TCC: Blood & Sin - 01

Horror - A queer writer specializing in the dark and disturbing must face the consequences when she caters to the wrong audience

New here? Start at the beginning. Read The Christmas Contract Part 1

Previously: We all delighted in the abridged version of “The Christmas Contract” by horror writer M. Dubois, a novel written for a quick buck and a foot in the traditional publishing door.

“TCC: Blood & Sin” follows the story of Martiza Dubois and the trouble she finds herself in after attracting the wrong kind of attention with her Hallmark knock-off. Now we have our taste of reality, and of course, blood and sin, for a Christmas treat.

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Maritza leaned back in her chair and let the words in the email from her agent sink in: The Christmas Contract, her bestselling debut novel, had been purchased by Streamflix to be adapted into a movie for release next season. She placed her ice-cold palms on her cheeks.

“No fucking way,” she muttered. “Oh, my god.”

Her hot forehead met her cool desk, and she tried not to hyperventilate. This was good news. This was big news. And this was more than she had wanted.

She didn’t write romance. She wrote horror stories. But now, her scheme to get her foot into the publishing door with a quick win was backfiring. Her name was tied in every way to this book, effectively ruining her chances of going back to writing horror, even under a pen name.

Everyone had been so supportive of her new venture. Not a single person had called her a sell-out (to her face). She had even enjoyed writing The Christmas Contract for the most part. The book had a cult following among a certain crowd, and the Hall Decker fan fiction had a following among another crowd.

It was too easy, too banal, too palatable, and somehow, she’d pulled it off so well that soon she had found herself signing a contract for book two. Anyone else would be over the moon—but Maritza immediately felt dread and that age-old passion-killer, imposter syndrome.

“I can’t write fucking white-picket-fence-romance forever. Jesus f—”

Buzz, buzz.

Her phone vibrated with a calendar event reminder.

“Shiet,” she growled. There was a book signing downtown today.

Another round of endless questions in front of a crowd of women clutching her book to their chests and swooning over Luke (barf) Winter, when Holly was the character Maritza truly loved—Holly, who had been modeled after her own girlfriend, Liz.

She got up, pulled some pants on, spritzed her curls, located her “business shoes”, wrapped a long scarf around her neck, and dashed out the door, hoping to stop for something extra garlicky to snack on before the anxiety-inducing event at the bookstore.

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Goofy caricatures of Noelle and Luke, the main characters of The Christmas Contract, stared back at Martiza as she closed the cover. She smiled at the woman across the table and slid the book toward her.

“Thank you for stopping by.”

As the woman left the bookstore, Martiza let her face fall into a more accurate depiction of her internal state: exhaustion. She picked up her phone and texted Liz to say the event was over. The door to the bookstore chimed right as she pressed send.

A woman with short, choppy, mousy brown hair, in a bright magenta sweater tucked into a long denim skirt, hastened toward the table where Maritza sat. Her sharp elbows jutted out at her sides as she marched and her brown leather boots with fur on the cuffs left small puddles of water on the floor. She held up her own copy of The Christmas Contract as she approached, out of breath and excited.

“I hope I didn’t miss the signing! I just have to meet M. Dubois.” Her words ran together and her eyes shone, big, brown, and glossy.

“No problem.” Martiza gave her a tight smile and held out her hand for the book.

The woman pulled the book to her chest and cradled it there. “No—I’m here to meet the author.”

“I am the author,” Maritza intoned with a slight edge as she clicked the pen in her hand, readying it for action.

The woman’s face assumed a slack, bewildered look. “M. Dubois?”

Maritza closed her eyes for a brief moment, then arranged her face into a much more exaggerated smile. “Yes. Martiza Dubois.”

“Oh.” The woman placed her book on the table and cringed as Maritza grabbed it and opened the front cover. “I thought you were French…”

“Uh, yes. A little French, some other stuff, mostly Mexican.”

“Mexican?”

The two women from vastly different worlds shared a long pause as they locked eyes over the table.

“Yes.” Maritza said flatly. “My photo has been everywhere online. You haven’t seen it?”

“Oh, I don’t mess with the internet. Too much woke agenda.”

“Right,” the writer leaned over the book to hide her smile. “Who can I make this out to?”

“Actually” —the woman’s hand twitched toward the book— “Okay, sure. Can you write ‘Holly and Chris forever’?”

“Holly and Chris?” Maritza chuckled. “Not Noelle and Luke?” The pen hovered over the page. She looked back up at the woman.

With an emphatic shaking of her head, the woman said, “No, no, no. Noelle is too…modern for my taste. Holly is my favorite.” She beamed down at Maritza.

The writer couldn’t help the warmth that enveloped her like a hug. “Oh, yeah. I like her, too.” She hesitated, then said in a rush, “If you want to know a secret, Holly is inspired by my girlfriend.”

A scowl formed on the woman’s face. One wide eye twitched. “Not your…girlfriend.”

“Yep, together for five years.”

Red splotches showed on the woman’s neck, then her cheeks. “Oh” —she put a hand to her forehead as her eyes darted around the store— “You’re not…who I thought you were. You’re not…traditional.”

Martiza snorted. She’d heard this plenty of times regarding the book. With a dismissive wave of her hand, she bent over the page again, and prepared to scrawl her signature on the inside.

“Lady, this is just a gig, just a paycheck. Name?”

The TCC Superfan leaned into Maritza’s personal space and hissed, “Mayruth. My name is Mayruth and I hate you for lying. Keep your trashy book.” She turned, hands shaking as she smoothed down her hair roughly, and stomped out of the bookstore.

Maritza promptly dropped the well-loved book into the small trashcan next to her with a flourish. “Be gone, crazy bitch.”

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When Liz pulled up to the curb, Martiza jogged out into the rain to meet her. Liz got out of the car to let her girlfriend drive. The women embraced and kissed briefly before ducking back into the safety of the vehicle. Maritza checked the windshield wipers and rearview mirror as she buckled up.

“Thanks for picking me up,” she breathed as she shook the rain from her hair.

“Thanks for driving me to the airport.” Liz squeezed her thigh. “You okay? You look a little more annoyed than usual.”

Maritza sighed deeply and loudly as she shifted the car into gear and turned on her blinker. “I’m fine, just another weirdo at the signing.”

“Ooh! Another homophobe?”

“Bingo.”

“Sorry, babe.”

She changed lanes and sped up. “It’s fine. I knew this would be an issue. I’m more upset that you’ll be gone for Christmas.”

“You have to work on the second book anyway. And we’ll have an amazing post-holiday-holiday.” Liz smiled that perfect, radiant smile she loved. “You know you work better without me around.”

The other woman grumbled as she coasted down the freeway ramp.

“It’s only six days,” Liz promised, “I’ll see you bright and early on the 26th.”

Maritza did not notice that the blue car behind them in line at the airport departures was the same one that followed her home.

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An insistent knock at her apartment door awoke Martiza the next morning at 5AM. She laid there a moment unsure of whether or not she’d actually heard it. Then, the rapping sounded again. A groan and a few curses later, she was out of bed.

Once in the living room, the knocking took on a frenzied pace, shaking the chain dangling from the lock.

“Okay, okay!” she yelled. The knocking ceased immediately. She checked the view of the hallway through the peephole and saw only empty space. “What the f—”

Her phone vibrated against the top of the nightstand back in her bedroom. She left the door and hurried to answer it; only her agent and Liz called her and she promised to be available for both.

She picked up her phone just as the caller—and unknown number—gave up.

“It’s too early for this,” she complained and rubbed her eyes.

A single heavy knock on the door froze the blood in her veins.

Buzz, buzz.

Another call. Unknown number. She answered timidly.

“Hello?”

Silence.

“Hello?”

The call disconnected.

She held the phone up in front of her face and stared at it, willing it to tell her what was going on. The pixels that made up the photo of Liz’s cat, Meowchelle, on her lock screen held no answers.

Buzz, buzz.

Incoming call. She dropped the phone like it was covered in ants and then quickly retrieved it. No more silly bullshit.

“What!” she barked into the speaker.

Silence—no—breathing, steady.

Ugh, a creep.

“Go fuck yourself!” She yelled—a little too high-pitched, a little too scared—at the caller.

Her phone remained on “do not disturb” for the rest of the day as she committed herself to coffee and writing.

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In the evening, Maritza found herself with an empty stomach and an empty fridge. Thai food was a quick jaunt down the street and ready in minutes.

She called in an order to the restaurant, then turned off the “do not disturb” setting on her phone. Fifteen voicemails, all from an unknown number, piled one atop the other on her screen. She listened to the first five, then gave up. Each one was exactly 15 seconds of silence.

“Okay, then,” she huffed. Into her pocket went the phone, and out the door went the writer.

The night was brisk, but not icy—a welcome break from the cold snaps the city had been experiencing. Soon, she had picked up her order from the warm eatery. The tantalizing scents of lemongrass and coriander made her stomach complain loudly as it gnawed away at itself. Once outside, she moved swiftly down the street back to her apartment.

Maritza kept her body alert and her head forward, but let her eyes scan up and down the street, studying potentially dangerous pockets of shadows as she moved. Scraping sounds called to her from an alley, the chain links of a fence rattled, the wind blew her hair in her face, and the headlights of oncoming cars burned holes in her vision.

She held her phone at the ready, in case of an emergency. The announcement of a new message sent a shock through her hand, up her arm. An unknown number. Three words sat in a black bar across her lock screen. She frowned. Footsteps approached rapidly from her left. Her eyes snapped up, but her pupils did not adjust quickly enough to see in the contrasting darkness of the street. She dropped her food and ran.

Rapid footfalls followed close enough behind that she did not waste precious seconds looking over her shoulder. In these situations, she knew the best course of action was to move like her life depended on it, plan her next steps, and never look back. She had the vague thought that she was leading her pursuer straight to her building, but her desire to be safe inside her apartment was too great.

The apartment building’s lights were a beacon in the ocean of pitch-black. Martiza pumped her legs and arms and concentrated on the concrete slapping the bottoms of her boots. She jumped up the couple steps and waved her key card in front of the security sensor on the front door. As soon as the glass door was opened slightly, she jammed herself into the gap and shut it, then whirled about and pressed herself against the glass.

White fog spread outward from her quick breaths. The only sound was her heavy breathing. Nothing stirred in the darkness—no cars, no pedestrians, and certainly no one following her.

Back in her apartment, Maritza stood staring out of the peephole in her door and into the hallway for several minutes before she was sure it was safe. Her phone was still clutched tightly in her hand. It took some mental effort to relax her fingers enough to set it down on the counter.

The message from the mystery number and her escape from who-knows-what effectively ruined her appetite. She slithered into bed with a cookie and a bottle of wine, and mulled over the three words in the message. Who would be so offended to randomly call her a “dirty lying bitch”? After half a bottle of wine, she decided everything was probably a big, dramatic misunderstanding.

🎄🎁🎄🎁🎄🎁🎄🎁

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cover image is made from free, unlicensed images found on Google, and photography by Cameron Stewart and Senivpetro

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