I didn't have a good head for wine. Really, it was no head at all, and at my ripe old age of seventy-two, I ought to know better than to agree to help my bachelor brother Bob finish off the last bottle.

It must have been during the second Christmas movie (The Muppet's Christmas Carol—I can never get enough of Dickens during the holidays, but between my youngest great-nephew and my oldest brother, this was as close to culture as we ever got) that I dozed off because one moment I was tucking my blanket around my feet and watching Scrooge tear up at the missed opportunities of his youth, and the next I jerked awake, hitting my empty glass of wine on the floor.

Where was I?

Overstuffed chair. Christmas lights on the tree winked and blinked. The fire had died, but the furnace was blazing away. All was right with the world. I lifted on stiff leg from the foot rest and tried to work some heat into my old bones and popsicled joints.

"Aunt Mildred?" a sweet voice asked.

My great-nephew Timmy had crept to the living room arch and was standing with his back to me, so as to not peak into the room. I told him Santa would leave without filling the stockings if Timmy came down and spied. I also told him to leave dark chocolate and wine instead of cookies and milk, may the angels have mercy on my soul. Just because I don't have a good head for it, doesn't mean I can pass up a glass of red for a special occasion.

"Yes, sweetheart? Are you all right?" His parents, my nephew and his darling wife had left the boy with us to go to another party and should have been home soon. He was wearing Star Wars pyjamas, from the original trilogy, thank you very much, which were a gift from myself last year. I could see his ankles and wrists poking out of the cuffs clearly.

"Did Santa come yet?" he asked.

"No, not yet. I see the chocolate and wine." Good thing for me, my early bedtime had slowed me down. Imagine trying to explain why I was in the middle of scarfing the midnight treats when the stockings hung as deflated as my boobs.

"I heard a noise in the kitchen, though," he whispered.

I beckoned him closer and pulled him on my knees. "Well, Santa hasn't stopped here yet. It must have been your Uncle Bob looking for some turkey for a sandwich." Honestly. I invited my brother over once a year and he stole enough turkey for a month of sandwiches. I shook my head, snowy wisps fell in my eyes and tickled Timmy's nose.

"Are you sure? It sounded...like rats."

"Rats?" I asked. "Let's go look. You can lead the way." With much groaning and creaking, I pulled myself upright and began the indoor-shoe shuffle to the kitchen.

We were at the end of the hallway when a low growl and scratching slithered from behind the swinging door. Timmy's grip tightened around mine.

"Was that rats?" he asked. His eyes were Americano coffee-cup sized.

I swallowed, but my mouth was dry. "More like raccoons. In my kitchen. In the middle of a snow storm on Christmas. Maybe I should call the fire department."

He shrugged.

"We'll just take a quick peek. You stay behind me." My wide bottom should protect him from any wild animal, that was a fact.

With the little seven-year-old firmly in a position of safety, I continued my careful waddle to the door. I pushed it slowly open, Timmy leaned from around my hip to peer with me into the kitchen.

Scritching sounded from under the sink.

My recent trip to the market came to mind. The stalls, the frosty air, the vendor even more ancient than me. I had bought a small bag of Cherimoya fruit—green and completely inappropriate for the non-adventurous group of family members the holidays always blew to my door in search of their annual home cooked meal.

"No day after Christmas," the old vendor had warned.

Or had she said 'nodaway after Christmas' as in, they made you nap like turkey and red wine both did? So was I supposed to have eaten them before midnight or prepared ahead of time to have a sofa nearby for emergency nap purposes?

A sharp squeal from the darkness made us jump.

"You stay here," I told Timmy. Danger lurked in that cabinet. Raccoon or rats, something was into the fruit and vegetables I kept stashed under the sink. I flicked on the light and grabbed my meat tenderizing hammer from the wall.

"Aunt Mildred?" Timmy whispered. "You look really cool. Except your underwear is showing."

"Oh." I felt around to my backside and hiked my jogging suit (jogging suit! As if I had ever gone jogging in it!) a few inches higher to cover my non-color nylon undies. This simple act gave me courage somehow. I looked better, ergo I was stronger. Tougher. More ready to face the call of the wild. I inched forward.

Drops of black liquid pooled under the cabinet door on the linoleum. Not black liquid. My golly-goodness. Blood.

I waved for Timmy to stay back as a scruff of blond hair appeared in the corner of my eye. Mewling and growling answered my movement. Whatever was in there seemed to know we were sneaking up on it.

I raised the hammer, its jagged metal head like some gothic kingly scepter above my head. With my other hand, I reached for the cabinet door and—

"Aunt Mildred, should I have a knife just in case?" Timmy asked. He was eyeing the cleaver stuck to the magnetic strip Bob had installed for me three Christmases ago next to the stove top.

"Not this time, sweetheart. Wait until you're at least eight."

I reached for the cabinet door and swung it open.

A razor sharp, fish hook ended vine shot out for my face. Reflexes I thought had died with my virginity thirty years ago spurted to life and I slammed the door on it.

Squealing, screeching. Vegetatative things were pushing against me.

"Timmy, run!" I shouted.

The adorable boy fell on his backside and shouted, "Aunt Mildred, watch out!"

I held the door shut, cutting through the vine. The sharp end fell to the floor, a final, pain-filled cry filled the room.

"I think we need to call your parents," I said. I was panting. How embarrassing. But really. There were bad, scary things happening under my sink. The kind of things I would tell my girlfriends about while we drank coffee later and they would pee their pants, laughing because in the light of day and far from my kitchen the idea of green Cherimoya fruit growing barbed vines sharp enough to skin a cat and growling from a dozen slit mouths, all hungry for...well, I didn't know what they were hungry for and I wasn't going to stay and find out, would probably be funny.

At that moment, though, it wasn't the least bit amusing.

"Timmy, go to your room while I call your parents."

He stared up at me, not moving.

"Timmy—"

"What's all the ruckus about?" boomed my brother's voice. He was in his grey and blue striped bath robe and bunny slippers at the doorway, blinking in confusion at the bright light.

"Bob, the fruit has gone bad in a terrible way. I'm calling the fire department and Timmy's parents." I strode purposefully, or as purposefully as my fluffy lamb's wool indoor shoes and bunions would allow, to the phone mounted on the wall.

I'm old fashioned. Yes, there is a curly-q cord and the receiver is big enough to wedge between my ear and should so I can talk hands free while I cook.

"Bad fruit?" Bob scoffed. He walked to the cabinet and, like a classic man, know-it-all man, knelt on one knee and said, "I'll take care of it."

"Better come with me, sweet-pea," I said to Timmy. No use arguing with my brother. He was pushing eighty and couldn't hear me anyway.

I steered my little guy out into the hallway, promising cinnamon rolls and pancakes with bacon smiley faces for breakfast the next morning.

Screams rose, shattering my happy visions of tomorrow morning.

"To your room, to your room, to your room!" I shouted, pushing Timmy one direction and trying to head in the other. I rushed back to the kitchen. Bob screamed again, shouting. The lights flickered and burst into a fireworks display. The sudden darkness caught me by surprise, but I had the good sense to swing the meat tenderizer at the level of my knees.

In the instant before the lights fizzled to nothing, I had seen Bob on the floor with those barbed vines digging in his neck. His eyes were filmed over and his mouth moved out of habit, still telling me what to do.

Get out! Get out, get out, get out!

Then the vines were coming for me.

In the darkness, I swung and I smashed something. A fresh, cucumber smell wafted in the air, mixing with the saltier smell of fresh blood.

I must have screamed, too, because there was Timmy yelling at me to tell him what had happened and asking where was Uncle Bob. My brother had been so pale, much too pale, the same as Grandpa Philip when he had been trapped underground by a tornado for week with only green beans and rain water to keep him alive.

I raised my triple chin and beat a hasty retreat. We rushed down the hallway, up the stair (all right, we didn't rush up the stairs. I wheezed up the stairs, but my great-nephew cheered me on the whole way) and into the guest room. There was a phone on the doily on the bed stand. I picked it up and dialed 911.

Nothing,

I hung up and listened. No dial tone.

"Where's Uncle Bob?" Timmy asked. I noticed his Star Wars pyjamas for the second time.

"I'm afraid," I said, and paused. There was no good way of saying this. "Uncle Bob is no longer with us. Except in a Ben Kenobi sort of way, but we can't hear him talking to us in our heads."

"What about the fruit? Is it going to kill us?"

I gripped the dead phone in my hand, gritting my teeth against the arthritis pain shooting through my fingers. Vampire fruit. Of all the things to have to deal with. "No, of course not. It's just gone to the dark side, is all. But we're going to use the force and get through this together."

"Can you call my parents?"

"I wish I could, but the little evil buggers must have chewed through the lines, condemning us to blood-sucking death." That might have been too much honesty. His eyes welled up.

"Don't you have a cell phone? Or send them an email?" he asked. His sweet voice was breaking my heart. And I thought only gifs of kittens hugging each other could make me cry.

"I don't have a cell phone. We're going to have to work together to get rid of those things downstairs. Remember what your parents said to you? That you have to do everything I say, and exactly what I say or you'll be in trouble with Santa?"

He nodded.

"Good. That starts right now." The situation was clear: the fruit had turned vampiric and killed my brother. It then cut the phone lines, in a disturbing show of both self-awareness and hostility.

But if there was one thing I had learned how to do in the countless hours of slaving away in a kitchen, it was how to kill fruits and vegetables.

There was peeling, and dicing. Chopping and cleaving. Hacking and steaming. Mixing and whipping. Carving and sculpting.

And that was only the beginning. There was also Julien stripping. Grating and broiling. Puréeing and blending. Baking and juicing. Especially juicing.

That was what we needed to do. There was just one catch.

"Timmy, I think we need to lure those fruit things out of the kitchen." I might have just announced the end of cartoons on Cartoon Network. Disbelief. Outrage. Denial. "You have to either stay in here or go with me."

"But...what about Santa?"

"He'll be fine. He's got Rudolph to protect him." That red-nosed reindeer had faced worse bullies than bad Cherimoya fruit. "What will it be? With me or stay in here?"

"But why do you need to go to the kitchen? We were just there."

"I know." I sighed. "But all the tools I need are in the kitchen." Like a teen-aged fool, I had run off, leaving behind everything I needed. There was a blender, there were knives, there was a potato mixer, I could go on and on. Everything that spelled death and destruction for vegetable matter was in that kitchen. "If we lure them out, we can go in."

"All right."

What a little camper. One shiny gold star, coming up!

We tiptoed back the way we came, but very carefully in the dark, me in front and Timmy with instructions to run for the snowy hills and my nearest neighbors if anything happened to me. Images of my drained brother's face haunted me every step.

I couldn't fight this! I could barely get into my pants every morning, and only managed that after three cups of coffee!

But for little Timmy's sake, I had to try. The nearest neighbors were fifteen minutes away by foot and I didn't trust my car in the snow. He might die if I didn't do something.

The door was broken at the top hinge and hung crazily open.

"All right, you run in when I give the signal." Timmy nodded and ducked into the living room.

I lay like a dying walrus on the floor, thinking this was the worst idea I had ever had. I moaned to get the vines' attention.

Tendrils came curling from the kitchen, the carrion hunters in search of dying prey. I moaned louder. It wasn't faked, my sciatica was killing me. Deadly points on the ends of the vines flashed in the near darkness. The flaw in my plan became apparent. I had wanted to lure out the fruit, but it sent the scouts instead. I scootched as best I could away and toward the front door. What I did was dance with the terrifying things. I would go back and forward, as they uncurled and darted, seeking my warm blood.

"Almost to the front door and to safety," I called. I found my coat in hall closet. "Then there will be no one in the house for days and days until the mailman comes looking for me!" That didn't work, no fruit in sight. "Oh, drat! I've cut my finger on a rusty nail! There's blood all over the floor!" I jabbed my finger with a safety pin that I used for my zipper tab. At the smell of fresh blood, the vines wriggled with joy and, spinning out of control and came for me.

But wait....There they were! The fruit!

"Haha! I'm out the door now!" I flung myself out the door, just as the fruit bounced down the hall and past the living room arch. Timmy dodged into the kitchen and I slammed the front door on a mass of writhing vines. I stood. The snow drifts were a piece of cake—chocolate cake with powdered sugar—after that. I made my way around the house and Timmy let me in the kitchen.

Tools.

I handed him the mixer. "If they get past me, use this as your last defense. Then activate your light speed and escape."

He pinched his lips tight and gave me a pinky-swear.

I readied the hand-held blender, plugging it in and wiping its chrome blades.

"This ends tonight with fruit splatters on the wall." I gave a teary-eyed glance at my brother's body.

The fruit was growling in the hallway. Tendrils appeared at the edges of the broken door.

"It's dinner time."

Vines shot forward. Evil, blood-sucking fruit hurtled in. The KitchenAid three speed handheld blender whirled to life in my hands, almost as if it were a part of me. We had been through so many things together—but never my life and death.

The biting vines attacked and I struck back. Green fruit and fresh blood sprayed my face and tiles. The floor was slick. I couldn't see. Vines poked their tines in my legs and arms. I fell. My hip! My hip was surely broken. I couldn't get back up. I swung the blender, cutting through the terrible creatures, but there were always more.

Then I heard the sound of the hand mixer through the growling, screeching fruit cries. Timmy was fighting back. The last fruit fell to the ground next to me and I puréed the nasty thing.

"I thought you were going to run," I gasped.

"You said I was the last defense. I had to obey you. So I did. You and me, we killed them." I grabbed him in a hug, careful not to smother him in my bosom.

We had won. His parents' car pulled in the drive, and I knew I would have a heap of explaining to do.

It didn't matter, though. I promise you this, that boy would never want for homemade cookies again so long as I lived. Christmas or any other day of the year.

The End.