Jingle Hell Choir At Midnight Mass [Wraith]
They ring the bells down here with jawbones, chipped and wired to rusted chains that clank in offbeat measure over the pits,
A hundred thousand skulls swing side to side above a molten plaza where the air tastes like pennies and old cigarettes.
It is Christmas by their calendar, which only counts in screams per minute and bodies per acre,
And the choir director is late again, arguing with a demon over which key lets agony sound a little faker.
You arrive like all the others, shivering without skin, breath replaced by smoke that curls backward into your teeth,
Dragged to the rehearsal hall by a hook through whatever passes for a collarbone in this basement beneath belief.
The walls sweat firelight that never warms, only paints nervous shadows that twitch like nerves in open flesh,
And the floor is a mosaic of cracked candy canes, broken halos, and melted tinsel formed into letters that spell “Sing or Burn,” more or less.
You thought carols were safe once, a December spell for cocoa and snow and grandparents who smelled like nutmeg and old books,
But here the sheet music is written on stretched parchment that used to be someone’s back, staff lines carved in with butchered hooks.
The notes are not round and friendly, they are jagged little teeth dripping pitch, each one tagged with a sin and a serial number,
Every clef a snake swallowing itself, every rest a knife you are not allowed to touch, no matter how much you hunger.
The conductor strides in with a grin made from someone else’s lips sewn into his own,
A crimson tuxedo cut from flayed choir robes and a bowtie that writhes with worms that never learn to atone.
He taps his baton on the nearest ribcage podium until it cracks, listening to the echo with a satisfied tilt of his head,“Welcome to our annual Yuletide broadcast,” he purrs, “where every chorus is a confession and every wrong note gets you fed.”
The sopranos stand in the front, once Sunday school kids who sang “Silent Night” with sticky fingers and plastic wings,
Now their mouths are fused into one long row, a zipper of shrieking throats that open only when the devil himself swings.
The altos are ex-priests and choir directors who thought they ran the show upstairs, now clutching pitchforks like tuning forks,
Their voices smoke with incense residue and lies, chanting backwards hymns that peel the shine off every holy work.
Tenors were the pretty boys that broke hearts for sport, the ones who kissed you behind the church and forgot your face by January third,
Now they hit high notes that shatter icicles hanging from the cavern ceiling, each note stuffed with every unreturned word.
The bass section is stockbrokers, war planners, and people who switched the tags on charity toys,
Every low rumble they produce shakes the stalactites loose, dropping like rotten chandeliers onto passing joys.
On the first downbeat the flames lean in, whole walls of fire bending as if the song were gravity’s darker cousin,
Sulfur chokes the air in rhythm, each cough from the damned landed right on the beat like a well-timed drum cousin.
They start with a classic, a twisted opener called “O Come All Ye Horrified,”Where the refrain is just your own name screamed in six-part harmony, each syllable stretched until whatever hope you had inside quietly died.
Next up is “Deck The Halls With Rows Of Torches,” where garlands are intestines braided carefully around spiked rails,
Every laugh from the demons in the balcony slams down like a cymbal crash whenever a mortal voice fails.
They make you sing verses about the night you earned your ticket here – every lie told under mistletoe, every affair under blinking lights,
You try to swallow the words, but your new throat is wired to the beat, and the melody drags your secrets into the open like rats dragging bones at night.
Every carol in their songbook is a contract, every rhymed couplet another nail in the memory of whatever you were,
You hit a note too flat and their pitch correction is not software but a barbed hook rethreading your nerves until you purr.
Miss a cue and the percussion section – a circle of hammer-wielding imps – accents the measure on your kneecaps,
Syncopation here means shared injury, where the groove is literally how your bones collapse.
There is dark humor baked into it, the way they replace sleigh bells with ankle chains,
The way fake snow falls from vents above, not flakes but ash from burned prayer slips and candy cane wrappers stained.
They pipe in canned laughter from the sinners who tried to call this place unfair,
Reverbed chuckles bouncing off lava fountains while the devil airs the annual “Naughty List Special” on an endless snare.
Sometimes, when the night on earth is cold enough and kids press their ears to windows to listen for reindeer hooves on roofs,
A faint echo of this underground concert bleeds through the cracks in the world like a draft of uncensored proof.
They think they hear a choir on the radio singing some off-brand version of “Hark,” casually eerie but still in tune,
Never guessing the chorus is actually a thousand lost throats begging to stop, riding the same frequency as the moon.
One girl in the front – at least she used to be a girl, you can tell by the shape of her ruined hands –Still hums her own melody under the official score, a private tune about a snow-covered yard and cheap mittens and old band stands.
The conductor hears it, of course he does, his ears are tuned to dissent like a hunter listening for twigs,
He leans in, smile widening, and weaves her little human fragment into the next verse like a razor in a dish of figs.
Now every time they perform “We Three Kings,” that tiny memory of home rides on top of the chord progression like a stubborn ghost,
A reminder that all this horror started with people wanting lights, warmth, a little sugar on their loneliness, almost.
Down here it has curdled into an annual spectacle, a concert series sponsored by sin, featuring headliners like Regret and Spite,
Tickets are free with admission, compulsory attendance, no refunds, front row seating in the firelight.
The finale every year is the same, an endless reprise called “Let It Burn, Let It Burn, Let It Burn,”The lyrics change according to the worst thing you did, adjusted on the fly by demons who never miss their turn.
Tonight you stand in the second row, throat raw, lungs filling with molten air that never quite kills,
Singing about that one December where you looked at someone who needed you and chose your own cheap thrills.
The conductor cues the last sustained chord with both arms raised, ash drifting from his cuffs like dead moths,
Overhead, the bells of jawbone and chain explode in a final clatter, shaking loose icicles carved into crosses and froths.
The flames below roar approval, the devils applaud with claws tapping together in a polite little rhythm,
And you realize this was only rehearsal, that the real show begins when they pipe this horror into every lonely living room above, dressed as religion and nostalgia and rhythm.
As the crowd of damned disperse back to their personal torments through archways of bone wrapped in blinking red and green lights,
You linger by the cracked podium, fingers touching the carved staff lines in the tortured skin with something like recognition in the lights.
Once, you sang for forgiveness, for mercy, for some quiet miracle to land on your doorstep with a bow and a warm, human face,
Now your voice is just one more instrument in Hell’s December playlist, looping forever, turning your favorite holiday into a grinning furnace that hums in place.