Excerpt: Corruption

Oliver Pax loved Christmas. It was no odd thing for a nine-year-old, but to him it wasn't the presents, the snow, the promise of Santa, anything like that. For years he had begged his parents to let him put the angel on the top of the tree first, breaking their tradition. This year they had finally said yes. It was a small thing to watch the ragged little doll on top of the spreading pine, but his grandmother had made it for him at his birth. She had a hand-stitched silk dress and wings, real dove feathers attached to the ends. Her hair was made from his grandmother's golden locks, before they had turned silver and started to fall out. She had a small tinsel halo, and her cloth hands were pressed reverently together. She slid on top of the tree with a little sigh of needles, and from there watched over them. Oliver would for hours do nothing more than gaze at her if left to his own devices. So they decorated the rest of the tree as a family.
It was December 20, 2012.
They said they would let him stay up until midnight as the news forecasted the end of the world according to the Mayan calender. There were all kinds of conspiracy theorists and crazies on the streets speaking of doom. Their preacher had promised them that God would protect them. His parents had laughed off the thought of doom. Midnight came, and they carried him to bed, the sound of Christmas carols rolling up from the small radio in the living room. Yawning, he was asleep before he was fully tucked into bed, Twas the Night Before Christmas left unopened on his bedside.
When he woke the next morning, there was not the usual smell of breakfast cooking. In fact, there was nothing at all. No sounds of his parents weary shuffles or drowsy talk, no coffee grinding or percolating (they used an old-fashioned percolator.) Shaking his head and mussing his dark hair, Oliver moved downstairs barefoot and clumsy. It was cold, a draft coming in through the open door. Open? The furniture lay all over the place, upturned and ripped, and the Christmas tree was gone.
“Momma?”
Where were his parents? Stumbling off the last step, he ran towards the front door. It was snowing, flakes melting on the plush carpet, curling around his toes.
“Papa?”
He ran across the living room and into the kitchen. The cross that had hung at the head was gone, a bare dusty space left on the wall. He found nothing but some toast scattered on the floor and the butter and milk left out on the counter. His cat, a present from last year, was a fluffed-up ball huddled in the corner, mewling plaintively. He picked her up, holding her to his chest as he searched the house again. His parents were gone. The tree was gone, and the little handmade angel lay in the middle of the floor, ripped apart as if savage hyenas had thought it prey. He imagined them coming into the room like they had on the nature program the night before, attacking a young gazelle and leaving the grass red. His mother had turned it off before the announcer could finish explaining how they began to eat while it was still alive. This is what it seemed to him. His Serengeti was torn apart. He sat with his back to the corner of the living room, holding both cat and ruined doll and shivering, staring at the open door wearing only his pajamas still.
By the time he heard a car pull up the driveway, he had run out of tears and sat as if a snowman in the corner. He had planned to build one today with his father, if it continued snowing.
It was his father that came through the door first. His shoulders were slumped, his head bowed, and he was still wearing his pajama pants, but there was a ragged coat tossed over his bare arms. There were red marks all along his chest, and a bruise over his left eye. He supported Oliver's mother with an arm around her waist, her nightgown torn and bloody in places, shivering as she closed the door behind them.
“Momma!” Oliver's cry came hoarse, dropping both cat and angel to run to his mother. She picked him up, holding him close to her chest and rocking him gently. “Momma, did Jesus save you?”

She slapped him. He had never been hit before, and now when looking for comfort, she had struck him across the face, leaving his cheek stinging and his eyes welling up with fresh tears he didn't know he had.
“God does not exist. Jesus does not exist,” she said, shaking him as he clung to her nightgown. “Do you understand me?” Her own blue eyes were brimming, red-rimmed and swollen. “God does not exist.”
He didn't understand.