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Kindle Notes & Highlights
by
Matt Forgit
Read between
December 15 - December 19, 2023
Looking forward to going on a slay ride with you. “Who sent these?” Mary asked. “The card isn’t signed and they spelled ‘sleigh’ wrong.”
“No matter how bad you feel about yourself, there are women who write love letters to serial killers. You’re not there yet.”
Everyone in this town looks like the kind of people who won’t make a gay wedding cake.
shithole, dollar-store, bargain-bin, Christmas nightmare hellscape.
“Back then, the town was called ‘Die-Witches,’
The Classen, Branscombe, and Persimmons families all owned and operated it until Mortimer Classen bought out their shares.
wearing his reindeer onesie and mask, covered in other people’s blood.
“You’re doing it again.” Mary cocked her head. “Like one of those sarcastic mean girls who lets you sit at their lunch table so they can talk about you behind your back and how your mom accidentally packed koala nuggets and banana-flavored milk in your 21 Jump Street lunch box that had lip gloss marks over Peter DeLuise’s face because you practiced kissing it in case you ever got a chance to do it in real life even though all the other girls loved Johnny Depp but you were holding out for him because you knew Peter would understand and respect you.” “That was weirdly specific.”
The man handed her a card and license, noting that his name was Llewellyn Barnes. Bertha noticed what looked like a smear of blood on the man’s hand when he handed it to him. When Barnes realized Bertha might have seen it, he withdrew that hand and put it in his peacoat pocket.
“There’s some people here that I haven’t seen in many years. They aren’t expecting me. I’m here to surprise them. I’ve traveled a long way to be here.”
That welcome video from 1988 is not as outdated as you’d expect. I particularly liked when the actors playing workers rapped about safety.”
I’m glad someone around here appreciates our cutting-edge, technologically advanced VHS tapes.”
She summoned her inner She-Ra and Wonder Woman. She opened her desk drawer, where she kept a framed photograph of Dolly Parton.
“Guide me, Dolly,” she said.
Kara, Liza, and Robin joined in with Mary, doing freestyle interpretive dance, their call to the universe for confidence, success, and clarity. Some people prayed. Some went on spiritual retreats and did yoga or practiced mindfulness. Mary and her friends liked to dance it out.
“Do you even care about Christmas?” “Christmas? A made-up holiday with made-up traditions that have nothing to do with religion, goodwill, or actual spirituality. Nothing about Christmas honors any historical legacy. It’s all been bastardized beyond recognition. We’re forced to buy presents we can’t afford for family members we are stuck with for a holiday we can’t escape. We tell kids that some fat creep watches them all year long to judge whether they’re worthy of gifts or not, when every other day, we tell kids to stay away from fat creeps. It’s a holiday invented for the rich to get richer
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“Good day to you, sir!” “Good day to you as well, ma’am!” Bright said, getting up from his seat. “Oh, actually, we’ll be seeing each other tonight. Your sister Noelle insisted that I come to her house for dinner tonight. Should I bring my own silverware or will sporks be provided?”
speaking of browser histories. I got a look at yours. It is so, so sad,” Robin said, pulling up Mary’s recent searches. “Extreme ironing, water tower pictures, adult coloring books, shower curtains, 1980s Martin Hewitt, The Boyfriend Pillow, business rompers, how to get edible cookie dough delivered to your house, when does Tanked air. That is the ‘lonely lady’ starter kit.”
He did not see the person in the reindeer costume standing behind him, off in the distance, just staring at Alfred through the holes in the reindeer mask.
He filled the ladle with some potato chowder and shouted. Balthazar’s head popped up, floating in the soup. His lifeless eyes stared at the ceiling as his head bobbed up and down in the hot liquid.
His son’s headless body was propped up on the door by several arrows that jutted out of his corpse.
The reindeer collected Alfred and Balthazar’s bodies and transported them back to Emmett Branscombe’s house. Cleaning up the bloody kitchen at Tinsel Inc. was a bitch but it couldn’t have people investigating a crime scene. Not yet anyway. It took all three of the men’s decapitated heads and placed them beneath Emmett’s tree, their vacant eyes gazing out at nothingness, their black irises illuminated by the blinking Christmas lights around them.
Mary went back to her window and peered out, trying to hide herself from whoever the reindeer weirdo was.
Dr. Sylvia Post contacted her team with the news of Chester Persimmons’ escape and probability of repeating his previous massacre.
Poutine factory was a front for a money-laundering operation.
Sometimes I’m relieved that the kids never caught on, but the other part of me wonders, ‘Did I raise stupid kids?’”
He never confessed to the crimes or gave any sort of explanation as to why he did what he did.
“Just once I wish we really were going to Dollywood,” sighed Belle.
Don’t make me call the gypsies to come take you away,”
“Grandma, can I bring Rudy?” Acorn
asked.
“Who’s Rudy?” answered Alvinia. “He’s the reindeer who hangs around outside and sometimes hides in my closet and scratches...
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He used to live in Tinselvania but someone new lives in his house.”
“Emmett Branscombe lives next door to Noelle and Jed,”
Margaret Murray, one of the most famous women archaeologists in history.”
“We used to go to this golf course at a country club. My dad was an avid golfer. It was a beautiful, sunny, happy day. My dad had bought new golf clubs he wanted to try out. There were several games going on and Dad was on the ninth hole. There was a golf ball machine that was being repaired on the practice course. The machine malfunctioned while it was being fixed. All of a sudden, errant golf balls came flying out of nowhere at lethal speed and velocity and hit him on the left side of his head. At the same time, there was a wedding reception in the grand hall of the club and someone had
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And then a wild pack of coyotes came out of the surrounding forest and ate him.”
after they climbed back down, they went to the local galleria with my siblings and grandparents and were killed in a stampede of people trying to get Cabbage Patch Kids.”
Mary’s mind envisioned Bright running toward her in slow motion, in a lush field full of colorful flowers, as Roberta Flack and Peabo Bryson’s “Tonight, I Celebrate My Love” played over the speakers of her imagination. Bright’s mind envisioned he and Mary spinning around in slow motion, in the middle of a glorious spring in Central Park, as Chaka Khan’s “Through the Fire” played over the speakers of his imagination.
“Okay,” he said, decided. “Many years ago, in 1997, my friends and I were involved in a drunk driving accident and thought we had killed someone, so we disposed of his body in the local river. A year later, I got a note in the mail that read, ‘I Know What You Did Last Summer!’ A fisherman in a black slicker used a giant hook to kill everyone except for me and Jennifer Love Hewitt. It was scary!”
It was an ornament for a Christmas tree. On the side of the silver ball was a painted picture of the Tinsel Inc. factory. “1990” was inscribed in calligraphy underneath the illustration. It was one of the old Christmas ornaments her family would give to the employees at the factory every year.
“Shh,” Rudy whispered, putting a finger to his lips. He shut the door.
The glimmering, flickering Christmas lights had been wrapped around Estelle’s body. She was still positioned on the couch. Several candy canes, the strabes made into deadly sharp points, were sticking out of Estelle’s body. One was lodged up to the curve, jutting out of her neck. Her eyes were wide open, frozen in a blank stare of death. Her clothes and the couch were soaked and splattered with her blood.
Beside the car, on the road, was an unmoving figure. A person, facedown on the asphalt. It was too dark for Bonnie to make out any of the static figure’s features or state.
“I’ve seen you eat chicken out of a can,” Kara said. “You can do anything.”
“Chester Persimmons was both a serial killer and a collector,” said Sylvia. “He kept the heads of all of his victims as trophies. He kept them in a trunk filled with Christmas decorations.”
Estelle’s son had called and left a voicemail to inform her that she and Orson were extremely sick and wouldn’t be into work for the rest of the week.
Lady Krampus is different from him. She finds men who have wronged or mistreated women and steals them away into the night and punishes them for their horrible misdeeds.”
“Is this slasher movie Christmas chic?
“Eating is definitely on my top-ten list of favorite things to do. Sure.
