The Ladies of Horror
Picture-Prompt Writing Challenge!

‘Tis the Season
by Elaine Pascale

“We need the bigger tree. It’s tradition,” he was saying but the baby was crying in the stroller and she knew they had no room on the credit card for the tree.

“Just a table tree will be fine. He is too young to know the difference this year.”

“You always have to piss all over my ideas.” He was becoming irrationally angry. It was just a tree.

“We can’t afford it. I am so sick of the cycle of going into debt every holiday season and then trying to scrape our way out of it the rest of the year.”

“We can pay the credit card off when we get our tax return.”

She rolled her eyes. She knew they would be lucky to get anything back at all, let alone the thousands that they owed.

The baby’s cries had evolved to screams. She decided to check if he needed a diaper change or a bottle. 

They had stopped in front of the streetlight display that her husband liked best. It looked like a Tim Burtonesque house enveloped by a gentle snowstorm. She hated the display and the false holiday serenity it displayed, and she currently hated him.  

“I just don’t see why you can’t be on my side with this. We always had a tree like that growing up and I want to carry on the tradition. I want our son to look back on the pictures of it in our home—”

She tried tuning him out as she felt around inside the diaper for wetness. Her hands had begun to shake, and she realized that she was hungry on top of being irritated. The sounds coming from her baby were cutting right through her.

“You are like the fucking grinch or something. A hater of holiday glee.” He folded his arms across his chest. Not once had he tried to help her soothe the baby. 

The blood had begun pounding in her ears. She was dizzy and angry, and she knew she had lost control of her temper.

She closed her eyes and whispered the words. 

The small streetlight display exploded.

She had been imagining his head exploding. She would work on her aim.

Fiction © Copyright Elaine Pascale
Image courtesy of  Pixabay.com

More from Elaine Pascale:

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