It’s day two of 12 Nightmares of the Holidays. If you missed it, please check out Jennifer Weigel’s scary good story.
The package wasn’t meant for Kristi, she knew that. The name on it was Dale Richards. The address was close, floor two while she was on floor five. And yet here it was, when she arrived home from work, a package sitting in front of her door where it most certainly did not belong.
Kristi picked it up and took it inside. She sat it on the kitchen table next to the dying Christmas cactus her mom had given her in lieu of a good present. Then she opened a beer and sat down to consider the thing.
So some delivery guy hadn’t been paying attention, and now she had to waste time on her Christmas Eve to deal with it.
Dale was an asshole, that was part of the problem. Never had a good word for anyone, that guy. Never the kind to open doors or help anyone get their groceries upstairs. If he’d gotten someone else’s box, he’d have dropped it downstairs next to all the mailboxes and left it there, package pirates be damned.
That’s what she’d do, she decided. She’d put the box downstairs and that would be the end of it.
But it was so late, and it was Christmas Eve. And she’d had such a long day at work, waiting on tables of festive, fun families. The box could sit on her table and wait until she got up in the morning. Hell, maybe it could wait until December 27th.
She didn’t know the time when she woke. It was pitch dark in her apartment. Her phone wasn’t glowing. No lights came from outside. She couldn’t even see the nightlight in her bathroom. Kristi muttered, figuring the block must have lost power again. She turned over and pulled the blanket closer around her. If the power was out, that meant her heat would be out. No sense leaving the warm bed and losing all that built-up body heat.
Kristi wondered briefly what had woken her. She didn’t think it was the sudden darkness. She thought it might be a sound. An unpleasant one, half-remembered in her post-sleep state.
She heard it again. The sound of something scraping along the floor between her bedroom and living room.
Kristi sat up in bed and reached for her phone. It should have at least enough juice to give her some light. But her hand never reached the bedside table. Instead, she felt something warm and wet and slick. Kristi pulled her hand back with a tone of disgust. She swung her feet to the ground and felt that same slick sensation.
Then, the sound around her changed. Something sharp and massive was crunching into her bed. Something else, wet and hot and bumpy was pushing against her, knocking her down and driving her closer to the grinding, massive things.
Something that felt like a giant tongue pushing her towards mashing teeth.
On Kristi’s kitchen table, the box was now empty, save for a Christmas card. Inside the card were two simple sentences.
You deserve this and more, Dale. Merry Christmas.
It hadn’t been meant for Kristi. But it was too late to correct that. Maybe it would still make its way down to floor two. Maybe by the 27th. It might decide to make some other stops along the way.
Jennifer Weigel
December 14, 2022 at 2:02 pm
Yeah, that’s why you should never be a package pirate… 😉
Or you could ask Mark Rober… https://youtu.be/3c584TGG7jQ
Nicole C. Luttrell
December 14, 2022 at 4:22 pm
Right?!