Missive Attack
by
Leslie R. Lee
Copyright 2009
He groaned. Would the holidays never end?
Concealed inside an oh so innocent card showing a snow covered landscape, was a... Christmas letter. He propped the card up next to the rest of the mail on the table. Emma, his wife, couldn’t miss it. The letter, he almost threw down as well, unread. Something about the paper though caught his attention. The texture was odd. Thick. Spongy. Somehow, it felt... meaty. Maybe it was some kind of high class parchment. Definitely weird, especially for something that gets hurled in the recycling bin at the first opportunity. He caught a faint odor. Strange, familiar, but the memory scuttled away to some recess of his mind refusing to be dislodged from its hiding place. Oddly, all the creases had smoothed away leaving just a slab of rubbery paper.
The writing looked almost real. Surely, like all letters of this ilk, some cheap color printer had spewed it out, along with a thousand identical copies. The dark crimson ink had a smell too. Coppery. It glistened as if still wet. This letter hadn’t been printed. This letter had been scribed as if a bone dry nib had scratched the paper so it oozed ink to form words, barely legible, the hand clutching the pen could hardly bear to carry on.
Usually, his wife opened all the Christmas cards. But, he figured he might as well do something for the Christmas cheer. He’d strewn some of the Christmas decorations around. Thrown some sparkly crap around the study. He just wasn’t very good at it. Just his luck to choose a card with a letter enclosed. At least it was just one side of one page. The multi-paged, double-sided, nine point font letters were the real horrors. He made his way back to his study. Light. He needed more light to read. Not simply to dispel the sudden shadows in the hallway by the front door. It was just that reading in bright light seemed safer somehow. The first thing was to make sure that he knew who’d sent it. The envelope had the right return address. The card had simply said “Season Greetings and Happy New Year, Love the Lee Family”. The inscription in the card stated a wish for Peace in the New Year. He snorted derisively. He didn’t recognize the scrawl. They’d never sent a Christmas letter before. Something about it made him want throw it away. Very far away. And run... But it possessed a peculiar comfort between his thumb and forefinger.
Even with the bright light, he had trouble deciphering the first sentence. Concentrate, he thought, focus. The dense hieroglyphs slowly started to untangle, the crimson deepening wetly, the paper seeming to glow like a fungus growing under some abandoned tomb. His head ached, nausea threatened to overwhelm him, but he refused to stop. He told himself that it was his decision to go on. Any time he wanted to, he could stop. He just didn’t want to. And it was just because of his concentration that the thin jagged lines seemed to lift off the page like a torn web made of razor wire. It pricked at his skin with tiny barbed hooks forcing his eyelids open keeping his head pinned to the letter.
The slam of the front door being thrown open jerked him out of the spell. He almost felt his skin tearing as he yanked free. Unsteadily, he headed to the hallway. Emma was frantically searching through the pile of mail.
“Thank God,” she said, almost crying with relief. “Thank God. It didn’t come.”
“What?” he said, bemused at her mail frenzy.
“The letter.” She stalked towards him, impatient. “You didn’t hear? There are letters going out. All over the country, the world even. You’re not supposed to read them. It’s all over the radio and TV.”
“A letter? What kind of a letter?”
She looked at him then at his hand. “What’s that?”
“This?” He looked at it quizzically. It folded up around his fingers, snuggling against him like a maggot. “It’s just a Christmas letter. From the Lee family.”
She couldn’t take her eyes off it. He held it but it was almost as if it held him. Like it was a coiled leech latched onto his arm.
“You didn’t read it,” she whispered fiercely. “Tell me you didn’t read it.”
His back was to the lit office so that he was almost just a silhouette, his features barely visible like some live action iPod commercial. She could tell he was grinning. Or rather, it looked like it should have been a grin. The saliva on his teeth glinted at her.
“It’s just a letter. A Christmas letter. From the Lee family.”
“Haven’t you been watching the news? Surfing the web?”
“Now why would I be doing that? You know me. Don’t you? I hardly ever listen to that garbage. You do know me, don’t you?”
She tried not to back up. “Of course I know you. The media has just been saying don’t open up any cards.”
He took a step forward. Then whispered. “Why not?”
She’d lived in this house for years. There were exactly twelve steps back towards the open door. No need to look. Just had to be ready. “A terrorist plot they said. Something about anthrax. Just have to be safe.”
“That sounds like crazy talk.”
“I just care about you, that’s all.” She took a deep breath smiled at him, then turned and ran. And she was fast. Hours in the gym, healthy life style, even sensible shoes. That made the shock of having him catch her after just three steps that much worse.
His hands clawed at her coat as she shrieked. She pulled her arms out and stumbled on. But two steps and he’d caught her again. She screamed for help but there was no one out there, and the neighbors... Safe in Florida or in Cancun or some sunny spot far from the frigid weather here.
He reached past her and slammed the door shut. She turned and punched him in the face. He didn’t seem to notice, dragging her towards the study. Her fist ached from the blow but she struck again. No slapping or scratching or wimpy girl stuff. She knew how to punch. And this time, she went for his throat, smashing her small and tight fist right into his Adam's apple. He jerked back a little but kept going stopping only when they were in the doorway to the study.
Then she saw. There was something crawling over his skin. Tendrils. Thin crimson vines with sharp thorns played over his flesh, digging in. He was oozing blood from these tiny pin pricks as if he was being squeezed like a sponge. Viscous blood dripped onto her clothes, soaking her. She couldn’t scream anymore, all her strength was stolen away by this horror of blood. His shirt ripped open from beneath revealing the wounds on his body. All the shiny dark red wires grew out from his hand. The flesh on his hand was barely visible beneath the writhing tentacles. He gently cradled the letter between thumb and forefinger. He wasn’t going to crumple or damage it in any way.