Well would you look at that, I got a Christmas Eve post!
When I realized a few weeks ago that one of my posting days would be so festive, I knew what I had to do.
Make it scary.
So, I figured while y’all are scrolling your phones while your relatives bicker about politics, you could read some more of my flash. When I put “gift” in quotation marks in the title, it’s because this story is a gift in the way a dead bird brought inside by your cat is a “gift”. Here’s your warning: it’s very gross. Merry Christmas.
Some background knowledge that you might find interesting:
Many modern-day Christmas traditions stem from the ancient Roman celebration of Saturnalia, which honored Saturn, god of agriculture and time. It fell around the winter solstice and usually marked the beginning of the winter planting. It’s the reason we celebrate Christmas when we do- the holiday has deep roots in the ancient celebration (when Christianity rose and grew powerful, they attempted to stamp out pagan celebrations and override them with their own). Elements such as the decorations, feasting and gift-giving were taken directly from Saturnalia.
It was also common practice for workers to get the day off, and for the wealthy elite to serve their slaves a lavish meal, reversing roles for a night. Hint hint.
Check out these sources for more interesting info about Saturnalia-
Now that you understand a bit of my inspiration, let’s get into the story.
Maybe don’t eat while you’re reading it.
Saturnalia
by Ava Christina
Eshmun sat at the Senator’s banquet table. He wore fine clothes dyed rich blues and purples, colors he hadn’t worn in years. Not since his capture.
The Senator himself strode into the room, his clothing bright and unstained.
“Io, Saturnalia!” The Senator cried with merry delight.
Eshmun stirred in the plush chair, uncomfortable. The Romans were a strange people, and they lived so loudly. Their customs and culture were still alien to him even after five years of living among them, serving them, scrubbing the floors after galas, the sour vomit smell never quite washing off his calloused hands.
The Senator smiled and snapped his soft fingers. “First course!”
Ten of Eshmun’s master’s fellow Senators emerged through the door leading to the culina, where all the Senator’s meals were prepared, their hands which have never known true work gripping beautiful silver serving platters. The plates were piled high with steaming confections of every kind imaginable: roast mutton that dripped with savory fat and oil, candied fruits, loaves of rich dark bread sliced and served with bowls full of butter.
Eshmun’s ears rang with the noise of the dining hall. The other slaves were enraptured by the beautiful clothes, the new shoes, the lush décor and table settings of fine silver. But all this opulence made Eshmun nervous.
Surely such treatment of slaves is illegal, he thought, wincing as the new leather of his gifted shoes pinched his crooked toe. Any moment he will turn angry and have us whipped for wearing such things, for sitting at his table.
The Senators, laughing and teasing one another, delighted in a moment of living life from the other side, setting the food down across the ridiculous length of the table. Eshmun and the rest of the Senator’s slaves eyed the food with longing but did not reach out and touch it.
“Today is the first day of Saturnalia,” the Senator boomed, “My fellow Senators and I humbly serve you in keeping with tradition. I understand that many of you are from other lands where this may seem strange. It is customary for masters to serve their slaves during Saturnalia, a day for celebration and chaos as we honor Saturn. Please, enjoy yourselves.”
At this, the other slaves reached greedily for the food, their normally filthy hands scrubbed clean in the bathing rooms an hour before. Eshmun felt as though his master did not view him and the other slaves as humans, rather as playthings to dress up and set around like children play with clay figures.
As the slaves plopped piles of steaming food onto their shining plates, the giggling Senators approached the table again with freshly uncorked wine, pouring it into the slaves’ sparkling clean glasses with gusto. Glasses that the slaves had washed themselves only the night before after one of their master’s gluttonous parties.
How these Romans love their wine, Eshmun thought, his nose wrinkling. Something about the entire show rankled him. It was a joke to these high-society Romans, pretending he and his fellow slaves were people for a night, giggling and miming such activities as scrubbing the floors and beating rugs.
It was all just fun to them. And Eshmun decided he didn’t want to dance around and put on a grateful face for them, make them feel like gracious gods for a night.
He sat in the chair, wearing the fine clothes and ridiculous shoes that pinched his toe, but he sat with arms crossed, not touching the food, the wine, or even the water, even though the feast set before him was more food than he’d ever seen in one place his entire life.
He would not participate in this Saturnalia.
They can sack my city and enslave me and my people, but they cannot make me into a plaything if I do not let them, Eshmun thought with satisfaction.
He glanced at the group of Senators, who had quieted their antics and now watched the slaves imbibe in food and drink like they were actors on a stage. Their attention was rapt, excited.
Anticipatory.
What are they…
Then the coughing began.
No.
Several slaves around the table fell from their chairs, their mouths spewing barely-chewed mutton and pastries and rank wine all over themselves, the table, the floor. They started to shake, collapsing fully onto the ornate tiles of the floor and twitching, their heads and heels drumming. The room filled with the stench of the dying, of stomach acid and lining and the liquid contents of destroyed bowels.
A sound rose above the choked cries and moans and thuds of seizing limbs.
Laughing.
Eshmun turned and saw the Senators. They watched the horrific, inhuman scene with mirth, clutching their stomachs and wiping at their eyes. He watched one of the men retch and vomit onto his expensive tunic, the brightly dyed fabric stained with the browns and yellows of the man’s latest decadent meal. He was not poisoned as well, Eshmun realized, simply unable to hold his gorge among the depravity. The man continued to bellow laughter as the vomit dried on his front.
Eshmun stood from the table in shock and horror. The chair clacked to the floor behind him, and he spun about wildly. What could he do? Three-quarters of the slaves in the dining hall already lay still on the rich tiles, breathing their last as their bodily fluids coagulated beneath them. He could not save them, his fellow oppressed, many of which in this very room he had known back in Carthage, back before the Romans came and overpowered their great city.
Before they took them back to their grand estates with marble pillars and monstrous tapestries only to murder them on a day set aside for chaos and mischief.
The Senators saw him and roared with laughter, pointing and clutching themselves. Just then, a slave seized and fell forward onto the table, knocking a silver candelabra over on its side. The flames caught on the tablecloth, reaching a spot of spilled fat from a dead slave’s plate and igniting it with a whoosh.
The Senators clapped and cheered at the sight. The chaos and misery fed them like starving children on the streets.
The flames crawled across the table, licking up every drop of fat and oil and spilled wine. It reached the body of a woman with long braids, her face having fallen into her stew bowl when she collapsed, and the braids lit up like kindling. The smell of her charring flesh mingled with the sour reek of the vomit, and that was when Eshmun finally vomited himself, coating the ridiculous leather shoes in his slave rations served to him the night before. Cabbage soup without any salt.
The fire had spread across the entire table, and the wood quickly collapsed under the damage, spilling everything to the floor and spreading the flames in a pool. They engulfed more of the bodies, most of them now lying still.
Eshmun was the only one of them still alive. All others had eaten the poisoned food. Allowed their dignities to be quashed in this twisted, childish game.
The Senators did not look overworried about Eshmun’s survival. They bolted in a line of guffaws for the double doors, escaping and closing them behind themselves. Eshmun ran to the doors after them, but as he neared, he heard scraping and smacking from outside, saw the doors being jostled.
Eshmun knew they were trapping him in here with the grotesquerie of ruptured human bodies. He tried the doors anyway, shoving against them with his entire body’s weight.
The doors did not budge. Eshmun heard the Senators cackle at his attempt.
Smoke began to fill the dining hall, and Eshmun choked as he breathed in the reek of burning bodies. I’m going to die in here.
Then he remembered. He’d served meals here before on occasion when his master had executed the usual staff for serving dissatisfactory meals.
The servant’s door. It led to the culina, which had to a door to the gardens.
Escape.
Eshmun turned and sprinted across the room, coughing and wincing at the smoke that assailed his eyes, nose and mouth. His foot, still clad in the now-filthy leather shoe, slipped on a puddle of vomit and Eshmun went sprawling, falling hard on his hands and right knee. He pulled himself up, too shaken to feel the pain as his knee began to bleed, and stumbled through the room to the small door in the far wall.
Part of him, the part that had been enslaved and beaten and treated like filth, expected the Senators to have blocked this door as well. But the gods smiled upon Eshmun in that moment. The door fell open under his shove and he went to his knees again in the culina, crying out as the split skin on his knee opened wider.
Eshmun made for the back door, bowed over in pain, and fell into it with desperate force. It gave way and then he was outside, the fresh, cold night air filling his nose and cleared it of the reek of his burning brethren.
Eshmun took off sprinting into the dark countryside, no regard for a destination other than away from his depraved master and the sickening laughter of his fellow Senators.
He made it over five hundred pedes before he began screaming from the horror he had witnessed.
Yeah. Think about that while you’re watching your family open gifts and drink ‘nog.
Happy Holidays!
DECEMBER WRITING GOALS UPDATE #4
Guys.
I.
DID IT!!!!!
I finished Father Cruz. Holy shit. I did it. After months of putting off writing the ending I already had planned, I finally did it. I cut the cord and said goodbye to my precious babies. I know this isn’t the end for this story, in fact, it’s only the end of the first draft, but I think we all know this is something to celebrate. I am now the proud mother of two children.
Father Cruz came in at 57,820 words, complete with creepy insects, gory body horror, and way too many references to Supernatural and The Exorcist. As a horror romance, it will need a very special person to give it a home when it’s eventually full grown. The agent search this time around will be just as difficult and heart-wrenching, but I think my second born has a much better shot at making it.
In other exciting news, I have also finished the cover design and the formatting/copyediting for my self-pub short story collection. I’m happy to announce that I am once again with child- this time with…
Losing Air: Dark and Strange Tales, a collection of all of my short works so far! She’s due (as of right now) in March 2026. Look out for more updates on that!
Lastly, I did not make any notable progress on other novel projects this week. But as you’ve read, I’ve been a little busy with some other stuff! We’ll see how much I get done next week (my last week!) with nothing else to take up my time.
Thanks for sticking with me!
This content was written and created by a human, without the use of any artificial intelligence tools. The authors do not authorize this article’s usage in training AI tools. We proudly support the original works of creators and individuals over technology that steals and manipulates original content without consent of creators.
Pen and Sword Blog 
Leave a comment