Holiday Short Story: “From Satan, With Love”
This letter is from Holly. I live at 583 Giglun Avanew. I kno you kno whoo I am but I just whant to be sher that you now wher I live becus last yere I asked for an uquaryum but I never got it. So I just whanted to be sher that you had the right adres for me.
This yere plese I would like a puppy plese. I promis I wood take such good care of it. I would take it for waks every day and I wood even pick up its poop even tho poop is grose.
I have been rilly good all year. Aspeshaly sinse Thanksgivgn becus I new you wood be paying more atenshun. I wood like a small puppy but one that will grow rilly big when its grown up. I wood like one with black fur plese becus I want to name it Shadow. I think is a rilly good name. And it only makes sens if the puppy is black. Gray would be ok to I gess.
So plese give me a puppy for Chrismas and I will be rilly good for the rest of the yere. If my brother says any thing meen about me in his letter, plese ignor him, he is a lier.
Holly folded her letter in threes as neatly as she could and slid it into the red envelope. Her letter was too tall for the flap to close properly over it, so she pulled it back out and refolded again more carefully. It still didn’t quite fit, so she folded the whole thing in half one more time, licked the flap, and sealed the envelope. With a green crayon she wrote “TO SATAN” in clumsy letters on the front, the “n” backwards. Then she covered the back in stickers of bearded, jolly looking men, deer with red noses, and snowmen that didn’t look anything like the lumpy and lopsided snowthings that Holly usually ended up creating in her own backyard. In the bottom corner, the only sticker-free space left, she wrote in cramped letters “HOLLY LITEL, 583 GILGUN”, just in case Santa needed one more reminder. She was still rather bitter about the aquarium fiasco from the previous year.
She got up off the living room carpet and ran outside, forgetting to put on her boots which were right by the door and consequently stepping right into the muddy snow slush that covered the porch in her socked feet. She hopped from one foot to the next as she clipped her letter to the outside of the mailbox, which she was only just tall enough to do this year.
Pleased with how she had efficiently handled writing and mailing her letter all by herself, she dashed back inside to the warmth and comfort of her home. Her younger brother had come into the living room in the few moments she was gone, and she glared at him.
“Have you sent your letter to Santa yet?” she asked him.
“No,” he said, blinking up at her.
“Well you should, because if you wait too long then it won’t have time to get to the North Pole before Christmas. The North Pole is miles and miles away and it takes the mailman a really long time to drive there. Don’t write anything mean about me in your letter, I already told Santa that whatever you say about me isn’t true.”
“I wasn’t going to write anything mean,” her brother replied indignantly. “Maybe I will though, and I’ll tell Santa that you’re a liar. He probably won’t be able to read your letter anyway, you can’t even spell. How far away is the North Pole?”
“Miles and miles,” said Holly. Then she had a horrible realization. She gasped, turned and ran back to the front door, yanking it open and nearly slipping in the half melted snow outside the door. She reached for her letter in its red envelope–
And her little hand grasped at empty air. It was gone. Someone, the mailman probably, had already taken it. Holly wailed.
Her mother, who was in the kitchen, heard her and hurried out to the front porch, her hands held out in front of her as if she were a freshly sterilized surgeon because they were covered in the sticky dough of biscuits that always came out of the oven with the texture and consistency of mud bricks.
“What is it, Holly? What’s wrong? Are you fighting with your brother again?” Worry and irritation fought for dominance in her tone.
“My letter to S-Santa!” the girl sobbed.
“What letter? Did you write a letter?”
“I forgot to write ‘to the north pole’ on the front! And the mailman already t-took it! They won’t know where to send it and Santa won’t get my l-l-letter!”
“The mailman?” Her mother frowned and looked down at her wrist, which was watch-free at the moment. “I thought the mailman already–oh, that doesn’t matter. It’s okay, Holly, you don’t need to cry. Did you write Santa’s name on the envelope?”
“Then it will be perfectly fine! Everyone knows where Santa lives, and your letter will probably go into a big bag full of other letters addressed to Santa, and I’m sure most of those other letters will have his address on it. So your letter will definitely get to the North Pole, don’t worry.”
Holly was doubtful in spite of her mother’s reassurance, but grown-ups seemed to know a lot more about the inner workings of the postal service than she did, so there was nothing for it but to put her faith in her mother, for now at least.
“Okay,” she said, only a little sullenly. “But he said that Santa won’t even be able to read my letter!” said Holly, pointing a damning finger at her brother, who had his nose pressed against the screen door, watching the drama unfold.
“Because of your dyslexia?” her mother asked. She put a gentle elbow, rather than a sticky hand, on Holly’s head, and shot her son a stern look. He made himself scarce. “Lots of other kids have dyslexia, or are too little to be very good at spelling. Santa is used to that, he can read anyone’s letter, no matter what.”
“No matter what?” Holly repeated.
“No matter what. I promise. Now come inside, alright? It’s freezing out here. The weather said it might snow again tonight. Holly, where are you shoes? No–no! Don’t walk on the carpet with your socks like that! Just take them off and go inside barefoot. That’s better, now give me those wet socks and close the door please. Thank you. I’m in the middle of making biscuits–don’t make that noise, that’s very rude–I’m making biscuits so why don’t you come into the kitchen with me and tell me what you asked Santa for. It wasn’t another aquarium, was it? I told you last year that aquariums are a big commitment and difficult to clean and take care of. Plus fish die so easily.”
“I asked Santa for a puppy this time. It’s too late for you to tell Santa not to get it for me now because the mailman already took my letter, and even if you sent your own letter telling him not to my letter would get there first because I sent it first. So he would get me the puppy before he even got your letter telling him not to get me one.”
Her mother sighed and closed her eyes, up to her elbows in overworked dough. Holly climbed up onto a kitchen chair and took a small piece of dough, which she popped into her mouth. Her mother smacked her hand away.
“Don’t eat raw dough, that’s how you get salmonella!” she admonished. Holly made a face and clambered back off the chair.
“That didn’t taste like I thought it would. I thought it might be like cookie dough.”
“Why would it be like–oh, never mind. Holly, we’ve talked about the puppy thing before. It’s the same as with the aquarium. Puppies are a lot of work, and they can be very destructive. Plus they need to be walked every day and socialized with other dogs and people, they need lots of expensive shots and they need to be chipped, and you have to pick up their poop every single day. And dog food is expensive. I just don’t think that you are old enough to really be ready for that kind of responsibility, and I don’t want to be left as the only one taking care of a dog that I didn’t even want.”
“I will take care of it!” Holly whined. “I already told Santa that I’ll walk it every day, and I’ll clean up it’s poop too. And I’ll use my allowance to buy it food! Or I can share my breakfast and dinner with it. It can eat at the table with me and we’ll share a plate. I’ll share my food with a puppy, I promise! I don’t mind sharing, I don’t eat that much anyway!”
“You say that now, but I know that you’ll be bored of taking care of it by New Year’s.”
“Don’t whine,” said her mother sternly. She tried to drop a poorly formed biscuit onto a baking sheet, but it stuck to her doughy fingers and defied all attempts by gravity to claim it. “Now don’t you have a room to be cleaning? Santa won’t leave you your presents if you don’t have a clean room to put them in.”
Holly sprinted out of the kitchen. She had faith in Santa, even if he did drop the ball on last year’s aquarium. He would know how much she wanted a puppy, and he wouldn’t let her down.
Holly’s parents awoke to two small bodies hurtling into the bed from the upper atmosphere.
“It’s Christmas, it’s Christmas!” they shrieked, jumping up and down with a complete disregard for the unholiness of the hour. Their father groaned and pulled the blankets over his head, and their mother struggled to turn on the bedside lamp without opening her eyes.
“Yes, but it’s also early,” pleaded their mother. “Can’t you two go back to bed for a little while longer? It’ll still be Christmas in an hour or two.”
“I can’t wait an hour!” Holly’s brother proclaimed in horror.
“We can’t go back to sleep now!” said Holly. “You can sleep on the couch while we open our stockings!”
Their father rolled himself into a sitting position, bleary eyed and unshaven. “I’ll get the coffee started,” he said in the defeated tone of a man headed for the gallows. He shuffled down the hall as their mother pulled on a robe and followed the scrambling children into the living room, where their Christmas tree stood, sparkling with fairy lights and a rainbow of ornaments, but only from the base to about half way up, which was as far as Holly and her brother could reach since they had insisted on decorating the tree by themselves that year.
Their mother threw herself onto the couch with a stifled yawn while the children wrestled their stockings from the fireplace. They immediately dumped out the contents in the middle of the living room and began rifling through their haul, not noticing in their wild abandon that their respective piles of toys and candy were getting intermixed. Their mother noticed, and knew this was likely to cause some strife when they inevitably started arguing about what belonged to who, but she was too tired to take preventative measures just then. She would cross that bridge when she came to it, hopefully after she had had a strong cup of coffee.
As if on cue, their father came into the living room holding two steaming cups. He passed one off to their mother and dropped onto the couch himself. He elbowed his wife and asked her through the corner of her mouth, “Maybe I’m just more tired than I thought I was, but I don’t remember that large present in the red wrapping paper, do you?”
Their mother tore her eyes from the children and noticed the large box for the first time, about two feet tall and two feet long, wrapped in crimson paper with a huge black bow on top. She frowned.
“No, I don’t. Did you put that one out?”
“I already said I didn’t recognize it.”
“Can we open our presents now?” Holly’s brother begged, surrounded by a nest of wooden and plastic toys he was already bored with, his small, round face smeared with chocolate from the lumps of “coal” he had received. Two oranges that had been stuffed into the toes of the stockings lay abandoned.
“Sure,” said their father. “Go for it.”
“Ah, we forgot the video recorder!” their mother suddenly gasped. Their father, who hadn’t forgotten, waved her off.
“Just use your phone. Or better yet, just enjoy the moment without having to document it.”
“You’ll regret not having home videos when we’re old and our grandkids want to see what their parents were like as children,” their mother admonished.
“No kid wants to see old home movies. Kids, do you want me to pull out my and your mom’s old video tapes from when we were kids at Christmas and watch them?”
“I want to watch Frosty,” Holly’s brother replied, looking as if he was about to burst into tears at the prospect of not.
“I want to open presents!” Holly demanded with all the barely restrained energy of an atom bomb about to go off.
“Go on then,” their mother sighed, pulling out her phone and setting up the video camera.
The children crawled over to the base of the tree and began hauling out presents, inspecting tags as they went. Each one that Holly found addressed to herself, she carefully placed on the ground in front of her and pressed her ear to its top, gently knocking on the side and listening intently. She even checked the smallest presents, just to be absolutely sure.
Holly’s mother noticed and groaned. “Holly, you did not get a puppy. I told you that you can’t have a puppy this year, and I am positive that Santa agreed with me. Maybe next year, if you prove to me you are responsible enough by keeping your room clean all year, you can have a hamster or something.”
“Who’s this one for?” Holly’s brother interrupted, trying to drag the large red gift out from beneath the tree. “It’s heavy! Aw, it says Holly on it. That sucks.”
“That isn’t nice. Holly, does it really have your name on it?”
Holly got up and rushed towards the black and red present, her little heart pounding fast enough to burst. There was a white tag attached to the bow, one corner very slightly singed.
To Holly, it said in an elaborate script that was almost impossible for her to read. “It is for me, it is!” she squealed, dancing on the spot.
“It must be from your mother,” said Holly’s mother out of the corner of her mouth, covering her phone’s speaker with one hand. “She has a key and it would be just like her to sneak in the house in the middle of the night to drop off the biggest present of the bunch. Maybe we should get a dog after all, one that barks.”
Holly pressed her ear against the box, and gave it a light rap with her knuckles. This present was different than all the rest. Surely, that must mean it was the special one, the one that Santa had set aside especially for her.
There was a long moment of unbroken silence, and Holly’s hopes began to tip over the edge of despair. Then something unmistakably shifted inside the box, something alive.
Holly shrieked and leapt to her feet, tearing the bow and paper from the box in a frenzy. Underneath was a plain brown box with a lid, like a giant shoe box. Holly flung the lid away, and stared down into the box.
“Well?” said her father. “What is it?”
“Is it from your grandmother?” asked her mother. “It’s not an aquarium, is it?”
Holly didn’t respond, she just stood there, staring down into the box. Her brother inched forward and peered in over her shoulder.
“It’s a dog,” he said. “I think.”
“What?” shrieked their mother.
“What do you mean you think?” asked their father.
“It’s…” Holly said hesitantly, speaking for the first time. “It’s sort of like a dog.”
Her parents exchanged looks.
“Step away from the box, Holly,” said her father, struggling to rise to his feet off the low couch.
“Touch it,” said her brother.
“Don’t touch it!” said her mother.
“I think it’s nice,” she said, as her father hurried to her side. The dog… thing pressed its side against her hand, seeming to react pleasurably to her touch. It turned its snout towards her hand and sniffed, before sticking out something approximating a tongue and licking her fingers.
“What hell is that?” her father gasped, grabbing Holly about the waist and hauling her away as she squealed in protest.
“It’s a dog!” her brother said as if it were obvious, and stuck his own hand into the box. Their mother, who was only a few steps behind their father, grabbed her son and pulled him back as well.
“Jesus Christ,” she gasped, looking down at the wriggling thing. “What’s wrong with it?”
“Nothing’s wrong with him,” said Holly defiantly, upset that mean things were being said about her new dog. “He’s just different is all. Didn’t you say that it’s okay to be different?”
“I think it’s a… a hairless… something?” her father suggested weakly.
“A hairless what?” snapped her mother.
“Cool, a hairless dog!” her brother said, trying to wriggle out of his mother’s grasp.
“I think it might be a puppy,” said her father, holding Holly back with one hand and leaning over to peer more closely at the animal in the box. “It looks young, I think.”
“What kind of puppy is that big? I’ve never seen a puppy that big before,” her mother hissed.
“A great dane puppy? Or a malamute?” her father suggested.
“That is not a great dane!”
“His name is Shadow!” Holly interjected as she tried to fight her way past her father’s arm. “I asked Santa for a black puppy named Shadow, and he got it for me! I meant I wanted it to have black fur, but I don’t care! I love him!”
Her mother and father exchanged a look. Her father turned and took Holly by the shoulders, kneeling so he was on her level.
“Holly, did you tell anyone other than your mother and Santa that you wanted a puppy for Christmas?”
“I told all my friends that Santa was getting me a puppy this year.”
“Did you tell any grownups? Did you tell Grandma, maybe?”
“I’m going to go call her,” said her mother, dialing her mother-in-law’s number.
“Honey,” Holly’s father said very gently, “I don’t think we can keep this puppy.”
“Why not?” wailed Holly, all her hopes and dreams and faith in the basic good of the universe crashing down around her.
“It looks… um, well, like it might be very sick. I don’t think we can take care of a very sick puppy like this.”
“He isn’t sick, he just looks like that! And even if he is sick, then I’ll take care of him! I’ll take him to the doctor’s and I’ll give him medicine and I’ll make sure he gets lots of rest!”
“She isn’t picking up,” said Holly’s mother angrily, stuffing her phone back into her robe pocket. “What was she thinking? Where did she even find that thing?”
“It’s got to be sick or something,” said Holly’s father. “Maybe an eye infection? I don’t think it’s eyes are supposed to… bulge like that. Or be that color. And it definitely has an underbite. And an overbite. It can’t seem to close its mouth over those teeth. I bet it probably has respiratory issues. Pugs have respiratory issues. Do you think it could be some kind of a pug?”
Holly’s mother just laughed incredulously.
“Those things on its back, that look like scales, that’s got to be a skin infection. I wouldn’t be surprised if it has mites or something.”
“Are dogs supposed to have that number of toes?” asked her mother.
“You know what,” said her father musingly. “I would be willing to bet that my mother decided to get Holly some fancy purebred puppy, but tried to save money by going to a cheap breeder. This is probably a very sick, poorly bred… something.”
“What are we going to do with this dog?” Holly’s mother groaned.
“Keep it, keep it!” shouted her brother, hopping up and down excitedly. “I want to show it to all my friends at school! Can I bring it to school when we go back? It’s so gross, it will freak everyone out!”
“He’s not gross!” Holly shouted back at him. “He’s mine and I love him even if he is bald and has scales! I don’t care, I love him! Santa probably picked him because he was lonely, because nobody else wanted him and Santa knew that I would love him anyway! He needs me!”
“Well we can’t get rid of it like this,” her father said in a low voice to her mother. “Nobody would take him, and a shelter might not have the resources for a dog with this many health issues.”
Her mother groaned again, and pinched the bridge of her nose. “You’re right, you’re right. God, this dog is going to cost us a fortune in vet bills.
“We can keep him?” said Holly, a tentative hopeful waver in her tone.
“For now, at least. But you have to take care of him, Holly! Just like you promised! If you get bored of him and start neglecting him, then we’ll find a new home for him as soon as he’s healthy...ish. Do you understand me?” Holly didn’t reply, she only squealed in joy and ducked beneath her father’s arm to rush the box. “Be gentle, be gentle!” her mother hollered. “It’s all… messed up, be gentle with it!”
Holly hauled the puppy out of the box with extreme difficulty. It tried to help the process along by doggy-paddling its taloned feet in the air. Once out of the box, Holly saw that it had a shiny red leather collar fastened around its thick neck. It nearly vanished between folds of leathery skin, but she was able to find the bone shaped metal tag and saw the name Shadow engraved on it. On the back, where an address would normally go, were just three repeating numbers.
She scratched him behind an ear, which was set lower on his head than any dog’s ear she had ever seen before. That was probably to make way for the small nubbins of horn that were just barely starting to sprout on the top of its head, she figured. Shadow opened his horrifying mouth and panted happily, his tail–which was almost as thick around as his barrel-like torso–thumping against the carpet.
Holly’s mother winced. “I’m going to go see if we have any skin ointment in the house that is dog safe,” she said, leaving to go check the medicine cabinets.
“We’ll have to go buy a leash and some dog food later today,” Holly’s father said. “It would have been nice of Grandma to have supplied that herself since she didn’t consult us about this, but…”
“Oh, can we take him with us to the pet store?” pleaded Holly. “I want him to pick out his own toys!”
“I think maybe he should stay here, honey.” He grimaced a little at the thick ropes of drool that hung from the dog’s open mouth. He didn’t notice the way the carpet singed slightly wherever drops of saliva landed. “He might… we don’t want him getting any of the other dogs sick too.”
“Oh,” she said sadly, but she didn’t argue. After all, she had a brand new puppy to play with. It was a bit of an unusual puppy for sure, but she had complete and utter faith in Santa’s reasoning, whatever it was. She did wish it had fur, but at least it was black like she had asked. She would just have to be more specific next time.
Holly slept with Shadow at the foot of her bed every night, usually covering him with a special blanket they had picked out for him at the pet store so he wouldn’t get cold at night, since he had no fur. This wasn’t really a problem, because Shadow’s body temperature ran at about 200 degrees. This had the positive side effect of ensuring that Holly never had cold feet in bed.
Their local vet had been no help at all, so the family had taken Shadow to a friend of theirs that worked on a farm as a vet for livestock. He had serious doubts about Shadow and voiced them to Holly’s parents, but by then the girl was so attached to the dog, and the dog to her, that it would have been cruel to separate them. At the very least, their vet friend was able to work it out so that Shadow got all his vaccinations and shots, plus some prescription-only anti-rash and anti-fungal ointments. He could only recommend daily tooth brushing for the sulfurous breath, and that they work extra hard on potty training because he didn’t know of any cures for urine that burned holes in the furniture.
He sent his friends and their new dog on their way, and watched them try to load the enormous thing into the back seat of their car. He shuddered, crossed himself even though he had never been a particularly religious man, and went back inside to burn the gloves he had used while handling the thing that was a dog, but only because it wasn’t anything else.
So by two weeks after Christmas, Shadow had all of his shots, a huge basket full of new dog toys, special dog food that promoted healthy coat growth, and even a small stocking that was covered in cutesy paw prints and had “Good Boy” embroidered on the white cuff, which had been on sale for half off at the pet store.
It was clear that Shadow was staying.
He seemed vaguely fond of the entire family, though he always gave them the slightly disquieting sense that he hardly ever actually noticed that they were there, or that he cared when he did. As for Holly, however, he followed at her heels night and day, struggling to keep up with her with his stumpy legs and the lizard-like tail that dragged behind him, and nearly doubled his length. He was as devoted as any dog has ever been, and true to her word she took him on walks twice a day (the neighbors found themselves locking their doors when the pair passed their houses); cleaned up his droppings all by herself even though she had to wear welder’s gloves to safely handle them; and gave him bi-weekly oatmeal baths that seemed to be having no impact on the strange scales on his back, but which he enjoyed nevertheless.
In the two weeks since Christmas, he had already grown several inches in height and length, and put on so many pounds that Holly could no longer lift him. For some reason, his red leather collar still seemed to fit perfectly fine, despite the fact that they hadn’t loosened it. His horns too had grown significantly and were now almost two inches tall. Holly’s parents ignored this, and as time went on, they found it was becoming easier and easier to ignore many things about Shadow. They also stopped getting headaches all the time when they started to just ignore things like his horns. Holly’s father often went on walks with them in the evening, and her mother had developed the bad habit of feeding Shadow scraps when she was cooking. This may have had something to do with his ever expanding girth.
Shadow snored when he slept, the occasional tiny spurt of flame shooting from between his teeth. Holly snored too, though it was hard to tell over the deep, earthquake inducing rumble that came from Shadow. Mid-snore this particular night, however, Shadow awoke quite suddenly.
He didn’t get up, or move in any way; he only opened his eyes and was instantly wide awake. The strange not-quite-silence of night time filled the air, the sound of the house settling, the impression of wind blowing outside, the soft sleep-sounds of Holly as she breathed and snored and shifted.
Shadow lifted his head, and a low growl escaped his throat.
The dog got up and slid off the bed, the heavy thud of his body hitting the floor failing to wake the girl. He trudged out of her room and down the hall, pausing to sniff at the doors of Holly’s parents and brother. Apparently satisfied, he continued on into the kitchen, and to the back door.
Holly’s parents had decided against installing a doggy door, since the back door was right off of the kitchen and it snowed where they lived. That didn’t stop Shadow though, and he slunk into the back yard on silent paws, his body low to the ground, almost fading into the darkness like a, well, a shadow. He prowled around the border of yard, staying close to the fence and stopping to sniff at anything that seemed suspicious. He sat on his haunches beneath the leafless oak where the children’s tree house had been built, little more than a slightly darker smudge against the already dark landscape. For a long time, he didn’t move. He didn’t even breath.
Then his eyes narrowed. Up against the sky, black with storm clouds, a dark speck moved. It came closer and closer, its great leathery wings flapping rhythmically like a nightmare of a bat. It soared silently through the air, and alighted like a ghost on the fence of Shadow’s yard. It didn’t seem to notice the dog, but Shadow’s eyes were fixed on the thing and his hackles would have been raised, had he had any fur.
The thing looked around the seemingly empty yard with quick, jerky movements, and then climbed down the fence the way a spider climbs down a wall to scuttle into a dark crevice. It began to crawl across the yard on all fours with overlong limbs, making towards the house. Before it could get very far, a growl like the splitting of tectonic plates filled the air. The creature froze and whipped its head around almost 180 degrees, and this time it couldn’t miss Shadow. The puppy charged at the creature, his maw–which was little more than a black hole lined with switchblades–gaping and glistening with ropes of saliva. The creature gave a screech of fear and frustration and leapt into the air, flapping its great wings once, twice, and just barely managing to pull its taloned toes out of range of Shadow’s reach in time. The thing spit and hissed, but it wasn’t stupid. It flew away with only its pride wounded, to find some easier victim to prey upon.
Shadow watched it go, filled with doggy-pride for having defended his territory. But that small skirmish, he was aware, had been nothing. It had been only an imp, after all. Just a skulking minor demon that crept around under the cover of night to create minor mischief, the kind of creature that made a person wake up in a bad mood for no reason, or hide car keys in obscure places just to ruin their day.
There were other threats, much worse threats, that Shadow could see where poor stupid humans couldn’t. The man who lingered near the park where the family took their daily walks and watched the children while they played. The teenage neighbor boy whose mouth was like the slash of a knife, who always smelled like the neighborhood cats and dogs that kept disappearing. The woman who had been smoking a cigarette outside the movie theater Shadow had seen from the back seat of the car when Holly’s father dropped her and her mother off to watch an evening film, the woman who befriended troubled young girls and convinced them to climb inside vans which would take them far, far away from their friends and family. Any human would have the sense to be afraid of an imp if they saw one, but Shadow had found that they didn't seem to be able to see the wickedness in their fellow men the way that he himself could.
Shadow wouldn’t be a puppy for long, and he was territorial. He would protect his house and his new family, and he was going to make sure that he was the only piece of hell that was allowed free reign in his little corner of the world.
An opossum scuttled along the top of the fence, and Shadow barked excitedly at it. He didn’t much like opossums either.
His duty done, his house defended, he went back inside and climbed onto the foot of Holly’s bed once more, struggling a little on his way up because of his stubby legs. He curled up and closed his eyes. Holly awoke just a little, rolled over, stuck her toes under Shadow’s warm body, and then went back to sleep, snug and warm and safe.
A holiday short story, and yes, it was inspired by the picture you’re thinking of. Happy Holidays!
