Hideous Faces, Beautiful Skulls. Mark McLaughlin
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you live in town or are you just visiting?”
“I’ve lived here in Detroit for about ten years. And I watch DayBreak. I’m a morning person.” Arla wondered if her breath smelled too boozy. Then she decided that she really didn’t care.
“I bet my viewers would just love to see what Painsettia Plont is up to these days,” Maggie said.
“She’s up to her knees in monkey-doo.” Arla found the statement wonderfully liberating. “It’s hell trying to find work when everyone still thinks of me as Painsettia. My last job was as an extra in some penny-ante production of Oklahoma. Before that, I played a burn victim on a cop show. They covered my face with bandages.”
Maggie tapped a scarlet fingernail against Arla’s glass. “Let me buy you another. Your real name is…?”
“Arla Merrick. And thank you for asking. Most people don’t.”
Maggie pulled a small notebook from her purse. “Can I have your phone number, Arla? I’d like you to be on my show next week. Who’d have thought a cherished Christmas special could have a downside?” She winked. “I don’t mind tipping the occasional sacred cow.”
* * * *
On the morning of Christmas Eve, Arla wrapped gifts for her niece, nephews, and sister Mavis. She had bought them all gloves and scarves. She was determined never again to set foot in a toy store.
Her guest spot on Maggie’s show the day before had gone quite well. Arla felt good, even optimistic. Perhaps a sympathetic director had seen the show. God, but she longed to play a real role. Lady MacBeth. Titania from A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Even old Mrs. Paroo from The Music Man would be better than nothing.
Mavis had said that she and the kids would be stopping by around noon. Arla glanced at her digital wristwatch. 7:42 AM. She still had plenty of time to finish a few chores around the house. She wondered if it had snowed the night before. Perhaps she needed to shovel the walk. She looked to the window, but of course, the drapes were drawn to help keep out the cold.
She crossed to the front door and opened it a crack. A little more. Then all the way.
Her neighborhood was—gone. Before her stretched an endless expanse of snowy hillocks and ice boulders. A blast of sub-zero wind blew snow into her eyes and momentarily stole her breath away.
She slammed the door shut and leaned against it. Something was wrong, incredibly wrong. It was as though her house had been picked up and dropped in an Arctic wasteland. Had some sort of freak blizzard covered everything in the neighborhood except her house? The lights were on; blizzard or not, she still had electricity.
She looked for the remote control but as usual, couldn’t find it. She clicked on the power button of the television. Perhaps she could find a news show that would tell her something.
When the screen lit up, the first thing Arla saw was the face of Painsettia Plont. She was looking at a close-up of the video box for Santa’s Elves Meet Painsettia Plont.
A sandy-haired man with a dark moustache appeared on the screen—Chip Carlyle, co-host of a national morning show, Breakfast with Chip & Sandra.
“Painsettia Plont has never been a happy camper,” he said, “and it seems that the same can be said for actress Arla Merrick. Yesterday on Detroit’s DayBreak, she claimed that the role has ruined her career.”
His blond co-host, Sandra Dupree, rolled her eyes. “It’s funny. I never really thought of Painsettia Plont as just an actress in a costume. She was like Scrooge, or a Christmas version of the Wicked Witch of the West—half legend, half real. At least, she was to me. I do feel sorry for Arla Merrick, but it’s a pity she had to spoil the illusion. Know what I mean, Chip?”
“Sure do, Sandra,” Chip said. “I’ll never be able to watch that show again without thinking of old Arla sitting by the phone, year in and year out, waiting for Hollywood to call.”
The show cut to a clip. Painsettia Plont was standing on a moonlit mountaintop. Her white fur robe billowed and flapped in the wind. In the distance, lightning streaked across a steel-grey sky.
What was this? Arla didn’t remember this scene. Painsettia was smiling her crooked smile straight into the camera. Yes, Arla was sure of it; there were no such shots in the special.
“Ashamed of me?” The voice of Painsettia Plont roared thunderously. “You silly, mindless fool! I am very much a part of your life, and you cannot silence me!” The voice grew louder, and Arla clapped her hands over her ears. “Now I have you, my sweet—and soon, you shall know the terror and the chill of my wintery vengeance!”
Painsettia sneered and began to laugh. The volume continued to rise, until the cups and plates in Arla’s living room cabinet rattled on their shelves. Arla tried to turn down the volume, but the knob was colder than ice—so cold that it turned the flesh of her fingertips dark grey. The knob would not move; she tried the power button, but it too was frozen.
The roar of Painsettia’s laugh rose so high that it shattered the glass in the windows. Icy gusts of wind tore the drapes from the walls and blew snow into the room. Arla felt twin bursts of pain in her head. She realized with horror that her eardrums had ruptured.
Arla stumbled away from the television, down the hall to her bedroom. She would lock herself in and wrap herself in quilts to keep out the cold—
The bedroom was a complete shambles. The windows had shattered here too, and snow covered her bed and nightstand. Arla cried out as the wrinkled face of a little man peered in through a broken window.
The little man leaped into the room. He wore a green suit and a red wool cap. Santa’s elves wore the same sort of outfit in the Christmas special.
More elves slipped into the room—Arla lost count after eight. Several of the elves grabbed her and proceeded to manhandle her through the broken window.
“What are you doing?” Arla shouted. “Let go! Let go of me!” She tried to shake free of them, but they were too strong. They dragged her through the windswept wasteland, over jagged shards of ice that tore at her clothes and flesh.
Eventually the elves stopped and scooped up handfuls of snow. They grinned wickedly as they packed the snow against her body.
Arla gasped with shock when she saw that they were situated on a edge of a huge chasm. She now knew that the elves were reenacting the finale of the Christmas special, in which they packed Painsettia Plont in the center of an enormous snowball and dropped her down into a bottomless pit.
“I’m not her! I’m not!” she cried. “For Christ’s sake! Stop it! You’re killing me!”
The elves packed the snow tighter, tighter, adding more and more. She tried to catch the gaze of even one of the elves. If only they would look at her—really look, and see that she was not their true enemy. But they were all so intent upon building the giant snowball. In a moment, only her head extended from the icy sphere. “You’ve got to stop,” she pleaded. “I am not Painsettia Plont!”
The elves pushed at the snowball. At first it wouldn’t budge, so they pushed harder. In a moment it rolled forward, teetered on the edge of the pit, and fell.
Arla screamed as she hurled into the chasm. Long after exhaustion forced her into numb silence, she continued to fall, down and down into an endless nightmare abyss of utter cold.
HUNGRY FOR FACES
It was horrible, watching Mr. Linfield move through his life like a maggot through shit. Michael saw him at least twice a week—in the streets, outside the supermarket, even at the mall. Young boys shouted at Mr. Linfield; sometimes they threw rocks or pop bottles at him. Everyone else walked past him, ignoring his outstretched hand.
That was what hurt the most: seeing Mr. Linfield beg. But then, what else could he do? He was a streetperson. A statistic with a ravaged face.
Something was wrong with the old guy’s mind. Whenever Michael handed