Refurbished t mobile dash phone (black)

“You gonna pass that thing over?”
Dee sat down next to me with deflated shoulders and a look of exhaustion. We were both outside in the dark, perched on an old AC unit round the back of the mall where deliveries were dropped off. Looking down I saw her aimlessly kicking her legs back and when I realised that she still wore her curly-toed elf shoes, I lost all control and began to cackle as I passed it over. It took her a few seconds to realise why, and when she did she pulled her parka tight to hide her red and green striped elf uniform.
“Fuck you,” she said as she reached up and pulled off her fake pointy ears before taking a drag. “You wouldn’t find this funny if you had to greet people dressed like this.”
“Oh come on I’m sure the mall walkers love it.”
“Eurgh! The old men keep trying to grab my ass,” she groaned. “And Dave asked me to bring the ears home! What the hell is wrong with guys? This isn’t the first time he’s mentioned dressing with elf ears.”
I swallowed my laughter and took the joint back when she passed it.
“You do look kinda cute. Innocent, like.”
“Oh that’s just gross.”
“Not as gross as what Dave’s gonna ask you to do with that candy cane.” I pointed to the fake bit of candy that was pinned to her waist.
“Awh!” she cried out before playfully hitting me. “What is wrong with you!?”
“Nothing’s wrong with me! You’re the one who’s gonna stick a candy cane up her ass!”
She kept hitting me as we broke down into a fit of giggles. It drained you, working in a place like that, and sometimes after a long day it left me feeling a few bread rolls short of a picnic basket. It didn’t help that staffing was practically non-existent and internet shopping had all but killed off the Christmas surge. The owner—a sweaty little man who looked increasingly overworked with each new year—tried to drum up more business by having us dress up like idiots. I was dressed as Santa for most of the day but it wasn’t that bad, aside from the fake beard that got itchy. It was Dee who got the worst of it, forced to dress as an elf and stand by a dingy looking grotto while greeting what few visitors we had each morning.
It didn’t help sales. Nothing the owner did ever helped. The mall was too far from any towns, and it was quickly dying. If you ever needed to visit a massive building filled with key cutters and mobile phone repair shops, we had you covered. Other than that, there was nothing worth seeing.
“It’s getting cold,” Dee said when we’d finally stopped laughing.
“I don’t understand why you don’t get that dick boyfriend of yours to come pick you up.”
“I want to be able to choose if I see him,” she shrugged. “He’d get all sad if he picked me up and I made him drop me off at mine. Besides, you don’t mind me riding along, do you? Your mother thinks I’m hilarious.”
“She’s just being polite,” I said. “Truth is, she thinks you’re a bad influence.”
“Is that right? I’m the bad influence? Doesn’t she grow all your weed?”
“Yeah but she heard about what Dave wants you to do with those candy canes—"
“Oh fuck off!” Dee cried with laughter. “Seriously, I’m freezing! Any sign of her?”
I checked my phone and let out an audible groan.
“She’s late,” I said as I read the text. “She’s stuck at the hospital. She says if it goes past eleven I can get a taxi and she’ll pay.”
“Isn’t there a storm due!? What time is it now?” Dee asked.
“Quarter past eight.”
“Fuuuuuuuuuck!”
“Come on,” I said. “I’ll open the mall back up. We’ll have to wait inside.”
-
“Where’d he get this creepy ass stuff?” I asked as Dee and I pulled open the shutter and ducked under. The first thing that greeted us was the little Christmas themed display the owner had put up by the entrance and it was enough to make me wonder if we should just sit outside in the cold. Plastic elves with round heads grinned at us, their chipped pie-shaped eyes squinting with a creepy kind of voyeurism. Nicotine coloured fake-snow gathered around their feet where they stood stock still, staring right at me and anyone else who dared to enter. In the daytime they looked cheap and laughable but with no real light other than the moon behind me I found them deeply unsettling.
Nowhere near as creepy as the Santa though.
“God knows,” Dee shrugged as she made a beeline towards the cafeteria. “I think the elves came from some bankruptcy auction. The animatronic Santa however...”
Santa stood seven feet tall and was made of spray painted plastic and metal. Behind his eyes and lips, and in between every joint of his arms, legs, and torso, lay tiny steel mechanisms that looked all too ready to snip off any curious fingers. This was a homemade decoration if I’d ever seen one, and I dreaded to think of who had put it together from scrap, and why.
“Al’s been going nuts trying to figure out how to turn it on,” Dee cried as she pulled two chairs off a table and set them down for us. “No way to plug it in. No sign of a battery. But it’s obviously meant to move. Anyone can see that. Every time he tries pulling one of the panels off to get a better look he ends up slicing his hand open on something.”
I looked at its enormous steel boots and noticed the chips and scratches all along the toes and sides.
“Must’ve hurt,” I muttered mindlessly before tearing my eyes away and walking over to my friend.
“Creeps me the fuck out,” Dee grumbled as she put her feet up on the table. “Every single kid who comes in starts bawling their eyes out when they see it. The only business that thing'll drum up is from serial killers. I keep begging him to just put it away but he says he paid for it so he ain’t moving it. Cheap bastard. Besides,” she laughed as she reached over and poked my belly, “we got another Santa right here, right?”
“Oh if you think I’m going to be stood up there next to you letting old mallwalkers molest me you’ve got another thing coming.”
Dee burst out laughing and with a nudge of the elbow she asked,
“Got another joint?”
“Yeah but...”
“But what?”
“It’s a long night,” I replied, “and we only just smoked. And, y’know, it’s one thing if we were doing something fun but I don’t fancy sitting here, trying to swallow my palpitations with Murder Claus standing right behind me.”
Dee cackled loudly and stood up.
“C’mon, why don’t we go sit in ol’ Al’s office. He never locks it and he’s always stashing cheap whiskey somewhere.”
I looked over my shoulder towards the mechanical Santa and had to suppress a shiver. It’s empty eyes always seemed to fixate me, no matter where I stood.
“Yeah alright,” I shrugged. “Let’s go.”
-
“Have you seen Al recently?” I asked as Dee tried the handle to his office. After a little bit of fiddling with an old credit card she popped the lock and it pushed open. “I thought you said he leaves it open?” I added.
Dee shrugged my question off and strode into the office like it belonged to her.
“I haven’t seen him today,” she said as she sat down on a small sofa.
“How can a man that rich let something that ugly sit in his office,” I groaned while eyeing the furniture.
“Knowing Al he bought it from a strip club,” she said. “Quick wipe down and he’d happily use it. That man has no shame. It’s like working for Mr Krabs.”
I went to sit next to her but stopped at the last minute. Distinct memories of my employer ferrying old looking divorcees into his office for private meetings sprung to mind and I shirked away from its touch.
“I’ll take the desk,” I said as I walked over and switched on the lamp. Behind me Dee continued to giggle at my reaction to the sofa. She might’ve said something about it, cracked a joke maybe. I can’t remember. The light came on and the old fabric desk chair was revealed, the flat seat soaked in greasy looking blood that dripped onto the floor in a thick puddle.
I cried out and Dee hurried over.
“What the fuck?” She whispered. “Did he hurt himself?”
Slowly I began to take in the surrounding area, noticing the broken photo frames and overturned papers. It looked like a fight had taken place, and there was more than just the one splash of blood. Streaks of it appeared on the edges of the desk and all along the floor. They looked like finger marks, and they slowly tracked away from the desk and towards the door, thinning out bit by bit until there was only a solitary hand print left on the jamb at about knee height.
“Oh boy,” Dee whispered as both our eyes lingered on that spot. I couldn’t help but picture our boss lying there with one bloodied hand clutching at the door frame. “About a year back I saw him get into a fight with some guys in the lot,” she said. “They looked like a bunch of nasty guys and they kept asking about some cash. And what do you know? Next day Al goes for a three week holiday and when he returns first thing he does is call those same guys up to his office. You know money laundering is what keeps this place open?”
“Something has to,” I said. “Do you think we should call the police?”
“Maybe?” she shrugged. “Last time they came he went off to gather money to pay ‘em back. Maybe he’s doing the same thing this time. Still… do you wanna wait outside?” she asked.
I took one last look at the blood soaked chair and nodded.
“Yeah.”
She took my hand and led me out, but both of us were given pause at the sound of squealing metal and rusted hinges. A solitary cry, the sound had rung out from somewhere deep inside the mall, hidden away in the labyrinth of shadows and glass shop fronts. “Was that a door?” Dee asked, and both of us stood on the metal gantry looking down with our breath held. We waited and waited, but nothing moved.
“We should really head out front and call the cops,” I said, but neither of us took up the charge. I thought about taking the first step down towards the ground floor but couldn’t quite manage it. There was no sign of anything or anyone down there but…
“On second thought,” Dee said. “Al’s a sleazy guy who can take care of himself. Let’s just wait this out in the lunchroom, yeah? At least we can keep an eye on the parking lot. We’ll see our ride coming a mile away. If he isn’t in work tomorrow, then we’ll call someone for help.”
-
Dee and I were in the lunchroom where she paced somewhere behind me, muttering rationalisations about what we’d seen. Feeling increasingly tired, I had my chin propped up in my hand and was letting my eyes wander the lot outside. More and more I found them returning to the same beat up looking car in the distant corner.
“I can’t get signal here but maybe we’re overreacting? I mean it might not even be his blood. Al’s a feisty guy and I’d bet my family’s house he’s got a gun squirrelled away somewhere in that office. Not to mention he isn’t exactly a small guy and…”
“Dee,” I said, feeling the need to stop her rambling. Over the lasty few minutes a heavy weight had started to settle in my gut as my eyes fought their hardest to see past the gentle flurry of falling snow and make sense of that lonely car. “Dee, is that Dave’s car?” I asked.
When she ran over, I think she was actually feeling a little happy.
“Oh fuck did he actually turn up? He does this sometimes, tries to surprise me. It drives me nuts most of the time but today might be the first time I’ll be thankful!”
“It’s been there for ages,” I said. “It’s been there since we first went outside. I noticed it but didn’t think anything of it. But I swear that’s…”
“Oh fuck well then it’s not him!” Dee cried, fairly annoyed. “He wouldn’t sit outside for an hour and a half without getting me, would he?”
“I swear there’s someone in the front seat,” I said.
“Oh well maybe they could give us a ride?”
“And Dee I swear to God that’s his license plate.”
“No way you can read that from here!”
“I don’t need to read it all! Just the part with 69 in it,” I cried. “Who else drives a car the same make and model that also has that number in the plate?”
Dee leaned down beside me and squinted hard through the snow. Her annoyance with me was fading, slowly replaced with anxious acceptance.
“No way,” she scoffed. “I mean, yeah it’s the same make and model…”
“And colour.”
“But why would he park up and just wait? Why would anyone do that?”
“Shall we find out?”
-
The snowfall had rapidly built up and fears of being trapped up in the hills were starting to nip away at my sense of calm. We’d had to camp out in the mall before during the Christmas season and it always sucked, but this time the thought filled me with genuine dread. I kept telling myself it was an unlikely thing to happen, but as Dee and I fought our way to the car I realised it might soon be inevitable. The snowfall was already thick on the ground, pulling at our shoes and soaking our feet all the way to our ankles. We were practically blind out there, marching through near-whiteout conditions to what I hoped was the right part of the lot. Once or twice Dee tried shouting something at me, but both of us quickly gave up trying to talk to each other over the sound of gale force winds.
When we got close enough to the car to read the plate in full, Dee cried out and gripped my shoulder to help herself go quicker on the icy tarmac. She looked happy, but I couldn’t shake the feeling something was wrong. I took a look at the blurry shape in the driver’s seat, registered the frost growing over the windows, and started to wonder why the hell anyone would sit out there with no heating. Not to mention they were stock still, refusing to look at us even as Dee jogged over and banged the window with her fist.
Something drew my attention. Some movement, I couldn’t say, and I turned to look at the mall behind us. Something in my gut told me it wasn’t quite empty, as though another pair of eyes watched us from behind all that dirty glass and rusted metal shutters. It was just about the only thing visible in the mounting storm, and as the snow piled up around its doors I couldn’t escape the feeling there was danger hiding in its shadows.
I couldn’t have looked over for more than a few seconds but it felt like an age, and when Dee started screaming I was whipped back to the present so quickly I was disorientated. I barely even registered what it was she was saying or crying as she turned and grabbed my jacket, her fingers digging into the fabric so tight I heard stitches start to give. It was so much, so quickly. Her screaming, the wind, the cold, the feeling of her nails as they caught my skin and started to dig in. By the time I looked up I know that only a few seconds could have passed, but it all felt like it played out over long minutes, like a kind of dream.
Dee had managed to open the car door and there sat Dave looking right at me. But my brain nagged. Something was wrong, I just couldn’t figure out what. He had his jacket, his jeans, the little waving toy cat on the dash… it was all there. I just kept staring at him in disbelief, my face probably mirroring his own expression that gawped at me with wide eyes and an open mouth.
When my brain finally caught up with reality it felt like a punch to the stomach.
Dave’s head had been twisted damn near clean off. His hands gripped the wheel but his chin was pointing right at us over his left shoulder, the angle completely impossible. It wasn’t that his neck was turned a bit too far for comfort. His head had been wrenched around two, maybe three times. It was so grotesque I almost wanted to touch it, to see if it felt like vinyl or rubber. Movies had conditioned me to expect a bit of unrealism from that kind of gore but Jesus… I could see every individual hair of his eyebrows. I could see the blue and purple veins that had burst in his eyes. It was all so fucking wrong I simply didn’t know what to make of it, and for some God awful stupid reason I reached out and shook his shoulder, just to check that he was dead.
“What the fuck are you doing!?” Dee cried.
“I just… I just… I just…”
I couldn’t get the words out and I soon recognised the signs of shock. I decided to lighten the load in my head and pushed all thoughts aside until only a single notion remained.
I’m cold.
“We need to get inside,” I said, my teeth chattering.
Dee said nothing as I pulled her up by her arm and guided her back to the mall.
-
The grotto was different. Two large empty prints stood in the fake snow, each as large as my head. The Santa was gone. I looked at the footprints and tried to ignore what felt like a clenched fist planted square in my gut. So far my mind was starting to pull at some strange threads, ones I recognised from a thousand horror films and hackneyed stories. I wanted to shake them free but they wouldn’t go away. I should’ve been beside Dee trying like hell to call the police, but deep down I knew it wouldn’t work. Lately I’d had the feeling of being watched. Finding Dave’s body had left me convinced it was more than just a feeling.
“I can’t get through,” Dee said, stepping up to me and surveying the empty prints. “I keep trying but it’s just dead.”
“Al uses a repeater to get signal out here, doesn’t he?” I asked to which she nodded. “Someone’s taken it down, I guess. I mean they must’ve killed Dave earlier than eight, right? That’s when we went and sat out there. As for Al… could’ve been any time.”
“We don’t know Al’s dead.”
“Either way, we’re stuck here and I don’t like it. My mother might turn up but some days she’s in work until midnight. Fuck,” I said, briefly looking at the windows where snow was falling thick and fast. “I’m not sure she’d reach us if she left right now. And we’ve been stuck before, right? It’s reasonable we’d be here until the morning. She might be a bit anxious, but she probably won’t call the police for a while yet.”
“So we just wait?”
“Dee,” I said trying to catch her eye. “I don’t think we’re alone here.”
“I think we should lock ourselves in Al’s office,” she replied. “I don’t know what the fuck is going on but I want to be somewhere with a door that we can lock. Wait!”
She cried the last word so suddenly I jumped and whipped around lightning fast, half expecting to find a dreadful plastic face gazing back at me. Instead there were two blinding headlights staring right at us from the parking lot. For a few seconds I was confused, not sure if this strange car was going to ram us or reverse or what, only for the car to turn and meander out of sight towards the back of the mall. When I looked back at Dee she was grinning with delight.
“Graham!” she cried.
The name clicked and I smiled too.
The security guard had just arrived.
-
“I completely forgot he even shows up!” I cried as I chased after Dee towards the rear of the mall.
“Me too!” she replied as she reached the back door and pushed it open.
It could have only been thirty seconds since we’d lost sight of the car, but when we ran out we saw it idle in the middle of the small lot. The engine wasn’t running but the lights were still on and pointing right at us, blinding me to who might be in the driver’s seat. I quickly stepped out of the beam and walked over, my heart plunging into my stomach as I saw what waited for me.
The car was empty and one of the windows had been broken and the roof was dented. The door was thrown wide open but the only sign of the security guard was his heavy duty flashlight that had been left behind on the ground just outside the car. I quickly grabbed it and turned it on.
Dee screamed and I moved the light towards her. She was looking up, pointing towards the roof of the mall with one hand clasped over her mouth. I quickly tracked the beam across and caught sight of a pale face looking back at me. Graham was upside down, his back flat against the wall with limp arms dangling freely. Even from thirty or forty feet away I could tell his eyes were vacant and lifeless. But that didn’t mean he was still. Something had already heaved him up to the very top of the wall in mere minutes and was now busy pulling the rest of him over the stony ledge with brutal efficiency. A living person might have screamed at such rough treatment, but I could only make out the sound of breaking bones and tearing cloth as his back arched to a complete ninety degrees before he was yanked the rest of the way.
Dee had stopped crying. Her lips were pressed tight and her face was white when she looked back at me, but I could tell she’d seen what had taken him. The wall itself had hand holds punched directly through concrete and into the brick behind it.
“What the fuck did that?” I asked.
“We need to get inside,” was the only thing she said.
-
“What are you looking for?” she asked.
“I have a hunch,” I replied as I pulled open the bottom drawer of Al’s desk. “Aha!” I cried before reaching in and pulling out a snub nosed revolver. “It’s so unbelievably fucking illegal for him to have this but thank God he does!”
“It won’t matter,” Dee said. “I’m all for finding a weapon but…”
“But what?” I asked as I checked the drawer for any ammunition. All I managed to find were three rounds, and that included the one already in the gun. I loaded up the rest and tucked the pistol into my belt.
“I’m not sure that gun’s going to do much,” Dee said as she watched me.
I thought of the empty grotto, and the strength it would take to climb that wall by punching into brick.
“Better than nothing,” I replied. “I don’t suppose you saw any keys in Dave’s car?”
Dee shuddered at the reminder of her boyfriend’s death, but she answered anyway.
“Nothing in the ignition. Should we go check the footwell?”
“It might be our only choice,” I said, “but I don’t feel optimistic. Maybe in the morning but for now, I think the best bet is to stay still.”
Dee went to reply but she didn’t get the chance. With a loud thunk the lights and electricity cut out all at once. The mall itself didn’t change, but the office we were in cut to black and I had to scramble to get the torch and turn it on. I found Dee pressed up against the wall, a look of panic on her face.
“What the fuck?” she whispered.
I silently agreed and turned the light towards the only door in and out of that room. For long seconds nothing happened. I could hear only the muffled sounds of the wind buffeting the building as Dee and I both held our breath and stayed as still as we could.
Then came the sound of something landing on the gantry outside. Metal creaked and groaned but nothing followed for long seconds until at last there came another a loud but softer crash of metal on metal. With steady rhythm the sound of something large slowly walking towards the door grew louder until I finally shook myself free of the paralysing terror and threw the door open to look outside.
Whatever was out there was practically on the other side of the mall, but it was so heavy the entire metal walkway shook violently with each step.
“We have to move, now!” I said while grabbing Dee. She was afraid, but as soon as she saw the distance between us and the dark shape making its way towards the elevated office, it was clear she understood my meaning. The gap was closing, but there was time.
We ran towards the nearby stairs and quickly made it down to the ground floor. Using the light, I checked the gantry and saw a brief flash of something red and large but whatever it was, it suddenly moved too quickly and I lost sight of it.
“It’s fucking toying with us,” I hissed, speaking only to myself.
“We need power,” Dee said, her voice surprisingly calm. “One of the shops has a secure room but it needs power for the door to lock.”
“How thick is the door?” I asked.
“I think it used to be a bookie, so it’s pretty strong.”
I didn’t like it much as a plan, but it was all we had and I was desperate to start moving.
-
“This is bullshit.”
Dee hissed the words as we pushed open the door to the basement, my light catching a few of the steps before they descended into blackness. There were only a few rooms down there but I was most interested in the fusebox right at the back, farthest away from where we were standing. Unfortunately when we reached the floor, we were stuck navigating a claustrophobic collection of large pumps, pipes, and large air con units that towered over us.
“This is bullshit,” I growled as we carefully stalked our way past row after row of machinery. “Can’t see a fucking thing. Just keep an eye out for the door to the backroom.”
When Dee’s hand found mine she crushed it so hard it hurt, but it got my attention silently and I turned the flashlight back to where she pointed. Sure enough there was the room we’d been searching for, only now it looked like something straight out of a nightmare. The door had been blown outwards like metal under pressure, and by rights it shouldn’t have been standing. It certainly didn’t fit the hole behind it, but something had grown around the frame and held it all in place. The substance, whatever it was, resembled roadkill crossed with an industrial accident. Pipes and needles and semi-recognisable tools jutted out of roiling fur and liquid flesh, reminding me a little of ferromagnetic fluid. It never stayed still but it never really moved either. I think we both would have left right there and then were it not for the sound of someone crying out from within.
“Hello?” they shouted. “I can hear you out there! Please! Please help me!”
“Ah fuck that’s Al,” Dee said, her hand gripping mine so hard I felt blood pooling in my fingertips.
“Alright,” I said, mostly to calm myself, “alright we gotta do this. If anyone knows what’s going on it’s Al.”
The door opened nice and easily, despite every bit of the jamb being gummed up with fur and pallid skin that never stayed still. Stepping inside, I saw a dungeon right out of someone’s worst nightmare. The whole room was a rancid bubbling mess of meat and metal with fleshy growths descending from the ceiling. In each one there hung a victim, trapped in the substance, their upside-down faces resting at about chest height. Hoping to free them I ran to the closest and saw Graham glaring back at me with lifeless eyes. I only needed one glance at the missing portion of his skull to realise he was dead. The same was true for Dave, who’d somehow been transported out of the car and to here, and for a few of the other unfamiliar characters who lay suspended in this horror. All of them showed signs of coming apart in grotesque ways. The liquid flesh and metal that encased Graham was steadily pouring into his skull—against the flow of gravity—and into his open mouth. Dave’s broken neck had been split open and clicking metallic probes scuttled between exposed vertebrae like termites in a house. The others, who appeared to have been dead much longer, were all barely recognisable as human. All that remained were faces and tufts of hair.
Somehow Al was alive, writhing and fighting the mass that encased him. “Get the fuck over here!” He cried.
I began to tear the awful substance away from him. It was like handling greasy raw chicken, and unseen shards of metal constantly cut at my hands, so that progress was slow and wouldn’t speed up until Dee appeared a few seconds later with a crowbar. I was about to ask where she found it but I stopped when I saw what liked a bundle of nerves growing out the end. I realised she must’ve torn it off one of the horrifying stalactites that surrounded us, their writhing forms constantly producing an endless array of familiar shapes and tools.
“How long have you been here?” I whispered to Al just as Dee freed his shoulder and his arm came loose.
“I don’t know,” he said. “But we have to leave now. There’s… there’s this… this…”
“A fucking murderous Santa Claus machine running around?” I cried hysterically. “Where the fuck did you find it?”
“I didn’t.”
Dee got his second arm free and, refusing to wait any longer, Al began to tear away every last bit of metal and flesh that held him in place. By the time it reached his legs, Dee and I were forced to watch and grimace as it meant Al pulling out tiny metallic filaments that pierced his skin. He snapped them with an audible twang and each time he swallowed an agonised scream behind clenched teeth that made me wonder just how deep they went.
“What the fuck do you mean you didn’t find it?” Dee asked once he was free and on the floor. It took a few seconds for the blood in his body to right itself, so he knelt there panting and answered our questions.
“It appeared by the dumpster,” he said. “Sometimes people chuck stuff in our bins for pick up. It’s a pain in the ass but this time, well… I turned up and there he was standing right by the back entrance, next to the dumpster like someone couldn’t be bothered to throw him in. I thought, ya know, why the fuck not? It looked homemade but so what? I figured a small business musta made it and then, for whatever reason, they threw it away on our doorstep.”
“You know I would honestly like to blame you right now,” I said. “But I’m not sure anyone could have predicted this.”
“To be fair the costumes are just fine.”
Dee and I took a moment to look at him as his words settled in.
“What!?” he cried. “A charity shop dumped something like thirty bags in our dumpster. You think I ain’t gonna check to see if any of it’s worth keeping? Look at this,” he said while reaching out to touch a lapel on Dee’s waist coat. “That’s sturdy material right there. And the kids love an elf come Christmas.”
“Did you wash them?” I asked.
Al shrugged.
“Gave ‘em a sniff.”
I pinched the bridge of my nose and swallowed my words. When I spoke it was to Dee.
“Can you check Dave for his keys?”
“Don’t bother,” Al said, cutting us off. “I’ve got mine in my pocket and my car’s parked out front where it always is. Let’s go.”
Before we left I had Dee and I grab another two sets of keys just in case – one off Dave, and one off Graham. Hopefully we wouldn’t need them, but I didn’t feel like putting any more faith in Al.
-
When I turned the corner and saw the grotto—the elves with all their backs to me—I skidded to a halt so quickly that Dee collided with my back. She didn’t swear or curse. All of us had been running towards the front of the mall perfectly aware of what might be waiting for us. It was a risk I’d hoped would pay off.
It didn’t.
The animatronic Santa was facing us. Empty eyes and a hollow grin fixing us even in the dark. Surprisingly though, even as Dee and I were frozen in terror, Al sidled past us and looked at it quizzically.
“I think we can do this,” he whispered.
“It’s right fucking there!” I hissed.
“No,” he said, stepping out towards it, closing the distance to just ten or fifteen feet. “No it’s not.”
Before I could stop him he walked up to the Santa and tapped it. A hollow sound like a bell rang out and he turned back to us with a grin.
“It’s not here!” he cried.
I didn’t understand what, exactly, he meant. But just in case, he thumped it a few more times and even grabbed it with both hands and rocked it back and forth, his laughter verging on hysterical. Cautiously, I allowed myself to approach the Santa, painfully aware that Al had refused to hand over the keys.
“Fuck’s sake Al!” Dee cried as we passed him and moved towards the door. “We need to leave!”
“Alright,” he said with a nod. “Just wanted to prove to you that we were sa—”
His voice was cut off by a sound like a toolbox falling into custard. I snapped around to see, but with no lights in the mall, and only a thin bit of moonlight and the fading torch in my hand, it was hard to gauge what happened clearly, at least at first. Something had landed on Al. The growing puddle of blood, and the arterial sprays that had soaked both of us—even as we stood over ten feet away—made it clear there would be no revival for Al. Neither Dee nor I cried out, but we both grew stiff with terror as we realised what we were looking at.
It moved like a spider but looked more like a jellyfish sculpture made out of refurbished tools. Only it wasn’t just that either. Fingers and hair and flaps of torn skin were jammed into every tiny little crevice, so that you couldn’t tell if you were looking at something alive, dead, or a bit of both. If I had to guess, it was the last option. Like the strange substance in the basement this thing didn’t stay still either. Every inch of it coiled and rolled over itself, but it lacked the shapelessness of that lifeless goop downstairs. It skittered and moved, even as it stood towering over Al’s crushed and lifeless body.
Suddenly a piece of it struck out at the metal Santa and gummed itself to the mouth. For a few seconds I thought it might yank the machine towards it, but slowly I realised that the main mass of its body was shrinking. It was pouring itself into the animatronic, and just like that I understood how this thing had liked to move and hunt, and maybe even get close to people without being spotted a million miles away. The thought that it might have stood there, immobile in its hiding place, for weeks as hundreds of people poured past it to go shopping made my skin crawl.
With a final slurp, the last of that thing tumbled into the Santa, and with a noise like a braking train, the head turned to face us.
-
“Nope!” Dee cried as I jerked forward to grab the bloodied keys that lay on the floor. “We’ve got two others, remember!?”
In a single motion she swung me around and had us both facing the doors out of there. Normally the shutter would be down, but something had already done the job of tearing it to pieces at some point in the night. With hardly any distance to go we were out in the wind and snow before that monster had even taken its first step.
We were a further fifty metres away when something blew the whole front door out in a flurry of snow and sparking metal. Where before it had felt as though something lurked in the darkness, watching and hunting us with gleeful patience, I now got the sense we had pissed it off. Something was tearing towards us with a speed that belied its sheer bulk and mass, and I’m sure if we hadn’t turned the corner when we did, it would’ve crushed us into the snow like it was a freight train running over a penny.
Still, the less than a second that elapsed between us turning and the sound of screeching metal coming to a stop was enough to send white hot pangs of terror coursing through my veins. It had been so near! Ahead lay Graham’s car with the lights still. God we were so close, but I knew deep down we’d never make it. I might have been crying, maybe even babbling. I’m not sure it even matters. In an instant all my racing thoughts crystallised into a single terrifying idea.
“Dee!” I cried, and I threw the keys towards her. “Get the fuck out of here!” I screamed before taking a sharp left and barrelling towards the fire exit by the back. It was a fifty-fifty chance, but to my reliefI heard the monster turn to chase me. The last thing I saw before I pulled the door shut was Dee clambering into the driver’s seat, and the emotionless glare of a badly sculpted Santa face thundering towards me at breakneck speeds.
-
I muttered the word shit under my breath as I went to run right back through the mall to very same entrance we’d just left. I made it ten metres, at most, before the door behind me burst open like a SWAT team had kicked it down. The thing that chased me didn’t even slow, and when I caught a glimpse of it I saw arachnid limbs emerging from its knees and elbows that gripped the floor and fought to keep the monster upright. The sight of it struggling to keep up at such high speeds gave me an idea.
All I can say for Al is that thank God he won’t let a bad idea get in his way. Those old gumball machines no one actually uses? Our mall was littered with them. A leftover from the nineties, they stood at most corners in the hope some kid might drop a few coins in to chew gum that wouldn’t even last five seconds. Whatever the reason, I was familiar with them if only because I always scratched my head at why they still dotted the place long after they’d been fashionable. I was still lucky to find myself near to one when the idea came to me, and I quickly threw it to the floor in a desperate crash.
The sound that followed was like thunder meeting a high speed car crash. The animatronic Santa lost all traction and collapsed in a forward moving fall, skidding to a halt after only a few metres as its ridiculously heavy frame scratched grooves in the cheap floor. Tendrils and limbs shot out of it to try and arrest its inertia, which now carried it in the wrong direction to my flight, but the monster’s attempts to slow were useless in the face of its own mass.
By the time it scurried out of its metal house, I had reached the shutters—I risked only a quick glance at Al’s brutalised corpse—and was on the verge of crying for joy as I saw Dee pull up in a car. The lights were blinding, but they illuminated enough of the space behind me to see that thing tearing through the building to reach me.
I didn’t even open the car door. I jumped in through the window head first and Dee drove off with a tyre squeal of acceleration. The last thing we heard as we left the lot was the sound of that thing ripping the front entrance apart piece by piece in a terrifying rage.
-
By the time the storm cleared and people made it to the mall there was nothing to be found except rubble and broken glass. The mall itself was written off as a shoddy construction job compounded by years of piss poor maintenance. Al was notoriously cheap and his business empire, if it could be called that, had caused a frightening number of injuries and close calls. It soon came out that when he bought the mall for cheap, it was only on the condition he get a ton of repairs done. He never did, of course.
So in everyone’s eyes there was a pretty good explanation for the missing people. And by the time their bodies were finally dug up from under all that broken concrete no one thought twice about why they were in such bad shape. A few journalists ran stories asking why some of those dead people had gone missing days before the collapse, but nothing really came of it. Dee and I spoke a little about what happened, but it was all written off as shock by some, or a sick prank by others. After a while we had to stop sharing our version of events. People either thought we were crazy or cruel.
Dee and I did our best to imagine that it all ended with thousands of tonnes of rock crushing that monster to death, but I’ve never been satisfied. I don’t know why it pulled that building down but it worked out pretty well for it, didn’t it? People walked away thinking nothing had happened. Everything from the timing of the storm to its choice of disguise tell me it wasn’t stupid. I imagine it had lain in that old Santa decoration for weeks, picking stragglers and late workers off one by one until the coming storm left us cut off and the opportunity was too good to pass up.
So I guess I wasn’t too surprised when I saw a photo in the paper just a few weeks that caught my eye. Since seeing it and verifying with my own eyes, I’ve spoken to Dee and she’s agreed to what we need to do.
There’s a town not too far from us that’s hosting a little winter festival. Ice skating, Santa’s grotto, a Ferris wheel – it’s nothing big but I’m sure a few thousand people will still pass through it by the time Christmas day rolls around. Only there’s already been a few missing children in the area, sparking fears from the police. But no one has yet to connect their disappearances to the eerie looking animatronic Santa that stands looming over visitors right by the entrance.
Dee and I know better though. And we might just pay it a visit.

“You gonna pass that thing over?”
Dee sat down next to me with deflated shoulders and a look of exhaustion. We were both outside in the dark, perched on an old AC unit round the back of the mall where deliveries were dropped off. Looking down I saw her aimlessly kicking her legs back and when I realised that she still wore her curly-toed elf shoes, I lost all control and began to cackle as I passed it over. It took her a few seconds to realise why, and when she did she pulled her parka tight to hide her red and green striped elf uniform.
“Fuck you,” she said as she reached up and pulled off her fake pointy ears before taking a drag. “You wouldn’t find this funny if you had to greet people dressed like this.”
“Oh come on I’m sure the mall walkers love it.”
“Eurgh! The old men keep trying to grab my ass,” she groaned. “And Dave asked me to bring the ears home! What the hell is wrong with guys? This isn’t the first time he’s mentioned dressing with elf ears.”
I swallowed my laughter and took the joint back when she passed it.
“You do look kinda cute. Innocent, like.”
“Oh that’s just gross.”
“Not as gross as what Dave’s gonna ask you to do with that candy cane.” I pointed to the fake bit of candy that was pinned to her waist.
“Awh!” she cried out before playfully hitting me. “What is wrong with you!?”
“Nothing’s wrong with me! You’re the one who’s gonna stick a candy cane up her ass!”
She kept hitting me as we broke down into a fit of giggles. It drained you, working in a place like that, and sometimes after a long day it left me feeling a few bread rolls short of a picnic basket. It didn’t help that staffing was practically non-existent and internet shopping had all but killed off the Christmas surge. The owner—a sweaty little man who looked increasingly overworked with each new year—tried to drum up more business by having us dress up like idiots. I was dressed as Santa for most of the day but it wasn’t that bad, aside from the fake beard that got itchy. It was Dee who got the worst of it, forced to dress as an elf and stand by a dingy looking grotto while greeting what few visitors we had each morning.
It didn’t help sales. Nothing the owner did ever helped. The mall was too far from any towns, and it was quickly dying. If you ever needed to visit a massive building filled with key cutters and mobile phone repair shops, we had you covered. Other than that, there was nothing worth seeing.
“It’s getting cold,” Dee said when we’d finally stopped laughing.
“I don’t understand why you don’t get that dick boyfriend of yours to come pick you up.”
“I want to be able to choose if I see him,” she shrugged. “He’d get all sad if he picked me up and I made him drop me off at mine. Besides, you don’t mind me riding along, do you? Your mother thinks I’m hilarious.”
“She’s just being polite,” I said. “Truth is, she thinks you’re a bad influence.”
“Is that right? I’m the bad influence? Doesn’t she grow all your weed?”
“Yeah but she heard about what Dave wants you to do with those candy canes—"
“Oh fuck off!” Dee cried with laughter. “Seriously, I’m freezing! Any sign of her?”
I checked my phone and let out an audible groan.
“She’s late,” I said as I read the text. “She’s stuck at the hospital. She says if it goes past eleven I can get a taxi and she’ll pay.”
“Isn’t there a storm due!? What time is it now?” Dee asked.
“Quarter past eight.”
“Fuuuuuuuuuck!”
“Come on,” I said. “I’ll open the mall back up. We’ll have to wait inside.”
-
“Where’d he get this creepy ass stuff?” I asked as Dee and I pulled open the shutter and ducked under. The first thing that greeted us was the little Christmas themed display the owner had put up by the entrance and it was enough to make me wonder if we should just sit outside in the cold. Plastic elves with round heads grinned at us, their chipped pie-shaped eyes squinting with a creepy kind of voyeurism. Nicotine coloured fake-snow gathered around their feet where they stood stock still, staring right at me and anyone else who dared to enter. In the daytime they looked cheap and laughable but with no real light other than the moon behind me I found them deeply unsettling.
Nowhere near as creepy as the Santa though.
“God knows,” Dee shrugged as she made a beeline towards the cafeteria. “I think the elves came from some bankruptcy auction. The animatronic Santa however...”
Santa stood seven feet tall and was made of spray painted plastic and metal. Behind his eyes and lips, and in between every joint of his arms, legs, and torso, lay tiny steel mechanisms that looked all too ready to snip off any curious fingers. This was a homemade decoration if I’d ever seen one, and I dreaded to think of who had put it together from scrap, and why.
“Al’s been going nuts trying to figure out how to turn it on,” Dee cried as she pulled two chairs off a table and set them down for us. “No way to plug it in. No sign of a battery. But it’s obviously meant to move. Anyone can see that. Every time he tries pulling one of the panels off to get a better look he ends up slicing his hand open on something.”
I looked at its enormous steel boots and noticed the chips and scratches all along the toes and sides.
“Must’ve hurt,” I muttered mindlessly before tearing my eyes away and walking over to my friend.
“Creeps me the fuck out,” Dee grumbled as she put her feet up on the table. “Every single kid who comes in starts bawling their eyes out when they see it. The only business that thing'll drum up is from serial killers. I keep begging him to just put it away but he says he paid for it so he ain’t moving it. Cheap bastard. Besides,” she laughed as she reached over and poked my belly, “we got another Santa right here, right?”
“Oh if you think I’m going to be stood up there next to you letting old mallwalkers molest me you’ve got another thing coming.”
Dee burst out laughing and with a nudge of the elbow she asked,
“Got another joint?”
“Yeah but...”
“But what?”
“It’s a long night,” I replied, “and we only just smoked. And, y’know, it’s one thing if we were doing something fun but I don’t fancy sitting here, trying to swallow my palpitations with Murder Claus standing right behind me.”
Dee cackled loudly and stood up.
“C’mon, why don’t we go sit in ol’ Al’s office. He never locks it and he’s always stashing cheap whiskey somewhere.”
I looked over my shoulder towards the mechanical Santa and had to suppress a shiver. It’s empty eyes always seemed to fixate me, no matter where I stood.
“Yeah alright,” I shrugged. “Let’s go.”
-
“Have you seen Al recently?” I asked as Dee tried the handle to his office. After a little bit of fiddling with an old credit card she popped the lock and it pushed open. “I thought you said he leaves it open?” I added.
Dee shrugged my question off and strode into the office like it belonged to her.
“I haven’t seen him today,” she said as she sat down on a small sofa.
“How can a man that rich let something that ugly sit in his office,” I groaned while eyeing the furniture.
“Knowing Al he bought it from a strip club,” she said. “Quick wipe down and he’d happily use it. That man has no shame. It’s like working for Mr Krabs.”
I went to sit next to her but stopped at the last minute. Distinct memories of my employer ferrying old looking divorcees into his office for private meetings sprung to mind and I shirked away from its touch.
“I’ll take the desk,” I said as I walked over and switched on the lamp. Behind me Dee continued to giggle at my reaction to the sofa. She might’ve said something about it, cracked a joke maybe. I can’t remember. The light came on and the old fabric desk chair was revealed, the flat seat soaked in greasy looking blood that dripped onto the floor in a thick puddle.
I cried out and Dee hurried over.
“What the fuck?” She whispered. “Did he hurt himself?”
Slowly I began to take in the surrounding area, noticing the broken photo frames and overturned papers. It looked like a fight had taken place, and there was more than just the one splash of blood. Streaks of it appeared on the edges of the desk and all along the floor. They looked like finger marks, and they slowly tracked away from the desk and towards the door, thinning out bit by bit until there was only a solitary hand print left on the jamb at about knee height.
“Oh boy,” Dee whispered as both our eyes lingered on that spot. I couldn’t help but picture our boss lying there with one bloodied hand clutching at the door frame. “About a year back I saw him get into a fight with some guys in the lot,” she said. “They looked like a bunch of nasty guys and they kept asking about some cash. And what do you know? Next day Al goes for a three week holiday and when he returns first thing he does is call those same guys up to his office. You know money laundering is what keeps this place open?”
“Something has to,” I said. “Do you think we should call the police?”
“Maybe?” she shrugged. “Last time they came he went off to gather money to pay ‘em back. Maybe he’s doing the same thing this time. Still… do you wanna wait outside?” she asked.
I took one last look at the blood soaked chair and nodded.
“Yeah.”
She took my hand and led me out, but both of us were given pause at the sound of squealing metal and rusted hinges. A solitary cry, the sound had rung out from somewhere deep inside the mall, hidden away in the labyrinth of shadows and glass shop fronts. “Was that a door?” Dee asked, and both of us stood on the metal gantry looking down with our breath held. We waited and waited, but nothing moved.
“We should really head out front and call the cops,” I said, but neither of us took up the charge. I thought about taking the first step down towards the ground floor but couldn’t quite manage it. There was no sign of anything or anyone down there but…
“On second thought,” Dee said. “Al’s a sleazy guy who can take care of himself. Let’s just wait this out in the lunchroom, yeah? At least we can keep an eye on the parking lot. We’ll see our ride coming a mile away. If he isn’t in work tomorrow, then we’ll call someone for help.”
-
Dee and I were in the lunchroom where she paced somewhere behind me, muttering rationalisations about what we’d seen. Feeling increasingly tired, I had my chin propped up in my hand and was letting my eyes wander the lot outside. More and more I found them returning to the same beat up looking car in the distant corner.
“I can’t get signal here but maybe we’re overreacting? I mean it might not even be his blood. Al’s a feisty guy and I’d bet my family’s house he’s got a gun squirrelled away somewhere in that office. Not to mention he isn’t exactly a small guy and…”
“Dee,” I said, feeling the need to stop her rambling. Over the lasty few minutes a heavy weight had started to settle in my gut as my eyes fought their hardest to see past the gentle flurry of falling snow and make sense of that lonely car. “Dee, is that Dave’s car?” I asked.
When she ran over, I think she was actually feeling a little happy.
“Oh fuck did he actually turn up? He does this sometimes, tries to surprise me. It drives me nuts most of the time but today might be the first time I’ll be thankful!”
“It’s been there for ages,” I said. “It’s been there since we first went outside. I noticed it but didn’t think anything of it. But I swear that’s…”
“Oh fuck well then it’s not him!” Dee cried, fairly annoyed. “He wouldn’t sit outside for an hour and a half without getting me, would he?”
“I swear there’s someone in the front seat,” I said.
“Oh well maybe they could give us a ride?”
“And Dee I swear to God that’s his license plate.”
“No way you can read that from here!”
“I don’t need to read it all! Just the part with 69 in it,” I cried. “Who else drives a car the same make and model that also has that number in the plate?”
Dee leaned down beside me and squinted hard through the snow. Her annoyance with me was fading, slowly replaced with anxious acceptance.
“No way,” she scoffed. “I mean, yeah it’s the same make and model…”
“And colour.”
“But why would he park up and just wait? Why would anyone do that?”
“Shall we find out?”
-
The snowfall had rapidly built up and fears of being trapped up in the hills were starting to nip away at my sense of calm. We’d had to camp out in the mall before during the Christmas season and it always sucked, but this time the thought filled me with genuine dread. I kept telling myself it was an unlikely thing to happen, but as Dee and I fought our way to the car I realised it might soon be inevitable. The snowfall was already thick on the ground, pulling at our shoes and soaking our feet all the way to our ankles. We were practically blind out there, marching through near-whiteout conditions to what I hoped was the right part of the lot. Once or twice Dee tried shouting something at me, but both of us quickly gave up trying to talk to each other over the sound of gale force winds.
When we got close enough to the car to read the plate in full, Dee cried out and gripped my shoulder to help herself go quicker on the icy tarmac. She looked happy, but I couldn’t shake the feeling something was wrong. I took a look at the blurry shape in the driver’s seat, registered the frost growing over the windows, and started to wonder why the hell anyone would sit out there with no heating. Not to mention they were stock still, refusing to look at us even as Dee jogged over and banged the window with her fist.
Something drew my attention. Some movement, I couldn’t say, and I turned to look at the mall behind us. Something in my gut told me it wasn’t quite empty, as though another pair of eyes watched us from behind all that dirty glass and rusted metal shutters. It was just about the only thing visible in the mounting storm, and as the snow piled up around its doors I couldn’t escape the feeling there was danger hiding in its shadows.
I couldn’t have looked over for more than a few seconds but it felt like an age, and when Dee started screaming I was whipped back to the present so quickly I was disorientated. I barely even registered what it was she was saying or crying as she turned and grabbed my jacket, her fingers digging into the fabric so tight I heard stitches start to give. It was so much, so quickly. Her screaming, the wind, the cold, the feeling of her nails as they caught my skin and started to dig in. By the time I looked up I know that only a few seconds could have passed, but it all felt like it played out over long minutes, like a kind of dream.
Dee had managed to open the car door and there sat Dave looking right at me. But my brain nagged. Something was wrong, I just couldn’t figure out what. He had his jacket, his jeans, the little waving toy cat on the dash… it was all there. I just kept staring at him in disbelief, my face probably mirroring his own expression that gawped at me with wide eyes and an open mouth.
When my brain finally caught up with reality it felt like a punch to the stomach.
Dave’s head had been twisted damn near clean off. His hands gripped the wheel but his chin was pointing right at us over his left shoulder, the angle completely impossible. It wasn’t that his neck was turned a bit too far for comfort. His head had been wrenched around two, maybe three times. It was so grotesque I almost wanted to touch it, to see if it felt like vinyl or rubber. Movies had conditioned me to expect a bit of unrealism from that kind of gore but Jesus… I could see every individual hair of his eyebrows. I could see the blue and purple veins that had burst in his eyes. It was all so fucking wrong I simply didn’t know what to make of it, and for some God awful stupid reason I reached out and shook his shoulder, just to check that he was dead.
“What the fuck are you doing!?” Dee cried.
“I just… I just… I just…”
I couldn’t get the words out and I soon recognised the signs of shock. I decided to lighten the load in my head and pushed all thoughts aside until only a single notion remained.
I’m cold.
“We need to get inside,” I said, my teeth chattering.
Dee said nothing as I pulled her up by her arm and guided her back to the mall.
-
The grotto was different. Two large empty prints stood in the fake snow, each as large as my head. The Santa was gone. I looked at the footprints and tried to ignore what felt like a clenched fist planted square in my gut. So far my mind was starting to pull at some strange threads, ones I recognised from a thousand horror films and hackneyed stories. I wanted to shake them free but they wouldn’t go away. I should’ve been beside Dee trying like hell to call the police, but deep down I knew it wouldn’t work. Lately I’d had the feeling of being watched. Finding Dave’s body had left me convinced it was more than just a feeling.
“I can’t get through,” Dee said, stepping up to me and surveying the empty prints. “I keep trying but it’s just dead.”
“Al uses a repeater to get signal out here, doesn’t he?” I asked to which she nodded. “Someone’s taken it down, I guess. I mean they must’ve killed Dave earlier than eight, right? That’s when we went and sat out there. As for Al… could’ve been any time.”
“We don’t know Al’s dead.”
“Either way, we’re stuck here and I don’t like it. My mother might turn up but some days she’s in work until midnight. Fuck,” I said, briefly looking at the windows where snow was falling thick and fast. “I’m not sure she’d reach us if she left right now. And we’ve been stuck before, right? It’s reasonable we’d be here until the morning. She might be a bit anxious, but she probably won’t call the police for a while yet.”
“So we just wait?”
“Dee,” I said trying to catch her eye. “I don’t think we’re alone here.”
“I think we should lock ourselves in Al’s office,” she replied. “I don’t know what the fuck is going on but I want to be somewhere with a door that we can lock. Wait!”
She cried the last word so suddenly I jumped and whipped around lightning fast, half expecting to find a dreadful plastic face gazing back at me. Instead there were two blinding headlights staring right at us from the parking lot. For a few seconds I was confused, not sure if this strange car was going to ram us or reverse or what, only for the car to turn and meander out of sight towards the back of the mall. When I looked back at Dee she was grinning with delight.
“Graham!” she cried.
The name clicked and I smiled too.
The security guard had just arrived.
-
“I completely forgot he even shows up!” I cried as I chased after Dee towards the rear of the mall.
“Me too!” she replied as she reached the back door and pushed it open.
It could have only been thirty seconds since we’d lost sight of the car, but when we ran out we saw it idle in the middle of the small lot. The engine wasn’t running but the lights were still on and pointing right at us, blinding me to who might be in the driver’s seat. I quickly stepped out of the beam and walked over, my heart plunging into my stomach as I saw what waited for me.
The car was empty and one of the windows had been broken and the roof was dented. The door was thrown wide open but the only sign of the security guard was his heavy duty flashlight that had been left behind on the ground just outside the car. I quickly grabbed it and turned it on.
Dee screamed and I moved the light towards her. She was looking up, pointing towards the roof of the mall with one hand clasped over her mouth. I quickly tracked the beam across and caught sight of a pale face looking back at me. Graham was upside down, his back flat against the wall with limp arms dangling freely. Even from thirty or forty feet away I could tell his eyes were vacant and lifeless. But that didn’t mean he was still. Something had already heaved him up to the very top of the wall in mere minutes and was now busy pulling the rest of him over the stony ledge with brutal efficiency. A living person might have screamed at such rough treatment, but I could only make out the sound of breaking bones and tearing cloth as his back arched to a complete ninety degrees before he was yanked the rest of the way.
Dee had stopped crying. Her lips were pressed tight and her face was white when she looked back at me, but I could tell she’d seen what had taken him. The wall itself had hand holds punched directly through concrete and into the brick behind it.
“What the fuck did that?” I asked.
“We need to get inside,” was the only thing she said.
-
“What are you looking for?” she asked.
“I have a hunch,” I replied as I pulled open the bottom drawer of Al’s desk. “Aha!” I cried before reaching in and pulling out a snub nosed revolver. “It’s so unbelievably fucking illegal for him to have this but thank God he does!”
“It won’t matter,” Dee said. “I’m all for finding a weapon but…”
“But what?” I asked as I checked the drawer for any ammunition. All I managed to find were three rounds, and that included the one already in the gun. I loaded up the rest and tucked the pistol into my belt.
“I’m not sure that gun’s going to do much,” Dee said as she watched me.
I thought of the empty grotto, and the strength it would take to climb that wall by punching into brick.
“Better than nothing,” I replied. “I don’t suppose you saw any keys in Dave’s car?”
Dee shuddered at the reminder of her boyfriend’s death, but she answered anyway.
“Nothing in the ignition. Should we go check the footwell?”
“It might be our only choice,” I said, “but I don’t feel optimistic. Maybe in the morning but for now, I think the best bet is to stay still.”
Dee went to reply but she didn’t get the chance. With a loud thunk the lights and electricity cut out all at once. The mall itself didn’t change, but the office we were in cut to black and I had to scramble to get the torch and turn it on. I found Dee pressed up against the wall, a look of panic on her face.
“What the fuck?” she whispered.
I silently agreed and turned the light towards the only door in and out of that room. For long seconds nothing happened. I could hear only the muffled sounds of the wind buffeting the building as Dee and I both held our breath and stayed as still as we could.
Then came the sound of something landing on the gantry outside. Metal creaked and groaned but nothing followed for long seconds until at last there came another a loud but softer crash of metal on metal. With steady rhythm the sound of something large slowly walking towards the door grew louder until I finally shook myself free of the paralysing terror and threw the door open to look outside.
Whatever was out there was practically on the other side of the mall, but it was so heavy the entire metal walkway shook violently with each step.
“We have to move, now!” I said while grabbing Dee. She was afraid, but as soon as she saw the distance between us and the dark shape making its way towards the elevated office, it was clear she understood my meaning. The gap was closing, but there was time.
We ran towards the nearby stairs and quickly made it down to the ground floor. Using the light, I checked the gantry and saw a brief flash of something red and large but whatever it was, it suddenly moved too quickly and I lost sight of it.
“It’s fucking toying with us,” I hissed, speaking only to myself.
“We need power,” Dee said, her voice surprisingly calm. “One of the shops has a secure room but it needs power for the door to lock.”
“How thick is the door?” I asked.
“I think it used to be a bookie, so it’s pretty strong.”
I didn’t like it much as a plan, but it was all we had and I was desperate to start moving.
-
“This is bullshit.”
Dee hissed the words as we pushed open the door to the basement, my light catching a few of the steps before they descended into blackness. There were only a few rooms down there but I was most interested in the fusebox right at the back, farthest away from where we were standing. Unfortunately when we reached the floor, we were stuck navigating a claustrophobic collection of large pumps, pipes, and large air con units that towered over us.
“This is bullshit,” I growled as we carefully stalked our way past row after row of machinery. “Can’t see a fucking thing. Just keep an eye out for the door to the backroom.”
When Dee’s hand found mine she crushed it so hard it hurt, but it got my attention silently and I turned the flashlight back to where she pointed. Sure enough there was the room we’d been searching for, only now it looked like something straight out of a nightmare. The door had been blown outwards like metal under pressure, and by rights it shouldn’t have been standing. It certainly didn’t fit the hole behind it, but something had grown around the frame and held it all in place. The substance, whatever it was, resembled roadkill crossed with an industrial accident. Pipes and needles and semi-recognisable tools jutted out of roiling fur and liquid flesh, reminding me a little of ferromagnetic fluid. It never stayed still but it never really moved either. I think we both would have left right there and then were it not for the sound of someone crying out from within.
“Hello?” they shouted. “I can hear you out there! Please! Please help me!”
“Ah fuck that’s Al,” Dee said, her hand gripping mine so hard I felt blood pooling in my fingertips.
“Alright,” I said, mostly to calm myself, “alright we gotta do this. If anyone knows what’s going on it’s Al.”
The door opened nice and easily, despite every bit of the jamb being gummed up with fur and pallid skin that never stayed still. Stepping inside, I saw a dungeon right out of someone’s worst nightmare. The whole room was a rancid bubbling mess of meat and metal with fleshy growths descending from the ceiling. In each one there hung a victim, trapped in the substance, their upside-down faces resting at about chest height. Hoping to free them I ran to the closest and saw Graham glaring back at me with lifeless eyes. I only needed one glance at the missing portion of his skull to realise he was dead. The same was true for Dave, who’d somehow been transported out of the car and to here, and for a few of the other unfamiliar characters who lay suspended in this horror. All of them showed signs of coming apart in grotesque ways. The liquid flesh and metal that encased Graham was steadily pouring into his skull—against the flow of gravity—and into his open mouth. Dave’s broken neck had been split open and clicking metallic probes scuttled between exposed vertebrae like termites in a house. The others, who appeared to have been dead much longer, were all barely recognisable as human. All that remained were faces and tufts of hair.
Somehow Al was alive, writhing and fighting the mass that encased him. “Get the fuck over here!” He cried.
I began to tear the awful substance away from him. It was like handling greasy raw chicken, and unseen shards of metal constantly cut at my hands, so that progress was slow and wouldn’t speed up until Dee appeared a few seconds later with a crowbar. I was about to ask where she found it but I stopped when I saw what liked a bundle of nerves growing out the end. I realised she must’ve torn it off one of the horrifying stalactites that surrounded us, their writhing forms constantly producing an endless array of familiar shapes and tools.
“How long have you been here?” I whispered to Al just as Dee freed his shoulder and his arm came loose.
“I don’t know,” he said. “But we have to leave now. There’s… there’s this… this…”
“A fucking murderous Santa Claus machine running around?” I cried hysterically. “Where the fuck did you find it?”
“I didn’t.”
Dee got his second arm free and, refusing to wait any longer, Al began to tear away every last bit of metal and flesh that held him in place. By the time it reached his legs, Dee and I were forced to watch and grimace as it meant Al pulling out tiny metallic filaments that pierced his skin. He snapped them with an audible twang and each time he swallowed an agonised scream behind clenched teeth that made me wonder just how deep they went.
“What the fuck do you mean you didn’t find it?” Dee asked once he was free and on the floor. It took a few seconds for the blood in his body to right itself, so he knelt there panting and answered our questions.
“It appeared by the dumpster,” he said. “Sometimes people chuck stuff in our bins for pick up. It’s a pain in the ass but this time, well… I turned up and there he was standing right by the back entrance, next to the dumpster like someone couldn’t be bothered to throw him in. I thought, ya know, why the fuck not? It looked homemade but so what? I figured a small business musta made it and then, for whatever reason, they threw it away on our doorstep.”
“You know I would honestly like to blame you right now,” I said. “But I’m not sure anyone could have predicted this.”
“To be fair the costumes are just fine.”
Dee and I took a moment to look at him as his words settled in.
“What!?” he cried. “A charity shop dumped something like thirty bags in our dumpster. You think I ain’t gonna check to see if any of it’s worth keeping? Look at this,” he said while reaching out to touch a lapel on Dee’s waist coat. “That’s sturdy material right there. And the kids love an elf come Christmas.”
“Did you wash them?” I asked.
Al shrugged.
“Gave ‘em a sniff.”
I pinched the bridge of my nose and swallowed my words. When I spoke it was to Dee.
“Can you check Dave for his keys?”
“Don’t bother,” Al said, cutting us off. “I’ve got mine in my pocket and my car’s parked out front where it always is. Let’s go.”
Before we left I had Dee and I grab another two sets of keys just in case – one off Dave, and one off Graham. Hopefully we wouldn’t need them, but I didn’t feel like putting any more faith in Al.
-
When I turned the corner and saw the grotto—the elves with all their backs to me—I skidded to a halt so quickly that Dee collided with my back. She didn’t swear or curse. All of us had been running towards the front of the mall perfectly aware of what might be waiting for us. It was a risk I’d hoped would pay off.
It didn’t.
The animatronic Santa was facing us. Empty eyes and a hollow grin fixing us even in the dark. Surprisingly though, even as Dee and I were frozen in terror, Al sidled past us and looked at it quizzically.
“I think we can do this,” he whispered.
“It’s right fucking there!” I hissed.
“No,” he said, stepping out towards it, closing the distance to just ten or fifteen feet. “No it’s not.”
Before I could stop him he walked up to the Santa and tapped it. A hollow sound like a bell rang out and he turned back to us with a grin.
“It’s not here!” he cried.
I didn’t understand what, exactly, he meant. But just in case, he thumped it a few more times and even grabbed it with both hands and rocked it back and forth, his laughter verging on hysterical. Cautiously, I allowed myself to approach the Santa, painfully aware that Al had refused to hand over the keys.
“Fuck’s sake Al!” Dee cried as we passed him and moved towards the door. “We need to leave!”
“Alright,” he said with a nod. “Just wanted to prove to you that we were sa—”
His voice was cut off by a sound like a toolbox falling into custard. I snapped around to see, but with no lights in the mall, and only a thin bit of moonlight and the fading torch in my hand, it was hard to gauge what happened clearly, at least at first. Something had landed on Al. The growing puddle of blood, and the arterial sprays that had soaked both of us—even as we stood over ten feet away—made it clear there would be no revival for Al. Neither Dee nor I cried out, but we both grew stiff with terror as we realised what we were looking at.
It moved like a spider but looked more like a jellyfish sculpture made out of refurbished tools. Only it wasn’t just that either. Fingers and hair and flaps of torn skin were jammed into every tiny little crevice, so that you couldn’t tell if you were looking at something alive, dead, or a bit of both. If I had to guess, it was the last option. Like the strange substance in the basement this thing didn’t stay still either. Every inch of it coiled and rolled over itself, but it lacked the shapelessness of that lifeless goop downstairs. It skittered and moved, even as it stood towering over Al’s crushed and lifeless body.
Suddenly a piece of it struck out at the metal Santa and gummed itself to the mouth. For a few seconds I thought it might yank the machine towards it, but slowly I realised that the main mass of its body was shrinking. It was pouring itself into the animatronic, and just like that I understood how this thing had liked to move and hunt, and maybe even get close to people without being spotted a million miles away. The thought that it might have stood there, immobile in its hiding place, for weeks as hundreds of people poured past it to go shopping made my skin crawl.
With a final slurp, the last of that thing tumbled into the Santa, and with a noise like a braking train, the head turned to face us.
-
“Nope!” Dee cried as I jerked forward to grab the bloodied keys that lay on the floor. “We’ve got two others, remember!?”
In a single motion she swung me around and had us both facing the doors out of there. Normally the shutter would be down, but something had already done the job of tearing it to pieces at some point in the night. With hardly any distance to go we were out in the wind and snow before that monster had even taken its first step.
We were a further fifty metres away when something blew the whole front door out in a flurry of snow and sparking metal. Where before it had felt as though something lurked in the darkness, watching and hunting us with gleeful patience, I now got the sense we had pissed it off. Something was tearing towards us with a speed that belied its sheer bulk and mass, and I’m sure if we hadn’t turned the corner when we did, it would’ve crushed us into the snow like it was a freight train running over a penny.
Still, the less than a second that elapsed between us turning and the sound of screeching metal coming to a stop was enough to send white hot pangs of terror coursing through my veins. It had been so near! Ahead lay Graham’s car with the lights still. God we were so close, but I knew deep down we’d never make it. I might have been crying, maybe even babbling. I’m not sure it even matters. In an instant all my racing thoughts crystallised into a single terrifying idea.
“Dee!” I cried, and I threw the keys towards her. “Get the fuck out of here!” I screamed before taking a sharp left and barrelling towards the fire exit by the back. It was a fifty-fifty chance, but to my reliefI heard the monster turn to chase me. The last thing I saw before I pulled the door shut was Dee clambering into the driver’s seat, and the emotionless glare of a badly sculpted Santa face thundering towards me at breakneck speeds.
-
I muttered the word shit under my breath as I went to run right back through the mall to very same entrance we’d just left. I made it ten metres, at most, before the door behind me burst open like a SWAT team had kicked it down. The thing that chased me didn’t even slow, and when I caught a glimpse of it I saw arachnid limbs emerging from its knees and elbows that gripped the floor and fought to keep the monster upright. The sight of it struggling to keep up at such high speeds gave me an idea.
All I can say for Al is that thank God he won’t let a bad idea get in his way. Those old gumball machines no one actually uses? Our mall was littered with them. A leftover from the nineties, they stood at most corners in the hope some kid might drop a few coins in to chew gum that wouldn’t even last five seconds. Whatever the reason, I was familiar with them if only because I always scratched my head at why they still dotted the place long after they’d been fashionable. I was still lucky to find myself near to one when the idea came to me, and I quickly threw it to the floor in a desperate crash.
The sound that followed was like thunder meeting a high speed car crash. The animatronic Santa lost all traction and collapsed in a forward moving fall, skidding to a halt after only a few metres as its ridiculously heavy frame scratched grooves in the cheap floor. Tendrils and limbs shot out of it to try and arrest its inertia, which now carried it in the wrong direction to my flight, but the monster’s attempts to slow were useless in the face of its own mass.
By the time it scurried out of its metal house, I had reached the shutters—I risked only a quick glance at Al’s brutalised corpse—and was on the verge of crying for joy as I saw Dee pull up in a car. The lights were blinding, but they illuminated enough of the space behind me to see that thing tearing through the building to reach me.
I didn’t even open the car door. I jumped in through the window head first and Dee drove off with a tyre squeal of acceleration. The last thing we heard as we left the lot was the sound of that thing ripping the front entrance apart piece by piece in a terrifying rage.
-
By the time the storm cleared and people made it to the mall there was nothing to be found except rubble and broken glass. The mall itself was written off as a shoddy construction job compounded by years of piss poor maintenance. Al was notoriously cheap and his business empire, if it could be called that, had caused a frightening number of injuries and close calls. It soon came out that when he bought the mall for cheap, it was only on the condition he get a ton of repairs done. He never did, of course.
So in everyone’s eyes there was a pretty good explanation for the missing people. And by the time their bodies were finally dug up from under all that broken concrete no one thought twice about why they were in such bad shape. A few journalists ran stories asking why some of those dead people had gone missing days before the collapse, but nothing really came of it. Dee and I spoke a little about what happened, but it was all written off as shock by some, or a sick prank by others. After a while we had to stop sharing our version of events. People either thought we were crazy or cruel.
Dee and I did our best to imagine that it all ended with thousands of tonnes of rock crushing that monster to death, but I’ve never been satisfied. I don’t know why it pulled that building down but it worked out pretty well for it, didn’t it? People walked away thinking nothing had happened. Everything from the timing of the storm to its choice of disguise tell me it wasn’t stupid. I imagine it had lain in that old Santa decoration for weeks, picking stragglers and late workers off one by one until the coming storm left us cut off and the opportunity was too good to pass up.
So I guess I wasn’t too surprised when I saw a photo in the paper just a few weeks that caught my eye. Since seeing it and verifying with my own eyes, I’ve spoken to Dee and she’s agreed to what we need to do.
There’s a town not too far from us that’s hosting a little winter festival. Ice skating, Santa’s grotto, a Ferris wheel – it’s nothing big but I’m sure a few thousand people will still pass through it by the time Christmas day rolls around. Only there’s already been a few missing children in the area, sparking fears from the police. But no one has yet to connect their disappearances to the eerie looking animatronic Santa that stands looming over visitors right by the entrance.
Dee and I know better though. And tonight, we’ll be paying that thing a visit.

Not so short introduction:
Woman, 44, American Dutchie (Dutch mum, American dad), recently single again, living alone in Amsterdam.
Other than the mortgage for my apartment I do not have debts. Not even study loans (bless the Dutch education system and Erasmus program). I used to be a ballerina (started balletschool when I was 7, graduated from the Royal Academy and worked for the Dutch National Ballet until I retired at 31) I went back to university and graduated law school. I am specialized in human rights. Nowadays I work as a policy maker for the Dutch government.
I have an 3 bedroom apartment in the center of Amsterdam which I bought 20 years ago with help from my parents. (They cosigned my mortgage, but I’ve always paid the mortgage myself.) I used to rent 2 bedrooms out to cover my costs when I was dancing and in uni. Just before corona hit, I redid my entire apartment; double glazing, all the wires for gas, electricity, outlets, kitchen, bathroom, paintwork - everything, which I paid for with my savings ($60,000).
The remaining mortgage is around $296,450 and current worth of the apartment is $1,100,000 (I am not kidding Amsterdam house prices have gone insane). I know thanks to the refurbishing, I needed an estimate for my insurances from a real estate agent.
Pensions in the Netherlands are different from the US; first we get a government pension from a certrain age (which for me probably will be when I turn 70). It’s around minimum wage. Secondly, all employees and most employers will pay for our pension. You save that with a specialized pension fund. You can’t touch the money. When you turn the required age you get a monthly income. For me that would be about 2/3 of my current income.
I have only $2,900 in savings left due to refurbishing my apartment.
No creditcard debts, I pay my credit card bill every month.
Main Job Monthly Take Home: $4490
Here is the take down: $7,555 gross a month minus $626 pension contribution and $2,439 taxes.
I also receive a fully paid public transport card for anything work related. Also my work laptop and work iPhone are fully paid for. My gym membership is $71 a month but reimbursed by work. Best part of being a civil servant in the Netherlands 12 weeks of paid holidays a year. Well, before corona this used to be a perk...
Expenses
Mortgage $1,215
Home owners association fee $29.65
Water $21.34 (monthly, billed every 3 months)
Gas/electricity $86.56
Life insurance $9 (it used to be mandatory when buying a house, basically if a home owner dies the family doesn’t have to worry about the mortgage)
Health insurance $143.48 - this covers everything that is qualified care.
Other insurances (legal, home, travel) $23.72
Mobile phone $27.27 (yes, even with a fully paid for workphone I have a personal phone)
Cable/wifi/internet $80.63
Newspapers and magazines $30.24 (I have a paper, monthly fashion magazine and a magazine on running, plud NY times esubscription - full luxury)
Spotify $9.99
Apple iCloud storage $0.99
Netflix $10.99
City taxes $50.49
Environment and waste taxes $33.75
Vitamines $13.04 (monthly, receive twice a year)
Personal trainer $260
Massage once a month $100
Donation to the National Ballet & Opera $260
Donations to animal shelter $15
Donation to Amnesty International $25
Various donations to research $100
Monthly savings should be $1,200 but I haven’t done this since mid March.
I don’t have a driver’s license. I do everything by bicycle, walking or public transport.
​
Day 1 total spent $66.99
7.30 I took a week off and temperatures got really high this week which resulted in a week where I did totally nothing except going to parks and riverside.
I do some yoga to wake up, shower, put sunscreen on, a bikini and a sundress, grab my beach bag and a botte of water from the freezer and cycle to a park/beach like area. It’s really quite in the morning and after 20 minutes I am ready for another tropical day. I roll out my towels, have a protein chocolate shake for breakfast and eat some berries. After that: time to read. I am finishing ‘Rodham’ and it’s quite entertaining.
10.00 I reapply more sunscreen (am I the only one who is single and wondering how to apply sunscreen to my back?), stroll to a beachstand and get myself a cappuccino to go, I grab a lemon poppy muffin along ($4.55)
Back to my towel and I text some friends to see how they are coping with the heat.
Not well. My sister tells me my oldest niece refuses to leave the pool and has decided she will become a mermaid.
14.00 The park and beach are getting busier. I pack my bag and cycle back home.
One of the perks of an old apartment is very high ceilings and inside my apartment it is relatively cool. I make a leftover salad for lunch with some eggs.
17.00 I ordered groceries from a new company and they deliver. It’s from farmers markets and really fresh plus top quality and therefore a bit more expensive than what I would normally pay. On the brightside: I don’t have to go to supermarkets. Total costs of groceries that will last me at least a week and a half: $62.44
Amsterdam is one of the two cities in the Netherlands were face masks are mandatory in some busy shopping streets. I do not know who made the map for Amsterdam, but it feels really random and also, the supervisory sucks. My solution: not going to the shops (for now at least)
I’d ordered fruit popsicles and can’t resist them. Pear flavor and they are good (yes, plural, I ate two)
19.30 I call my mum (you will read this a lot) and she is really not doing well with the heat. Most Dutch homes don’t have airconditioning. She has, in her bedroom, but doesn’t want to use it all the time, which I find ridiculous and I make her go to her bedroom and just sit in the coolness.
I don’t want to cook dinner so eat some carrots, cucumber, tomatoes, cashew nuts and drink a lot of Coke Zero with ice and lemon.
21.00 I do some more yoga. As a former ballerina everyone assumes I like yoga. I do not. However, it is something I can do everywhere and anytime and I feel better after I do it. I should make this my mantra: I feel better afterwards. I really do.
I’ve been quite depressed after my relation ended and corona quarantine hit so with this week I started to reintroduce structure to my day. Well, I tried...
21.30 One of my friends has just started online dating and I am a bit annoyed with her; she doesn’t let one of us know when she spends the night with a man (ahh the dating life) Turns out I am not the only one fuming at her and she promises to do better. I am also a bit jealous of her; I just can’t get used to the idea to date in the current situation.
22.45 I move to my bedroom, turn the fan on and watch Netflix (and eat chocolate) until I fall a sleep which is already the next morning.
Day 2 total spent $31.48
7.30 It is Saturday and I wake up at 7.30. Why? I am terrible waking up on weekdays but the weekend, no problem usually. So strange. I get up and see that the forecast is really heavy showers and cooler temperatures later. I put on some running shorts and grab my headphones and go for a quick run.
Turns out the rain was just waiting for me to be halfway. I get back home as quickly as I can, but I am fully, totally soaked.
Saturdays are my selfcare days, so the rest of the morning I am busy in my beautiful bathroom. I wash my hair (Olaplex - takes forever, but very worth it), do a mani and pedi, scrub, put a mask on, the whole shabang.
13.00 Yes, I hadn’t eaten anything or had coffee. That is never a good idea. I quickly make a iced coffee (just black coffee with ice cubes, shoot me) and make pancakes with a lot of syrup.
14.30 I FaceTime my best friend. She is in lock down at her home, ‘cause her sister has corona and she saw her sister. She is also living alone and finds the lock down at home extremely hard, especially with the tropical temperatures.
18.00 This happens a lot. It suddenly is late. How did that happen? I bake some sourdough bread and have that with butter and salt.
Order a pink glitter bomb confetti card for my friend, yes, I am that sort of friend. $4.15
19.30 I am rearranging my furniture. My spare bedroom has become my home office and that means I have to find another place for all my workout gear. Spinning bike moves to my bedroom and weights to my dressing room. Order some boxes from Ikea so I can store more stuff under the stairs. Luckily, Ikea homedelivers ($27.33)
22.30 Feeling restless, so I put on a podcast. I listen to one about grief and that wasn’t my best idea... End up crying, feeling anxious and tired, but not so tired I can sleep.
Put on Netflix, grab a bag of popcorn (whoever thought of peanutbutter popcorn is a genius), and end up rewatching Lucifer. At least it entertains me till the next morning
Day 3 total spent $345.00
7.00 I wake to my phone buzzing and it’s one of my friends who wants to FaceTime. I look like shit, so instead call her back. I suspect my friends made a schedule to make sure I don’t go downhill any further. My fiancé broke up with me mid March and has since moved in with another woman and I have so many questions and basically am just angry. Not good. I love my friends for looking after me , but not at 7 in the morning.
9.00 Finally get out of bed and do laundry and clean my house. But first coffee. I am nearly out of beans and order them from my favorite shop ($57.40) I love cleaning. My mum and I used to joke that we should start a cleaning company together.
12.00 Make brunch with poached eggs, bacon, toasted sourdough and a fruit salad.
Clean the kitchen afterwards.
Sort all my trash and nearly fall down the stairs while taking down the trash.
15.00 Order flowers for my great grandaunt who trip over a stone and broke her shoulder. She’s 94 and as though as one can be ($27.60 - flowers are so much cheaper here than anywhere else; this is for a big bouquet and includes delivery)
18.30 I call my mum and afterwards my sister. Her husband is an actor and she is a pilates instructor. Both receive corona benefits and are happy that that will see them through for now. I transfer some money to my sis to give her some wiggle room ($260)
Day 4 total spent $8.65
6.45 My alarm goes off and here starts the game ‘I do not want to get out of bed, how many times can I snooze?’ Unfortunately, today it is 8h30 when I finally get out of bed. I stretch and do some yoga before making coffee and a big bowl of porridge with honey and raspberries.
Yes, I did not shower. I know. I do brush my teeth and wash my face.
I put my hair in a bun and put on a sports bra, leggings and a top and trainers. My standard stay at home outfit since mid March.
Check in on my team who are not happy that we are still working from home. We all are fully aware it is necessary, but we are so ready to go back to the office. Plans are that as of September we are allowed back once a week (spoiler: later this week the government decided that this was not gonna happen)
12.30 I make lunch: a huge bowl of fresh pasta with homemade tomato sauce and meatballs and call a colleague who is about to start his holidays. He’s going to his parents’ house in France, thankfully by car so he can easily come back if France goes in lockdown again. Freeze the rest of the pasta.
16.00 Snack time: I go out a buy cookies and Coke zero ($8.65) at the shop that is also my post office and pick up some parcels. The shop has big squares on the floor to keep distance. I joke to the shopowner he should get a dice and make it into a game and he enjoys that idea.
19.00 I call it a day and call my mum. As said, we call every day since my father passed away a couple of years ago. She is in good spirits thanks to the rain and I am so happy to hear that.
19.30 Dinner is grilled tuna with tomatoes, freshly baked bread and green beans.
Texting friends while making dinner and nearly killing my phone when I smash crash it through the kitchen.
20.30 Tuna is not a smart choice for dinner when you do a spinning session. I take it easy while watching Ricky Gervais’ Humanity on Netflix (I do not know whether or not I like it). I’ve bought a spinning bike to workout from home when the gyms closed. Gyms have reopened but I am still hesitant to go back to the spinning studio ‘cause it is in a room without windows.
22.30 I should go to bed. However, welcome to my head and my spiraling thoughts. After an hour I take a shower and listen to Spotify playlist piano music. It doesn’t work and I end up watching Netflix (Eurovison, it is strange and after that Crazy Delicious) again till the wee hours of the morning.
Day 5 total spent $1.15
6.45 Nope, ain’t gonna happen. I get up at 7.30, take a shower and put on exercise clothes. Eat a banana and grab a towel, bottle of water and cycle to meet my trainer. On Tuesdays and Fridays I work out with a personal trainer. We work out at one of the parks nearby unless it’s too hot like it was Friday.
8.30 Back home, shower, get dressed in yoga top and leggings. Picked up a freshly baked croissant ($1.15) Make my usual coffee and enjoy breakfast on my balcony.
Tuesdays are really busy at work, full day of Webex and Zoom meetings. Suddenly it’s 13h and I quickly make porridge, this time with apricot jam.
My secretary texts me that the minister would like to do an IRL meet in the Hague, would I mind to come to the office on Thursday? I do and don’t - I really need to see other people, but I have to use public transport to get to the Hague and I haven’t done that yet. Mask are mandatory in public transport.
Fun fact: although Amsterdam is the capital of the Netherlands, parliament and all the ministries are based in the Hague.
19.00 Quick call to my mum. I attempt to make a stir fry of broccoli, asparagus and green beans with chicken and brown rice but it’s not a huge success.
While eating I call a friend who lives in Maastricht. We chat for 4 hours straight and I feel calm and happy afterwards.
23.30 Brush teeth, do skincare routine (the Ordinary serum - it is bright red and I look like I am wounded) and meditate.
Day 6 total spent $213.76
6.45 Ugh. Yes, I know. Snooze. Get up at 7.55 and am ridiculously proud of myself.
Shower, athleisure wear, breakfast: I make scrambled eggs with toast and butter and my daily dose of caffeine.
8.30 Another endless day of meetings. There was an article in my newspaper that online meetings drain energy much faster than IRL meetings and I fully, wholeheartedly agree.
10.00 Computer says no. Our system just went down. My WhatsApp explodes with complaints. We can access our mail on the phone but no documents are available. I use this as an excuses to do some online clothes shopping for autumn. Sales are on and I need some pants. End up buying black wool pants from my favorite brand and somehow also buy more athleisure wear. More black compression leggings ‘cause well, shut up. Total $213.76
12.30 Early lunch, systems are still down. I make French toast with cinnamon sugar. Really happy with the result and proudly text my mum who is not impressed (somehow I did not inherit my mums cooking gene) I do my laundry in my new laundry room - people, I never knew this a thing, it is, while making some calls and make a to-do list for the rest of the week. System is still down.
16.00 I have a Zoom call with my psychologist. The pandemic and the end of my relation were two triggers that made me fairly depressed and I’ve spent months on my couch or in bed just doing nothing. I feel very lonely at the moment, even with chatting to family and friends. I am not lonely, I feel that way.
17.30 It was a heavy session and I feel worn out. I put on my trainers and go for a stroll. It is strange to walk around in a nearly deserted city. Although tourists are slowly coming back, the numbers are much lower. Unfortunately I do feel like it are all the drinking, drugs doing, screaming tourists.
Yes, you can do drugs in the Netherlands. No, most of us have never done drugs.
19.00 I call my mum and we discuss whether she should come to visit this weekend. I say no, mum doesn’t say anything which basically means she will come to see me whether I agree or not. I make another attempt at a stir fry, this time with noodles, shrimps, cilantro, zucchini and bell peppers. Meh.
20.00 On the news the government announces that contaminations are rising again and that we have to keep working from home until further notice. Although totally expected and understandable it hits me hard and I cry than eat chocolate.
21.00 My phone explodes with everyone’s opinions and views what to do now. I text my team to tell them that we will have to work from home until further notice and that I know it is hard. I strongly urge them not to go back to the office unless it is really necessary.
I text my boss about tomorrow’s appointment with the minister. It’s still on.
23.00 Bedtime. I’ve had Headspace in the past and wonder if I should try that again.
Day 7 total spent $287.98
6.45 I snooze. My therapist says I shouldn’t do it and just set a later alarm. He’s right. Get out of bed at 7 and do some meditation exercises and yoga.
Get fully dressed with a suit and heels. Pack my office bag and add hand sanitizer, face masks in plastic bags and wet wipes.
8.00 On the train to The Hague. It is eery to see how quiet the train is. Everyone is wearing a face mask. I like how some have done their best to do something extraordinary: I see a girl with a glitter mask and a man with a spiderman one. This used to be the busiest train: Amsterdam is its start and even than I often had to stand. Not today.
9.00 Arrive at the office and feel quit emotional. Walk to my favorite coffee place and it is deserted. I order a cappuccino to go with a croissant and chat with the barrista ($7.68)
The office is deserted. I log in and take a selfie to send to my team. Somehow I work better at the office. I prepare the meeting with the minister and it goes well.
Even there we keep distance and the security staff checks in several times.
11.30 Have a coffee appointment with my director. She pays for the coffee. We walk & talk, a lot is about non work topics. After this, I order a salad with bread to go and a green juice for lunch ($17.60)
14.30 I really need new running shoes but am hesitant to go to a store. Ask my physiotherapist for advice and he says to reorder the same ones I already have online. Find my Mizunos and order ($137.59)
16.00 I need something sweet and I need caffeine. Quick dash to our cafeteria and grab a Twix and a bottle of Coke Zero ($7.68). Chat with my secretary through Webex and ask her if she has everything she needs at home.
19.00 It almost feels like a normal workday until I walk to the train. Put mask on and again it is so quiet. I call mum and send her a trainselfie. Start a new book: the latest of Deborah Harkness. I really liked the first 3 books, this one I am on the fence about. Cycle to home from the station and arrive at home at 20.30, make dinner with leftover veggies and some mince meat from the freezer.
21.30 I get an e-mail from my favorite beauty website that the have a sale. I shouldn’t. I have too much stuff. Yeah, I order anyway: Olaplex no. 3 in a big bottle and more stuff form the Ordinary and the Inkey List ($117.43)
23.30 Bedtime! I listen to some piano music and try to go to sleep.
Reflections
My spending was normal for what I do since quarantine started. I treat myself to too much stuff I find I need and want.
It was really insightful to see this and it left me wondering why I do it. Gonna curb my spending and back to a budget ‘cause I do not feel comfortable with so little money in my savings.
Sorry for all the complaining in the diary and thanks for reading!