by J. Robert King

The holiday man twinkled brightly in its glass globe, its great hands fisting as it pummeled the walls or flattened like flippers on the concave inner edge.

Thanks to Zak, the neural paints had been well-laid this year – greens, reds, golds, silvers – glowing and sparking with each impulse that ran along its arms and torso and legs. The man lit up the whole great room and made us all glad.

This man had not been a good prospect at first, but we had gone late and couldn’t have expected better. It was one of those hairy unwashed things, wrapped in great wet textiles and suffused with smoke. It’s locomotor, too, had been difficult to stop, the man hard to pursue through trees and brush. But at last we downed it and brought it aboard and stripped it. Only then did we see how scrawny it was – ragged-toothed and ill-tempered.

Thank goodness for lipid injectors. It was emulsed, defurred, deloused, defoliated, desexed, then injected. Even the children were pleased with how well the hollows of its flesh took the lipids. Soon, the man bulged beautifully. While it was yet restrained, the children set to painting it. Zak, the eldest, carefully mapped the neurons with pins so the others could get the colors just right.

And they did. Now it hung there, scrabbling, inside its swaying ornament of glass – its neurons creating a shimmering show.

I only hoped it would last through the holiday: scrawny holiday men often don’t make it past a week.

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Rob’s Angel of Death is available now. Death’s Disciples is available in the UK from 6th January 2011 and in the US and Canada from 25th January.

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