Tattletail

Prologue

When I was nine, I had the worst Christmas of my life. On Christmas Eve my mother and I sat on the couch waiting for my father to arrive home. My parents were in the middle of a nasty divorce and I thought the holidays would bring them together again. But he didn't walk through that door. Christmas Day came and went, and we heard nothing from him. I tried to call him: no answer. We asked everyone in our small town and they didn't know. Panicked, my mother had the police out in full force looking for him in the snowy streets. Five days went by and neither of us could eat or sleep. On the sixth day it was very cold, and I went to light a fire.

I could smell something burning, and it didn't smell very nice at all. The firefighters came round to inspect the chimney. We expected them to pull out a dead cat or bird. But they didn't. They pulled out my father's charred corpse. He was dressed in a Santa outfit, as he had planned to come down the chimney and surprise us. Instead, he slipped and fell, breaking his neck and dying instantly. His body had been decaying in our chimney for six days. That's how I found out that Santa Claus wasn't real.

Of course, upon telling this to some of the children in my class, they freaked out and got me put in detention by our substitute teacher of all things. I didn't get in trouble with my mother, however. She had started drinking shortly after my father's death, and spent most of her time in the bedroom, where she sobbed herself to sleep every night. With my father gone, she left for work every morning. There was never time for me. As a result I became a brat and even went so far as to swear. But it was usually under my breath.

By the time 1998 rolled around things really got bad. I turned ten years old, but all my mother got me for my birthday was cake and a card. No gifts. No special treats. No visit to Chuck E Cheese's. No "Happy Birthday To You" songs. Just a kiss on the cheek, and a quick "I love you, sweetie". There wasn't a shroud of doubt that me and my mother grew apart, but I was the one that blamed her for our dying friendship. I guess I should have done more to help manners. After what happened the following Christmas, I regretted not mending the bond that was lost in a lake of sadness.

The latest best-selling toy had come out by then. A company called "WayGetters Electronics" created perhaps the most annoying and creepy fur balls anyone in my generation had ever seen. The TattleTail family consisted of a bunch of little gremlin-like creatures who danced, ate, and laid plastic eggs. Oddly enough, Mama TattleTail was banned for unknown reasons. I guess if you were a little girl you might have liked them, but being a ten year old boy I just didn't care much for them. My mother, on the other hand, fell in love with the TattleTails and actually urged me to ask for one for Christmas. I told her a thousand times no, that I'd rather lick a toilet seat than put up with a stupid piece of plastic.

But my mom was persistent, and later on you'll understand why. About two months had passed. I'd already asked for a remote control race car that caught my eye in a magazine and I was really depending on my mother to come through for me. The excitement was so unbearably strong for my new toy that about a week before Christmas, I did something that would have put me on the naughty list for life. I concocted a plan to carefully open my present down in the basement at about nine o'clock, when I knew my mom would be so knocked out from booze she wouldn't wake up to a twister hitting the house. Those next few nights, I took part in a terrifying adventure that made me rethink my life a little...