Famous Last Words

It wouldn’t have escalated if they hadn’t gone after my cat.

You know how it is when things start to get out of hand. One minute, all’s well, and the next, well, you’re standing in your yard screaming you don’t give a damn so loud you don’t recognize your own voice.

Let me start over.

It all began with a gift from my mother-in-law. See, Mom used to work at this doll factory, where they hand painted the faces. And frankly, I find those soulless bright blue eyes pretty creepy. Even toured the factory once when we visited. Identical faces, no matter which way you look, whether it’s a moose or a mouse. But that’s how we wound up with Satan’s souvenirs. You wouldn’t believe how fast I packed those things up as soon as we got home.

But it was Christmas, and it’s once a year, and my husband likes them, and what the hell. It was a gift. I could take it for a few weeks. We so rarely decorate, and this year was kind of a bummer to start with. If it made him happy, that was all that mattered. I’d just tuck those little suckers in the corner.

So there went Rudolph, minus the red nose. The black fuzzy ball was falling off anyway, dangling by a thread, and I couldn’t wait for the cat to eat it. I tried to rename the little guy Blitzen, but my true thoughts came through when I called him Blitzkrieg instead.

And in front of Rudolph, drunken dancing Santa balanced on one curved leg, hand waving a cane, dressed in motheaten purple velvet and with a floppy top hat covering most of that terrible unblinking face. The nearby tree counted as a distraction, since it had LED lights so bright you could see them from space. You could barely watch the TV over the glow, although that might be because the tree was all of eighteen inches tall and wrapped in lights so thick the branches were obliterated.

Anyway. It slowed down for a few days, and I was able to mostly forget those bizarre toys were there. The tree got knocked over a few times, but that’s what cats do. Until I came down one morning and stared. After a minute, I got some coffee, then crept closer, steaming cup in hand, still gazing at the scene in front of me.

See, Santa was riding Rudolph, right in front of the dark and silent television, and my husband swore it wasn’t him. The cat was all poofy-tailed and hid most of the day, and it’s not like she had the manual dexterity to do it. Or the sense of humor, frankly. Kitty’s intense about her belly rubs, thank you.

So I shook my finger at them, tucked them back in their corner, and thought nothing more of it. Until, of course, the next morning.

“You’re sure this isn’t a variation of elf on a shelf?” I couldn’t stop asking, even though I could see my husband’s face twisting in annoyance after the third time. But what else was I supposed to think? Santa and Generic Reindeer had been in our usual seats, and the TV was tuned to the Hallmark Channel.

“I’m warning you guys.” I put the Duo of Doom back into their corner and pushed them closer toward the wall, behind the chair. “It’s not funny.”

The next morning, I tripped coming out of the bedroom and nearly fell down the stairs. Wrenched my shoulder grabbing the bannister at the last minute, and the rug burn and bruises aren’t a ton of fun, either. But mostly I remember screaming when I found myself facing two laughing, vacant, blue-eyed terrors.

My husband rolled his eyes and pointed out the cat had been known to carry things to our doorstep before. “An early Christmas present.”

“Sure,” I muttered, but I didn’t believe it. These wireframe nightmares were as big as she was. Besides, Kitty was still haunting the basement, low to the ground and stalking when she had to come upstairs for food. I dropped a dish that day, and she bolted out of the kitchen so fast she was a furry feline meteorite.

Breakfast was aspirin and coffee that morning, and then I chucked those painted demons into the corner. Rudolph and Santa landed in a tangled heap, and I didn’t care if I never saw them again. The smack they made was satisfying, let me tell you.

I made my husband leave the bedroom first the next morning, just in case. He opened the door, and even cleared the stairs for me. He’s a good one. But he didn’t notice they weren’t in the living room where Santa’s confused and drunken reign of terror should have been, probably because they were supposed to be properly hidden.

Which meant I was the one who found Father Frakking Christmas and the Reindeer from Hell on the stove. With the gas burner flaming merrily blue, a marshmallow toasting on Santa-the-drum-major’s half-melted plastic mace, as if they weren’t made of felt and highly flammable.

This time, I growled. And then I hid them in the oven, where they couldn’t escape.

I probably looked like a crazy person. I know I felt like one, especially trying to explain it when the muffins suddenly didn’t fit on the oven rack. Hubby sent me for a massage, poured me a glass of wine – I told you he was a good one – and suggested I go to bed early.

And all that stress came slamming back with nightmares of those damn blue eyes, off key bells mixed with yodeling so loud Switzerland would have given up its vaunted neutrality to make the affront to good taste and hearing stop. Until I woke up and realized the yowling of my dreams was very, very real.

And my poor black tabby was wearing Deer Jerky’s jingle bell bridle.

Well. I don’t quite remember what happened next, upon the advice of my lawyer. I can tell you that it all seemed quite reasonable at the time, and that everyone in the family made it out of the house safely before it blew. Even the cat.

Sometimes, it takes a ridiculous amount of effort to solve a problem, but it’s like vacuuming for a few minutes after you suck up the spider, just to make sure it’s dead. But as counsel mentioned, I’m sure that’s an unrelated tangent.

This time, it wasn’t so hard to say goodbye to the house, or to move onto the next chapter of my life. I hope my future doesn’t include jail. But whatever happens, I have a few last words.

Next year, we’re skipping Christmas.

***

I don’t think that’s what Leigh Kimmel expected when this week’s prompt was supposed to be inspired by Billy Joel’s “Famous Last Words” song…my prompt went to Cedar Sanderson: “The belladonna tasted like bitter blueberry and regret.”

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