Secret Santa

It wasn’t pretty, but this was the best Christmas dinner Bonesaw could make on such a short time frame.

A mass of meat sat on the floor. It rose up to her knees and was covered in thousands of small bumps, as if it had bubbled outward and then froze. Large tumors protruded from it at awkward angles and they looked wet with juice.

Crouched a few feet away from her and the mass of meat was Nice Guy. His eyebrow was raised as he stared at the meat mass. Hesitantly he poked at it. The meat mass squelched loudly and Nice Guy pulled away a glistening finger.

He wiped it off on the ill-fitting shirt she had hastily sewn a few hours ago, “This is supposed to be what exactly?”

“It’s chicken,” Bonesaw said. “There wasn’t enough for everyone. I had to stick a few cancer cells into it to get it this big. I could inject a few more, get it a bit bigger, but I think it’s big enough already.”

“Breed?”

“Hmm? Oh darn, I completely forgot about Breed!” His bugs were adorable, but she didn’t want the hungry things to get in the chicken if she could help it.

She reached for a cleaver, “I’ll make a second one for the bugs, then.” The chicken was too large for the cleaver and juice spurted up where she cut. She sunk her forearm into the juicy mass of meat to cut it all the way and then cut it again.

The larger half of the chicken started to bubble and pop, slick tumors growing outwards and on top of each other to replace what had been cut away.

In the corner of her eye she could see Nice Guy watching with fascination.

Bonesaw hummed a scattered tune and held out a hand. A few moments later the spider box clinging to her back handed her a pair of syringes. “Rejuvenate.” She stabbed one syringe into the chunk of chicken she cut off. “And cancer-ate.” The second syringe went into it. The meat grew shiny and slick, oozing juice. A few moments later it’s surface started to bubble and burst out into boils.

It looked delicious.

Bonesaw held her hand out for another syringe and jammed it into the other chicken. This one was meant to effectively cook it. She could have asked Mimi to do it, but Mimi was still asleep and wasn’t finished. Her passenger was heavy handed compared to some of the others and it was creating problems. If she asked Burnscar for help now there was a chance the girl would lose control. Jack would be mad if she burnt down the pocket dimension while he was asleep.

It was just easier to inject the meat with a strain of bacteria that just ate all the bad stuff that made uncooked chicken harmful and let it die out.

Nice Guy hesitantly spoke up. It was easy to forget he was there, even with the countermeasures she had made against him. “Was there a tinker when it was my time?”

She shook her head, “Nah. You were a few years too early.”

“Shame. I think we would have been great friends.”

“We still can be! Everyone is friends on Christmas!”

Nice Guy shrugged, “Maybe. Just focus on the others. I like what you’ve done with the chicken. It’s clever.”

“Aww, this is nothing. It’s all rushed and it’s boring. There’s nothing creative or eye catching about it.” It’s not art. Jack wouldn’t like it.

“But it works. Function over form isn’t a bad thing. It doesn’t need to be creative. Personally, I think your chicken is fine.”

A series of crashes sounded out from beyond the kitchen, along with that of a dish breaking.

Nice Guy was standing now. He had drifted towards the exit like a moth towards a flame.

Bonesaw scowled and clenched her fists. It was Christmas Day. Today was supposed to be full of holiday cheer and good spirits and opening presents under a giant tree that Siberian found and laughing when Mannequin made his presents impossible to open and singing Christmas carols in the town square alongside Shatterbird. Today was supposed to be fun and she wouldn’t let it be ruined.

The makeshift dining room was hardly any nicer then the kitchen, but the changes that Nyx had created made it feel like Christmas. Colored lights on strings lined and dangled from the rafters, wreathes hung on the walls, mistletoe had been set up over a doorway, and garlands lined the edges of the room and the set of folding tables that had been put together.

Those folding tables were meant to be a dining table, but now they were forced apart and engulfed by a cloud of red and evergreen smoke. A short child was off to the side hunched over and dry heaving. Wisps of dark green smoke drifted out of his mouth with every wheezing cough he made. Breed.

A girl with streaks of what looked like red dye in her hair was knelt next to him, worry spread over her features. Her lips were moving, but Bonesaw couldn’t hear anything she was saying. There were sections of raised loose skin along her arms that looked as if they could be lifted. Nyx.

A laughing blonde girl stood too close to a boy. He wasn’t a teenager, but he was tall enough to look like one. He was thin, as if he’d been starved, and his tanned skin was stretched tight over his bones. Screamer and Psychosama.

They weren’t supposed to be children. None of them had been children when they had been around, but Christmas had come before they’d grown up.

Screamer’s laughter abruptly stopped and shifted into a smug tone. “How’s dinner coming? Everything going smoothly in there?”

Bonesaw was at Breed’s side, holding his jaw open and peering down his throat. “What happened to him?” She couldn’t keep harshness out of her voice.

She still couldn’t make out what the girl with skin flaps was saying and she was inches away from her. Her words were being silenced before they could be heard.

Even on the other side of the table it sounded like Screamer was whispering in her ear. When she spoke it was as if she were sharing a secret, “The dumbass swallowed one of his bugs and fell into the table. He broke a wreath on the way down.”

“Language! It’s Christmas! Weren’t you going to help him?” Bonesaw popped the cap off of a vial and poured its contents down Breed’s throat. She hadn’t tested it, but it should purge Nyx’s gas from his lungs. An angry chittering hiss from deep inside Breed’s throat made itself known. It sounded adorable and cuddly.

Psychosama rubbed at his head and stared down at the patch of hair that had been pulled loose. “No. He deserved to choke.”

Screamer gave a toothy grin. “It’s rude to cough up a fucking cockroach on fucking Christmas. It’s a pretty shitty fucking thing to do. Wouldn’t you agree, Psy?”

Bonesaw cringed. Jack would have kept this under control.

Psychosama gave a curt nod and moved to loom over Bonesaw. He looked down at her and Breed, who seemed to be playing dead and pretending he wasn’t here. “It is. I wonder what would happen if I used my power on his bug right now. Do you think he would stretch out?”

Breed’s eyes were shut, but they still visibly widened. His chest moved faster and lumps started shifting around in his throat.

Nyx rose, her arms spread out and raised so that her skin flaps fell back.

Screamer ignored her, “I don’t know. He might just fucking explode. Or maybe the fucker will just claw it’s fucking way out of his fuck-“.

Screamer closed her mouth as dark colored gas steadily flowed out of the holes under Nyx’s skin flaps. Nyx’s voice still wasn’t audible, but her face was contorted in anger. She mouthed the words anyways, her arms moving and swirling the smoke to emphasize some point or another. The smoke brushed against the table and the wreathes and Screamers skin and took on their shades and a man opened the door to the kitchen.

Bonesaw broke a vial of white smoke and raised her voice, “Can we stop fighting and just enjoy the holiday season, please? All of you are ruining this holiday! Everyone please just stop! Stop fighting! Please.”

There was a few moments of silence that was filled only by the background buzzing of the lights and the man in the doorway shouting something.

Bonesaw ran past the man to go check on the chicken and make sure that it hadn’t overgrown.

The second chicken had expanded outwards since she’d been gone. Shiny tumors had grown and been pushed outwards by rows of boils that had grown on top of each other. Streaks of glossy fat went through it.

Bonesaw stabbed the chicken with the syringe and then stabbed it a few more times, fuming. Screamer and Psychosama hadn’t been described as nice people by Jack, but she had expected them to be able to behave and celebrate Christmas. Everyone in her family celebrated Christmas when Jack told them too, even if Ned called it pointless and Shatterbird acted too proud to join in. Even then, they still had had a wonderful time and gotten everyone together to celebrate.

Why couldn’t these clones be like her family?

Jack would have known the answer, but Jack wasn’t here right now and even if he was she didn’t want to bother him about this. She knew she was being silly, but this was her project and she wanted to prove she could do it.

She was failing.

A man with a handkerchief dabbed at the corners of her eyes.

She felt a pinprick on her arm as her spiderbot slid a needle into her arm. She wasn’t sure why it had done that. The gray matter in it might-

Bonesaw felt her cortisol levels rising and her focus directed forwards, onto the man with the handkerchief. Nice Guy.

He was smiling softly at her, “It’s alright, it’s going to be alright.”

Bonesaw blinked, trying not to spill anymore tears even as her voice hitched, “But it’s not! They’re being bullies and grinches and they aren’t listening to me!”

Nice Guy shifted from his squat to sit on the mucky chicken-juice stained ground. He leaned forward, “I know, but they aren’t reasonable people. They don’t care about Christmas spirit and holiday cheer.”

“They’re just a bunch of jerks.”

“They’re just a bunch of jerks,” Nice Guy repeated sympathetically. “Christmas should be spent with family and with people you like, not a bunch of jerks.”

Bonesaw stared down at her hands. She could just grab a little anti-depressant and go back to celebrating Christmas, but it didn’t feel right to do that. “They are family.”

Nice Guy sighed and leaned back, “They don’t have to be. They don’t like you and you don’t seem to like them. There’s not much family in that, now is there?”

“But they are family! They’re part of the Nine like me!”

Nice Guy chuckled, but in a humorless way. It reminded her of how Shatterbird laughed, but it didn’t sound half as cruel. “Just because you’re part of the Nine doesn’t mean you’re family. Family is who you choose.”

“Like recruitment?” Bonesaw felt like she was working on a body and needed just the right sort of bone to complete the spine. She almost had it, but she needed that one key piece to tie it together.

Nice Guy frowned, “Almost. It’s not really like recruitment at all, actually. You don’t have to earn the right to be a part of the family. You shouldn’t have to jump through hoops. Family is... it’s who you like and accept despite their flaws. It’s the people you trust and unconditionally support and who will support you when you’re in trouble. Family helps each other. They don’t tear each other down like the people out there.”

“I don’t have to have Christmas with them? But that’s rude!”

Nice Guy stood and offered out a hand. “Sometimes you just have to be rude. I have faith in you.”

She took his hand. It was slimy and shiny and felt like Christmas dinner looked.

Bonesaw stared down at the tumorous chicken. She could do this. Christmas wasn’t ruined. She could still have Christmas with the people she wanted to have Christmas with. Mannequin, Shatterbird, Siberian, Crawler.

She could even have it with Nice Guy, Nyx, and Breed.

She wished she could celebrate Christmas with Jack too.

She hefted one chicken into her arms. Her spider box grabbed the other one and held it above her head. Juice dripped off from it and ran down her nose.

Nice Guy opened the door, “Go on, choose your family.”

Bonesaw pulled a smile on her face and stepped out the door.