When Daryl asked his parents if they were ever going to get around to putting up the Christmas tree, his father answered by gulping his bourbon and growling, and his mother hummed while scraping a two-dollar scratcher with her lucky penny that had yet to deliver on its promising label.<\/p>\n
\u201cChristmas is next week,\u201d Daryl said.<\/p>\n
\u201cYeah?\u201d his dad said, pouring another drink.<\/p>\n
\u201cDon\u2019t you wanna know what I want?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWant?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cFor Christmas.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWant, want, want,\u201d Daryl\u2019s father sighed with a shake of his head. \u201cThat\u2019s all I hear.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cMom?\u201d Daryl said.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m listening, honey,\u201d his mom said, not looking up.<\/p>\n
\u201cWell, I\u2019m old enough to learn how to hunt and shoot now,\u201d Daryl began.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhoo-hoo!\u201d his mom cheered. \u201cI won twenty dollars!\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s great,\u201d his dad said. \u201cWin five grand a week for life, and someday you might break even.\u201d<\/p>\n
Daryl held his clenched fists down at his sides, hands balled so tight, his fingernails stabbed his palms and broke the skin. \u201cI want a rifle,\u201d he said. \u201cA twenty-two.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThat right?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cOr a switchblade\u2014so I can stick it in both your necks while you\u2019re sleeping.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThem blades is illegal in New York,\u201d Daryl\u2019s dad said. \u201cYou got another thing coming if you think I\u2019m traveling to another state to buy you anything.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cMaybe I\u2019ll ask Santa for it. Or a machete,\u201d Daryl said. \u201cI\u2019d like to swing it down on your head, see how far I can bury it into your skull.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThat reminds me,\u201d his dad said. \u201cWe need a new ax, since you broke the last one.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI broke the handle. We just need a new handle.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cNo, you need a new handle. And what\u2019s this talk of hunting with a twenty-two? That\u2019s too small a caliber.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cNot if you want what you\u2019re hunting to suffer. I want to take you into the woods, Dad, and shoot you a hundred times over before you die.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cA hundred shots?\u201d his dad said, astounded. \u201cYou\u2019d need a magazine longer than the rifle to let off that many rounds.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cNot if you have extra mags ready to go,\u201d Daryl said, \u201cwhich would be on my ammo belt.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYou got an ammo belt, do you?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cNot yet. I\u2019ll ask Santa.\u201d<\/p>\n
Daryl\u2019s dad snorted. \u201cLet me know how that works out.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIf I\u2019m lucky, I\u2019ll get me one of them fancy battery-powered drills. Use it to clear the wax out of your ears as I\u2019m scrambling your brains. Mom, too.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cHear that, honey? Our little Daryl thinks he\u2019s gonna be a carpenter.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cUh-huh,\u201d Daryl\u2019s mom said. She was holding her winning scratcher close to her face, regarding it like some mothers might admire their child\u2019s school photo.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat I really want is one of them knives where the blade curves like a banana,\u201d Daryl said. \u201cThey\u2019re easy to conceal and versatile for close quarter killing. I could pull it out and swipe it across your Adam\u2019s apple so fast you\u2019ll still be chugging that whiskey before you realize it\u2019s gushing out your throat instead of going into your belly.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat you need is a good pair of scissors,\u201d his dad said, \u201cso your mother can cut that abominable haircut you think is so fancy.\u201d<\/p>\n
Daryl combed his fingers through his curly mullet. \u201cAlso want me a litter of dermestid beetles. They\u2019re the ones that eat the flesh off carcasses till there\u2019s nothing left but bone. It\u2019s what I aim to do with your corpses once I get the nerve to kill you.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cDaryl!\u201d his mother snapped. \u201cHow many times must we tell you no when it comes to having pets?\u201d<\/p>\n
Daryl considered both his parents, watching them living in their own separate worlds, realities where drinking and winning the lottery were top priorities. Worlds where they had a son that they never listened to. At times, Daryl would say things to grab their attention and make them listen, to see if he could get them to hear him\u2014really hear him\u2014like describing all the ways he\u2019d kill them. It never worked, but someday he\u2019d get his mom and dad to listen.<\/p>\n
Daryl\u2019s mother put on her boots and jacket and left the house, heading for the gas station to cash her scratcher, likely returning with twenty dollars\u2019 worth of new ones. His father moved to the living room to continue boozing in front of the television, lounging in his new recliner he purchased secondhand. He had been spending most of his afternoons and nights in that chair, drinking, smoking, and snoozing, right in the spot where the Christmas tree was supposed to go.<\/p>\n
***<\/p>\n
On Christmas Eve, the presents arrived, gift-wrapped boxes of all shapes and sizes with no names on them. They lay on the floor behind his father\u2019s chair, and that whole day, whenever Daryl\u2019s old man got up to piss or refill his glass, he\u2019d sneak a peek and try to guess what was in them. Every box he hefted was heavy, and when he shook them, they all made the same clunky rattling sound, as if they were filled with loose dirt and rocks.<\/p>\n
Or coal.<\/p>\n
Next morning\u2014Christmas morning\u2014Daryl ran downstairs and discovered the presents were missing; nothing there but his dad\u2019s ugly, beat-up recliner, and a lingering stench of smoke, as if the woodstove door had been left open all night. The fire was out, he noticed, and inside lay a considerable amount of charcoal and flaky ash, the kind that paper and cardboard leave behind after being torched.<\/p>\n
When his dad came down the stairs sometime later, he smelled the same as the living room, and on his hands and face were faint markings of black smudges and soot.<\/p>\n
\u201cLooks like Santa came down the chimney and stole all your presents,\u201d he said. An odd thing to say, considering he hadn\u2019t yet made it to the living room to notice.<\/p>\n
Should\u2019ve asked for the ax handle, Daryl thought, the closest thing to a weapon he could have gotten his hands on.<\/p>\n
Oh well. Maybe next Christmas.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
“What\u2019s this talk of hunting with a twenty-two?” his dad says. “That\u2019s too small a caliber.\u201d
\n\u201cNot if you want what you\u2019re hunting to suffer,” Daryl says. “I want to take you into the woods, Dad, and shoot you a hundred times over before you die.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":182,"featured_media":23522,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-23521","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-fiction","writer-devin-james-leonard"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23521","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/182"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23521"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23521\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23528,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23521\/revisions\/23528"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23522"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23521"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23521"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23521"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}