It’s Christmas morning and outside the window, snow is drifting from a sky bruised black and blue. I watch fat snowflakes splatter against the glass, tiny perfect flowers that soon melt and fall like teardrops.

We are all gathered in the living room, our faces bathed in the glow of the white lights that twinkle in the fake Christmas tree by the fireplace. Dad, Mom, my brother Jamie, me and our cat, Minou, who is perched on the window sill, alternately staring at us and at the snow drifting outside.

Mom is curled up in the big wing chair in the corner, clutching a mug of coffee and smoking a cigarette. She blows a cloud of smoke into the air, stares into space, throws me an absent smile when she catches me looking at her. Dad is fiddling with a couple of logs, arranging them this way and that on the steel grate in the fireplace. He crumples newspaper into balls, stuffs them in the gaps around the logs, and reaches for Mom’s lighter on the coffee table. He rumples my hair as he turns back to the hearth and lights the paper.

The fire crackles and pops; flames leap up the chimney.

Dad turns, beams a smile our way and gestures for my brother and I to sit down on the navy blue carpet in front of him. Then he closes his eyes, reaches under the tree and pulls out a present.

Every year, it’s always the same. We get up at the crack of dawn, Mom drinks coffee and smokes cigarettes, Dad makes a huge fire, then hands out all the Christmas presents as he blindly pulls them out from under the tree. Every year, it never changes.

I watch him as he grabs a present wrapped in green-and-red striped paper, a box about the size of a large shoebox, and opens his eyes to read the gift tag. Immediately, he sets it down on the floor beside him and reaches under the tree for another gift. I scoot closer, reading what’s written on the Santa-shaped tag tucked under the green bow decorating the top of the green-and-red striped box.

“To the Thompson family, hope you all have a wonderful Christmas, lots of love, Great Aunt Deanna.”

Every year this is the one present we can never wait to open, but it’s also the one present we always open last.

Dad’s aunt Deanna, who is in her late sixties and lives far away, somewhere up in Canada, in a city called Montreal where a lot of people speak French, always sends the strangest, most wonderful presents in the world. She’s been retired for several years now, but Dad said she worked her whole life as a professor of literature at a university there, I think he called it McGill. She never married, never had children, and now that she doesn’t teach anymore she travels all over the world. Every once in a while we’ll get a postcard from her, and it’s always from a place I’ve never heard of, like Vanuatu or Burkina Faso or Myanmar, where she went just last month.

Exotic places, like her. She comes to visit us each year, in the summertime when we’re off school, and she wears embroidered kimonos to the grocery store and flowing peasant dresses to the beach. I’ve seen her wear high heels to one of my brother’s baseball games and bright yellow runners to my uncle Danny’s funeral last year. She never goes anywhere without ‘putting on her face’, as she calls slathering on blue eye shadow and red lipstick, and always drapes herself in so many necklaces and bracelets that Aunt Bea says she could open up her own jewellery shop downtown. She smells like rosewater and wears her long grey hair braided and coiled on top of her head in a bun that looks like a giant cinnamon roll. Dad calls her impulsive and eccentric. Mom calls her weird and bizarre. Jamie and I call her the coolest great aunt in the world.

And not just because her presents are strange and wonderful. She is also one of the nicest people I’ve ever met. Sweet and kind and always smiling, everyone agrees it’s impossible not to like Great Aunt Deanna.

Or her presents. Last year when she went on a safari in Eritrea, on the north-eastern coast of Africa, she sent each of us masks carved out of wood by peasant women in a remote village somewhere. A few years ago, it was shirts depicting beautiful scenery hand-painted by orphans in Vanuatu. Strange musical instruments from the mountains of Tibet; necklaces of shells and beads from the Caribbean island of St. Lucia. Every year it was something different, something unique and beautiful, something Dad says you sure couldn’t find at the Wal-Mart at the edge of town.

I steal a glance at the green-and-red striped box and wonder what Great Aunt Deanna sent us this year as I open my other gifts - a cell phone, makeup and a pile of cool new clothes - and watch everyone else open theirs. From me, Dad gets two books by his favourite author, Mom a bottle of perfume, and my brother an X-Box game.

Dad says he’s already read one of the books and Mom jokingly says she now has enough perfume to drown in. Jamie is the only one who seems happy as he tears the plastic wrapper from the game, a big smile on his face.

Finally, there is only one present left, Great Aunt Deanna’s.

Dad sits down with the box in his lap. Jamie and I scoot closer. On the count of three, we all tear at the green-and-red striped paper, except Mom who is still curled up in the corner of the couch, smoking.

Dad makes a big production of lifting the lid, and the first thing I see is a real maple leaf, a giant red one just like on the Canadian flag. He takes it out and sets it down on the end table beside him, then pulls out two packages of pancake batter mix, tins of hot chocolate and specialty coffees, a pound of smoked Canadian bacon, boxes of cookies and chocolates and candies, and a big bottle in the shape of a maple leaf full of maple syrup produced on a farm not far from where Great Aunt Deanna lives.

There is a note at the bottom of the box, handwritten on a little card shaped like a gingerbread man.

“Something from closer to home this year. Hope you all have a wonderful Christmas breakfast. Love, Great Aunt Deanna.”

Mom says what a great gift, now she’ll have to spend all this time cooking and cleaning up the kitchen on Christmas morning, and wasn’t that just fantastic? She says she doesn’t like gifts of food; there’s nothing lasting about them. Dad says he can’t remember how long it’s been since he’s had pancakes with maple syrup, years at least, but it’s the best in the world. Jamie and I are on our feet, drooling and tugging on Mom’s hands.

With a heavy sigh she gets up and we follow her as she carries the box into the kitchen. Dad comes along too and starts pulling out a bowl and a frying pan from the cupboard. We help crack eggs and pour milk into the batter mix while Dad measures out coffee grounds and spoons hot chocolate powder into mugs and Mom cooks strips of thick bacon and sets the kitchen table with the good dishes in the china cabinet.

When breakfast is finally ready, we all sit down around the table and attack our pancakes as if we’ve never had them before, and we haven’t, not like this, sweet and sticky and smothered with thick maple syrup that drips down our stacks and pools on our plates.

I look around and catch a glimpse of the picture in the window, a family snapshot, a reflection of our faces in the glass. We are happy, smiling at each other, Mom winking at Dad over the rim of her coffee cup, Dad winking back, Jamie laughing at something I said and I think how wrong Mom was when she said there was nothing lasting about gifts of food.

Great Aunt Deanna’s present to us this year was the kind that lasts a lifetime - the gift of happy memories.

Beyond us in the window, snowflakes dance in the air.

*****


(Note: The following short story was the second place winner in the 2007 Cape Fear Crime Festival short story contest in North Carolina and first appeared in chapbook form)

Break Down
by Sonia Suedfeld

The gas station was one of those all-in-one, pump-and-rest stops strategically located every forty or fifty miles along desolate stretches of highway. The kind of place where one could purchase gas, an order of burger and fries to go, and even cold beer and live bait from the same giant cooler in the back of the crowded store.

I’d been travelling for two hours already, but I hadn’t pulled off the highway on this late and chilly Christmas Eve afternoon for any of those things. My tank was nearly full, I wasn’t the least bit hungry and I couldn’t imagine grabbing a six-pack of beer and a Styrofoam container of worms at the same time, for any reason, in this lifetime or the next. On my way north to spend the holidays with my mother, I had only stopped for a quick caffeine fix; all I held in my gloved hand was a large Colombian Roast, double-double.

There were two people ahead of me in the checkout line, an older woman in a pink knit scarf and matching hat and a balding man in his late thirties who was turning every so often to look at me out of the corner of his eye.

I pretended not to notice and sipped my coffee instead, letting my eyes roam along the shelves packed with merchandise and the walls and windows covered in paper Santas and reindeers and strings of blinking, coloured lights. I stopped looking around when I noticed the front page of The Times piled high by the register.

“Third victim found shot to death” proclaimed the headline above a photograph of a handsome, smiling man with dark hair and warm, brown eyes.

I reached around the balding man to grab a copy of the newspaper where I had worked as a copy editor for the last seven years. Until just over a week ago.

Bastards, I thought. They even had the gall to blame it on downsizing, as if that would cushion the blow. A lousy week before Christmas.

With teeth clenched, I focused on the page.

“Dennis James was found dead in his Ford F-150 along Highway 77-A, just outside the small town of Bellingford, early yesterday morning by a passing motorist,” read the cutline under the photograph. “The 43-year-old computer analyst died of a single gunshot wound to the chest.”

I quickly read the accompanying story. The man had left behind a wife and three small children, all under the age of eight. A friend of the family was quoted as saying: “This is a tragedy, especially with Christmas just around the corner. Dennis was a great guy, a wonderful father… there’s no reason anyone would want to kill him, no reason in the world.”

The other two previous victims, also white men in their thirties, were both found dead in their vehicles along remote highways out of the city, killed by a single gunshot wound to the chest. The first, John Guthrie, had been found just five days ago; Maurice Leblanc’s body was discovered two days later. With few leads in the case, investigators were appealing to the public to come forward with any information which might lead to the apprehension of the killer or killers. There was even a reward of $50,000.

“Some bad shit, eh?”

The man ahead of me had turned all the way around and was indicating the newspaper with a wave of the beef jerky stick he was holding in his hand.

I gave him one of those polite smiles meant to discourage conversation, but it was apparently lost on him.

“That poor bastard… pardon my French, but that’s some bad way to go, man,” he said with a continuous shake of his balding head. “Shot right in the chest, wasn’t he?”

There was something I didn’t like about him, something about the way his eyes shifted around and didn’t quite meet my own when he looked at me that made me feel slightly uneasy.

I gave him another very brief smile and nodded. “That’s what they’re saying.”

“Poor son-of-a-bitch,” the man went on, still shaking his head. “He had three little kids and everything. Makes no sense why someone would kill him like that... and two days before Christmas, for God’s sake.”

The woman with the pink scarf and hat left and the man moved ahead, placing his beef jerky on the counter.

“There were two others, you know.” He spoke out of the corner of his mouth, aiming the words over his shoulder at me. “All three were shot dead in their trucks, apparently.”

I watched him fish two rumpled twenties out of his pocket and hand them to the teenaged, pimply-faced clerk manning the cash register. “Yeah, just this and the thirty bucks of gas,” he told the boy and then, turning towards me, “The cops are stumped, you know… they couldn’t figure it out if their lives depended on it.”

“Really.”

“Yeah, but you know, I’ve got this theory. All those guys were probably low-life, scum-sucking dealers selling drugs to kids,” he went on, accepting change from the clerk and smirking in my direction, “and got exactly what they deserved.”

I couldn’t help the incredulous look that crossed my face. Could this man really believe that? Or could it be that I knew far too much, as usual, having been in the newspaper business all those years?

Probably. But any fairly intelligent person should have been able to deduce that three murdered men - all killed in the same cold-blooded way along quiet roads and highways north of the city and all in the last week - did not equal drug dealers offing one another for whatever reason - money, territory, a deal gone bad. There was something far more insidious going on, something far more horrifying.

Although the investigating cops hadn’t so much as whispered the words ‘serial killer’ yet, everyone knew only one person was responsible; everyone knew the cases were linked. Everyone except this man, apparently.

But I said none of those things as I watched him pocket his change and his beef jerky, and move aside so I could pay for my coffee and newspaper.

“Hi, how are you this afternoon?” the clerk asked in a voice that cracked on the last syllable. His face glowed as red as the neon sign announcing ‘Cold Beer Sold Here’ in the window behind him.

“Fine, thank-you,” I answered, handing him a crisp five out of my purse.

“It wouldn’t surprise me,” the bald man went on. “What do they call it, you know, when bad guys kill each other off?”

“Cleaning house?” offered the clerk as he handed me my change and wished me a Merry Christmas.

“Yeah, that’s it,” the man said, falling into step beside me as I headed for the door. “Cleaning house. Makes the cops’ jobs a hell of a lot easier. What did you say your name was?”

He had followed me outside to my silver Acura and showed no signs of getting lost any time soon. My unease deepened and I felt annoyance, too, coursing just under the surface.

“I didn’t.”

“Right,” he said, his eyes shifting around the parking lot before coming to rest on mine for a fleeting moment. “Well, I’m Gerard… just call me Gerry. All my friends do. And you are?”

“Running late. I’m sorry, but I really must get going.”

My tone must have been harsher than I realized because a hurt look crossed his face. “Well, Running,” he said, quickly recovering and chuckling at his own joke, “it was real nice talking to you. Drive safe now and have a Merry Christmas.”

“You, too.”

I watched him walk over to a blue GMC Sierra parked at the self-serve pumps. He turned to look at me one last time, smiling and waving, before climbing in.

Gooseflesh broke out over my arms; nausea rolled in my stomach.

I started my car and peeled out of the parking lot, leaving behind clouds of gravel dust hanging like ghosts in the air.

*****

Ten minutes along the highway, I could fight it no more.

Pulling over onto the shoulder, the memory was a tidal wave, huge and terrifying as it crashed inside my mind, and suddenly I was there again, reliving the worst thing that had ever happened to me.

Just over four and a half years ago, I was held captive for eight hours by a man who had offered me a ride after I broke down on the side of a country road. A road much like this highway, long and straight and bordered on either side by miles upon miles of forest. A road a lot like this two-lane highway, I thought in panic as I started looking around, remote and spooky and hiding a million spots where a man could rape and torture a woman in the dirty cab of his brown pick-up truck for hours on end and never worry about another soul coming along.

It had been a Friday, late afternoon, summer only two weeks away. A day that had started like any other; a day that would end like no other. A nightmare that would last for all eternity.

I’d been about halfway through a fifty-minute commute home from The Times when trouble hit. The highway I always took home was actually a deserted country road through farmland and forest and stretched as far as the eye could see. The windows were down, the wind whipped through my hair, Tom Petty was on the radio. And white smoke was pouring from under the hood of my Toyota Tercel.

There’d been no warning of any kind; no ‘service engine soon’ message had popped up anywhere. I had just enough time to pull the car off the road before the engine sputtered one last time and died. Swearing served no purpose, but I did it anyway, shouting terrible words at the top of my lungs especially when I discovered I was in a dead spot - my cell phone was out of serviceable range.

Twenty minutes from home, stranded on a deserted country road, I waited for what seemed like an eternity for the first car to come along. An older couple inside, they zoomed by without even slowing down. The next car, some five minutes later, actually slowed but didn’t stop. It was another ten minutes before the brown pick-up truck came along.

It pulled up ahead of my still-smoking Tercel. I watched a muscular young man with short, spiky blond hair climb out and approach my car with a smile on his face. He was very good-looking and reminded me a little of my girlfriend’s husband, tall and lanky and deeply tanned from working in the sun.

“Afraid I’ve got some good news and some bad news for you, sweetheart,” he drawled with a slow smile as he came up to the driver’s side window of my car and bent over to look in at me. “Which do you want first?”

I smiled back, looking into a pair of laughing blue eyes. “Well, the bad news I think I already know.” I indicated the smoking hood of my car with a nod of my head. “The transmission just blew, didn’t it? So what’s the good news? You’re a mechanic, just passing by?”

He shook his head. “Sorry, no, ’fraid not. But I can give you a ride, take you anywhere you want to go.”

I don’t know why but I didn’t think twice about accepting a ride from him. He told me his name was Tony as we climbed into the truck. I told him mine was Rachel as we buckled our seatbelts and set off.

The first stirring of unease didn’t hit me until he’d turned down a road I’d never travelled before, a road he assured me was a little-known shortcut into the small town where I lived. Full-blown panic set in a few minutes later when he pulled onto a dirt path in a forested area and parked his truck in a thicket of trees and bushes. Then there was nothing but cold, white fear as he pounced on me.

I screamed, I cried, I fought. He laughed as he tied my hands behind my back, cut away my clothes with a hunting knife, and raped me over and over again, sometimes so brutally I could feel my flesh tearing and blood leaking down my legs.

The more I screamed, the more I cried, the more I fought, the more he seemed to enjoy himself. He guzzled vodka straight from a bottle he’d pulled out from under the driver’s seat, and the more he drank, the more sadistic and cruel he became. The more depraved and monstrous.

To this day I cannot speak about some of the things he did to me during those long, hellish hours. But I remember everything. I remember praying for him to kill me so the nightmare would finally end.

Hours later, when night had fallen and it was dark and cold in the cab of the truck, I finally managed to free my hands, wrestle the bottle away from him and smash it over his head with every ounce of strength I had left. He crumpled against the door, knocked out cold and bleeding from a gash in his forehead.

I sobbed in relief as I scrambled to find my clothes. Leaving the truck, I hobbled my way out of the dark forest and along the road back to the highway where I flagged down the first vehicle I saw - a transport truck. Seeing the state I was in, the driver took me directly to the nearest hospital where I spent the next few hours being examined for a rape kit, treated for my injuries, and interviewed at length by the police.

Not that it did any good. To this day, the monster who held me captive remains free, despite everything the cops did to track and catch him, despite everything I did to help them. Free to rape, free to torture, maybe even free to kill.

And that’s what haunts me most of all - knowing I was probably not the first and certainly not the last, knowing that others might not have survived.

*****

A blinding flash of light, twin beams of headlights in my rear-view mirror. I blinked several times, startled, as I came hurtling back to the present.

I realized I was still gripping the steering wheel with both hands. I let go and glanced at my watch. Only a few minutes had passed since I had pulled over onto the shoulder, but in that time, freezing rain had begun to fall, temperatures had dropped, and twilight had deepened all around me. I felt cold seeping into my bones.

The headlights flashed again in my rear-view mirror; a vehicle was slowly approaching.

I saw the blur of the driver’s face through the passenger side window as the vehicle passed me. I saw red brake lights as the vehicle pulled onto the shoulder some fifty yards ahead of me. I saw the vehicle stop and the lights wink out.

The vehicle was a pick-up truck.

Fear clawed like icy fingers at my throat and all I could hear inside my car were the sounds of my panicked breathing and galloping heart.

There was no time to waste. I threw open the door of my car and lurched out, my boots sinking into wet gravel as rain slashed at my face, needle-sharp and bitingly cold. I barely noticed. Every fibre of my being was focused on one thing and one thing only - the pick-up truck parked ahead of me on this godforsaken stretch of dark highway.

I started towards it, almost running.

Along the tailgates, I made out the letters GMC, and along the side, Sierra. The truck appeared to be black or navy blue in the gathering darkness, and looked exactly like the truck I had seen at the gas station pumps a few miles back. Could it be the same one? The one that annoying man had climbed in?

Gerry, I remembered as I came up to the driver’s side window and rapped hard on the wet glass with a fisted hand.

The window began to lower and a second later, I saw that I was right. Gerry stared down at me, a huge smile splitting his face.

“Hey, hi! It’s me, Gerry, remember? From the gas station? I thought that was your car back there… that’s why I pulled over. What a coincidence!”

“Isn’t it, though?”

“You’re telling me!” Gerry gave a long shake of his balding head. “So, do you need some help? Did you break down back there?”

I smiled. “Yes. Yes, I think I did.”

“Well, don’t just stand out there… that freaking rain’s cold, man. Hop in and get warm,” he invited.

I was still smiling as I walked around the front of the truck to the passenger side, opened the door, and pulled myself up into the cab. Heat blasted my face as I closed the door and leaned back against the seat.

“So if you’re broken down, I can call a tow for you or give you a ride,” Gerry offered. “Christmas Eve and all… it’s a hell of a night to break down on the highway.”

“Isn’t it, though?” I said again, smiling at him, as I slipped my gloved hand out of the pocket of my coat.

I aimed the gun straight at his heart and pulled the trigger.

Gerry jerked once, then slumped against the driver’s door. He died with a look of complete surprise on his face.

Just like the others.

*****

(Note: The following short story won an Honourable Mention in the 2006 Hidden Talents short story contest and first appeared in the Tall Tales & Short Stories vol. IV anthology published by Tall Tales Press in 2006)


The Trash Collector
by Sonia Suedfeld

The sound split the silence like a clap of thunder.