The Ladies of Horror
Picture-Prompt Writing Challenge!

One Christmas Eve
by Christina Sng

One Christmas Eve,
I curl up in a dark corner
By the decorated tree,
Determined to see Santa
For the very first time.

At midnight, I hear it,
Someone climbing
Down the chimney,
Muttering something
About chilean cookies.

It isn’t a jolly old man
In furry red suit
But a demon fatted
By far too many cookies
Stuck in its sharp teeth.

It has been feeding tonight,
Pretending to be Santa,
Hopefully leaving gifts,
Leaving me to wonder
Where the real guy is.

The demon looks right
At me and blinks, sighing,
“Ah, no curious children
To eat here tonight.
I’ll just take the cookie.”

And it is up and out
Through the chimney
Before I can duck,
And no, it leaves not
A single present for us.

I stay petrified
Till the family wakes up
And Mom finds me
Shivering
In my hiding spot.

She holds me close,
Nuzzling my fur
While I purr at her,
Mewling softly,
Safe in her arms.

Fiction © Copyright Christina Sng
Image courtesy of Pixabay.com

Image courtesy of Pixabay.com

More from Christina Sng:

A Collection of Nightmares

Hold your screams and enter a world of seasonal creatures, dreams of bones, and confessions modeled from open eyes and endless insomnia. Christina Sng’s A Collection of Nightmares is a poetic feast of sleeplessness and shadows, an exquisite exhibition of fear and things better left unsaid. Here are ramblings at the end of the world and a path that leads to a thousand paper cuts at the hands of a skin carver. There are crawlspace whispers, and fresh sheets gently washed with sacrifice and poison, and if you’re careful in this ghost month, these poems will call upon the succubus to tend to your flesh wounds and scars.
These nightmares are sweeping fantasies that electrocute the senses as much as they dull the ache of loneliness by showing you what’s hiding under your bed, in the back of your closet, and inside your head. Sng’s poems dissect and flower, her autopsies are delicate blooms dressed with blood and syntax. Her words are charcoal and cotton, safe yet dressed in an executioner’s garb.
Dream carefully.
You’ve already made your bed.
The nightmares you have now will not be kind.
And you have no one to blame but yourself.

Available on Amazon!