Merry Christmas!

I know it’s December, but the house feels colder than it should. Even with the fireplace roaring, the cold has crept into the walls, into us. Dad tries his best, he really does. He’s cheerful when he can manage it, setting up games and baking cookies, turning up Christmas movies so loud you can’t hear much else. But I see the cracks. The worry in his face. I hear him crying at night when he thinks we’re asleep, with his sobs that’re muffled against the couch where he now sleeps beside us instead of with Mom.
Mom’s sickness started small, like a shadow creeping in. “Just a fever,” Dad said, but it didn’t leave. Her skin turned pale and her breath became shallow, her voice began slipping away into a rasp that didn’t sound like it came from her at all. The doctors didn’t know what it was, and Dad followed every instruction they gave: soup, medicine, tea. Nothing worked. By the second week, her hair started to fall out in clumps, her nails too. Her eyes sank into her skull, and sometimes she stared right past me, her lips twitching, like she was trying to remember who I was. I loved her. I was scared of her, but I loved her. “Hi, Mommy,” I would whisper, sitting by her bed each night, dampening a cloth for her forehead. “You’re so beautiful tonight.” At first, she’d nod, even squeeze my hand. But then, one night, her lips parted, and her tongue slid out. I’ll never forget the way she looked at me then. Dad stopped letting us into her room after that. “She just needs rest,” he said, but I saw the tears in his eyes. I saw the chains too, and the padlocks, though I never dared ask what they were for. By Christmas Eve, the house was silent, too silent, the banging and wailing that had been coming from her room had been placed by an eerie stillness. Dad didn’t feed her that night. “She’s sleeping,” he said, locking us all in the room we now shared. I tried to sleep, but I woke to the sound of footsteps down the hall and Dad’s whispered voice. “Go back to bed,” he told me. “Santa’s here.”
I believed him.
Christmas morning came, and I threw off my blanket in excitement. “It’s Chri—” My words died in my throat. My brother’s bed was soaked in red, the sheets clinging to his small, limp body. Mom was hunched over him, her hair stringy and matted, her jaw slack as she dropped him to the floor. His face, or what was left of it, was unrecognizable. She looked at me then, and for a moment, there was something in her sunken eyes, something almost human.
“Mom?” I croaked, stepping back off my bed. Her head twitched, the bones in her neck cracked as her mouth opened impossibly wide. I bolted for the door, screaming for Dad, but tripped over him in the hallway. His rib cage and been ripped out and his chest and stomach fell all over the floor. I ran into the snow, barefoot and screaming. Behind me I could hear her labored breaths growing louder. She tackled me just outside the neighbor’s house, her hands clawing into my shoulders, dragging me deeper into the snow. I twisted, kicked and thrashed, but she was too strong. “It’s me, Mama!” I sobbed, reaching for her face. For a moment, I thought she stopped. Her eyes flickered, her hands loosening. “Please, it’s me.”
Then her jaw snapped shut around my nose, I screamed as she chewed it off. I don’t know how I lived. I crawled back inside as blood dripped from my face, watching her stumble toward the neighbor’s house. I thought I was safe. I thought it was over. But now, I’m not so sure. My skin feels cold, and my head hurts so badly. I’m not sure why I did, but I wrapped the chains in my mom’s room around me. I don’t know why, but there weren’t any fireworks for the new year this year… I’m just so hungry.