Porcelain
A very Early Holiday Story for you all....
“One night a year, God is gone.”
I remember it all.
Every moment of it.
I remember the day that the snow still fell. It was a winter night. Quaint. Gentle. A subtle hand guided the snowflakes on their path down to the supple white below. The skies were patterned with a dirty purple as the sun had fallen away, partially peeking through the clouds ever so slightly. As if nothing in the world was unwell, like God himself had touched the heavens and gave us a glimpse of his work.
The home was filled with the soft scent of tarts and gingerbread toasted in our oven. It was nearly the holiday, and preparation was finishing. I asked Momma for one when the oven bleeped.
“Not ‘till tomorrow, sweetheart,” she told me. “I want everyone to have their share when they come over tomorrow.”
I continued to whine and beg, but the answer was the same. “No.” I was around seven at the time, and I never knew the definition of that solemn word. But I was smarter than most kids, who would throw everything and the kitchen sink off the counter only to be taken to their room and given a whooping. But I thought I was smarter. I didn’t scream. I didn’t fret. I didn’t whine any further. I just went “okay” and I left it at that. I would imagine my mother was quite pleased with what she heard. What a good kid I had raised, she probably thought. I wish that was the end of it.
I thought I was smarter.
And when all was said and done, and the oven was turned off, the cookies left to cool in the night, the lights being turned off, and the bedtime wishes being sung, the day had ended for all but me. An hour into bedtime, I had snuck from my room, past my mother’s room, past my brother’s, and slowly crept down the stairs to have myself a treat. Maybe I would blame my brother; he always was a sneaky older boy. Or maybe Mama would blame herself after having one too many cold ones– maybe she just forgot she took one, she might think. I was a devious little thing, smarter than most, but that bar wasn’t high at all.
I remember that I took a gingerbread man, dotted with two gumdrops on its belly and heavy icing that made up its face and hair. I took him up to my room to enjoy him for myself and savor what I had taken. I remember sitting in my cozy room trying to pick out which part I would have first. I eventually settled on the arm. I proceeded to crack one off and shove it inside my gullet. The taste was immaculate, flowing breathtakingly along the tongue with a savory sweetness. And, for the briefest of moments, I felt it tasted so much better after taking it.
But that taste wasn’t worth what came shortly after.
Just seconds after I swallowed the first bite, a melody hit my ear. It was delicate, twinkling, yet deeply uncanny. It was like having your hair softly stroked by a stranger. And the second I heard its tune, my body instinctively froze. I sat, arms and legs utterly petrified as a soft stroke hit the inside of the closet door. It was a rub, halfway a scratch but also halfway a tap.
The door slowly inched open, my heart speeding up quicker and quicker the more it opened. Once it hit the side of the wall, it looked like there was absolutely nothing but pure darkness. And then, it emerged. A face made of pure porcelain. It was that of a woman, pale white and dull. Its eyes bugged, unblinking yet aware. It stood deathly still, until a soft voice unfurled from its ghastly throat:
After that, the moments blurred together. I remember that it was soon upon me. I remember the paralysis continued, and all was deathly silent, then suddenly the hard crunch of bone came, followed by tearing and pulling, like a rope being tugged apart. But most of all, I remember the pain. My body was still and unmoving that whole time– it wasn’t possible. And yet, my nerves still registered every single piece of fragmented bone piercing through the skin. The unraveling of flesh from the wrist. Thinking about it makes my heart palpitate.
It was only a minute, but it felt like an hour. The porcelain woman took what I savaged from the gingerbread man. I remember how it laid me down after it was all said and done and caressed my cheek. It seemed to mold back into the darkness where it had come from. I remember staring into the darkness of the closet for hours, praying that it would not return. I couldn’t sleep at all that night, and I remained paralyzed for that entire time. And by the next morning, when my mother came into my room for presents, she was met with the bloody horror of a son without his dominant hand.
I don’t know how I survived that night. I don’t know what I saw. But I have made it a rule in my family to never do anything bad on the day before Christmas day. I fear that one day my only children will fall prey to the Porcelain woman. Or maybe one day I’ll see her again if I’ve done something to wrong another on the Eve of that day.
I used to think that God had touched the heavens that night. But I was wrong. God wasn’t anywhere that day.
One night a year, God is gone.