December 25th. For many, it is a day of celebration and mirth.
For Christmas Macendale, it's his birthday.
It was the beginning of an unusually snowy winter season in Versailes, Kentucky and the beginning of a life that should not come as a surprise to anyone familiar with the circumstances of its birth. Christmas' mother, Wendy, was addicted to meth and many other lesser substances. His father, Jason, was a meth dealer who was shot and killed two minutes before Christmas came crying into the world.
The next few years of his life would not get any better. Despite the obvious drug-addled life of his mother and the recent death of his father, the hospital had little choice but to send him home with his mother. It was a busy time of year for Child Services, and so the small baby was soon living in an insect-infested, low-income apartment.
From birth until the age of three, Christmas may well have not been alive for how much attention his mother gave him. He went malnourished and was often sick, his life barely hanging by a thread. For the sake of many lives in the future, he may have been better if he did die. But no, the small baby defied the odds and managed to survive until his mother finally escaped from her drug-induced stupor.
While she may have gotten clean, she never could hold down a steady enough job to truly improve the quality of living for her son. He attended the worst school in Versailes, and wore whatever mis matched clothing his mother could afford or steal from the Good Will and Salvation Army. His small size and withdrawn attitude did not help him at school, and he was constantly the target of bullying.
What Christmas lacked in size and power, however, he made up for in ingenuity and callousness. He soon discovered ways to get even, starting with harmless pranks - putting bugs in the chocolate milk of bullies. He also learned how to switch personalities on the fly. Devious, callous kid one moment and innocent, bullied child the next.
As he aged, so did his pranks. At the age of eight he managed to put a razorblade inside the candy bar of a particularly nasty bully that almost killed him. When the teachers were investigating, he was sad and innocent. When nobody was looking he was gleefully laughing at the bully's pain.
Along with a growing mean streak and his ability and confidence to pull off such despicable acts as he got older, the mental state of his mother began to diminish. Years of drug abuse can not be washed away, particularly a drug like meth. Her brain was too damaged to continue to function properly. Despite her inability to care for him as a young child, the teenage Christmas loved his mother.
Perhaps she was the only thing in the world he truly did have any compassion for, as he managed to hold down a few jobs throughout high school to support her. However, he began to crack more and more, over time distancing himself from his emotions and a real life. Soon his days consisted of fighting through school, working, and returning home to care for his mother.
He managed to make it through high school and graduate while continuing to strike back anonymously at anyone and everything he felt wronged him or his mother. However, he had no intentions of going to college. Instead, he continued to work where he could. Mostly small time convenience stores and other late night work where he was left mostly to himself and where he would have time to take care of his mother.
When Christmas was 22, a former friend of his father's who had fallen on hard times came knocking around their ramshackle apartment trying to weedle money out of his mother. He was the first person Christmas would ever kill. He told him he would get him his money, and lured him to an abandoned warehouse. There, dressed head to toe in obscuring clothing and wearing medical scrubs on his hands and feet, he murdered him in cold blood.
His murder was never traced back to him, no cops came looking for the man who killed such a pusher. With such little physical evidence, the case was dropped. This incident will forever be a mark in Christmas' psyche for two reasons. One, it was the event that totally shattered any respect he had left for human life. Two, it proved to him that he could get away with murder.
Years would go by largely uninterrupted. Christmas would kill the occassional animal to perfect his cover ups, and otherwise would work or take care of his mother. If there was some semblance of happy inside his head, that's what it was. He was placated and practically invisible. That is until a bomb went off in New York, and the whole world changed.
Special people were everywhere. That's what they said. Special. Special like his mother always called him everytime he tucked her in. Everytime he fed her dinner or helped her shower. How could they be special? Only he could be special. Born on Christmas. He was a miracle. He was the special one, not them.
Christmas began to formulate an idea in his mind. He spent three years saving up as much money as he could, spending nothing on himself. Then he took his mother and moved to New York, moving into a smaller apartment than the one he spent his whole life in. There, he set his mother up with the best he could buy and left himself with a small mattress.
He began to hit the streets, looking for any sign of these so called special people. He purchased a large storage locker near the docks, and sanitized it. He read up on medical texts. He was preparing to show the world that he was special. He managed to secure a job at the Suresh Center, a location he would be able to secure knowledge about these special people. It turns out he can still smile and fake it with the best of them.
His first target was a sixty three year old man. He was scared. He lived alone. He had the power to camouflage himself in front of anything. It didn't matter. He was sound asleep when Christmas broke into his apartment. There, in the dead of night, he injected him with anesthetic and drove him to his storage container. There he did his dirty work. He saw for the first time the proof that this man was not special. His insides looked just the same as the drug pusher he killed years ago.
He had done it. The first kill was in place. The first clue was in place. He took the man's registry card and left it outside the police station in a plain manilla envelope. He was careful. He wore a hood and kept his back to cameras. Then he returned home and tucked his mother in, kissing her forehead goodnight.
She murmured, "You're special, Christmas."
