(A/N: Written Nov.-Dec. 2008. Influence heavily by Virginia Woolf and H.P. Lovecraft, so I suppose you could call this a pastiche. Also, it's unrevised. A friend looked it over once and marked it up, but I've yet to make any according changes, so keep that in mind.)

It wasn’t supposed to go like this. It’s the Holidays Ball – Christmas Ball, unofficially – and everyone’s invited. We’re all here, it’s going to be a blast, you wouldn’t believe.

The lights gleam red – all red, some with blue-and-green tints hidden by the red that cakes the surface – and they twinkle at me like the eyes of rats. The thing is gone now, but what it’s left is even worse. Everyone’s here, and earlier this evening, I was ecstatic about that. Now all I want is for my guests to leave. But they can’t – their bodies refuse to move, to get up and flee, no matter how hard I implore.

I step out around the bar, refusing to look at the window, to remember how it looked when it came, all light and lithe—

I step out and look for Mrs. Williams, the first to fall, because she was also the first to see it looming outside. She looks innocent, warm, fetal – in the womb. There’s no blood around her, but the dress she wore tonight was a shimmery shade of that same color. I didn’t like that dress, the first I saw her; the first she walked in the door. A married woman, and she’s wearing that. She was talking to Charlie, flashing the curves she has left – when she knew I was introducing him to Kris, Kristen McMann. Bad Mrs. Williams. Horrible.

But now I want to ask her how she feels about tonight, and the party. Does she think the drinks were right, the hors d’oeuvres adequate? I realize she won’t answer me, yet I touch her to be sure.

Her skin is light against my fingers as I brush her face; her eyes are pits, and wiggle when I prod them with my nails. I wish she were here, awake, but it doesn’t matter – the way in which she’s here is irrelevant, as long as she’s here. As long as they’re all here, all my guests.

And they are. Beautiful and terrible, they look at the ceiling, or at each other, looking exactly the way I’ve always wanted: helpless.

I’m suddenly delighted, and grateful. Dependent on me, they need me like I once had to beg from them, from their dirty hands – beg and beseech, sob silently and follow their demands as my mother once followed scripture. Such a euphoric feeling, this.

I find Mr. Kaufman and re-tie his tie – he’s always had trouble with it, since the stroke, sometimes it’s so atrocious it looks like a silk noose.

Patsy, still sitting in the easy chair, spilled her drink in her lap when it came at her. And so I mop it up, smiling at her black hole of a stare. She’s my pet. They’re all like my pets.

Of an instant, I hear the crickets pick up, and I know it has come back. I run to the picture window, stepping around the guests in my path. The flapping of wings and the sounds of gigantic gulps of air, echoing scrapes – all of these float down to me, and I push the window back open to hear it better.

It is sending me its love, and I respond in kind:

“Thank you,” I call, “for my gifts! Thank you, for all of them.”

I smell a smell, and it is a smiling, grinning smell. As my deliverer descends to join me at my Holidays Ball – Christmas Ball, really – I smile and grin in return. It is the least I can do, to repay; to give thanks for such a collective beauty. For such a wonderful party.