.

"Babe?" she mumbled.

She reached for the lamp on her nightstand, turned it on, and squinted as harsh light stabbed into her eyes.

"Mark?"

She turned toward her husband and froze, unable to process what she was seeing. Her first thought was that Mark had been replaced by a human-sized doll drenched in gallons of red paint. The doll was broken - limbs separated from the body and split into pieces, chest cavity torn open, ribs splintered, organs a churned-up mass of unidentifiable meat, head halfway detached from the neck, lower jaw broken off and hanging by a thread of muscle, the face... the face...

There was no face. The head had been caved in, leaving only a few features still visible in the crimson mess - an eye, a few teeth, the tip of the tongue, and small bumpy bits that she thought might be parts of the brain. The eye was angled toward her as if it were dispassionately observing her struggle to understand the mangled horror lying on the bed next to her.

This was no doll.

It was Mark.

She drew in a breath to scream, but her gaze lifted to take in the figure standing next to Mark's side of the bed, and the scream died in her throat. She registered the Santa suit first, her stunned mind thinking it was a good choice since blood splatter wouldn't show as much on the red fabric. Then she noticed the ax, rivulets of blood streaming from the blade like a miniature crimson waterfall. Lastly as if she'd been putting it off until she had no other choice she gazed upon the intruder's face. Fake white hair hung down from his hat, but he had no beard. His face was covered with white makeup, mouth and eyes rimmed in black, and two thin arch-ing black lines served as eyebrows. Both his nose, which had a small black dot on the tip, and his chin were elongated. And his teeth were dingy, the gums black with rot. Blood had spattered his forehead and cheeks and stippled his disgusting teeth. Mark's blood...

- Page 11