Deafening screams interrupt the sweet lullaby of christmas memories, taking a nutcracker orchestra constitute. My mother's pleasured crying of my name evolves to the thumping of feet on stairs and then she's there, with the howling and her smiling drowning out act one, scene two of nutcracker protruding from my bedroom boom box.
"Do you hear that?" She cries.
I smile a weak, lethargic smile back at her from underneath my bed covers, meant more to emanate tired acceptance than excitement.
"It sounds like this..." and then she joins the screeching animal in a cacophony of troubled cries: "oh oh oh ahhhh! ahhh! ahhh!" She laughs at her newfound game.
The screams grow weaker, there behind our beige and red house in the thick clot of trees and wilderness until they fade into weary moans, and then utter darkness. The creature's world fades as ours continues. 