7. A Waking Nightmare

7

A WAKING NIGHTMARE

QUINN

CHRISTMAS

The stress of Patrick's massive confession mixed with playing host-with-the-most tomorrow when our electric is out has seeped into my dreams and turned them into freaky nightmares.

The sound of my name being called repeatedly pierces the veil of my subconscious. I wrestle myself awake only to notice that I might've landed in yet another nightmare, Inception style. The shadowy outline of Patrick hovers over me, and even through sleep-crusted eyes, I can tell he's holding a large, metallic object up at his side in a menacing way.

This is it. I'm about to be Dateline 'd. I thought that was only a straight people problem.

My hands fly up to protect myself. "Please don't hurt me!"

"What? Oh. Sorry." Patrick drops the frying pan—I mean, I think it's a frying pan; I'm not keen to lean over and inspect closer. The object hits the carpeted floor with a muddled ring. "I didn't mean to scare you."

"Mission failed," I say, hand clasped over my speedily rising chest. I try to sit up, placated in the knowledge that my husband hasn't come to turn me into the subject of a future true crime podcast, but newly unsettled by the way Patrick flops onto the side of the bed in the guest bedroom with his features scrunched. "What's wrong? What happened?"

I'm hot in my long-sleeve T-shirt and hoodie, and the night light I put in here when we had overnight company last is on across the room, casting a dim honeyed glow across the floor. The power must be back on. "Did something happen with the breaker in the basement? Was there a family of rats down there?" Patrick hates animals with long tails that scurry. I don't know why exactly his first choice of rodent repellent would be cookware, per se, but Patrick has done weirder things.

"No, I—" He cuts himself off, shaking his head.

"What?" This bed-in-a-box mattress dimples as I scoot up onto my knees. I would normally run a hand along his back, the comforting gesture he probably needs most, but I can't bring myself to touch him. Not after our conversation outside.

What would I do if one of my students was in a sleep-deprived panic spiral? "Big inhale, hold your breath, count to seven, biiiiiiig exhale. Good, very good. Now, tell me what happened."

Finally, Patrick looks at me, marginally calmer but fear still helixing in his expression. "I think I killed a man."

I shoot back from him, twist the knob on the bedside lamp, and look him over in the light. There's no blood on his hands. The frying pan—okay, good; it was a normal frying pan—isn't dented or misshapen in any way. The only evidence that this could be the truth is the stupefied way Patrick stares off into the middle-distance barely breathing, eyebrows converged like he's trying to figure out a complex math problem.

"Pat, I think maybe you got shocked by the electrical cords earlier." I need to rationalize this, so my heart rate slows and I don't freak myself out more. "Or you're overtired and imagining weird things. Hell, I was just dreaming about a pig with your mom's voice."

That snaps Patrick out of his stupor. "Did you just call my mom a pig?"

"No. That's not the point. Why don't you forget the lights and go to bed? You're imagining things." He's delusional right now. Running on fumes, clearly. I guess that can happen when you lose your job and have no idea how you're going to pay a mortgage on a house with only one meager, stretched-to-the-max income.

"Quinn, I'm serious. I think I killed a man. I think I killed… Santa ."

"Santa?" I ask, hoping I've misheard him.

"Claus."

I surprise us both by laughing raucously at the seriousness with which he says this. "Pat, Santa Claus isn't real." I put out the cookies and milk every year as tradition, and Patrick gets up in the middle of the night to create the illusion that Santa's been to our apartment, but this is taking it a step too far. "If this is some kind of weird joke you're trying to pull so I won't be mad at you, it's not going to work."

He jumps up, possibly offended by this. "Come with me, I'll show you."

Obviously, he's not going to give up this sleep-addled charade until I oblige, so I do the only thing a trying-to-be-patient husband can do when his spouse is losing his marbles in the middle of the night: I shove on my slippers, pick up the frying pan to put back in the cabinet in the kitchen, and begrudgingly humor him by following along.

"If this is all an elaborate ruse because there's some special Christmas present waiting for me under the tree, I swear to—" I don't finish that sentence because there's a red lump of velvet in the shape of a man sprawled out across our floor, unmoving.

"Holy shit!" Fear grabs hold of my legs. I can't step any closer. "Who is that?" The confusion in the set of Patrick's brows is not reassuring in the slightest. I take stock of the long white beard, the portly belly, and the scuffed black boots with the shiny buckles. No wonder Patrick thought he killed Santa Claus. This man looks like he stepped out of a picture book.

"I don't know. After I got the power back on, I went out to the garage in search of power strips and when I came back in, he was in here eating the cookies." Patrick rakes his hands furiously through his long, slightly greasy hair.

This is not good. Our marriage is on the rocks, our mortgage is going to drown us in debt, and now we may be criminals.

Regaining a small sense of courage, I approach the breathing lump with caution, then nudge the man's shoulder with my slipper. "Hello, sir? Wake up. We need you to get up now." The man doesn't respond. "I knew we should've set up an alarm system!"

"I don't think now is the time to discuss that," Patrick snaps, pacing behind me. "Do you think we should call the police? Do you think we were the target of some Christmas-specific robbery ring where men who look and dress like Santa hit unsuspecting houses?"

While anything is plausible at this point, something about that isn't adding up in my mind. "What kind of crook stops what he's doing to taste-test cookies?" I inspect the plate covered in crumbs.

"Maybe he was going for verisimilitude." I shoot Patrick with as much skepticism as I can muster. "What? Don't look at me like that. It makes sense. Who would believe an emergency call about a man in a red suit breaking into their house and eating cookies on Christmas Eve? It's not all that different than when you get up in the middle of the night to eat them so it seems like Santa's been here."

Confusion flicks me in the forehead. "I don't do that. You do that."

"I do, what?" Patrick asks, nose crinkled. "No, I don't do anything. You put out the cookies and then sneak out of bed and eat them."

"No," I say, annoyingly slowly, partially for him to understand and partially for my own benefit. "I put out the cookies and you sneak out of bed and eat them."

"I have never in the history of our relationship snuck out of bed on Christmas Eve to—"

Our bickering and possible magic-based revelation are stopped by a groan from the floor. Down there, the man has shifted slightly. Another groan escapes from between his lips hidden inside that nest of white hair.

Panic provokes me. "He's waking up! What do we do?"

"How should I know?" Patrick, boots squishing on the linoleum, trepidaciously approaches the man that has now begun to shake himself awake. "Hello there. Are you all right? I didn't hit you too hard, did I?"

My heart is thudding so loudly. I'm hovering behind my husband as he approaches Maybe Santa with apology laced in his voice. "It's okay. Don't be alarmed."

"It's a man. Not a rescue dog," I chide.

"I'm trying to be reassuring."

"He broke into our house!"

"He could be Santa Claus!" Patrick whips around to look at me, eyes wide. He already believes it to be true. I can tell. He's always had a childish sense of wonder about him. An optimism that the world held zany truths within its folds.

"He could be anybo—" I don't get to finish that statement because behind Patrick I notice the man sit up far too fast for someone who was just knocked out cold and, in the dim light, it looks like he's trying to reach for Patrick's ankle.

Santa Claus or not. Fight or not. Nobody touches my man!

Without thinking, barely even remembering that I'm holding the frying pan at this point, I swing and connect with something hard.

Clang.

Thud.

"Double crap!" Patrick yells.