Written 10 years ago, Excessively Xmas has become a holiday family classic. Merry Christmas from SamSpeak.

EXCESSIVELY XMAS

In the turtle-eyed haze of a long ago encounter, Nick grabbed for his Glock 9 millimeter and took aim through a barbed-wire thicket of Christmas lights at his namesake nemesis, dressed in red, the color of blood. Sweet, sickening music, the marketer's mating call of the season filled the cold night with empty cheer. Nick fingered the trigger. Fingered it just as he had years before on a similarly cheerless, chilled evening at the fulcrum of his existence.

He had fingered triggers many times before in a happy youth, taking aim at Warhol Campbell soup cans and glass coke bottles out in the woods behind his house. The woods were long gone now, replaced by a mall, very much like the one in which he now found himself.

And he wondered as he wandered in the woods--about toys and girls and snakes and lizards, about spit wads and racing cars and the rabbit running up ahead of him, brown on white in the green forest's snow. He raised his gun and let go with a volley that missed its prey. Years later he would not miss. He stepped out of his car on that first night, staring up at the bright lights above obscuring light from millions of years ago. Nick gazed down at his lighter and lit up another smoke. He inhaled deeply and headed towards the mall. Only one day left to shop, and it had come down to this. What should he get her? What possible present could show her the future he had in mind for them? What symbolized their unbreakable bond, their life-long commitment, this tender, fragile, tightly wrapped, ribbon and bow package called love? Something $34.99 or under.

He had pulled into a large, concrete parking lot, cementing the plan in his mind as he put out the cigarette in the ashtray. Bubble bath? No. That crushed velvet gown she was always raving about? Perhaps. Something that symbolized his overwhelming love for her was what was in order. But what material item of this world could fit that large bill? He wandered through the mall's hall's stale air gazing as he went into the decorated-rectangular openings which passed for store fronts. Clothes, electronics, clothes, toys, videos, CDs and more clothes poised on the outer reaches of the rectangular openings, as if ready to spring upon passing prey.

Over in the centerpiece of the mall, where two hallways met and where the season's decorations flourished in full regalia, was a swarm of children--clamoring and screaming, fidgeting and fighting, a child therapist's forty-dollar-an-hour, attention-deficit dream. The swarm of boys and girls came in every shape and every size below the level of three and a half feet, bundled up in parent-provided protective armor designed to protect them against--nature. In the midst of this seasonal suburban mall mayhem, in the center of this Gap Kids clothing parental excess, with shopping bags full of expensive plastic molded into hundreds of toy forms, with snot sloughing from noses and shrieks pealing out below the noses, sat a large, fat man dressed in red. His cheeks also were red like a 16 year-old girl's first application of makeup in youthful, inexperienced excess. His nose also bore the signs of the scarlet letter.

Instinctively, Nick began to turn away, fully intent on dashing to the farthest reaches of the mall, away from this madness. But as he turned, a sound somehow forced its way above the cacophonous shrill screaming of the swarm of children, the rustling of countless plastic bags, the clamoring of debt-ridden adults, the chaotic sound of dozens of stores' competing Muzak audio Christmas cards. A whimper--lonely, clear and young, floating above the din--halted Nick's steps in mid-track.

He turned, searching for the sound's source in a sea of sounds. The whimper guided him, an audio spotlight--a clairvoyant star--towards the source, towards a young girl. She was a tender child with eyes almost round, with hair almost dark. She appeared to be alone in the swarm; she stared straight ahead at the man in red. The whimper continued its crawl, a lizard scurrying out of its desert hole, from the child's lips. A vacant space--the only one in all of the mall--no greater than two-feet square, formed around her. Parents, kids, shoppers and shoppees, unconsciously created it. Nick leaned down to the girl's level, also careful not to violate the safe zone, and asked if she was O.K.

The girl ignored or did not hear Nick, perhaps wrapped up in the echoing box of her own din. At any rate, she did not answer, did not turn to Nick, did not even acknowledge nor even flinch from the attempted intrusion. Nick asked where her parents were but received the same response, or rather no response at all. Nick honed in on the girl's vision-stare, only to find the end of the beam lit the center of the stage where a fat man continued to sing the season's song. And what would you like for Christmas, young boy? Mom, Dad did you hear that? An electro-pleasure powered video-audio dynomatic, can't resist this rat-a-tat-tat, trend-setting, toy of the year gift. Nick gazed at the Claus looking for an answer; an answer the girl had yet to find? Oblivious, Saint Nick hauled another child onto his lap; the swarm closed in around him.

Nick stared, transfixed by the image of a small boy, perched comfortably on a fat man dressed in red--an intimate encounter in a maze of people. Finally, Nick looked back down towards the small girl. She was gone. Nick scanned the crowd in vain and lifted his gaze above the sea of children beyond to the great open mall, finally finding the small child disappearing into the mall's horizon, down the long, wide endless hallway. Nick dashed after her, at first walking quickly and then, as the girl turned a corner into a different connecting hallway, Nick broke into the middle ground between race-walk and trot.

As Nick gained ground on the girl, the child abruptly pivoted into a photo booth. A twenty-five cent, automatic, get your photo taken, results immediate, small closet of a booth. Nick ran up to it. He stared at its exterior. Nervously, he looked around him at the pedestrian jam clogging the hall. Nick turned back to the dark gray curtains covering the entrance to the booth. He heard no crystalline whimper. No guiding light from within. No sound at all. Without warning, Nick ripped open the curtains revealing the compact photo booth inside where a small girl, flat on her back, lay motionless, on the uncomfortable bench designed for sitting. Nick leaned down and asked if she was O.K. He received the same, tired old response the girl had given him before. Summoning a courage which he wondered why he needed, Nick reached out and touched the girl. Again, no response. He softly pushed the girl's shoulder as if to wake her, even as his own shoulder was pushed. Nick turned and saw red. Feet of red fabric covering a large man with white whiskers stared past him into the booth. Mirroring Nick's reaction the red man wanted to know if the girl was O.K. Both men stared into the booth.

"She wanted turtles." Saint Nick said, as if in explanation.

"Should we call mall security?" Nick wondered out loud. "Turtles?" he wondered next.

The girl had come to him, waited in line, climbed onto his lap, and asked for turtles for Christmas, was the beginning of Saint Nick's explanation. "She appeared to be alone, no parents or guardian. I asked her why she wanted turtles. She told me her pet turtles had died. I told her Santa would do his best and then I asked her where her parents were. The girl smiled. It wasn't a happy smile--in fact, it scared me if you want to know the truth. And she kept smiling, staring at me and smiling. Wouldn't say a word. Just smiled, goddamn it..."

Nick looked back towards the girl, "Shouldn't we see if she's allright?"

"So I tossed her off my lap and then--that sound. That damn sound. At first I looked at her, then tried to ignore her, go about my business, but when I heard it disappearing down the hall I turned to my back-up, told him I had to go..." Ignoring the rantings of the fat man behind him, Nick kept pushing the girl, trying to roust her. Finally, he felt the girl's neck. Nick jumped back, out of the booth, nearly hitting his head, and crashed into Saint Nick behind him.

"What? What is it?" the not so jolly fat man wanted to know.

"You bastard." Nick placed his hands around Saint Nick's neck, squeezing, silent now, the emotion releasing through the bulge of his eyes. The Saint fought back, using his considerable girth to toss Nick aside, and he ran and weaved through the crowded hallway towards the exit. Nick chased him, out the mall's multiple glass doors, through its deforested concrete jungle parking lot, pulling a gun from his holster as he ran, an upgrade from the spry shots of his youth. In the farthest reaches of the lot, next to the construction site of a new super mall scheduled to open the next holiday season, Santa fell down in exhaustion. Nick ran up to the fallen idol and pointed his gun at him. Christmas lights tangled in the barbed-wire construction fence flashed in the night as the distant sound of recorded song filled Nick's ears. He fingered the trigger. "All she wanted was a turtle."

The words echoed in the dark hallways of his mind this night years later as again he fingered the trigger. A fucking turtle. A pet for a small child, one girl's small Christmas wish. He looked at this Santa. This man in red. This symbol of the season. His finger itched to move the half inch that was needed to end the life.

Slowly, like snow falling on a December night, his index finger relaxed and he lowered the gun. He smiled. The man in red, scurrying up off the concrete, his ripped trousers revealing rosy red cheeks, opened the door to his car, another long mall night's work over, and he got in.

"She always loves turtles." Nick smiled, his aim, as always, true. And another tradition of Christmas was fulfilled.