t he? First he had a daughter, instead of the son he needed to continue his myth. Then the financial catastrophe he got himself involved in. After my mother died he came back again, to see if he could fix his mistake. Again and again. Until this morning. And that’s when I made sure it was really going to be the last time. Happy now?”

  Her finger tensed on the trigger, and I moved fast. Right where my head had been the plywood board exploded in dust and splinters. She was a bad shot, she had killed her father at point-blank. The second shot took off the lightbulb, and shivers of glass rained everywhere. The child was screaming at the top of his lungs. I had to stop her now, before she could reload. I dived in the direction where she had been, and felt the hard kick of the rifle’s butt straight in my face. My upper lip split and a good amount of cartilage was displaced in my nose. I fell back, blood rushing down my throat, making me cough. The only light in the room now came from the pellet holes. That’s when I knew exactly how a starry night in hell would feel.

  She moved out of her nook, walking on her knees, incredibly fast. Skirt draped around her, she looked like a giant insect with a deadly sting. Moving, not breathing, not fast enough, I got up on my knees and went for her again, feinted to the left to avoid being socked, tried for the shotgun. I grabbed it, my left hand burning on the barrel but I didn’t let go.

  We struggled for a while, I was breathing hard from my mouth, my nose leaking a bloody waterfall. I pulled: big mistake. She pushed in the same direction. The battered plywood behind me went in pieces, as we fell through on the unfinished deck. I hit the planks with my head, and she was on me, I felt her knee sinking in the solar plexus and I almost went out for good. I couldn’t recover my breath, and she was pressing the hot barrel of the shotgun on my throat. Sunlight felt dimmer and dimmer, her wild grunts echoed liquid in my head. I gathered all the strength I had left and pushed with my legs, felt the termite-infested boards cracking. And suddenly, I was free, light, floating in the air, falling. I closed my eyes anticipating the impact on the cold concrete and the darkness that would follow. Instead it was a cold splash that woke up every last bit of me, and the feeling of sinking in liquid shit. I felt stuff floating around me in the near darkness, and for a few seconds I lost sense any of direction. Then I touched the hard bottom with my hands. My eyes stung when I opened them, the sun was but a faint disk of light in a thick greenish-brown haze. The pool, we had fallen in the deep end of the pool.

  There was something here, something I nearly missed diving through the water. A large structure. A wooden sled. That’s how she got rid of it. I swam towards it grabbed something to pull myself up, the leather reins, cut sharply. She probably let the reindeer go back to Lapland or wherever they were from. And all around me, a dark red cloud was spreading. I swam through it, towards the faint light above. I found Corinna’s body close to the surface, folded in two, a rod had gone through her abdomen and protruded, bloody from her back. She had impaled herself on the metal railing of the sled. I had no time to check on her, my chest felt like it was about to implode, and I resurfaced. I coughed out a lung holding on to the edge of the pool.

  I sensed him before I saw him, or perhaps I smelled him first. Shiiit, that had to be one dirty diaper.

  He looked down at me with those big blue eyes, the curly blond hair.

  “Mommy?” he asked, worried.

  He could barely stand up, how the heck did he get down there without killing himself on the ladder? He obviously had some innate talent for that kind of stunt.

  I coughed some more, caught my breath, tried my best. “Mommy is gone... for a while... Nicholas. Can I call you Nick?”

  He could not reply, of course, just stared at me while I tried to pull myself up from the murky waters. I thought about stopping at the drugstore, on the way home, I definitely had to pick up some diapers. And what did they even eat when they were that age? It had been so long I hardly even remembered. I thought I’d get some milk. Milk and cookies.

  He was bound to like that.

  ***

  About the author:

  I don't remember a time of my life when I did not enjoy writing, drawing or simply telling stories. A recent short story of mine, "The Baby in the Cupboard," has been published in the UK in the anthology "Late-Night River Lights." I am currently working on a collection of dystopian California stories, a novel for young (but smart) adults and a series of thrillers set in beautiful Santa Teresa, CA.

  Connect with Me Online:

  http://www.paologardinali.com/