A Christmas Tale So Bloody Frightening You'll Kill Yourself With The Shift Key- Part One

Considering the yearly growing number of murders that occurred there, it was very strange that people continued to move to Kittenville at all. Some people blamed its popularity on the really brilliant tree that stood in the town square. Others said that it was probably something to do with gypsies. Most, however, simply said "Stop asking such shit questions and watch out behind you, that gypsy's just slipped a estate agent's catalogue into your bag".

For Jimmy though, it didn't matter why he'd ended up there. Kittenville was his home, for better or for worse, and he spent most of his time waiting for some better to turn up, as he'd been dealing with a hog-load of worse since the moment he'd been born.*

(*the moment he'd been born, the doctor accidently shot him with a rifle, mistaking the anti-natal room for a forest and Jimmy for a deer)

Jimmy was a sololnm- solloumn- soloulm he was a sober young boy, and never was he more sober then around Christmas.

If there was one thing Jimmy hated more than being mistaken for a deer when crying and naked, it was Christmas. His hatred dated back four years, to when a boy in a red coat had pushed him over on a particularly cold day. Jimmy would be the first to admit that this was a pretty tenuous link, but, as Jimmy himself said:
"The ground was really, really hard. And I was wearing spiky pants."
And there wasn't a lot of arguing with that. Also his Dad had been killed in a Christmas-based combine harvester accident four years ago, so that probably had something to do with it as well.

Jimmy's problem was that his mum loved Christmas more than snakes loved gloves. A lot more. Like really a lot more than that. That wasn't a great example, but trust me, she really did love Christmas. She loved Christmas so much that she tried really hard to give birth to Jimmy on Christmas day, just so that she felt like she had a real reason to celebrate. Which she did. And that was probably another reason Jimmy hated Christmas so much. That and their last name being 'Christmas'.

Every year, Jimmy had to make sure that he got his Mum a present worthy of her love of Christmas, knowing that his birth would go unnoticed by the world. His mum tried to cheer him up, stating "Jimmy, think about it this way, the entire WORLD celebrates with you on your birthday!" But, as Jimmy astutley pointed out, that was bullshit.
But life will be what it is, and so this year Jimmy walked towards the town centre knowing that once again, he would do his best to please his mum, seeing as she'd been blinded six christmasses ago and all.

He passed shop after shop with a heavy heart. A new piece of bread? Some egg shoes? Nothing seemed to stand out, except a garden hat-stand, which didn't really take his interest anyway.
"Hey, Christmas!"
Jimmy turned away from examining the latest in carrots, to see his arch nemesis, Bruno Brunelli but feet away from him. Bruno got away with saying almost anything, because he had been paralysed from tripping whilst kicking some puppies some years back. Everyone thought he put the cockmunch in cockmuncher, and that he didn't 'put' it, but rather 'cock-munched' it in. But when his wheelchair gazed at you like shiny red-cross collection orphan with wheels, there was little you could do. Even Jimmy, who'd had his share of cockmunchery in his time, found it difficult to bring it up. Especially as Bruno refused to believe he had a wheelchair in the first place.
"Whats a LOSER like you doing in a place like this?" Bruno scoffed, carefully reversing his wheelchair into a designated parking area.
"Hi Bruno" said Jimmy calmly, "would you like some help with your chair?"
"What chair, you dickshoot?" said Bruno, as he took out his disabled parking badge and swung it casually around his neck. "Do you mean the chair that I used to do YOUR MUM last night?"
"No," said Jimmy, "no, that's not the chair I meant."
"yeah well maybe it should be, you ass-cradle. You better just watch it, or i'll kick the living crap out of you. And then when that living crap is dead, i'll kick the DEAD crap out of you, just to make totally sure you're all crapped out of any type of crap that might-"
"I understand, thanks" said Jimmy, staring not in-obviously at Brunos inactive legs.
"I have to go anyway, cock.... shit. I've got a football game to play in, and the team will go freakin crazy if I'm not there for kick-off"
"yeah sure," said Jimmy under his breath, "cos they'll have to get a table to serve the drinks on instead."
"WHAT THE HELL DID YOU SAY YOU SHAFT-BUNCHER?" screamed Bruno, who had used the power of ears to hear what Jimmy had said. Jimmy was a bit of a dick too, now I think about it.

But Jimmy didn't answer. His eye had suddenly been caught by something else. A ragged old woman had lurched into view, clutching trinkets of the like Jimmy had never seen before. Her face was a plump mystery, covered in hair. The shades of her skin mixed with her hair, which shone with a light the same colour as her dress, which was itself a misty colour reminicient of her shoes. Her shoes were tangled up in socks much the same colour, a sort of murky echo of her face.

Over the dulling sounds of Bruno frantically beating Jimmy's shins with his own feet, Jimmy could hear her tinny voice, calling to the crowds,
"Christmas gifts, my dears, beautiful gifts for those you love, and in no way cursed or evil or anything horrid like that, just really nice things, the type of things that would be part of really nice stories about heaving breasts and sweaty, breast-filled meadows."

Emboldened by the lady's voice, and strengthened by the large amount of enticing coughing she was now doing, Jimmy pushed Bruno away quite firmly (with his arms and hands) and walked towards the ragged figure. She was also standing by the brilliant tree, which helped. Seeing him approach, she grinned, and her eyes seemed to glaze over like Greggs 5 for a pound donuts, except there were two of them, and they didn't cost anything.

"My dear boy," she whispered softly, "how happy I am to see you."
"Thanks," said Jimmy, "yeah this has been brilliant so far isn't it? The walking went well, and now the talking has kicked off, I'm really happy with it,"
"quiet, my dear", said the woman a bit less softly. "Now is the time to listen, not to speak. I have the perfect treasure for you. You wish to give a gift this Christmas?"
"Well yeah, that is the tradition, I'm not planning on setting the house on fire and doing a shit in the bath just to change things up a bit". He really was a bit of a dick.
"Quiet, my dear" said the woman again, "I have for you a gift of immeasurable worth, but it must go to the one you love best. Then, and only then will its immense beauty be revealed,"
"Oh, right well that's pretty-"
"Quiet, my dear. Do not argue with me, for you cannot argue with your destiny,"
"I'm not, its seems brilli-"
"Quiet, my dear. You are young and headstrong, but soon you will learn."
"Alright then,"
"Quiet, please do not try to resist my offering,"
"I'm really-"
"Quiet. You cannot imagine the power of this gift."
"honestly, I"
"Quiet, my dear."

Without another word, seeing as the author was pushing it as it was, the woman brought from behind her back a canvas bag, wrapped in what can only be described as some string. Jimmy held his breath, and waited with bated breath. He let out a quick breath and then took a long breath in. It's fair to say there was a hell of a lot of breath action going on. The woman took her wrinkled old hands and dove into the bag like a dog diving into the crotch of an embarrassed stranger. Jimmy did a few more things with his breath that probably don't need extended explanations. The old woman opened her hand, to reveal... a George Foreman grill. But a George Foreman Grill the like of which Jimmy had never seen. It glowed with an inner power, borne of being made entirely out of ice, and effectively being totally useless.
"What the shit is this?" asked Jimmy, not unreasonably.
The woman grinned, as she placed the frozen grill into Jimmy's hands
"Just take it, and trust what I have told you. Give it to the one you love best, and see what rewards you reap."
Jimmy looked down at his ass-heap of a present.
"But I don't understand. How can this possibly-"
She had gone.
Jimmy looked rapidly about him, to no avail. Well, there was some avail, but the avail he ended up with was another foot beating from Bruno, who'd decided to sacrifice the first half of his match to pound Jimmy onto the pavement. Which, lets be honest, is pretty shit avail. Not even staring up at the tree took away the pain of his foot-punching avail. Still. He had his mysterious package, his mother was waiting with her eyes like bits of wall, and Christmas was but one night away...

To Be Continued (probably)

The Night At Vampire Manor

Ned was an ordinary boy in every way. Except for the fact that he was horribly murdered by vampires, but that doesn't happen until the end of the story, so don't worry about that for now. Ned's full name was Ned VampireOrphan, which had always made him and his loving parents laugh, until the day they died horribly in a mysterious vampire accident. The day they died, Ned thought he heard a mysterious voice in the distance say softly, 'you're next'.
But he couldn't have been more wrong.
The voice had cried out something that day, but it wasn't 'you're next'. It was 'You're next, Ned'.

This fatal misunderstanding had meant that Ned had gone through life carefree, happy and with no idea about the tragic fate that was to befall him. If only we could go back to that time, and warn Ned about what was to come. Sadly though, the 'up' arrow key on my key board is broken, so there's no going back.




"There's no going back" said Ned, to his only friend in the world, John. John had no distinctive character traits to speak of, which had the effect of making everyone around him think that he was someone who would be killed off fairly quickly in a story. This depressing idea meant that basically no one wanted to hang around with him, and so he and Ned had only each other for company.
"No, there's certainly isn't" Agreed John quite quietly but usefully.
Ned sighed. If only, he thought, if only there was another way to prove to the kids of MurderTown that he was worth being friends with. But he had promised to spend the night in Vampire Manor, and if he survived, he would be heralded as the coolest kid to every walk the street of BloodTerrace.
"Besides," said Ned, "No-one's lived in that rickety old mansion for years,"
"Quite a lot of people have died in it recently though," pointed out John, in a way that helpfully let readers know the history of the house.
"Yes, but no one has lived in it and that's the material point. How scary can an old abandoned house be?"
John shrugged, and keen to move the plot along, picked up his stride.

As they came close to the end of BloodTerrace (so called because of the mysterious synchronisation of the menstrual cycles of those who lived there) a local boy named Pete appeared at a gate. Pete was the kind of guy you bring into a horror story to kill, because he is so annoying and beautifully symmetrical of the face. Unfortunately though, Pete was also bloody clever, and wouldn't get himself mixed up in this kind of story, no matter how much I tried. Instead, he simply spat at Ned's feet, gave him the finger and walked off, shouting "You losers will never make it, see you tomorrow, in your COFFINS!"*

(*This outcry was appropriate for MurderTown purely because of the efficient burial system that had come into place since the late 1970's- great casket business competition meant that market rules applied, and the companies with the best (and quickest) service got the local custom. In a place of a strangely large amount of deaths, this had lead to a great streamlining of the death-to-burial system, and an efficiency rarly seen in small badly named towns)

Ned snarled, and pounded the bloodsoaked ground at his feet, "Why can't I be more like Pete?" he yelled at John. John, said nothing, as that meant the author didn't have to give him an opinion either way. Ned's eyes glinted at Pete's retreating back.
"I swear," he whispered softly, "I will show you what I'm really made of".
"What?" Said John,
"I'm going to show him what I'm made of" said Ned a bit louder.
"Oh right, sorry. You know I've got a gimpy ear" Said John, showing a rare glimpse of an underdeveloped character trait.





As the two boys walked, the great mansion that was to be their final destination rose into view like a horrifying erection. Though the building had been abandoned for years now (due mainly to the fact that the local economy now depended on casketry, and no one had need for a well done up B&B) the turrets stood high and proud. The old gate was swinging open upon their entrance, as if to say "come in you damned fools,", or perhaps "A gust of wind has just hit me".

Ned and John carefully walked past the rusty gate, and stared at the garden they found themselves in. Years of neglect had led to everything dying, meaning that there was a shitload of dandilions everywhere. Like, everywhere.
"I kind of thought there'd be more overgrown ivy and stuff," said Ned, thoughtfully, "intertwined tendrils of exotic petals, bulbous and reeking seed pods and the smells of foreign lands"
"There's some dog shit over there" John pointed out.
"Yes there is, John" laughed Ned quite inappropriately, "yes there is."

Once Ned had gotten over his bizarre and ill-timed laughing fit, the two boys began to make their way through the sea of probably terrifying yellow flowers, to the front door. It was wooden, door-shaped, with a handle that was used for opening it. In short, it was everything a good door should be. Ned raised a fist, and knocked smartly on its peeled surface. The noise rang through the building, causing John to die quite unexpectedly.
"John!" cried Ned, "Are you alright?"
Being dead, John found this question quite difficult to answer, and so Ned repeated it over and over again for several minutes before giving up, placing his body in the piles of dandilions. A single tear ran down Ned's face, as he remembered John's allergy to loud banging noises. If only the narration at some point had mentioned it, he thought angrily to himself, "If only!" he cried. But it was far too late. He had come this far. He'd been walking for nearly 20 minutes now, and by God, he wasn't going to turn back now.
"There's no going back!" he said. If John had been alive, he would have said "You said that already, quite near the start". But luckily, he was dead, so no-one realised how terrible the author was at scripting dialogue.

Pushing the door with all his strength, it gave way and he fell with a crash into a darkened hall-way. His heart beating fast, he slowly got up and looked around. As we mentioned, it was darkened, so there was essentially nothing to see. He looked around for a lightswitch, before remembering the darkened thing again and gave up.

Walking quite unsteadily, Ned felt around for something that could shed some light on this whole not having any light situation. Finally his hands made contact with a switch, and he gratefully flicked it, only to have the Greatest Hits of Aqua blasted at him out of a nearby sound system. Hastily flicking the switch again, he returned gratefully to the terrifying silence of before. Looking further yielded no joy, and Ned was forced to accept that he would spend the night in total darkness if he was to stay here. It was to be the longest night of his life.

In the morning, light streamed through the windows that just hours ago were as black as the underside of dirty fish. Ned opened his eyes and breathed out shakily. He could barely believe that he had survived a night of the Dr Jones lyrics going through his mind over and over again. There had also been the matter of killing a demon by fiendishly solving the riddle of the crypt, but to be honest, it was mainly the Aqua thing. John sat up, and smiled to himself. He had done it. Now he could hold his head high, and prove to everyone that he was someone worth knowing, not just a 'no-parent', like so many kids had called him. Stepping out of the house, onto the jauntily terrifying dandlion field, the sky was clear and the sun beckoned. Ned had never felt so alive. Sadly, he was then killed by a vampire that had been cunningly disguised as some dog shit. The vampire was also probably Pete, in a clever twist that you weren't expecting.



THE. END.