“Huh? No. Were they being homophobic?”
“No, actually. They were whatever the opposite of homophobic is? Homophilic? Homo-enthusiastic? Aggressively queer-positive? She practically showered us in condoms and lube as we left.”
“Huh,” Mac said, making his ‘imagine that’ face, seemingly back from his fugue state.
They followed the instructions to the flight of stairs that led them to the second floor. Well, Archer followed her instructions, dragging Mac and their backpacks with them. The metal stairs creaked beneath their boots, a tired warning groaning through the empty halls.
“How much did this room cost us? Whatever it was, it was too much,” Mac said, glancing warily at the darkened windows with their dusty shades and suspiciously shredded screens.
“Did you hearanythingthat happened there, darling?”
Mac gave a dull shake of his head, then a full body shudder. “Sorry, Katniss, I was a little preoccupied.”
“With what?” Archer prodded, wanting to shake him and scream ‘what did you see?’ like he was Brad Pitt in the movieSeven.
He turned the key in the lock, noting that someone had painted the door red with a green bow so the door looked like a decaying Christmas present. It even had a sprig of holly. Yeah, that tracked.
This place was a nightmare. A festive, glitter-coated, candy-cane-scented nightmare.
“Don’t worry about it,” Mac said, following Archer pastthe threshold.
Archer heaved a sigh, then flipped the light switch, gasping dramatically, as the room sprang to life. They’d thought the town was bad; this room was quantifiably worse. They stared, both too stunned to speak, taking in the festive horror show posing as interior décor.
A massive Santa portrait hung directly over the four-poster bed, its too-rosy cheeks and glassy eyes painted with such unnerving realism it felt like he was breathing. He somehow glowed even though there were no lights present.
The bed itself was draped in a heavy quilt embroidered with a huge reindeer whose proportions were just… wrong—its eyes red-stitched, its grin too wide, its hooves curling like claws. Dusty tinsel and old string lights choked the bedposts, the bulbs casting a sickly flicker across the room. The flicker didn’t so much illuminate as haunt, every shadow stretching just a little too long.
On the dresser, a fully automated Christmas village chugged to life, tiny Victorian skaters gliding endlessly around a mirrored pond—except one had tipped over and was now being dragged face-down by her partner, scraping along the ice in a loop of mechanical misery. Her tiny squeaking motor made a sound like a dying mouse, which absolutely did not help.
But none of that compared to the corner by the window, where four life-sized Victorian carolers stood arranged in a perfect semicircle, porcelain faces smiling wide, eyes bright and dead all at once. Just when he thought it couldn’t get worse, they appeared to come to life, winding up with ahorrific whine before belting outJingle Bellsin a high shrill child-like chorus.
Archer couldn’t stop himself from muttering, “Oh, sweet bloody hell.”
But Mac didn’t make a sound—he went statue-still, just like in the lobby, the color draining from his face as he stared on in what Archer could only describe as unbridled terror. It was the look of a man who had seen combat, death, disaster… and decided this was worse.
He didn’t move for a full minute. He was so still that when he snapped back to life, Archer jolted with surprise. Mac was now shaking his head back and forth.
“Nope. No. No. Just no. I can’t—I can’t do it. I can’t. I don’t…I don’t do…I don’t do dolls. Not those dolls. Not any dolls. Especially not singing dolls. Carolers. I’ll sleep in the car. Hell, I’ll sleep in the snowbank. Fuck it, I don’t care. What’s a little frostbite? How important are toes really?”
Archer could only stare as his afraid-of-nothing husband rapidly unraveled in the presence of plastic animatronic Christmas decor. “Babe?”
Mac shook his head. “It’s like their eyes arefollowingme. I gotta get out of here, Katniss. I’m not cut out for this. Bombs, guns, murder, torture… teaching. No problem. But I draw the line at four creepy life-size fucking Victorian dolls singing at me like I’ve landed in the ninth fucking circle of hell.”
When Archer just blinked at him in shock, Mac continued his rambling. “No. It’s not right. They’re not right. I can deal with Santa and weird little pointy-eared elves and thisfreakishly Willy Wonka mismatched striped wallpaper but I cannot—No, I will not—sleep in a room where I’m being stared at by those…things.”
To prove his point, Mac took a stumbling step backward, hand clutched dramatically to his chest like a Regency widow discovering her husband’s gambling debts. Meanwhile, the carolers hit the word ‘HEY!’ with bloodthirsty enthusiasm, all four porcelain heads jerking forward in unison. Archer couldn’t even blame him. If the room had offered a trapdoor exit, he would’ve used it first.
He had never seen his husband this unglued before. He needed to get those dolls out of there. Or getthemout of there. But if he requested a new room, they might take offense and, as a professional gambler, he was certain there was at least a seventy percent chance that—should Ma & Pa Christmas be offended—they would sneak into their room and dismember them in their sleep. Frankly, those odds felt generous.
“Do you have to pee?” Archer asked suddenly.
That seemed to jar Mac enough to pull him from his downward spiral. “Huh?”
“Pee? Urinate? Empty your bladder? Tinkle? Do you need to go? If you do, do it now.”
Mac frowned, but Archer held up his hand. “Donotask questions. Go pee. Then stand outside in the hallway until I say.”
Mac did as he was told, then stumbled from the bathroom with a haunted look. Archer didn’t ask what he’d seen. He’d know soon enough. As soon as he was out of the room,Archer got to work.
