My therapist told me that talking this out would help process the trauma, but the local PD and DA’s office warned that revealing too much could damage the investigation.

Neither one matters: I know the police will never figure out what happened, and I’m never going to heal. The only option is mitigating my pain, so let’s get into it.

The headache woke me, and no wonder: I’d passed out sitting up with my head cocked backward, and the position left me feeling like a rail spike had passed cleanly through my left temple before popping out the right one.

I was sitting in a circle with four other people. One was this guy Jerry from my office; the other three I didn’t recognize. I tried to speak, but there was no saliva on my sticky tongue. My arms felt free until I tried to stand; a sharp pain yanked against both hands, and I fell back into my seat. I looked down to see at least a dozen strands of twine wrapped so tightly around each wrist that my fingertips were turning purple. The slack was loose enough to reach in front of me, but stopped just short of allowing my hands to touch each other in hopes of escape. I relaxed against the metal chair, panting.

That’s when I looked closer at my surroundings.

Jerry was struggling with his own twine bonds, meeting the same success that I had. Next to him, a short, college-aged girl was on the edge of hyperventilation. She sat beside a man in a black suit with slicked-back hair. He was grinding his teeth and staring at each of us in turn. Directly across from me was a blonde woman in her fifties. She was gazing at me as though I was the sole reason that every one of her childhood ambitions had turned to shit.

“Ho!”

We all looked around to see a large, fat man walk to the center of our little circle.

“Ho, ho!” he continued, coming to a halt just before me. Up close, it became apparent that he was trying to put on the guise of Santa Claus. His long, scraggly beard was streaked with gray and white, but was far too greasy to be fluffy. The oversized coat had clearly been red at one point. But it was now so thoroughly streaked with stains that I could only assume were chewing tobacco and squirrel blood that it was mostly brown with crimson patches. His pants reeked of urine that evaporated without being washed, keeping all of the mustiness without losing any of the nastiness. His boots smelled of something other than dog shit, because dog shit was altogether more familiar and more pleasant. The cherry on top was a soft Santa cap that had been starched vertically into a cone shape, culminating in a festive fuzzy white ball that clashed with his brown and yellow teeth.

“What are you going to do to us?” Jerry asked, his voice trembling.

“Don’t play into it,” the blonde woman deadpanned. “He wants a reaction. The only control we have is just how bad this is going to be, so let’s not make it worse than the hell we’re about to eat.”

She delivered the explanation so plainly that I had no doubt every word was correct.

“Would you like to be the first to draw a gift?” Dirty Santa asked. Several tense second passed before I realized that he was talking to me.

I snapped my attention to the center of our unholy ring, where I noticed for the first time that five presents were gift-wrapped and sitting on a small table.

“No,” I squeaked.

“You can unwrap yours and take a look before showing your new friends!” he continued as though I hadn’t spoken. “Keep the toy if you like it, or switch with a neighbor’s if you’re jealous! If someone gives you what they dislike, you have to play with it right away!”

I finally realized what his voice sounded like. My grandmother lived on a farm, and a chicken had once found its way into the kitchen and slipped its foot into the sink. In an attempt to escape, he fluttered his wings and flipped the switch to start the garbage grinder. The sound had rattled me so badly that years later, my pubescent hair grew in already raised. Dirty Santa’s voice caressed the same ungodly recesses of my reluctant brain as that tortured chicken had.

I made a quick judgment call: choosing a gift seemed the best way to keep this psychopath calm, so I reached for a red bag with a green bow. The twine kept me from leaning all the way forward; Dirty Santa responded by reaching down to slide it closer to my fingertips. The smell got exponentially worse as he moved nearer – even while closing my mouth and breathing out through my nostrils – because the scent wafted through my ears and seeped into my sinuses.

Pinching the bag with my fingertips, I tipped it over in my lap. Something heavy tumbled out.

It was a pair of handheld garden shears.

Attached to it was a note that I instinctively read aloud: “For one of your own fingers. Nineteen toes and fingies is enough to type, but can you stay conscious with only thirteen?”

Dirty Santa clapped as light and fast as a hummingbird as the young woman started crying, emitting a soft wail of profound hopelessness.

“Oh shit,” Jerry huffed, his breaths coming in short gasps. “Oh shit. This is for real. This is fucking real.”

I stared at the tool in my lap, unwilling to believe what I knew was about to happen.

The blonde woman was right:

There are many degrees of “terrible.”

Dirty Santa looked over at the man with the slicked-back hair, who reached out a trembling hand for a blue bag with orange ribbon. He could just reach far enough to stare into it, eyes wide.

“I’d… I’d like to change gifts,” he whispered.

Before I could ask what that meant, Dirty Santa had plucked the gift from my hands, done a pirouette, and switched our bags. I looked down at the new present.

‘I’m for an eye!’ read a tag that was tied to an ice pick.

“You need to play with your toy right now!” Dirty Santa chanted in a voice that was an octave too high.

“No,” I whispered.

His attitude changed very, very quickly.

I can’t bring myself to go into the details, but we’ve all popped grapes between our teeth.

Most of us have never considered what it feels like to be the grape.

I thought the pain would be unbearable. But when I had no choice but to sit and watch what came next, my mind warped under a new threshold of “impossible.”

In hindsight, I can obviously type with a missing eye. I wish that was the worst of it. Of course, things were about to get much more painful than the ice pick, but I’ve reached my limit for today. The valium’s kicking in, and that’s the only way I can sleep at this point. I’ll share more later if I can, but this process is extremely painful for me.

The nightmare that happened next

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