Beneath The Mistletoe

ONE

The nutcracker's face crumbled into ash as Holly watched the flames. The fire ate hungrily at what little kindling she had managed to gather -- a few damp frozen twigs, two chair legs and a couple decorations that had been gathering dust in the window of her Aunt Gem's house on Garden St. The cold this evening was already worse than last night. Or maybe it was her own loneliness that chilled her bones. She'd been by herself for almost a year now. She should have been used to it. She thought she was used to it -- night after night, having no one to talk to but the stars.

But tonight wasn't like those other nights.

Tonight was Christmas Eve.

Holly glanced out the grimy window, at Garden Street -- a dark, snow covered graveyard. A shadow of what it had been just a year ago. She could remember the white Christmas lights lining the eves troughs of every house -- all except Brian Foster's house at the end of the court, who considered white lights too "self important." His front lawn was a veritable carnival of blow up decorations -- an elf popping out of a Christmas tree, a dinosaur wearing a scarf, Santa in a race car. But Brian Foster's lawn was dark tonight, it's two foot blanket of sparkling snow pristine and undisturbed. Just like all the rest. No footprints anywhere. None but Holly's.

Holly poked at her little fire, glowing healthily in the middle of Aunt Gem's honeyed hardwood living room floor. Gem would have had a fit if she saw it. But Holly knew that wouldn't be happening. Aunt Gem was never coming back to Garden St. No one was coming back to Garden St. Not after what happened.

The tin of canned pears she'd scavenged from a house three blocks over was frozen. Gingerly, she placed it in the flames and watched the label bubble and blacken, peeling away from the metal in the heat. She wasn't sure why she bothered anymore. Eating. What was the point? She was a ghost now. Close to it, anyway. Cold and forgotten by the people that used to love her. She swallowed, trying not to think about them -- Mom and Aunt Gem. They'd cried, the day Holly was turned away. The swab test took only seconds to turn blue and the instant it did, their tears began to flow. They wailed and held each other, but refused to look at Holly. Refused to watch her walk out the gates of the Clean Refuse, passed the armed military personnel and watch towers that protected them all from the threat outside. As she walked away, listening to them cry, Holly knew that to Mom and Aunt Gem, she was dead already.

Holly's stomach grumbled and she sighed. She wasn't dead. Not yet. The hunger proved that much. She was still Holly, just Holly.

For now.

She went to the hall mirror -- this was the seventh check she'd done since noon. But she couldn't be too careful. Not today. It had been a year exactly. One whole year. Everyone knew that after contact, you only had a year before you stopped being you.

She pulled off her hat, her mitts, her scarf. The cold air bit at her fingers and she shivered. She leaned into the mirror and ran her hands along the side of her face, inspecting every millimeter. Blue veins - - that was supposed to be the first sign that the change had begun. When she was satisfied that there weren't any on her face, she gathered her dark brown hair and held it up, running her hands along her neck. She continued like this, slowly, methodically, gradually stripping off layer after layer of clothing until she'd inspected every inch of her body. She couldn't find a sign of the change anywhere. It still hadn't begun.

Relieved, she redressed quickly and returned to her seat on the floor in front of the fire.

Maybe it wouldn't happen, some part of her hoped. Maybe she wasn't really infected. She shook her head angrily, trying to shake the naive thought away. She'd made contact with the parasite. She could remember the exact moment, one year ago, when Chris Winters...