Read the Short Story by Kelly Mintzer
At 11:59 p.m. on Christmas Eve, time stretches, a weary Santa hefts a bone saw, and a wish for the “perfect man” demands a bloody price.
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Michael awoke to the sound of bone against saw; he heard it before he saw it, before he felt it, and the blood flowed freely and with gusto.
Quite a hook, eh?
Wouldn’t it be great if it started like that? I wish it did. I wish it had. The truth is quieter, softer, though no less ugly, no less violent in its own distinct rite.
And though Michael loses some limbs in the fallout, this isn’t truly his story. Well, he would disagree. But we know better. It’s not really Chris’s story either. But sometimes we must settle for the man of least resistance.
That brief prelude out of the way… join me now. On Christmas Eve. For as long as we can make it last.
***
Chris spent as long as he could hiding in the minute before. He stretched 11:59 to its logical limits and well beyond, pulled and borrowed from every available resource so that one last minute of Christmas Eve, 2024, contained rises and falls of civilizations, new loves found, realized, lost, and mourned.
Maybe.
Or maybe 11:59 lasted just long enough for him to reconcile what he had to do with what he wanted to do, and the horrifying reality that after gently touching Selena’s shoulder on the street outside of Michael’s home, the two had become the same.
Chris rubbed the bridge of his nose. This wasn’t how it was supposed to be, but it’s how it was, and somehow, impossibly, this dildo was sleeping straight through his last minute, which seemed absurd even for a last minute that lasted half an hour.
Chris coughed. Michael kept sleeping. Chris coughed again, louder. Michael kept sleeping. Chris tried to sneeze. Michael slept on.
Well then, Chris thought, I suppose desperate measures are in order.
“AHEM”, he said, not a cough, not a clearing of the throat, an audible, spoken two syllables.
Michael snored happily away.
11:59 stretched on, and Chris felt his resources and his will waning. Maybe, he thought, this was the wrong choice.
“A little late for that now”, Mary said, settling her tired bones onto the floor in the darkened corner by the door. Chris closed his eyes tightly, trying not to think of the rub of femur against tibia. She shouldn’t be sitting on the floor. She shouldn’t be here. None of this should be happening.
“Yeah, well…it is. And I came because maybe, Chris, it actually should.”
“This isn’t how I work.”
She sighed and rested her head against the wall. “Ok. But maybe it should be.”
Chris couldn’t reasonably hold up to the notion of living like… this. His compassion ran deep, and what he was about to embark on—hell, what he’d already done—sat rancid in his throat. It wasn’t why he existed. He had to believe that.
Mary observed her partner, her mate, her beloved above all else, struggling with the weight of what was asked, and pulled herself to her feet. Her joints cracked and creaked, but she ignored them.
11:59 stretched into infinity as the world slept and the anxious girls waited for the Christmas day Wordle to drop, and parents idly munched chocolate chip cookies and rearranged last-minute ribbons, asking their babies silently for just an extra hour this morning. Mary, wearing every minute of the 87 years she’d aged before hitting her own, personal 11:59, still took Chris’s breath away. He felt his heart fill and swell and overflow a warm, peppermint venom through his veins as she approached.
“Hey”, she said, pressing her thumb into his cheek. “If you don’t want to do this, don’t. Leave now. Let me do it. Let me grant her wish.”
Chris leaned into Mary’s soft, moist, wrinkled hand, and it felt like home. “No. It’s my job. But does he… is this right?”
Mary shrugged. “Why don’t you ask him?”
***
Michael slept through 20 minutes of 11:59 pm on his last Christmas Eve as himself. He awoke to the sound of soft voices: an older man and an older woman. He wasn’t sure what they were doing in his room, but he was damn sure they didn’t belong there.
He’d sent Selena home an hour earlier and was very much looking forward to Christmas alone. Geriatric interlopers were not a part of his plans, and, to be perfectly candid, the idea of heroically taking out home invaders gave him a stiffy. So, he reached under his mattress to find his… nothing. He found his… nothing.
“Looking for this?”
The old man had a long beard and perhaps a few delusions of grandeur. His red suit and floppy hat were familiar enough, though not particularly welcome in this precise context. Michael sighed. Well, he thought. I guess it’s a good thing I sent Martha and the kids to the in-laws.
“Who the hell are you?”
The old man let his head drop. “Not a great start, Michael. You still go by Michael, I assume?”
“I’m not sure why you assume anything.”
He smiled, and to his credit, his cheeks lit up like cherries, and his dimples were deep and oddly comforting. “I’m not really assuming. I’m trying to set you at ease. For what’s about to happen.”
“And what, exactly, is about to happen?”
“That largely depends on you.”
He hadn’t even noticed the old bitch. She could have been anywhere between 60 and 85, but all Michael truly knew with any degree of certainty was that the old boy could have bagged someone younger. Prettier. Someone without that fierce intelligence and unbending sense of certainty behind their eyes. He saw the beginnings of that confidence and assuredness in Martha.
It was precisely the absence of that stony resolve, he thought, that drove him to Sabrina’s arms.
“Selena.”
“I beg your pardon?”
The woman moved through the shadows, but he caught a glimpse of her red velvet dress in the refracted glow of the white lights Martha had hung before she left. Her voice was a little shaky but certain; the voice of someone who had been around for a very long time and spent every year, every day, every goddamn minute she had on earth becoming surer and surer.
Michael hated her.
“Her name, the girl, is Selena, not Sabrina.”
The old man looked at her with such love and aching in his eyes, Michael felt he should look away. He didn’t, of course, it was his house and also who WERE these people, but the adoration was raw in a way that bled.
And that was when he knew, with absolute certainty, that he was in fucking trouble.
The old woman went to speak again, but the old man gently touched her arm. “Do you really not know her name?”
Michael shrugged. Of course, he knew her name. He was tired. The names were close. But also…
“Oh,” Chris said. “You don’t care.”
***
Chris had struggled with the first amputation. It was nothing he had trained for in any significant or meaningful way. Mary had encouraged him to familiarize himself with anatomy after the letter arrived, to come to terms with the notion of blood and viscera. Still, he’d felt quite confident that it wouldn’t matter, that the magic that fueled him would make this part as easy as putting a bow on a rocking horse.
He’d been wrong.
Edmond Dantes hadn’t been a good guy, necessarily, but he certainly wasn’t a bad man. He was thoroughly fine. Unfortunately for him, he had an absolutely impeccable right hand, one he’d once used to brush the hair from the face of a lover he hardly remembered, but she could never forget.
And she had been a good girl. Nice, even.
Chris had waited until Edmond’s wife had fallen asleep, 9:54, precisely, before compressing his fingers and stretching the moment. He sat in 9:54 for 4 minutes before acting, then moved forward with a confidence that was well on its way to being gone. The bone saw sat heavy in his hand, but he was still quite sure of the correctness of his actions.
This was, after all, what she’d asked for.
Edmond clocked him in the 9:54’s third minute and closed his eyes tight.
“This is punishment.”
Chris stopped short. “I guess. Of a sort.”
“I’ve been a bad man.”
Chris shook his head. “I truly don’t know that. I’m sorry to say this is less about how bad you are and more about how good someone else is.”
Edmond nodded, quietly resolved to his fate. “I’d like to know, sir.”
Chris reached out his hand and laid it gently on Edmond’s forehead. He saw a life lived with measures of kindness, cruelty, and indifference.
Oh. He saw hope. He saw desire. He saw wanting.
Chris stood frozen, uncertain. It was easier when he didn’t think of Edmond—or anyone else he was about to face—as actual people instead of raw materials.
Edmond grabbed his wrist. “It’s ok”, he said. “I accept whatever judgment you pass, sir.”
“Why?”
Edmond smiled. “Because, in this life, I have been granted the chance to see you exist. I get to know goodness is real. And I’ve not been that good. I don’t mind. Take my life, if you must.”
Chris exhaled. “Not your life. Just your hand.”
Edmond chuckled. “Just a hand? Then what are you waiting for?”
***
Chris’s sack sat screaming in a shaft of moonlight by the bed. Artful placement, for certain, but Chris felt it was only fair to give Michael a slight hint of what was in store. He felt every moment and breath of agony, pain, and fear pooling alongside the gathering blood between the floorboards of the house that Martha’s parents put the down payment on when they still believed Michael was going to treat their daughter well.
The Christmas tree lights blinked as the Clonazepam took over.
“What…is…this….?” Michael stuttered, a thin stream of drool forming in the corner of his mouth.
Chris stood slowly, allowing his body to catch up with the motion. Christ, he thought. Perhaps I am too old for this.
He glanced towards Mary, standing fierce and erect in the corner, and felt every cell stir.
Perhaps not.
“Did you know she had planned to go home for Christmas? To see her family for the first time in a year?”
Michael furrowed his brow as much as the drugs would allow. “What? Who? Martha went home. She took the kids.”
“Yes, and how convenient was that?” Mary asked, her fists pulled tight and white.
Chris shook his head, and she sighed. He would not pull rank on her, but she understood that this was his beat first and foremost. She stepped back.
“Not Martha, Michael. Selena.”
Michael shrugged. “She’s an adult. She made her choice.”
Chris considered Andrew Markowich, who had accepted the loss of his left foot as a fair exchange for the time he’d broken the lead cheerleader’s heart in 10th grade. He felt the ache radiating from his bloody, sodden sack and bore it.
But this….
“She’s 24 years old!”
“Right. That’s an adult!”
Michael’s mouth was foaming, rabid and diseased, not because of the drugs but because of his absolute certainty that he was right, correct, morally superior. Chris stomped his booted foot on the hardwood floor so hard that the light fixtures shook.
“She is 24, and you are 55! Her superior at work!. And….”
Chris tried to catch his breath. He had been wrapped up in the thoughts of the work ahead so profoundly that he hadn’t considered the flash of what he had seen, steadying Selena on the icy sidewalk outside of Michael’s home.
Michael scoffed. “And what? She knew I was married. She made her choice. I never lied to her.”
Chris stood, unable to speak, thinking instead of 11:57 pm.
Mary approached him softly and put her hand gently on his shoulder. Her eyes went wide.
“Oh,” she said.
***
Chris was connected to all of humanity, but Mary was connected to Chris.
He handed her—the only person he trusted fully—the weight of 11:57.
It happened, as these things so often do, in the blink of an eye, barely worth mentioning, while holding the weight of an entire broken heart.
Selena, 24, awkward, hopeful, and lonely, slipped on a patch of ice in front of her lover’s house. A kindly older man in a red suit caught her and steadied her.
And oh. Oh no.
“Thank you,” she said, gripping his arm tightly to regain her footing.
Her parents had asked her to come home for the holiday, and she’d been excited to say “yes”—until Michael told her that his wife was taking the kids to the in-laws for Christmas.
“I’m not happy,” he’d said.
“I can’t stand to think of you around those other men,” he’d said.
“I know you’ll want someone younger and more carefree, like you,” he’d said.
She’d sat alone in her one-bedroom apartment, drinking wine from a box and trying so hard to understand what she felt; she wanted to talk to someone, to better explore what she was going through. But she couldn’t. The shame and the desire balanced the scale. She hated herself almost as much as she loved him.
“I don’t want you to stay,” he’d said. “It’s fine. I don’t mind being alone. Just go and have a good time with your family. I’ll be fine here alone.”
She’d stayed.
Of course, she stayed.
But the phone had rung at 11:30, and he’d gone into the bathroom alone, and when he came out, he refused her embrace.
“You know I still love my wife,” he’d said. “But I love you, too.”
She’d smiled awkwardly and pulled the sheet over her breasts. “Of course. Yes, right. Yeah.”
“I’ve always told you that. I’ve always told you that you should find someone your own age,” he’d said. And she told herself that yes, he was telling the truth, despite the way he’d called her cheap and easy when she’d had drinks with men her own age. Despite the way he’d told her that her friends were leading her down bad paths until she had none left and all she could hold onto was him.
She slid into her jeans and threw on her Christmas sweater, trying for all she was worth to hide her humiliation. Trying not to think of her family drinking mulled wine and listening to “A Christmas Carol” and exchanging gifts.
Tomorrow she’d try to order pizza, and when no place was open because of the holiday, she’d eat leftover rice and raw cookie dough and sit quietly sobbing and hating herself.
Chris wished he could tell her that in a few years, she’d meet someone who would never ask her to choose between a social life and a romantic one; someone who would encourage her to eat the things she loved instead of ordering “healthy” options for her, or telling her she was a “bad ass” for running on a broken ankle. Someone who would cradle her and protect her; someone she would never need to feel shame about.
But Chris couldn’t offer her that comfort. All he could do was help her regain her balance on the slick sidewalk as the tears flowed down her face and offer a gentle “Merry Christmas” as she tried desperately to flag a cab.
***
“Oh.”
“Oh,” didn’t feel like a good indicator to Michael. “Oh” should be neutral, but the way the old lady said it, it felt like a death sentence, though he couldn’t imagine why. He’d been good. He’d been fine. Whatever. Everyone had been a consenting adult.
The old man approached him, and for the first time, Michael was acutely aware of his inability to move beyond a twitch or a shift.
Something flickered in the moonlight.
A hatchet. One covered in a healthy dose of rust.
Or…
“You can’t do this to me,” Michael said.
The old man stopped. “Why not? Convince me.”
“Why would you?”
“That’s not the compelling argument you think it is.”
Michael tried—and failed—to shrug. “Ok. But… tell me why. I think that’s a reasonable ask. Tell me why.”
Michael glanced at the clock. Still 11:59. Good news. There’s still hope.
“Because it’s what she asked for. And she was nice.”
Michael chuckled. He saw salvation, and he had every intention of grabbing it by both antlers. “Oh, she was? Was she not an equal participant? She knew I was married!”
The old man shook his head. “She was. And she regretted it. She carried it with her every damn day of her life. And I would remind you. She was 23, and you were 50. You were her boss. And while she felt repentance, you learned nothing.”
The angel of death swung his hatchet in a high arch over Michael’s hip. Michael swallowed as hard as the barbiturates would allow him.
“But… you’re for rewarding the good. Not punishing the bad, right? So this is out of your jurisdiction.”
The old man’s arm froze in its path.
Michael sighed in relief.
Mary stepped forward.
***
“I’m not going to tell you what to do.
I’m not going to force your hand.
Despite the fact that we have a sack full of bits and pieces of men far better than this one. I’ll support what you decide to do. Because you ARE a good man. And once Christmas Day hits, whether you’ve followed through on this one or not… I’ll still believe you are the man who listened to me when I told you that a girl on the nice list—even if she is 30—if she truly is nice and wrote you a letter, she deserves her ask. I’ll still believe that you believe. I saw you saw through bone tonight. I saw you cauterize wounds and veins in the name of granting a wish.
I’m not going to tell you what to do.
But I believe in you.”
***
Chris stood, his right arm weighed down by the impossible weight of the bone saw, as his bleeding sack sang loudly in the corner. Yes, Edmond’s hand, yes, Marcus’s ankle, yes, Richard’s thigh, yes, Tom’s bicep, singing beautifully, impossibly, in imperfect but undeniable multipart harmony, “Baby, Please Come Home”…Yes, he thought. This is right.
He stepped closer to Michael, swallowing the bitter taste of something he wasn’t fully prepared to do.
Mary gently laid her hand on Chris’s shoulder. “Are you sure?” she asked softly, too softly for anyone besides her mate to hear, and Chris knew, in that moment, that she meant it.
Michael sneered, desperate and afraid. “Oh, please. Who wears the pants here? This is between us men.”
Chris abandoned all hesitation and second thought—no danger of thought number three now, this is where we are, this is where we land. The bone saw hit hard and definitively against Michael’s pelvic bone, and a bright and decisive spray of blood stained Chris’s beard and suit.
***
Chris and Mary spent much of the remnants of 11:59 placing Michael’s hands, biceps, calves, and thighs into boxes and wrapping them. Edmond, Marcus, Richard, and Tom may have only been able to claim perfection in small and isolated sections, but they were entirely ok and deserved some recompense for their sacrifice. Michael’s parts may not have been perfect, but hell… they were better than nothing.
Mary tied the last ribbon tightly and with a flourish.
“I kind of thought you weren’t going to do it,” she said. “I wouldn’t have judged you. It’s a hard decision to make.”
Chris reached over the seeping box containing Michael’s forearm and touched her cheek. “It was the easiest decision I ever made. I just listened to you.”
The clock struck 12:00.
***
CHRISTMAS MORNING
Selena woke at 5:45 am to the feel of her niece tugging her arm. “Ok, ok, ok…” she said, stumbling out of bed in a perfectly reasonable pair of Charlie Brown pajamas. She didn’t expect much, and she was fine with that. Adult Christmas is different, she thought, and the letter she’d sent to “Santa” alongside Elyse and Andy’s was a comfortable joke. Her sister had encouraged her, “Describe your perfect man.”
She had remembered parts from previous lovers: the caress of Edmond’s pointer finger along her jawline as she fell asleep, the secure embrace of her hands in Tom’s bicep, the soft shiver of Marcus’ ankle melting down her leg, the comfort she felt when Richard let her warm her frozen toes on his thighs. They had all meant the world to her.
But when she really came down to it, stripped everything else away, what she remembered was standing in the copy room with Michael as he told her, “I love my wife, but I love you, too”, and how she had felt her entire 23-year-old world fall apart to keep his 50-year-old world together.
She’d hated herself for years afterwards; she hated to admit it was something she’d ever wanted. And yet, when her niece and nephew asked her to write a letter to Santa, it had been easy, a no-brainer.
Dear Santa, she’d written. Bring me my perfect man.
She wasn’t expecting anything, of course.
And yet.
Here, on Christmas morning, while Edmond, down a hand, was opening a strange and soggy package and while Richard—desperate not to look a gift horse in the mouse—was gently encouraging his partner to sew a thigh a couple of shades too light to his hip and his-strangely left behind-calf, she found a collection of boxes filled with the gentlest limbs of her best lovers. And one large box, complete with a torso and a head with the tongue removed, with instructions included for assembling the perfect man.
“Oh,” Selena says, uncertain where to go from here.
“Oh,” says Mary, her sister, who only shows up at Christmas, brandishing a needle and thread.
“Merry Christmas to us.”
***THE END***
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