The morning after was brisk, quiet as ice. Each exhalation a white cloud; each inhalation, gag-inducing. As I hurled another shovelful of manure from our frost-slicked roof, reindeer bristles visible in the pungent matter, Dad grumbled on the other side of the rooftop ridge that he kind of missed Krampus.

Graham Robert Scott’s stories have appeared or are forthcoming in Barrelhouse, Nature, Blink-Ink, and Pulp Literature. See more at hemicyon.wordpress.com.