A Christmas Tale

I didn't know what to call it.

So I called it the Christmas Tree from Hell.

That sort of disproved the whole point about me not being able to call it anything, but the fact remained: it had tasted blood. My blood. It was a chance accident, I pricked my finger on a needle. The tree shuddered, though, almost as if it was pleased. I didn't see it at first, though. It took a long time for me to truly see.

Christmas Eve, quarter to midnight, I hear something. We had all gone to bed early, anticipating the holiday, but something roused me out of my slumber. I had heard the dog walking around the house as it so often did at night, but the noise suddenly stopped. I thought nothing of it, but the abrupt cessasion of any canine footsteps gave me pause. Vaguely worried, I drifted off to sleep.

Next day, the tree looked greener somehow. Fuller, too, almost like somebody had poured fertilizer on it or something. There was fur, too, all around the base of the tree. When I saw the blood, it didn't take long to put two and two together.

I got the chainsaw, then. It was an easy job. I had to stop this demon conifer, this Douglas fir from the bowels of hell. The tree was split into six pieces that reeked of brimstone and evergreen. They thrashed for a moment, then lay still. I buried them all, as deep as I could dig a hole into the frozen December soil.

Next morning, there were six identical trees on my front lawn. They had grown, each one as mighty as the original demon tree. Ten feet tall, they were, and with needles as sharp as razor blades.

Aunt Susan was the first to try and run to the car. One of the tree-demons was waiting for her on the roof. It jumped down onto her, impaling her straight through with it's fiendish limbs. After it sucked the flesh from her body, it deposited the bones in a grisly heap on our front door.

They've been waiting for three days now.

We're not getting out alive.

I've been drinking mulled wine in the hopes that it will give me magic Christmas powers, but it doesn't seem to be working. Tomorrow, some of us are going to try to take one of the trees out with some Molotov cocktails and the air rifle we bought little Billy for Christmas.

Save us, Santa.