Death Stories with Zoe

Yule Be Sorry - A Holiday Tragedy

**Trigger warning: this story is violent and gross but completely fictitious. Don't continue reading if you think it may upset you!**

It was the Friday before Christmas and everyone at Wattpad HQ was in a festive mood. Snow flurries were beginning to fall, which delighted Aron, the head of Wattpad Studios. Aron had scored an invitation to the super-secret, super-exclusive "XXX-Mas Party," known among the start-up community in Toronto as the hottest Christmas bash in town. He knew that being seen at a party like that, among venture capital legends and Canadian big wigs, was critical for Wattpad's reputation as a major player in the tech scene.

But there was one problem.

Aron really wanted his boss, Allen Lau, to go to the party with him. He thought it was important for other bigshots in the tech industry to see that Allen could cut loose and get wild. Although Aron knew that  Allen had a fun side, the studious co-founder of Wattpad typically preferred to go home immediately after work to have a nutritious dinner with his family and read comic books until he went to bed at an early hour. So Aron waited until the end of the day to slap the invitation down on Allen's desk.

"No if's or but's," Aron told Allen. "You need a night out. It'll be a great networking opportunity. I really want to see you there tonight."

Allen slid the invitation back toward Aron. "Why don't you take Kiel or Caitlin with you? I have a brand new Phoenix Resurrection to read tonight."

Aron shook his head. "You are our fearless leader, Allen. It will raise our profile in the tech community if you're seen rubbing elbows at a party like this. I heard last year Drake was there. Today I saw on Twitter that Shawn Mendes might show up. You have to go. Seriously. One drink and you can leave, but don't wimp out on me, here."

Aron left, and Allen tinkered around the office for a bit, thinking about the invitation. The truth was, he hated electronic music. Despised pulsating lights. Loathed tightly-packed crowds. In just about every way possible, he was the opposite of a party animal.

Aron texted him twice asking him if he was on his way yet. Allen did not reply.

But, the blinking Christmas lights on the office tree caught his eye just as he was about to lock up for the night, and he thought, what the heck? It *is* the holiday season. If it means that much to Aron, I'll go.

Really – Aron's badgering about the party had Allen wondering if his peers in the technology community thought of him as a stick-in-the-mud. A tech geek. Someone who didn't know how to throw back a couple of Tequilas every once in a while. This made Allen get defensive. He could certainly party when necessary. His karaoke song was Funky Cold Medina by the Tone Loc, for pete's sake. In college he used to bring the house down with that.

Allen studied the address on the invitation and decided he'd go to the party, find Aron in the crowd, have one glass of water, and go home. Maybe he wouldn't be a party monster, but he'd be a good sport.

"You sure you want to go to this address?" his Lyft driver asked him, sounding dubious.

"Yes," Allen said after double-checking the invitation. "Why do you ask?"

The driver informed Allen that the area on the waterfront was a little dangerous at that time of night. In fact, as soon as the driver slowed to a stop and Allen got out of the car, the driver hit the gas and peeled away as fast as he could.

Allen looked around. He was surrounded on all sides by warehouses that looked empty. He didn't see any signs of a party or hear loud thumping of bass in the distance. A bone-chilling gust of wind blew, sending flurries of snow all around, and Allen pulled up the collar of his winter coat  a little higher. 

 He whipped out his phone to text Aron back. Fingers stiff with cold, he managed to tap out, "I'm here. Where R U?" While waiting for Aron's reply, Allen opened up his phone's map application and saw that he was just two short blocks from the Harbour. No wonder it was so cold. Allen was starting to regret this entire adventure. He could be home already, eating dinner, and instead he was roaming around a desolate part of Toronto in the middle of a snowstorm.

Finally Aron texted back and told Allen that the address on the flyer was a decoy to keep the party secret. The real address was two more blocks away, just a short walk.

Allen sighed, annoyed, and debated whether or not he should throw in the towel and just summon a Lyft to take him home. But then again, it wasn't even nine o'clock yet, and he knew it meant a lot to Aron for him to show up. So he kept walking, keeping his eyes glued to the map application on his phone so that he could watch the little blue icon representing himself and make sure he was traveling in the right direction.

Allen was so intent on keeping his eyes on his phone that he was taken by complete surprise when he stepped carelessly onto a patch of black ice. He slipped and fell hard before he'd even realized what happened, cracking his skull on the pavement.

Minutes passed while Allen lay there dazed, trying to figure out what had happened while hot blood poured from his skull over the dark ice. It was only when he noticed steam rising from the blood in the frigid night air that he realized how badly injured he was and that he was in trouble. He'd dropped his phone, and although he could hear it – someone was texting him – he couldn't see it.

Allen struggled to sit upright to see if he could spot his phone, but just as he caught a glimpse of it, he heard the roar of an approaching engine.

"No, no," Allen murmured to himself in horror.

An enormous 18-wheeler truck was fast approaching, and although Allen was caught in its blindingly bright headlights, the driver was too distracted by singing Christmas carols to see him sitting there, vulnerable, injured, and immobile, in the street. 

Allen's life flashed before his eyes – and his very last thought was that he wished he'd never let Aron peer-pressure him into going to some hipster party in the middle of a terrible neighborhood on Christmas Eve.

The truck plowed right into Allen! The weight of the vehicle smashed Allen's bones, pulverized his glasses, and crushed his skull. Droplets of Allen's blood sprayed up into the truck's mud flaps. Gory shreds of muscle and hunks of flesh wadded up in the treads of the truck's snow tires. By the time the every wheel along the length of the truck had run over Allen's body, there wasn't much left of him besides an ooey, gooey mess and a pair of bloodied trainers.

A few feet away, his cell phone buzzed again. It was Aron, asking if Allen had gotten lost.

But that wasn't all.

Hours later, when technology superstars began leaving the party around the corner, Allen's gnarly remains had been partially covered by the falling snow. Each and every one of them ran over him on their drives home, smashing him into even tinier, bloodier bits in their Teslas and BMW's.

The day after Christmas, when the snow began to melt, Allen's body was found by a hipster out walking a labradoodle. Workers from the Chief Coroner's office placed Allen's barely recognizable body on a stretcher to carry him away – light as a feather, stiff as a board.

Light as a feather, stiff as a board.

Happy Halloween, everyone!

And for those of you who don't know, @AllenLau is the real co-founder of Wattpad, and @AronIsHere is the real head of Wattpad Studios (and also the most likely Wattpad employee to lure you to a hipster holiday party).