 Stories and content in Weird Darkness can be disturbing for some listeners and is intended for mature audiences only. Parental discretion is strongly advised. On the first day of Christmas, my true love sent to me a Partridge in a Pear Tree. There are 92 known species of partridges and all are actually ground nesters and unlikely to roost in a pear tree. It's a fallacy, this line, because this would be unnatural. They simply don't belong there. Divorcing me at Christmas and leaving me rotting alone in a cold place where I didn't belong was also an unnatural state of existence. I was a sickly partridge and this cruel new reality was the pear tree where she sent me where I didn't belong. So I responded, as one does under a breakup, both romantic and psychiatric. I chopped my true love up like I was filleting flank steak and stuffed her diced remains amongst the tinsel and ornaments around our Christmas tree. Welcome, Weirdos, I'm Darren Marlar and this is Weird Darkness. Here you'll find stories of the paranormal, supernatural, legends, lore, the strange and bizarre, crime, conspiracy, mysterious, macabre, unsolved and unexplained. Coming up in this episode, it's a short horror story from one of my favorite indie authors, John Allen, and as you can already hear, it's going to be a gruesome one. This story won't be holly or jolly. It's the 12 Slays of Christmas. If you're new here, welcome to the show and while you're listening, be sure to check out WeirdDarkness.com for merchandise, my newsletter, to win our contests, to connect with me on social media. Plus, visit the Hope in the Darkness page if you're struggling with depression or dark thoughts. You can find all of that and more at WeirdDarkness.com. Now, bolt your doors, lock your windows, turn off your lights and come with me into the Weird Darkness. On the second day of Christmas, my true love sent to me two turtledoves. That's what the voices called the eyes of the officer conducting a welfare check at the behest of my serpent mother-in-law. I impaled the turtledoves with the sharpened end of a gnawed candy cane. Then I placed the policeman's severed head in a gift box and wrapped it for my mother-in-law, a small token of affection that expressed my heartfelt feelings for her. With utmost Christmas spirit, I shipped the serpent's gift and left Rockford and skipped to Spokane. On the third day of Christmas, my true love sent to me three French hens and faces to match the voices in my head. That's what I saw going forward, three talking French hens in cheery, cartoon form alongside the bloodied apparition of my bossy, nagging dead wife. They might have only been real in my diseased, ravaged mind, but they spoke to me and told me to kill. I was commanded. Losing the burden of responsibility for my wickedness allowed my wrath to flourish. I found a streetwalker in Spokane before leaving for Phoenix and pulled her underneath a batch of mistletoe in a park gazebo. We kissed under the pale moonlight as the stars radiated above and held cosmic conversations like the movie It's a Wonderful Life. Then I chewed her face off. It had a sour taste, but I pretended I was feasting on popcorn balls and gumdrops. After, I pushed her ears inside the slit of a rusty Salvation Army box. On the fourth day of Christmas, my true love sent to me four calling birds. The first bird to call was my neighbor to ask about the squad cars and my driveway through voicemail. Then my in-laws rang me up, but I scoffed and refused to answer. Thank God for caller ID. The third call was from my brother and I had no time for him because he only called during emergencies. As I strangled the mall Santa behind Macy's with a strand of Christmas lights, the fourth call bellowed. My wife and the three French hens ordered me to answer this one, so I did. The detective wanted me for questioning. I agreed and told the screw I'd be there in the morning. The lifeless cosplay Santa lie wide eyed in the gutter, the pulsating hues from green and red lights flashing against his shocked, mortified face. My phone was tossed in his empty toy bag for the cops to ping me in Phoenix and I laughed at the thought of meeting any detective in Rockdale tomorrow. Hours later I was shuffling across the arctic tundra of a Minneapolis whiteout. The freedom of lunacy I realized was the greatest gift my wife bequeathed to me. On the fifth day of Christmas my true love sent to me five gold rings. In some parts of North America they say five golden rings, so it's easier to sing, but it really is five gold rings and that's the way I sing it. My true love and the French hens colluded inside my mind again and told me this before I was given my mission. So I pressed the button on a gold-plated doorbell and rang five times at a random house. When the surly old man answered the door and instantly cursed at what he thought was going to be me begging for holiday donations for some charity, I cackled in his wrinkled face. Soon this scrooge would be the one begging and charity was not going to be given. I drilled and hammered spikes and fought through tendons and bone until his legs were forever melded in a seated position atop a chopped tree stump at his backyard. The mouth on this one was enough to make a sailor frown. Until the moment he perished I had to listen to a barrage of old-time expletives. Eventually his gushing blood froze into crimson icicles and I placed a doll next to him as the billowing snow drifted sideways. Elf on a shelf, meat grump on a stump. On the sixth day of Christmas my true love sent to me six geese laying. Minneapolis was still draped in harrowing white doom and I was stuck another day. Now on the orders of my mind's new handlers I traipsed through the woods wearing an ugly Christmas sweater and Santa hat. The sharply honed axe from the old man's backyard fixed to my hand like a fleece glove. Jack Frost was nipping at my nose and I needed to find someone soon. Luckily opportunity came towards the North Pole. The explosions came in succession and deeper into the woods. I marched until I found the hunter standing over the waterfowl corpses of six innocent geese. I waited until he returned to his cabin, a spirited little place filled with Christmas splendor. As he shook off the snow from his camouflage jacket I chopped off his feet and inserted them into the stockings that were hung over the chimney with care. That hunter tried to crawl to freedom as he bled out so I encased his torso inside a wreath tight enough to prohibit his arms from moving. To be fair I gave him the same opportunity he gave the geese with buckshot riddled wings. Ben Crosby dreamt of a white Christmas from the record player in the kitchen and I'd like to think it was a pleasant final song for the woodsman as death overcame him. On the seventh day of Christmas my true love sent to me seven swans of swimming. In St. Petersburg the next day I shared a hotel with contestants from the southern Florida Miss holiday pageant. What true swans they were, once introverts, meek and mild, blossomed now and ready to present themselves to the world for judgment of their measurements and tans. There's could have been a nice tale about perseverance but the wifey and the hens had an alternative viewpoint. So I stalked seven of these swans to the sandy beach where they frolicked in the gulf and bronzed themselves under the happy sun. Seven swans held a contest to see who could swim to the sandbar and back the quickest. Six returned. The seventh swan just didn't have the lung capacity to pull it off, not with an esophagus full of filthy lumps of coal that is. My heart wasn't in this one. Florida didn't feel very much like Christmas. No snow. This was the most wonderful time of the year after all and I found my way to Boston. On the eighth day of Christmas my true love sent to me eight maids of milking. When I arrived at the Mary Maid cleaning service, the store was closed. An office Christmas party was being held, the sign on the door read. The bar across the street was the most likely location as a nor'easter began to filter in and my assumption was correct. It was a friendly place where everybody knew your name, much like that other famous Boston bar from that sitcom. No one knew my name though and I was grateful. I needed the quiet solitude to figure this out. I ended up cheating a little. There were 16 maids, not eight, and no milk was involved though I reconciled that the spiked eggnog shared enough dairy DNA to count. The woman was chosen at random, a generic homely type I wouldn't remember moments after introducing myself. She was easy to pull away from the group as it was doubtful men approached her very often. In a back booth away from the drunken laughter, she talked while my eyes darted. This bar was kitschy during the holiday season, inflatable elves, framed photos of cousin Eddie from the Christmas vacation movie, even a Santa sleigh hung from the rafters with a life-sized criss-cringle mannequin at the helm. I preferred to view this kill not as gore, but as a whimsical experience. I imagined as I crashed the blunt object across her temples in a furious rage, it was more of a playful knock into a fantasy where visions of sugar plums danced in her head. In actuality, my handlers decided that the replica leg lamp from another seasonal classic, a Christmas story, was just what I needed to bludgeon this stranger until brain matter oozed from her ears. On the ninth day of Christmas, my true love sent to me nine ladies dancing. Detroit was a sloppy, icy mess, and now I knew the feds or some other three-letter agency were tracking me, so it was important to blend in. Knowing they'd be searching for me in the city, I grabbed a cab to Auburn Hills and found a nice little flop house motel with a room in the back. I must have ordered over 20 pizzas before I secured nine female delivery drivers, and the room smelled like pepperoni and fear once my admittedly sick plan came to fruition. I'd shattered glass ornaments at least three dozen into jagged pieces ingrained into the carpet fibers. At gunpoint, I forced the nine ladies to dance barefoot atop this flesh-piercing nightmare. With their duct-taped mouths whimpering, I wore my Santa hat and watched them sway to the rhythm of, baby, it's cold outside. Finally, one of my lambs crumbled to the floor in agony. The eight winners received a fruitcake as they limped shoeless into the cold. Run, run, Rudolph, I sang into the night, laughing as they scattered into all directions as fast as they could, leaving bloody footprints in the crisp blanket of snow. As for the loser, I hung her from the rafters with a double-looped garland. I put foam antlers on her head to brighten the occasion before fleeing into the night. Before I left, my dead wife and the three French hens made a point that I had to agree with. I was an utter psychopath that Beelzebub himself wouldn't claim. On the tenth day of Christmas, a true love sent to me, Ten Lords a Leaping. Based on my pattern, I should have been in Nashville, but instead, I used the highway to make it to Chicago by morning to throw off the chase. Ten Lords a Leaping refers to the Ten Commandments, so I found myself window shopping the endless stream of Catholic churches in the windy city during the busiest time of the year for confession. I never could bring myself to unalive clergy, but it was easy enough to slip into the rear of St. Anthony's, knock the priest out, and take his spot in the confessional booth. Even the confines of a holy place couldn't wash the devil out of me. Oh, how the sinners spilled their guts. One particular sinner confessed to an unspeakable crime, so I followed him home, and he spilled his guts again, this time at my hand. Who knew the star that capped this Christmas tree could be so sharp? This foul soul lived alone, so I decided to make myself at home for a few days. I mummified as carcass with his large intestine and an entire roll of Grinch wrapping paper. Then I rolled his remains down the basement stairs, and the hens and the wife and I baked gingerbread men while home alone played for my new television. On the 11th day of Christmas, my true love sent to me 11 Piper's Piping. The following evening, I knew the Christmas spirit was on my side when exactly 11 carolers beckoned me to my new door to the tune of Silent Night. What nice pipes this mobile choir had indeed, except for the nasally stringy man singing off key. Something about him irked me. He looked like the type who wrote bad reviews online and complained to the HOA about noise. The corpse bride and the cartoon French hens told me that he was the one who had made the naughty list, so I caught up to the group an hour later. 40 feet away, I hid behind slush and grime and positioned myself obscure inside a sniper nest. It was innocent and innocuous, pelting the man with snowballs. After an onslaught directed solely towards him, I finally goaded him enough to come scold what he had to think was a child hiding and acting up. Such sullying of joy was definitely his thing. Once separated from the group, my nuisance became my prey. The last snowball to peg the bridge of his nose was laced with an unforgiving jingle bell, jingle bell, jingle bell rock that turned off his lights. After dragging him by his ankles to my place, his streaked blood, a cookie-crumb trail behind us, I manipulated his body to make a snow angel. Then I quit goofing off and I ripped off his lips and nose and removed his eyes with a nutcracker. I replaced them with a corn cob pipe, a button nose and two eyes made out of regurgitated coal for my seventh Florida swan's throat. I then impaled his body on a spike and packed it with the elements, so I had my own snowman in the front yard. On the twelfth day of Christmas, my true love sent to me twelve dramas drumming. The dozen lawmen banging on the door with guns drawn woke me up. I hoped it was a simple nightmare before Christmas, but I knew better. It seemed they had finally caught up to Mark Partridge, the commercial airline pilot turned oxyrocytyl Christmas maniac on a cross-country rampage. One vile demonic exploits of homicide were all over the news. Some would say I went viral. The wife and French hens said I'd become a virus. As I lounged in bed wearing another man's pajamas in another man's home, this deranged pear tree I created, I wondered how they found me. Perhaps the decaying meat soup out front didn't quite pass as frosty the snowman. Maybe only a mind as besieged with thundering malice and destruction as mine could have thought that it might. I did say I was unabashedly insane. As the front door downstairs splintered into kindle and the boys from the bureau rushed in, I bit into one of the sugar cookies I'd left for Santa and chased it down with some milk. The cyanide filling killed me instantly. It was time. I didn't belong here anyway, alone and rotting in this cold place. I was a groundnester and all of this was unnatural. I ended my satanic oppression and my life with a nibble off of a cookie. I also finished my 12 days of Christmas as I'd started it. A partridge in a pear tree. Thanks for listening. If you like the show, please share it with someone you know who loves the paranormal or strange stories, true crime, monsters or unsolved mysteries like you do. And please leave a rating and review of the show in the podcast app you listen from. You can email me anytime with your questions or comments at darren at weirddarkness.com. Darren is D-A-R-R-E-N. Weirddarkness.com is also where you can find all of my social media, listen to audiobooks I've narrated, shop the Weird Darkness store, sign up for monthly contests, find other podcasts that I host and find the Hope in the Darkness page if you or someone you know is struggling with depression or dark thoughts. Also on the website, if you have a true paranormal or creepy tale to tell, you can click on Tell Your Story. You can find all of that and more at Weirddarkness.com. The fictional horror story The Twelve Slays of Christmas was written by John Allen. Weirddarkness is a production and trademark of Barler House Productions. Copyright Weirddarkness 2022. And now that we're coming out of the dark, I'll leave you with a little light. Revelation 3 verse 20. Here I am. I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with him and he with me. And a final thought. Blessed is the season which engages the whole world in a conspiracy of love. Hamilton Wright, maybe. I'm Darren Marlar. Thanks for joining me in the Weird Darkness. And Merry Christmas. By sharing this video with someone you know who loves all things strange and macabre. If you want to listen to the podcast, you can find it at Weirddarkness.com.