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The bedroom was an obstacle course in the dark.  Alley had started unpacking the boxes this afternoon, but she worked them like a jigsaw puzzle—lazily pulling from one box just to abandon it and pick over another—which left the bedroom floor littered with the odds and ends of our past.  Familiar shapes out of place in the near blackness, and then-

 

CRUNCH

 

A sharp sting raced up the bottom of my foot and into my calf.  I bit down on my lip and sucked in the pain, fighting the urge to scream out and cuss the entire building awake.  I held my breath and hobbled down the hall towards the bathroom, careful not to bump into anything else.

 

I sat on the toilet seat and inspected my foot.  An opaque splinter was poking out of the the arch, and a fine coat of red and green glitter covered my heel.  It took me a moment to register what it was that I had stepped on, and when it sunk in, I was forced to hold back another fit of expletives.  Alley had been rifling through the Christmas box today when she pulled out an ornament.

 

"Look at this," she said, holding it just out of reach.

 

It was a hand painted Santa with a present in his hands, and on the tag it read: I'll always be watching over you.  Love, Dad.

 

"We wanted him to make it until Christmas," she told me, “and he did.  This was the last thing he ever gave me."

 

I pulled out the splinter with a quick yank of the tweezers and blotted the wound with a wad of toilet paper.  A half emptied box of toiletries rested by the tub, and I dug out a bottle of peroxide.  The fizz mixed with the glitter in what looked like a mini fireworks show on my calloused skin.  It was a nasty gash, but it would heal.  The ornament, on the other hand, was a goner.

 

Just great, I thought to myself.  Of all the ornaments - from the ice-skating Daffy Duck to the cutesy, bible reading Precious Moments Kid - why did it have to be this one?  The guilt I had been feeling when I got out of bed had reached a staggering new height.  Here we were, Alley and I on the first day of our new start, and I was already sneaking out of the house again.  On top of that, I had broken the last remaining memory of her father.

 

I fumbled with the cellophane back of a bandaid, and watched the blood soak through to the top.  My phone buzzed, and a text read out: ARE U COMING?

 

A loud snore emerged from the bedroom in objection.  How could you? it said.  You promised me it wouldn't happen again.

 

YOU WILL BE, the next text read.

 

"This isn't my fault," I grumbled as I got to my feet.  And I avoided my reflection as I opened the medicine cabinet.

 

I reached for my cologne, and suddenly my body went numb.  All I could feel was a slight pulse beating through my fresh wound, and a small wisp of air grace my lips as I gasped.  In the background of my mind I could hear the bottle of peroxide bounce off of the sink and crack open on the cold, checkered floor.

 

It couldn't be.

 

On the top shelf, neatly tucked behind Alley's toothbrush, was the painted Santa.  The ornament, which I had just shattered into a million pieces, sitting like brand new with a fresh tag that read: CHEATER.

 

I slammed the cabinet door and took a step backwards, my foot slipping on the wet floor, and came crashing down into the bathtub.  The snores from the bedroom turned into a wakeful snort.

 

"Everything okay?" Alley's groggy voice rang out.

 

"Y-yes, everything is fine," I stammered as I climbed my way out of the basin, my body still trembling.

 

A hallucination, I told myself.  That's it.  That's all it could be.  I waited until Alley stopped rustling around in the bed, and crept back over to the medicine cabinet.  I had to open it again.  I had to show myself that it wasn't real.  My body protested, my arms quivering and my knees buckling, but my mind screamed: Just open it already, and stop this nonsense! 

 

CHEATER it said, still sitting on the top shelf.  The paint was fresh.  Too fresh to be real. I dipped my hand into the cabinet, expecting it to disappear like some sort of psychosomatic mirage, but it held weight.  Even the little red and green pieces of glitter rubbed off onto my fingertips.  I brought it up to my face, the hair on the back of my neck trying to leap off of my body, and the little painted Santa winked.  

 

This time I couldn't hold back the scream, and the ornament crashed down into the puddle of fizzy medicine.  A thick, dark red liquid drained out from it like a stab wound, twisting and turning in the peroxide like a hellish Van Gogh painting.

 

Outside of the door I could hear Alley's feet shuffling down the hall.

 

"Go back to sleep," I cried, trying to hold back the hysteria in my voice, "I'll be out in a minute."

 

But the footsteps came closer.  I grabbed a towel hanging from the back of the door and recoiled as the grotesque solution soaked into its fiber.  Red streaks smeared across the floor, the little specks of glitter sparkling through the crimson.

 

KNOCK - KNOCK -

 

"Just a minute."

 

I shoved the bloody towel under the sink and unlatched the door.  The cleanup had been shoddy, but what was it that I had been cleaning up exactly?

 

"Sorry, I was just-"

 

Alley's snores echoed from the bedroom while the tall, noxious figure in front of me held out a decayed finger.  And the ornament, dangling from the tip of her dead father's bony hand, read: You're coming with me!

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