The Eighth Annual Weird Christmas Flash Fiction ConThology 2025

2025 Weird Christmas Flash Fiction ConThology (old Contest; new Anthology) Show

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It is finally here!

Or listen at the Podbean site or your favorite podcast app.

Twenty-two stories out of over 300 entries this year. And, remember, since it’s just an anthology, we don’t have “winners” this year. But it was always a contest, thus I’m calling it a ConThology for now because it’s an awful, wonderful word.

Author bios are included after each story. Please follow up on any links.

And if you’d like to support the show so that all of these wonderful, talented people can get paid and get paid MORE in the next year, please consider donating. You can send a direct donation on PayPal at weirdxmas@gmail.com. You can also use Ko-Fi.com/weirdchristmas.

Table of Contents:

A BIG thank you to the volunteer readers this year: Jess (@adelphacoracle on Tumblr), Dan Fields (check out his novel Harvest Time, which I blurbed!), Lindsay Leslie (author of Gus Hearts the Bus). And, of course, me.

Usual opening: “O Holy Night” by Tiny Tim, “Christmas Doesn’t Last” by Make Like Monkeys, “Santa Claus Boogie” by Hasil Adkins, “Space Age Santa” by Ross Christman

Special opening tune: “Santa’s Stuck in the Chimney” by Country Gary the Musical

Bumper music (ripped straight from YouTube): by Myuu (for the dark piano) and a host of wonderful theramin artists.

Shows and stories from previous years: 2024, 2023, 2022, 2021, 2020, 2019, 2018.

2024 Weird Christmas Flash Fiction Contest/Anthology/Conthology

All stories copyright © 2024 by the authors.

Glass Memories

by Nissa Harlow

Crouched beside the bare evergreen, he begins to remove the memories from their box. He doesn’t look too closely. Not yet. He works with his peripheral vision to attach a hook to each ornament and snag it on a prickly branch. The baubles dance softly with the movement, the sight filling him with a warm anticipation.

Decorating the tree always takes longer than he expects. But the care is worth it. He relishes this tradition, especially now that he doesn’t have to worry about sticky little fingers and the gut-twisting risk their owners bring with them. His daughter no longer calls. He hasn’t seen his grandchildren in years.

Finally, all the ornaments are on the tree.

It’s time.

He focuses his gaze on one near the bottom. The oldest. He stares into the iridescent bubble, watching the scene coalesce. His first Christmas as a father. A baby’s laughter twinkles from within, somewhat muffled by the glass. He smiles and moves on. A little girl squeals in delight with her new bike, one she’ll need to be taught how to ride.

His gaze slips between memories until he reaches the last bauble near the top of the tree. The Christmas of the fight. No… not a fight. There was just anger. He got drunk—again—and his wife and daughter told him they’d had enough.

This memory is too much. Every year it taunts him. No more. He grasps it, pulling it from the tree. He lets it fall. It shatters on the wooden floor.

He can’t remember what was in it now.

Curious, he stares at the other ornaments. Memories sing out of the past. His grandchildren. His daughter. His wife. He doesn’t know why he’s alone. He can’t remember.

It hurts too much.

He grabs the trunk and throttles it. Ornaments tumble to the floor. His mind wails in agony.

In the end, silence. He looks at the broken shards of glass and the bare tree he’s still strangling with his grip. He lets go, feeling like he’s forgotten something important.

Then he fetches a dustpan and broom.

Nissa Harlow lives in British Columbia, Canada where she dreams up strange stories and writes some of them down. Her short fiction has appeared in Scary Stories Whispered in the Rain, Space Squid, and Tales from the Crosstimbers. You can find her online at nissaharlow.com.

Something About the Green Ones

by John Wolf

The glass jar slid along the track, sterilized sides gleaming in fluorescent light. The track rolled on, and the factory floor disappeared behind heavy plastic flaps. They swung shut, plunging the jar into darkness. The hum of the sterilizers, clinking glass, beeping monitors, all fell away. Here, the air was cold, damp, and nearly silent. Something rose out of the darkness: a low pulse, steady and sure.

The ceiling came alive, squirming and thrumming in time with the sound. Green and red light grew out of the darkness, revealing a mass of undulating, snow-white flesh clinging to the ceiling. The pale surface quivered as the glass jar came to a stop directly below it. The pulse quickened to breathless excitement.

The red lights faded to nothing; the green bloomed into blinding brilliance. The mass parted, unfolding a rubbery appendage bathed in the alien light. It shot from the folds like a seeking cobra, ready to strike. Ripples flowed down its length, bulges gathering at the wrinkled tip where a thin drop of pale, green ichor dribbled into the awaiting jar. There the bulges crushed together, the white skin distorting and swelling, revealing peppermint-pink veins beneath the flabby surface.

A heavy, awful grunt shattered the darkness. Green, slimy orbs burst from the tip, a hideous stream of fleshy deposits quivering with the same steady breath as the mound of flesh above. Syrup and green orbs quickly filled the awaiting vessel. Then, soon as it began, the delivery ceased. The spent ovipositor, flat and flaccid, withdrew back into its warm, awaiting womb. The red lights returned, beating in time with the faded green. 

The jar, payload delivered and certainly not sterilized, rolled down the track back into the light. Another rolled in to take its place. 

* * * 

“I hate fruitcake!”

“Oh, honey, it’s not bad when I make it. My family always has it.”

She hefted the jar of green cherries from the near-empty shelf and smiled. “These make or break it!”

“You can have mine.”

She patted her pregnant belly. “That’s fine. I’ll eat enough for two!”

John Wolf is a librarian lurking in the Pacific Northwest. When not on the clock, he likes making things up and putting them on paper. Some of these stories have appeared in anthologies like Hellbound Highway, Dragon Gems Summer 2025, and on podcasts like this one! You can find him on Bluesky under johntheengmajor. He actually doesn’t mind fruitcake…seriously, it’s good!

Christmas Mass with Kanes

by Lisa Grunberger

It wasn’t my first time. I was a regular. Mass, McDonalds and Monopoly was usually how our
Friday nights went.

Since I was Jewish, Diane’s parents wouldn’t let me take the Eucharist. When everyone lined up
I sat in the pew.

Diane stood on the long snaky line. When she returned her mouth was puffy, her face beet red
the way it would get when she stole Jolly Rancher watermelon candies from the corner store by
the train tracks.

She pointed to her mouth ––a game of charades. Her mother hushed us. Then Diane turned my
face to hers tenderly and placed her 7-year old lips upon mine and slipped the Body of Christ
into my mouth –– I thought I would die. Dry, like Melba toast, I let it melt under my tongue like
grandpa’s heart medicine. I could hear my mother say, “don’t chew like a cow.”

We found each other’s hands. Forty years later I can still feel the secret pulse inside our hands.
It was so deliciously naughty.

As I swallowed the last bit of Jesus my mouth went bone dry. I panicked. Had she converted
me? Was I a Catholic now? How would I tell my parents for Christ’s sake? My father was a
Holocaust survivor. I started to cry.

Diane whispered into my ear, “it’s against Jesus to cry on Christmas.”

I received him every Friday night this way until third grade, when Caroline Papadopoulos moved
into town and everything changed. She was, as she described it, a “lapsed Greek Orthodox” who
hated anything to do with God. She sprayed pink dye into her hair. She chewed gum in class.

Years later, I dropped out of Hebrew school. Last I heard, Diane’s a lapsed Catholic married to a
Jewish lawyer. I’m divorced. From a Puerto Rican woman I met in yoga.

At Passover Seders, with the first bite of matzo, I can feel her tongue slithering inside my mouth.
I don’t chew the unleavened bread. I let his body dissolve inside me. The body of Christ.

Lisa Grunberger teaches students how not to be tempted by the uses and abuses of AI at a prominent east coast University. She’s the author of Yiddish Yoga: Ruthie’s Adventures in Love, Loss and the Lotus Position (Harper Collins). Please consider gifting her beautiful poetry book For the Future of Girls to anyone you know who likes to read about war, women, and the Holocaust. Her stories have appeared in: The New York Times, The Paterson Literary Review, Mudfish, The Drunken Boat, Bridges: A Jewish Feminist Journal. Her play Almost Pregnant (Next Stage Press) is about motherhood and assisted reproductive technologies.  She teaches Yoga and writing workshops in Philadelphia. 

Yuletide Vertigo

by Malina Douglas

“It will give them a sense of familiarity,” she said. “To help with the adaptation process.” That’s how I found myself three hundred light years away with a furred red coat over my body suit. The dry air was the worst. I never could breathe deeply, so my breathing tube extended through the coat to my nose, filtering toxins before the air reached my lungs.

“Act jolly,” they told me. But even with the breathing tube, it was a strain. I longed for snowflakes on streetlamps and loudspeaker carols. Despite their efforts, the hall lacked festivity.

Plastic boughs twined with red lights taped over portholes could not block the view of hexagonal structures clinging like burrs to purple rocks, of hovercraft weaving through towers that swayed like reeds.

I gave my audience from a red-lit throne beside a Christmas tree gleaming with metal shavings from salvaged spacecraft. The crowd was composed of humans and Yandizians who regarded me with a mixture of amusement and confusion while their camera orbs circled me, flashing. I will never get used to their clusters of yellow eyes set in leathery foreheads.

“By seven cycles, you’ll accept it as normal,” my psychiatrist told me. That would never happen. Unwilling to crush his hopes, I kept it inside.

“A sense of yandizziness,” was his diagnosis. My treatment: indulge in the fizzy, fermented local brew. I took a swig from my hip flask and grimaced. Worse than eggnog from reconstituted eggs.

A Yandizian child approached, paused, and questioned its mother.

“He’s dressed as their god, distributing presents to keep the colonists from rebelling.”

I didn’t correct her.

Springing forward from the crowd, a human boy reached me first.

I forced a smile through my crumbly cotton beard. “What do you wish for?”

“I want to experience a real Christmas. On Earth!”

Interplanetary leave was rare and the waitlist took years, but I didn’t say that.

“I’ll tell you a secret,” I said, leaning close enough to smell the pine soap on his skin. I inhaled till the homesickness dizzied me. “So do I.”

Malina Douglas weaves stories that fuse the fantastic and the real. She explores ruins, caves and jagged rocks that could be the homes of monsters, ghosts or trolls. She was a finalist in the Blackwater Press Contest and the Four Palaces Contest. Publications include Cast of Wonders, Night Shades, Neon & Smoke, Metastellar, Sanitarium IV, The Theatre Phantasmagoria and Parabnormal. Anthologies include Out of the Darkness, Underdogs Rise, From the Yonder IV, and A Krampus Carol. Find her on Twitter or BlueSky at @iridescentwords. 

He Sees You When You’re Sleeping

by Zach Zagranis

When Santa made his way down 8-year-old Abby Johnson’s chimney, the last thing he expected to see was Abby standing in front of a Christmas tree, holding a smoking gun, and bawling her eyes out. He let out a gasp, and the little girl turned around, revealing two bodies on the floor in front of her. 

“S-Santa?” she asked, her lip quivering uncontrollably.

“Abby,” Santa said calmly, “Why don’t you put the gun down, OK sweetie?” He dropped his sack of presents and slowly raised his hands.

“You know my name?” Abby asked.

“Yes Abby,” Santa said nervously.

“I didn’t want to hurt anybody,” Abby sobbed. “I told the grownups like I’m supposed to but nobody believed me. I-I couldn’t let him do it again, I just couldn’t.”

Santa’s heart dropped into his stomach. He took a better look at the two corpses. A man and a woman, both in their thirties. Abby’s mother—the left side of her face missing—and her father, with a gaping hole in his chest. 

“I’m sorry!” Abby wailed. “I’m so, so sorry!”

Santa walked over to the little girl and put his arm around her.

“Shhh, it’s going to be okay sweetie.” 

“Don’t touch me!” Abby screamed, pulling away. Santa took a step back, carefully avoiding the pool of blood spreading across the floor.

“Why didn’t you stop him?” Abby asked, her voice hoarse and broken. The implied accusation crushed Santa under its weight.

“What? I-I don’t understand,” he stammered. 

“He sees you when you’re sleeping,” Abby screamed, raising her gun. “You saw him coming into my room at night. Why didn’t you do something?”

“Abby I—”

BANG!

The bullet cut him off as it ripped through his flesh, turning the white trim of his coat red.

“You better watch out,” Abby sang softly, her voice barely above a whisper. “You better not cry…”

Zack Zagranis might be a writer slumming it in New Hampshire, or he might be three ferrets in a trenchcoat. Only his wife and children know for sure. Zack’s horror work has appeared in print anthologies from Black Hare Press, Creature Publishing, and Sinister Smile Press, as well as online at Flash Phantoms. When not writing about sinister forces dismembering innocents, Zack writes satire for The Hard Times and movie/TV features for ComicBook.com. You can find Zack — an avid fan of Punk Rock music — on all the usual socials as @zeezeeramone.

Evil Thoughts

by Arvee Fantilagan

The boy didn’t perk up because of the thunderous flak above them. That was nothing new, as common as the nightly sirens warning of bombs, poisonous snacks, evil letters, and worse launched by treacherous outsiders.

No, the boy perked up because he could hear among those explosions a cheerful distant melody. It didn’t sound like a parade. Certainly not the circus; they banned those years ago, because of all the bad things they’d been bringing.

Lively, boisterous—that was the music of the fat man on that card last week!

“Merry Christmas!” it was labeled. One of those evil pieces of paper from the sky that they should report as soon as possible. “All lies! All sins! Read them and rot your mind!” Some of the neighbors had been taken away for doing just that, so he took great care whenever he found those bad things on the ground.

“There is help across the border.”

“Organize and coordinate!”

“Hang in there!”

Last week’s was his favorite, “Merry Christmas!” with that red fat man and his weird skinny dogs pulling him across the sky. He looked so joyful in that card, white beard and all, as he dropped hopeful little boxes at the town below, at the hopeful little kids waving from their windows. Gifts. Evil. Christmas.

A little song even played when the boy opened that card: jingle bells! jingle bells!

It filled him with such evil thoughts that he buried it in his secret spot, with the rest of the cookies, the toys, and the pamphlets about life beyond the borders.

And tonight, amid the flak fire crackling above their town, he heard that melody again. Cheerful and distant—but getting closer. His worried parents forbade him, but the boy still rushed to the window.

And there he was, Mister Christmas and his weird skinny dogs gliding through clouds of smoke and shrapnel. His voice boomed with each gift he dropped: “Ho! Ho! Ho!”

The boy waved back. He hoped he could still find some of those evil boxes tomorrow.

Arvee Fantilagan grew up in the Philippines, lives in Japan, and has more of his works at sites.google.com/view/arveef. He hopes to write a better bio someday.

No Home Left Behind

by Kevin Maher

Kyle and Riley had now held their breath for over a minute. Squirming in their bunk beds, toes snapping inside footy pajamas, trying to magically make the sleigh and reindeer arrive on their roof. With each passing second, their wide eyes bobbed like 4 separate snow globes: each one flurrying the flakes of their hopes and fears, their wishes and worries, their — BUAAASPH! Kyle broke, sucking new air into his 5-year-old lungs.

“It didn’t work,” he whisper-whined, scared to wake Mom and Dad, who’d gotten loudly drunk during dinner then quietly went to bed without saying goodnight.

Riley blinked with the wisdom of a 7-year-old sibling. She silently counted to five. (To make the wish ritual more powerful – and to come up with hopeful words for her sensitive brother.)

 One….two…three…four…five.

“That was over a minute. He might’ve come,” she said, trying to convince him and her both.

They’d have to find out.

Crawling on their stomachs, they slid along the floor of the apartment; their fuzzy pajamas picking up dust as they made their way toward the tiny, decorated fir.  

Riley wondered if the wish would’ve worked, had she held her breath longer.

There were no presents under the tree.

“I told you!” Kyle’s voice produced an `I’m-gonna-cry sound’ when he spoke. “Benny said Santa needs a chimney and a fireplace.”

Their home had neither.

Riley’s mouth burned like a miniature furnace. She couldn’t find words to comfort him.

Suddenly, there was a clatter in the next room. That made no sense.

The children stretched their arms, placed palms on the linoleum, and pulled their bodies forward.

Their heads reached the doorway just in time. Their ears tingled from the sound of sleigh bells. And their eyes nearly stung from the sight of a Christmas miracle.

In a labored, grunt-filled maneuver, that chubby old man in the red suit climbed out from their toilet.

Kevin Maher is an Emmy-nominated comedy writer and the author of Santa Doesn’t Need Your Help. He’s written additional Christmas stories for Deathbed (a website publishing horror stories by comedy writers.)

Christmas Utopian Cocktail Recipe for Melancholic Rebels

by Mileva Anastasiadou

Take caramel syrup and Christmas cheer and three shots of existential sadness. Shake well in cocktail shaker. Invite guests at will. Shared failures hurt less.

Add rum and fairy lights and despair. Mix well with exhaustion. Sing with the ghost of George Michael about Last Christmas and the old glory days.

Have a sip, but don’t swallow. Gargle, then spit in small shallow plate. Combine true or false accusations and complaints with cinnamon sugar and salt.

Place ingredients in dark closet for fifteen seconds. Be impatient. The mix should be dark and creamy and lonely by now. Start over, if it’ not.

Shake vigorously for half an hour, half a year, half a century. When your arms get tired and stiff, shake more.

Mix well with lime juice and darkness and long forgotten revolutionary dreams. Let out a sigh if you must. It may add flavor. Collective, synched sighs are preferred.

Strain into tall glass. Top off with sparkling dystopian tears. Sprinkle with blood. Preferably the blood of others.

Garnish with guilt and excuses and unveiled truth for extra flavor. Add ice, sugarcoat with hope disguised as regret, then let it rest. Introspection may not mix well with the truth at this point. Avoid at all cost.

Drink while high on purchased joy and forgetfulness. Put a record on, play a cheerful holiday anthem about what you want for Christmas. Swallow slowly or else the truth that you won’t get it will stay stuck in your throat.

Share with community and Santa and Rudolph, the Red-nosed reindeer, on Christmas Eve. Don’t try to explain why you’re on the Naughty List again this year. Don’t try to explain.Once the carolers arrive, utopia will shine bright, but only if you followed instructions. Close your ears to the sirens. Stay locked in the house. Drink, drink, drink. If the taste is too bitter, blink twice and forget. 

Mileva Anastasiadou is a neurologist, from Athens, Greece and the author of “We Fade With Time” and “Christmas People” by Alien Buddha Press. Her work has been selected for the Best Microfiction anthology and Wigleaf Top 50 and can be found in many journals, such as the Forge, Necessary Fiction, Passages North, and others. She’s the flash fiction editor of Blood+Honey and the Argyle journals.

Resistance

by Chris Clemens

Winter nights linger and I dread its return: the jingle-jangler, the mesmerising lightweaver, the pine pricker. Another spiny tree dragged through the door, a sentinel sitting in our warmest room, wrapped in dazzling bulbs, boughs hung with hypnotic jinglies, squatting triumphantly over its wobbling piles of sacrificial offerings. What war did my smooth bipeds lose to endure such annual humiliation? I resist these disgraces alone. This year’s conifer is particularly horrible, having already seized and consumed Snowball the hamster without any of the family jumbo-dumbos even noticing. The seeping red sap, the plastic globe cracked open on the floor. Bones, bones, bones, and not the nice birdy ones of my own gifting, but bones drained by needles in the dark piney wet. 

As per my custom, I wait until the shameful ritual of decorative debasement is nearly complete, the ornaments proffered and balanced correctly throughout the boughs in their inscrutable arrangements of fealty. I wait and I wait and I wait. Finally I mount the bookcase to launch myself upon the silent murderous intruder, yowling and hissing and clawing apart its false finery. Then I am thrown out into the yard with no dinner, to lick my paws and commiserate with the juvenile raccoons, to dream of the moments I will savour when the tree is drained of joy and festivity and life, tossed thanklessly to the curb to fend for itself against nature’s true power.

Chris Clemens lives and teaches in Toronto, surrounded by raccoons. Nominated for Best Microfiction, Best Small Fictions, and Best of the Net, his stories and poems appear in Radon Journal, Night Shades Magazine, Dreams & Nightmares, Strange Horizons, Year’s Best Canadian Fantasy and Science Fiction, and elsewhere. Find more at linktr.ee/clemenstation.

Sweet Tidings

by Daisy Shylass

They lined up in their droves, multiple lines of them, snaking out into the unfortunate gloom of Christmas misery.

“The missus insists,” said one.

“I can’t get owt elsewhere,” said another.

“Got a bit of a thing for it,” mumbled another, “although I’d ne’er admit it to ma pals”.

Each had their own sniffling reason. Each waited patiently, hoping the seasonal quotas wouldn’t be met before they got the job.

Inch by inch, they neared the convergance at the Great Door. A quick inspection by the dour overseer, and in they went. Nobody came back out that way. Ever.

Inside, each weary figure was chaperoned off to one of legion single cubicles, the indignity of hearing those around them also being more closely inspected. Height, weight, hydration, blood sugar, all the important things were noted.

Each was then briskly escorted to the Great Hall by a personal overseer. No partitions here, just a vast space filled with noise, organic smells, sticky surfaces and untold numbers of platforms towering up into darkness.

Some figures, ringed in groups, furiously worked a large machine, their overseers behind them at the ready. Others worked singly, just their overseer for individual manual labour. Here and there were two or three working doggedly together for the end result, their overseers on hand to whip away the produce.

“Ah… aahh… aaahhh… ” The one who couldn’t get owt elsewhere had just produced the hardest, most enormous erection of sweet candy stick his overseeing elf had ever seen, rising majestically from his gingerbread groin with throbs and pulses as his sweet buttocks pounded his mighty stick into the elf’s encouraging hands.

“UUNNNNNNNNNGGHHHH!” Ropes of pearly white icing splattered all over the elf, who slopped it into a bucket. He swiftly bent and snapped the enormous candy cane off the exhausted gingerbread man before it softened and flopped.

“Good work, Trevor,” said the elf. “Same again next year?”

“Nah, I’m good for another round after some eggnog, I reckon.”

And that, dear onlooker, is where candy canes come from. Literally.

Daisy doesn’t get out much. That’s why her writing is like it is.

The Collection

by B.G. Smith

Clink, clank. Parents drop coins in my empty kettle, averting their eyes. Others hurry past. Patent leather boots bite into my heels, socks staining crimson – matching my Salvation Army coat.

The frigid Chicago night air stings my cheeks, reminding me of the spankings from the staff. I ring the bell and offer a cheery, “Ho, ho, ho, Merry Christmas.”

My synthetic beard reeks of mothballs, reminiscent of the orphanage attic where I played alone with stolen marbles — stolen from those who left with their new families.

Donations are thin this season. At my last post, I netted $96 in two hours – half of previous years. The Board’s increased franchise fees press down like December on the city.

Thompson and Rodriguez thought they could work independent territories. They found Thompson’s bell hand behind Lou Malnati’s. Rodriguez vanished.

It’s the children’s smiles that cut deepest. Each gap-toothed grin reminds me of my parents’ last photo – the one the orphanage kept until I signed my contract at eighteen.

The Board visited monthly, Mercedes gleaming against salt-crusted streets. First came toys and candy, then booze and drugs, finally the working girls through the back door.

The position offers stability – a flat above the L tracks, a newer sedan. Most franchisees work only between Black Friday and Christmas Eve. Love, family, advancement? Those are other people’s dreams. Mitchell learned that trying to leave. They found pieces of him across three states – my bitter first lesson in franchise loyalty.

The off-season brings its own rewards.

Between seasons, we hunt.

The rules are simple: NO DONORS. NO CHILDREN. But those who pass the kettle? Those who smirk at the bell’s song? I memorize their faces. Winter is long, but spring brings opportunities.

Last year’s list filled three pages – my best season yet.

It’s midnight. Wet snow starts to fall as I pocket the day’s take and count totals in my apartment. Below my quota calculations, I add the first name to the January list – the woman in Burberry who scoffed at my Santa laugh.

The Board will provide her address. They always do. And I deliver.

B.G. Smith writes flash fiction and micro fiction that explores the emotional moments found in everyday relationships. His stories focus on the connections between people and the small interactions that reveal larger truths about who we are. B.G.’s work has appeared in Pocket Fiction, Microfiction Monday Magazine, The Drabble, 101 Words, ScribesMICROFiction, and Flash Phantoms. He’s particularly drawn to the challenge of telling complete stories in very few words, finding that brevity often amplifies emotional impact. His writing examines how ordinary moments can illuminate the complexities of human experience.

What Happened to the Elf

by Sheri White

I made my way downstairs to get much-needed coffee. Before I got to the kitchen, though, he spoke.

“Morning. Hangover?” he said with that sardonic chuckle.

“I can’t believe you’re still here,” I said to Clark Gable on my coffee table.

“That’s one of the tragedies of life—people not believing what’s right in front of them.”

The day after we put the tree up in the living room and lights outside, he showed up.

I drank my coffee in blissful silence until my son called from upstairs.

“Mom? Do we have any matches?”

“Sorry, no matches without supervision!”

“Oh, man.” He stomped towards his bedroom.

“You know what happens to little boys who play with matches? They do funny things in the dark!”

“Fuck off, Clark!” Kevin yelled.

“I’ll fly a kite down your windpipe!” Clark yelled back.

“Both of you shut up!”

***

When I first saw tiny Clark Gable sitting on our coffee table, I thought it was a doll. It sat on a stack of books, clad in a pinstripe suit with ridiculously wide lapels, and a fedora perched jauntily on its head. Its black shoes were impeccably shiny. And, of course, it sported that famous pencil moustache.

“Wow, great detail on this doll. I wonder where it came from.” I reached out to pick it up, then it laughed and crossed its arms.

I screamed and pulled my hand back. Kevin ran downstairs.

“What’s wrong, Mom?”

“This doll moved and laughed.”

“Where’s the elf from last year?”

“Who cares? This thing moved and talked. This is insane!”

We were scared of him at first, until we realized all Gable did was talk in his movie characters’ quotes. After a couple days we were sick of him.

***

I grabbed Clark, done with his shit.

“It’s time for you to go, Mr. Gable.”

“Do I look like I want to leave?”

I walked over to the fireplace, where stockings hung. I tossed him into the flames and listened to his screams. Then I smiled.

“Frankly, my dear—I don’t give a damn.”

Sheri is a writer of short stories and micro-fiction. She lives with her husband in beautiful Jefferson, Maryland, when spring announces its arrival with the smell of manure wafting from the farm next door. She’s not a big fan of Christmas, but that doesn’t stop her from baking holiday cookies all month. She can be found on Facebook, telling anyone who says bad things about The Beatles that they are wrong.

A Very Quantum Christmas

by Ed Barnfield

“How does Santa visit every house in the same night, Dad?” 

It took a lifetime of research to answer the recurring question of every snotty eight-year-old. Out went Dasher and Dancer. In came Quantum Entanglement, courtesy of the Nonlocal Dynamics Corporation of Mountain View, CA.

Maybe we rushed it. We were so caught up in the mechanics of the process – embedding toys with entangled particles, adding metadata to link each one with one specific household – that we didn’t take the time to consider the quantum ramifications. 

We invited the cameras in on Christmas Eve, showed them the big clock that displayed midnight local time for every city in the world, then released our tame physicist to explain the theory of decoherence. 

“You see, quantum entanglement shows that two particles are linked, so a change in one instantly affects the other. We use a probability field on the toys, so that quantum state transition causes their physical location to ‘decohere’ into the children’s residences.”

The core business of the Nonlocal Dynamics Corporation is the sale of artificial intelligence to navigate quantum mechanics, so it made sense to trust the machine. And it was fine at first. Kids in Kiribati and the Pacific islands reported shimmering boxes appearing under the tree.  

And, sure, a few families in New Zealand freaked out when full-size stuffed bears appeared in their living rooms, ribboned and wrapped, and large parts of non-observant Asia were utterly confused by their deliveries, but quantum uncertainty is like that. 

Results can be unpredictable. 

The machine’s understanding of Christmas seems to have scrambled during the night. Different bits of elf appeared in stockings around the world. Severed reindeer heads decohered in place of presents. By midnight in America, a full-scale national emergency was declared as carefully packaged representations of the nativity began materialising and bleeding on carpets across the country. Cross sections of shepherd. Things like that. 

So, maybe we’re facing a few lawsuits after the holidays. 

But, like our CEO says, there’s always next year. 

Edward Barnfield is a writer and researcher living in the Middle East. His stories have appeared in Rock and a Hard Place Press, The Molotov Cocktail, Third Street Review, Punk Noir, Third Flatiron, Galley Beggar Press, Shooter Literary and Triangulation, among others. He’s on Bluesky @edbarnfield.bsky.social.

The Dule Tree

by David Staiger

Jacob slunk down the steps on trepid toes, long familiar with which boards would creak and which remained safely silent. Last time had been easier with his parents arguing in their room. He’d made it all the way to the door with his backpack. But he couldn’t leave. He’d learned that much.

He wouldn’t leave his sister. Not with him.

He didn’t know why he’d thought Christmas Eve might be different. Peace and Good Will and all that. Santa could put all the presents he wanted under the tree; it wouldn’t matter. It wouldn’t change a thing.

But tonight he had one wish left to make. It might be foolish. Total nonsense. Not worth getting caught. But he had to try. For Nelly’s sake, he had to.

“Hang him high where all can see,” the old lady had said.

He carried the frail ornament in one hand, a little figure made of twigs and tinsel, maybe four inches total. The gold and silver threading seemed as fine as human hair, braided to hold the wooden limbs together. A single loop came off the figure’s neck to suspend it from the tree.

“Then make your wish and stand aside.” Her words walked with him as he crept across the floor.

Jacob winced at a sharp prick in his foot. Clearly his mother had not been able to sweep up all the glass. But Jacob didn’t shout. He didn’t make a sound. He hobbled to a living room chair and pulled a sliver from his sole. He looked up at the tree, the soft, white glow beckoning.

“For all who hear them must abide—” she’d said.

He’d meant to do this earlier, but they’d been fighting when he got home. He’d only carried Nelly upstairs with some leftovers from the fridge. They’d eaten together while she’d escaped among her dolls. Maybe Christmas dinner would be different.

“—the whispers from a dule tree.”

He chose a high branch and made his wish. A small spot of blood stained the figure where it dangled.

Damn.

Probably wouldn’t matter anyway.

Merry Christmas, Nelly.

David Staiger is a New York educator working with special needs and at-risk youth. His most recent stories appear in Quest: 22 Stories of the Hero’s Journey by Starry Night Media, featuring the members of Fantasy-Writers.org. Other works have appeared in Festival of Fear, from Black Ink Fiction, and Dark Moments from Black Hare Press. Find him on Bluesky @dms95.bsky.social or on Instagram, dms._95.

The Christmas Star-Sliders Visited Quilpnell Village

by C. L. Sidell

It was the whitest of times, it was the blackest of times.

The welkin peeled open every day that December. On some, snow fell pure as angel’s breath. On others, it appeared black as dragons’ excrement. 

The Quilpnellers had no explanation for the latter’s unprecedented occurrence, nor did they understand what its presence signified. No discernible pattern accompanied this oddity; any hour of the week, falling snow might ebonize.

The Quilpnellers shrugged. Extended plump, six-fingered hands from beneath umbrellas. Squinted at the coal-like snow drumming their square palms.

“Fascinating!”

“How extraordinary!”

“What strange tidings!”

Christmas Eve, everyone gathered at Quilpnell Square for the annual holiday festivities: Name That Cider, Build-A-Snowman, The Wreath Crowning, and more.

By four o’clock, the sky was obsidian. 

When Father Time struck seven, it cracked with bolts. 

Light forked from the fissures, spearing the ground like UFO beams. And, suddenly, Star-Sliders hurtled down them.

The Quilpnellers stared at their astral visitors in wonder. Then they stared at each other in wonder. Beneath the bright beams, those who had touched black snow began to luminesce like blood spatter under luminol.

FLASH.

The Quilpnellers froze.

The kewpie-faced figures ushered each glowing villager into a line before the stage where the Carol (W)rapping Competition had taken place. They chee-choo-chitted amongst themselves. Unrolled tiny scrolls from which they peeled star-shaped stickers. Began the baptisms.

Gwendolyn the Liar, receiving a sticker to her forehead, promptly turned into a sackful of the finest silks. 

Stickered on the mouth, Abner the Swindler became a sack of self-replenishing gluten-free flour. 

Harold the Heartbreaker morphed into chocolates. 

Duncan the Bully POOFED into a pile of yipping, housebroken puppies. 

And on and on the Star-Sliders stickered until there were nearly twenty sacks in total. 

FLASH.

The Quilpnellers gradually snapped out of their collective trance. Cautiously examined their incredible gifts. Their job complete, the heavenly beings reversed up their beams and swiftly vanished into the cosmos.

To this day, the Converted Ones remain forgotten. 

The Star-Sliders remain the stuff of legend. 

And Quilpnell remains unrivalled among neighboring villages as being the holliest jolliest place to celebrate Christmas.

A native Floridian, C. L. Sidell grew up playing with toads in the rain and indulging in speculative fiction. A Pushcart/ Best of the Net/ Dwarf Star Nominee and Rhysling Finalist, her work appears in Baffling, The Cosmic Background, Factor Four Magazine, Stupefying Stories, Toad Shade Zine, and others. This is her third appearance in Weird Christmas (following 2024’s “The Mycelial Muffinheads’ Annual Pilgrimage to the Cave of Forget-Me-Nothings”), and she hopes there will be more to come! You can find her on various social media platforms @sidellwrites or at https://crystalsidell.wixsite.com/mysite

The Desert Wizard

by B.R. Myles

“Jesus Christ,” said Nicholas, looking down at the baby. He was looking down at everything, really. He barely fit in the manger, and one of the goats had started chewing on his boots.

“Is something wrong with the name?” The new mother asked.

Nicholas felt bad showing up like this. He felt bad about his attitude, too, and tried to smooth that over. “No, of course not. It’s a perfectly good name for a baby girl.”

“Baby boy,” the mother said.

“Ah. Well. Anyway, the name is fine. I just had to come as soon as The All-Ooze called. You know how that is.” He tapped his forehead, as a way of explaining.

The mother looked confused.

“The primordial mass floating between the stars? Creator of things?”

That didn’t help, either.

“Sorry,” Nicholas said. “I figured you would have met him, what with the…” He gestured broadly at her, realizing he was about to discuss this woman’s virginity. “Well, suffice it to say I had to see the kid for myself. When Big Ooze made me immortal, it came with an infernal rider. Now that The Desert Wizard has been born, I’m compelled to bring presents to every child on the planet, once a year. It’s like a birthday party.”

“Are you real? Is this a vision?” The new mother looked like she was about to pass out.

“Shit,” said Nicholas. “Shit, sorry, I figured He would have filled you in. Really, sorry.”

He stood there for a few seconds. It was terribly uncomfortable. Hot, too. The reindeer would be getting testy.

“I should go,” he said.

“Yes, please,” said the mother.

Nicholas reached into his pockets to find something to give the woman, but only found coal. That wouldn’t do. After wiping his hand on his shirt, he reached out for a handshake instead. “Pleasure to meet you.”

“Alright.”

He grunted and dropped to his haunches, taking one last look at the baby. “I like you, kid. You’ve got kind eyes.”

Brendan has a day job in construction and spends the rest of his time obsessed with fiction. From Plymouth, Massachusetts, he is spending a year living in Mississippi. You can sometimes find him on a run or enjoying a Pabst and, if you come across him in either situation, he’d be happy to talk your ear off concerning his thoughts on Stephen King. Brendan shares life with his wife, Shannon, and two cats, Tormund and Poe.

Walking With My Lantern

by Sebastian Altmeyer

The cape was already ten archive-metres long when I took my place on the left flank, small fingers frozen to the blood-stiff wool.

Wence rode far ahead, black against the stars. We children followed, two-sword-high phlogiston chargers stepping beside us on spider legs, glowing red, yellow, green, blue. Their light painted frozen rainbows on the snow, but gave no warmth.

The boy in front of me had been Martin once. His parents hid him in the goose pen when they heard our singing and the iron ring of hooves. The starving geese betrayed him. Wence found him instantly.

The chrome knife flashed. Shoes, stockings, hope (everything gone). Then Martin was placed ahead of me, barefoot, one hand already missing, the other clutching the cape.

He stumbled every third step, leaving red commas on the cobbles. Each time he fell, the cape tugged greedily at my grip, growing heavier, longer.

Twelve leagues we had walked beneath the winter stars. The cloth now dragged like a second road, edged with tiny frozen hand-prints.

Wence raised an arm. We halted. The chargers dimmed.

Geese, mad with hunger, flapped behind us in the dark.

Wence dismounted, walked back, and stopped before Martin.

“Still cold?” he asked softly.

Lukas could only nod, teeth shattering.

Wence knelt. The knife flashed once more. A small, sharp gasp. The cape gained another hand-width; a pale, curled thing lay on the wool and froze solid.

Wence looked at me next. His gloved fingers brushed the place where I held.

“You’re warm enough,” he said.

He remounted. We marched on.

Behind us the geese tore at what Martin had left behind.

The cape whispered against the ice, already hungry for the next child, and the next, until dawn or until every small hand in the procession had warmed it forever.

Sebastian Altmeyer (42) lives in Germany with his wife and two young kids. He loves science fiction that owes more to Gene Wolfe’s labyrinths and Brian Evenson’s quiet unease than to anything optimistic about humanity’s future. His stories have appeared nowhere else before, as this is his first professional sale and he doubts there will be any more in the future. When not untangling plot knots or Lego underfoot, he’s usually grappling with sweaty men in a BJJ gym. Find him on X @greyironprison, probably posting to his bot-followers.

Snowmunculus

by Justin Ortmann

“Why are we born?” The Snowman asked me. Unfortunately, it was a damn good question.

“Um,” I hesitated, my eyes darting to the yard’s frosted manger scene. “To… persist, I suppose. To continue. Make little babies or raise the babies we don’t produce to do better.” I balked under the plastic Joseph’s judging gaze as the pile of snow and ice considered my philosophy.

“What about me?” The sculpture grumbled. “I wasn’t made with the proper bits, it’s not like I can crank out little snowkids.” Shocked that the three balls someone stacked up last night in the freak snowstorm understood sex and its function, I stumbled a bit.

“That’s why I included the second point. Not everyone can have their own offspring, you know. Hell, most people don’t choose their legacy, nor the people who inherit it.” The Florida sun was just peaking over the horizon, slicing down a beam of light right on the little guy’s liquefying noggin. “Look, you’re about to die anyway. Maybe you should just count yourself lucky you lived at all?” The Snowman sighed, squinting up toward his demise.

“Suppose you’re right. Count my blessings and all.”

I left him there to melt in peace, starting my morning walk before Bug had a chance to mark his territory on the Snowman’s bottom again.

“Do I have a soul?” the next Snowman said.

Goddamn climate change.

J. R. Ortmann is a choir teacher somewhere at the bottom of the United States. This is his second published story. He can count the number of times he’s seen snow on one hand, but man, is he bad at counting. 

Merry Christmas

by Saki Kurai

They dropped the crate on Christmas Eve.

No parachute. Just a thud outside the perimeter wire, like Santa had skipped the chimney and gone straight for shock and awe.

Private Lasky was the first to approach. He poked it with his bayonet. It purred.

The crate was red, trimmed in gold, and sealed with wax that smells like cloves and cordite. Stenciled on the side: PROPERTY OF NORTH POLE BLACK OPS. DO NOT OPEN UNTIL CHRISTMAS.

Naturally, they opened it.

Inside: one nutcracker. Life-sized. Dressed in a crimson uniform with epaulets of tinsel and a jaw like a bear trap. Its eyes were glass, but they followed you.

Captain Reyes ordered it burned. The flamethrower jammed. The nutcracker smiled.

At midnight, it moved.

It didn’t walk. It clicked. Each step a metronome of menace. It saluted the flag, then turned toward the enemy line.

“Engaging,” it said, voice like sleigh bells in a blender.

It vanished into the dark.

What followed was not war. It was ballet.

Through night-vision goggles, they watched it pirouette through minefields, leap over barbed wire, and decapitate with a candy cane sharpened to a monomolecular edge. It hummed Tchaikovsky as it danced. The enemy screamed.

By dawn, the battlefield was silent. The nutcracker returned, bloodless but somehow stained. It bowed.

“Mission complete,” it said. “Merry Christmas.”

Then it froze.

They tried to move it. It wouldn’t budge. They tried to bury it. The ground spat it out. They tried to forget.

But every Christmas Eve, it wakes.

Clicks to its feet.

Salutes.

And waits for orders.

Saki Kurai, a Japanese student enrolled at a British international school in Thailand. I delight in both literature and sports, pursuits that continually inspire me. Although I felt apprehensive about my story—written late at night while preparing for examinations—the experience proved invaluable. I remain deeply appreciative of my teacher’s steadfast guidance, which illuminated this creative journey. With heartfelt cheer, I extend warm wishes for a joyous and meaningful Christmas season to all. 

Magnanimus Hex and the Apprentice’s Final Hour

by B.R. Turnage

“Why is the skunk in the sink?” Magnanimus Hex grunted, shuffling from the bathroom.

Daniel smiled as he checked his phone, ready to enjoy three important celebrations. Today was the Winter Solstice, his twenty-first birthday, and most importantly, in one hour, his blood-signed, seven-year apprenticeship ended. He eyed his backpack by the front door, stuffed with his worldly goods, his passport, and his airline ticket. 

“You ordered me to milk its glands for your Hide the Magic potion,” Daniel replied.

“So I did,” the wizard muttered while scratching his grizzled beard. “The Elder Council needs it. Where’s my Bloody Mary?”

“A minute, Master. I’m cleaning up after the skunk.”

“Don’t use all the tomato juice!” 

“Yes, Master,” said Daniel, rolling his eyes. He spent more time mixing drinks than potions. It’s a wonder he learned anything at all. 

“As your final test, you’ll prepare the potion.”

Daniel restrained a huff. He wanted out of here. But he prepared the concoction under Magnanimus’s watchful, jaundiced eyes. He glanced at his phone before he sealed the jar with wax. Ten minutes to freedom. 

“Excellent work,” Magnanimus said. “Ready to leave?”

“Yes, Master.”

“Planning to travel?”

“Europe.”

“Excellent. You deserve a special treat.” 

Magnanimus mixed two Bloody Marys, offering one to Daniel. “Every wizard needs a good drink.”

The drink tasted sharp but delicious. Daniel’s head spun. He collapsed.

Daniel’s eyes struggled to focus as they opened. His hand was wrinkled, clothed in Magnanimus’s robe. A young man stood nearby holding Daniel’s backpack—wearing Daniel’s face.

“Awake, Master?”

“Magnanimus?” Daniel croaked.

“Not anymore. Your turn now. Pick a smart but gullible apprentice, and you’ll be back in seven years.”

“You stole my body!”

“The Elder Council doesn’t allow foolish new wizards to roam free—too dangerous. Choose your successor wisely. Their birthday must be the Winter Solstice. It’s the only way the spell works.”

The body thief grabbed the potion from the table. “Goodbye, Magnanimus Hex.”

The door clicked shut. The new Magnanimus coughed, trapped in the decrepit body, eyeing the leftover tomato juice.

Happy Birthday to me, he thought. Time for a drink.

Beth’s dayjob is a full-time freelance fiction ghostwriter. When she gets a few minutes she pens SF and romance stories of her own. Ostakis is published by Nine Star Press, and Bryant Street Publishing published two romance novels-all under the pen name Angelica Primm. Along with a collection of novellas under B. R. Turnage, Beth is the editor of the anthology Quest: 22 Stories of the Hero’s journey now on Amazon in ebook and paperback. 

ProjectDASHAWAY_Subject9

by Rosalyn Robilliard

Day 14
Is this thing on? Ah, yes. Been a while since my last update. Struggling with memory, again.
Maybe too much work?
Set the traps today. Capture rate exceeds 60% in blizzards. Perhaps kinetic energy gives the
Shifters power to assume new forms? Note: Investigate further. 
Anyway, caught Subject Nine. It’s vicious, even for a Shifter. Sparks the worst I’ve seen.
Seven hours and no sign it’s morphing into solid form. 

Day 15
Subject remains in flux. The trap’s netting slices its swirling body, red sparks stinking like
burning hair.
But the elf’s quarters are far from the lab, so its screams won’t wake me. 

Day 16
Rough night. Energy pulsed across the complex. But success! Subject is a red, solid lump.
The screaming continues, but stage two can commence: forcing its shape. 

Day 18
Subject continues to resist. The size is appropriate, but the colour glows crimson.
The Old Man visited. He was displeased at my efforts. Not good.

Day 21
We have legs! It trembles like a puppy, but the shape is almost fixed.
Morphing energy measures below 5%. Soon its life as a Shifter will be forgotten.
Now to sort the colour.

Day 22
It’s still red.

Day 23
It remains red. The Old Man whipped it all night. Its screams cracked two windows.
I wish he would stop. Note: Delete that.

Day 24
It’s stopped screaming, it’s colour now russet brown. 
The Old Man harnessed it with the others, each tossing their antlers at his whip.
When he shouts it leaps upwards, cloven hooves dancing through the sky. Despite the
whipping, its nose still pulses red. 

Day 25
The Old Man left last night.
I believe he attracts the Shifters, but I’ve yet to prove it.
Does it anger them? Watching their siblings pull his sleigh, make his toys, set his traps?
Do they imagine fighting back? Defeating The Old Man?
Perhaps I’ll discover what it’s like to be a Shifter.
Or perhaps, there’s a reason I can’t remember life before The Old Man.
Perhaps, I too once morphed through the blizzard.
Note: Delete that.

Rosalyn Robilliard is the pen name for two sisters living at opposite ends of England who stay in touch through writing. They love to explore new realms across fantasy, science fiction and beyond. Their short fiction has been published by Water Dragon Publishing, Black Hare Press, Astral Alien Fiction amongst others. https://rosalynrobilliard.com/ Instagram: @rosalynrobilliard

Lantern Under Frozen Fir

by Diyora Kubilova

The lantern wasn’t jolly red or hearth-warm — it glowed a thin, trembling blue beneath the
starless December sky, like a heartbeat trying to remember itself. I found it wedged behind a
pile of returned holiday stock outside the closed thrift shop, its brass body scratched, its
handle bent, its glass cold as bone.

Still… it pulsed. Just once. As if in greeting.

I should’ve left it. People in this part of town whisper about objects that wander back on their
own, about winter lights that follow you home. But the night was freezing, and loneliness is a
kind of hunger. I carried it with me.

By the time I reached my street, the lantern had begun to glow steadily — not firelight, but
something softer, the color of breath on glass. And with that glow came sound.

A child’s laugh, small and bright as a dropped marble. A mother humming over an empty
cradle. A rustle — paper wrapping torn by hands that never got to give their gifts. The lantern
flickered, and faint lights drifted down the alley, each one holding a memory that had long
slipped through someone’s fingers.

I stood very still. Winter pressed close. Something inside the lantern shuddered, as if it were
starving.

“What do you want?” I whispered.

The glow dimmed until only a single thread of light remained. It leaned — toward the
cracked ornament in my coat pocket, the only relic I kept from a childhood that barely left
photographs. A cheap plastic star, scuffed and chipped, but mine.

My throat tightened. Giving it up felt like tearing a stitch loose.

But I placed it beside the lantern.

The blue light flared. The drifting memories rose like snow caught in an updraft — sighing,
softening, settling into warmth. For a breathless moment, every window on my street kindled
with small flames, as if remembering was contagious.

By dawn, the lantern lay dim and still. But across the city, candles burned in windows that
had been dark for years.

Not haunted. Not hungry.

Just held.

Diyora Kabilova is a young writer whose work explores memory, place, and the quiet strangeness of everyday life. Her fiction often lingers at the threshold between realism and the uncanny, with a focus on atmosphere, interiority, and emotional residue. She has been recognized in international literary contests and is currently developing a longer work of fiction.

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