Topic: Silent Night, or "Why I Need Another TV"

Audrey Horne

Date: 2010-11-28 19:10 EST
It was one of those long, cold nights where she had the apartment to herself and dozing off in front of the television wasn't a horrible prospect, no, but the temperature would have made any attempts at sleep downright miserable.

But still, as Harold Lloyd hung from that watchtower in all of his black and white splendor, Audrey's head began to nod. It was the same motion, played on loop; up, down, chin up, eyes wide, down. Long ago stars, silent once again in death, bled into place-holding snow on the TV screen and the chilled air of the living room soon found little Audrey Horne curled into a tight little ball beneath her blanket, head resting on the arm of the couch and her breath coming out in wisps of fogged condensation.

It wasn't so bad if you just dreamed of warm things; matches, campfires, space heaters...carolers.

"Tis the season to be jolly, falalala lalalala.."

Audrey sat up with a start and looked around the room, cheeks frozen into a splotchy shade of pink and her nose numb. The singing stopped and for a moment she began to wonder if she had simply dreamed it; if the combination of cold, and loneliness and that cheese sandwich she had eaten for dinner had somehow kicked her brain into Holiday overdrive.

Seconds turned into minutes and once again Audrey drifted off to sleep, only be dragged back to reality with a;

"Don we now our gay apparel! Falalalala lalala!"

Stuck somewhere between being asleep and being completely awake, Audrey's mind began to do something strange. She knew that she was actually hearing it, knew that it wasn't some persistently annoying figment of her imagination and slowly her mind began to form a conclusion.

All fingers pointed to someone, or rather a group of someones, screwing with her poor noggin.

The trek to the window may as well have been laid out on frozen arctic tundra as far as the girl's cold numbed feet were concerned, but sleep deprivation and a chronic case of the sniffles gave her that extra oomph to carry on.

"Troll the ancient Yule tide carol! Falalalala lala lala!"

The window creaked and groaned it's resistance to the pale fingers pushing on it, but it finally gave way and ushered a teethchatteringly cold breeze right into Audrey's face. Grumbling and growling, she peered down and into the street, only to see..nothing. Zip. Zilch. Zero. Nada.

"Hello' If anyone is out there, could you please stop singing" I'm trying to sleep, and not sure if ya know this or not, but it's still November."

She kept her tone calm, even, just loud enough to hopefully get the words to hidden ears and after a few moments of silence had passed, she closed the window, turned and made her way back to the couch and the surprisingly warm fleece throw draped across the back.

Ahh. Sweet silence. Sweet, blissful, fleece covered, snug as a bug in a rug silence and relaxation. Five minutes was all that it had taken for her to drift back off to sleep and, just as her eyes began darting behind her lids, there came a sound from the streets below;

"Silent night! Holy night! All is calm! All is bright!"

Shouting, horrible singing; a stark contrast to the almost sweet sounds of earlier in the night and Audrey sat up, stiff muscled and wide eyed like a pissed, little brunette version of Frankenstein's monster.

"'Round the young virgin, mother and child! Holy frickin' infant so tender and mild!"

That was when her left eye began to twitch.

"Sleep in heavenly peace! Sleep in heavenly peace!"

Twitch. Twitch. Twitch.

And then there was silence once again. Silence was really starting to lose credibility with Audrey and, slightly paranoid now, she lay her head back down...

"Rudolph the red nosed reindeer!"

She swung her legs over the side of the couch and sat there, staring at the window, chin resting in the palm of her hand as sleep deprived gears turned and spun behind raccoon ringed blue eyes. "What did he have guys!" He had a very shiny nose! And if ya ever saw him, you would even say it glows! YEAH!"

Twitch. Twitch. Twitchtwitch.

"Really' Really?" She shook her head from side to side, a little voice in the back of her mind telling her that this was, indeed, war. "Okay."

The amnesia of those next five minutes could have easily been chocked up to atmosphere and the need for a human body to sleep. Not so much tired as exhausted, frustrated and slowly descending into some sort of paranoid spiral, Audrey moved to her feet.

Her movements now were those of a somnambulist, stiff legged, zombie strides. Three nights without sleep; three nights. The more she thought about it, the more her eye twitched.

"Jingle bells! Jingle bells! Jingle all the way!"

She plucked the small, black and white television from the end table it had rested on since she had moved in, and continued toward the window. Pressing the television against the wall with her stomach, she pushed the window up and open, careful- oh so very careful- to keep it quiet. Making a sound would no doubt send the punks into hiding once again.

A television that weighed, at most, fifteen pounds suddenly felt as light as a loaf of bread and Audrey, grinning from ear to ear, tossed the contraption out of the window with all of her might.

A crash knocked her from her daze; the sound of broken plastic, broken glass, twisted metal, and something much softer hitting the debris with a crushing thud. She blinked and peered out of the window, blue eyes squinting in order to see through the dull, yellow crawl of the street lights.

There were three of them, four if you counted the one sprawled out on the ground, and they were all dressed in festive holiday sweaters. Reindeer and Santa Clauses stitched in greens and reds and there wasn't one of them, not one, that was human.

Horns and hooves and jagged, yellow teeth set in gaping, lipless mauls and Audrey knew that she should have been afraid, should have said something other than what actually came out of her mouth.

"Target hit. Achievement unlocked."

The creatures just looked up at her, confusion written as plain as day on otherworldly features and their cursing and shouting was cut off when she slammed the window closed.

Of course, it didn't occur to her until she was settled once again that she had just tossed her television- her salvation on those nights when she was alone- out of the window. Never mind that she may, or may not have killed someone.

Groaning, she tucked her head beneath her arm and sighed;

"Where am I going to get another TV?"