Christmas Demon

Photo by Emiliano Vittoriosi on Unsplash

This was the year of my Christmas goblin. A girlfriend told me about hers the year before and I had distanced myself from her, believing her to be insane. But my goblin happened to me in the same way it happened to her and so now I am ashamed to say I must learn to cope with the memory of what happened without the sympathetic sisterhood of a fellow victim.

At night, five days before the Eve of Christmas, my goblin sat on my chest, my chest which had been ripped apart by cancer. I was asleep and I awoke in the dark to a growing pressure on my chest and stomach. It was like a crushing, suffocating medieval torture or punishment by the addition of stones. In the flicker of the candlelight of my room – for I always kept a long lasting flame alight through the winter – I beheld the demon’s tongue flicking in and out of his grinning face, his whipping forked shiny tail, his black eyes which were mirrors reflecting the flame of the candle and revealing an internal desolation. His naked baboon shaped bottom was greasy and slid on my chest and he had to keep righting himself on his perch though my chest was lumpy and bumpy as broken rocks in a quarry and would have held just about anything being that it was no longer the smooth cushioned breast of my youth.

He spoke of his love for me, his long admiration. The unnaturally low, atonal sound of his voice was like that emitted from a voice scrambler. As he spoke, his tail stroked my leg and stomach and my own stomach clenched, wary of what he may be preparing to do. His words were a kind of flat mocking of what I had hoped to hear from some future love, words of some future boyfriend or husband. He said I was a deep person, special and sensitive. He said I would make the perfect wife. He said he wanted to move in with me. He said we would be together forever. His hooved hands brushed back my hair, his warm fetid breath filled the air. He said he had only come just now, had only felt welcome to do so, because my dog had died and she was delicious. He had eaten her! My dog had been ill for a long time. And yet she had been alive when I went to bed. He had either killed her or he had not emerged until he knew she was dead, until he knew he could proceed undeterred! My heart broke and the goblin ground himself more firmly down on my chest as if he could apply greater pressure by his will. He smiled at my squirming, at my attempt to draw deeper breath, at my tears.

“You can save your own life by carrying me around your stupid little town. I get to ride on your back and you can’t say a word.”

And so, off we went. I could not even release his hold long enough to change into my clothes or bend over to pull on shoes. We went out into the night though my tropical climate was mild and the pandemic meant it was quiet. Still, the demon demanded roller coaster rides at the deserted theme parks, demanded I make for him churros and turkey legs at the concession stands, demanded entry into alligator parks and whale and dolphin tanks. He accomplished break ins and operation of equipment through his magic demon powers he said, mockingly, though most of the time I was too hunched over from his weight on my back to observe how he was operating. My feet began to bleed. More more! he screamed into my ear, whipping me with his tail which was sharp enough to tear flesh.

At the first light of dawn, I suddenly felt no load on my back, no cloud of rotting breath surrounding my head like a dank nimbus. In fact I was light enough to feel as if I was floating. The air smelled sweet. My dog barked at me when I returned home. She was alive! He had lied! Or she had been returned to life when I had fulfilled what he wanted from me.

I called my girlfriend who had spoken to me of her nightmare last Christmas. I wanted to tell her about my experience. Her husband, whom I had known since childhood, told me she had died alone and on the street some months ago, addicted to coke, mumbling about demons.