Caroline curses her clumsiness as the lightbulb smashes against the kitchen floor. It was supposed to last a lifetime, part of a new generation of energy efficient bulbs. She steps down from the stool, catching sight of her reflection in the window. Tired eyes rimmed with shadows; bedraggled hair peering out of the night sky—she looks exactly as she feels. In the lounge, the phone rings again. She steps carefully around the curls of broken glass and leaves the kitchen to answer it.
“Hello?”
The lounge sparkles in the rosy glow of the Christmas tree, light dancing across shelves of glittered greetings cards and tinselled ornaments. Felt stockings hang at an angle above the fireplace, and a trio of candle kings congregate in the centre of the coffee table, waiting to be lit. Caroline’s tried to make it perfect for her mum’s visit, but she suspects it won’t be enough.
“Hi, Mum.”
Before he died, her father marched proudly in support of climate protests and campaigns to save the bees from government sanctioned pesticides. Anything to preserve the planet for future generations. Her mum complained that he was so busy protesting, he never had time to replace the cracked bathroom window or fix the dripping tap in the kitchen. Somehow, it was always Caroline’s fault.
“Sorry, Mum, I didn’t realise you’d left a message.”
Three years after her dad’s funeral, Caroline still tiptoes through her mum’s phone calls, expecting to be blamed for everything.
“Yes, of course we can watch the King’s speech. No, I’m not expecting any other visitors. Yes, I’ll be here. If I’m not, the spare key is under the mat.”
The pinboard above the kitchen table is covered in faded newspaper clippings, sections of ordnance survey maps, and photos of mutilated animals. The previous weekend, Caroline joined a small group of activists in a botched attempt to rescue half a dozen macaques from a laboratory in West London. Her mum wouldn’t have approved. She’d have said, “You’re as bad as your father.”
Once the call is over, Caroline fetches a brush to sweep the broken bulb into the folds of a local newspaper. On the floor, between shards of shattered glass, she spots something that shouldn’t be there: a pink skinned creature the size of her thumb. The creature’s translucent wings remind her of the stories she read as a child—tales of Tinkerbell and the Cottingley Fairies. It looks like a miniature version of the decoration on top of her Christmas tree.
The following day, she stays home to study the creature through the glass walls of an old fish tank. She places a saucer of winter berries next to the folded flannel bed on which she’s rested the creature’s sleeping body. Online, she searches for something, anything, that resembles the creature. She wants to tell someone but who can she trust? A small part of her hopes the creature will die so she can flush it and move on. Trying to save the world is exhausting. Just for once, she’d prefer not to feel responsible for something she doesn’t understand.
Two days later, the creature sits up and inspects a tear in the tip of its right wing. It moves like a miniature person—stretching, yawning, and rubbing its eyes. Caroline leans in closer and the creature flies at her, hard and fast, its little hands balled into fists. There’s a dull thunk as it hits the glass of the tank. Then it falls to the floor, unconscious.
When the creature next wakes up, it feasts, and a soft light shines from its abdomen.
Seeing this, Caroline remembers her failed attempt to rescue the macaques from the laboratory in West London. They’d expected to find a room of cages in a dark basement, the animals sedated, the air ripe with excrement. What they discovered instead was a warehouse full of shipping crates. Pallets of cardboard boxes with Warm White and Soft Glow printed on the sides. A commercial enterprise of some magnitude.
She retrieves a scrunched-up newspaper from the bin and unrolls it across the kitchen worktop, revealing the remains of the broken bulb. Where there should be a light board with a grid of LEDs, she finds two terminals, but no filament.
Could the creature have been inside the bulb?
She searches the pinboard until she finds a photo of the scientist whose laboratory she broke into—the one with rimless glasses and long hair retreating from his forehead. She presses the photo against the glass wall of the fish tank. The creature sees it and retreats into a corner, its wings curled protectively around its body.
Caroline grabs her rucksack and balaclava and takes the bus to West London. The night air is cool, threatening rain. Sitting on a damp embankment, she watches the scientist through a window as he studies the screen of an electron microscope. She wonders how many other crooked scientists there are in the world, playing God for some commercial advantage. Whatever she does, she knows it’ll never be enough.
The scientist leaves the laboratory after midnight and she surprises him, using darkness and the threat of a taser blast to persuade him to accompany her back inside. He’s a flimsy man who begs not to be hurt. Inside, strip lights hum over squeaky clean floors. Monitors perch on gunmetal tables. Caroline ties the scientist to a chair with electrical cable and shows him a photo of the creature in her tank. His eyes tell her everything.
“It shouldn’t have survived. You must kill it.”
“Where are the others?”
When the scientist doesn’t answer, Caroline slaps the glasses from his face. Then she presses the Taser against his chest, and he nods towards a door at the side of the lab. “In there.”
Caroline unclips the security pass from his pocket.
“It’s not what you think,” he calls after her. “They’re not designed to exist in the wild. It should have died on exposure to the air.”
Beyond the door, the only light comes from a couple of green exit signs. A thick, swampy smell turns Caroline’s stomach. Rows of glass tanks stretch to the far wall. She approaches the nearest one and uses her sleeve to wipe away the condensation.
“We couldn’t satisfy the new energy regulations using conventional methods,” says the scientist. “Bioengineering was the only viable solution.”
Inside the tank there are hundreds of the creatures, their unconscious bodies piled on top of one another like a mass grave. Caroline’s fingers curl into fists. There’s no way she can leave them like this.
“They’ll die,” says the scientist. “If you free them, they’ll turn to dust. And if they don’t…” The words catch in his throat. “We haven’t tested for this.”
Another product rushed to market with inadequate controls. No doubt the company lawyers have protections in place to keep the shareholders safe. It’ll be the consumers who suffer the consequences. Taxpayers who clean up the mess.
Caroline knows she can’t save the world, not on her own, but she might be able to inspire others. And she can honour the memory of her dad while she’s doing it.
The city is sleeping by the time she leaves the laboratory. The adrenaline has left her body and she’s exhausted. She needs to lay low for a couple of days, so she checks in to a hotel near Oxford Street. The thought of Christmas shopping doesn’t hold much appeal but at least it’s an alibi. She keeps the television on but there’s nothing in the news. Eventually the creatures will be discovered, probably gorging on berries at the bottom of someone’s garden. By then it won’t be her problem.
She wonders about the creature in her fish tank. Did she leave enough food? Enough water? As darkness descends on the third day, she decides to return home.
The door to her flat is closed and locked. She enters quietly, listening to the silence. In the kitchen, the cupboard doors have been ripped from their hinges. The contents—tins and packets of food—appear to have exploded across the worktop. The fish tank is on the floor, smashed. The mess reminds Caroline of how the laboratory looked when she left.
She approaches the lounge door, hardly daring to breathe. Great shards of glass hang from the window frame. The cool December breeze pricks like daggers against her skin. She thinks the creature must have broken the window when it escaped from her flat, but then she hears a sound—a wet and warty tchk.
Something moves near the top of the Christmas tree—a cousin of the shadows, which reaches around the branches as it claws its way up to its perch. The creature is bigger now, about the size of the fairy it has displaced, with grey skin and leathery wings. Ribbons of drool fall from its lips. Its bared teeth look sharp and dangerous. In its hand, it holds a pair of rimless glasses. They look like the ones warn by the scientist, although this doesn’t make any sense, unless…
Caroline sees the others now, the ones she liberated from the laboratory. Too late, she realises the glass from the window has fallen inwards, not outwards. Her creature didn’t escape, the others forced their way inside. While she watches, they bleed from dark corners, one becoming ten becoming dozens, all of them grown, all of them transformed.
Their stomachs glow in anticipation of a meal.
Caroline remains perfectly still. The creature in her fish tank ate fruit, so there’s no reason to believe they’re carnivorous. No reason apart from their teeth. Still, she’s bigger than they are. If she doesn’t threaten them, they might leave her alone.
She counts to ten in her head.
It’s working. She’s about to risk a step towards the exit when the doorbell rings. The creatures shuffle and sniff the air.
Go away.
The doorbell rings again.
Caroline can’t breathe deeply enough to satisfy the panic in her lungs. Her legs feel weak. Her chest is unbearably tight. The creatures watch, eyes glowing the same colour as their stomachs.
“Caroline?” says a shrill voice from the other side of the flat door. “It’s your mum.”
Fuck.
There’s a crash as one of the creatures knocks a ceramic Santa off the shelf in the lounge. The statue hits the edge of the coffee table, its head cleanly severed from its body.
Everything shifts, as though the lounge itself jumped in shock, and Caroline is sure the creatures will attack. She braces herself, ready for a thousand tiny fangs to pierce her flesh, for her head to be ripped from her shoulders as her body is dragged through the window and dropped to the icy pavement below.
But the creatures settle again and resume watching.
That was too close.
Caroline’s mum wiggles the spare key into the lock. “I heard something. I’m coming in.”
The creatures lean forward. It’s hard to be sure but Caroline would swear they’re grinning. She needs to warn her mum. She’s about to speak when she feels something warm and wet on her neck.
Slowly, ever so slowly, she looks up. Above her, one of the creatures hangs from the kitchen light, saliva spilling from its mouth. Caroline notices a tear in its right wing that reminds her of the creature in her fishtank. She searches its eyes for recognition, but all she sees is hunger.
The flat door opens.
“Are you there, dear?”
And now Caroline runs, racing into the hall where her mum is already halfway through the door, Rudolph’s nose flashing brightly in the middle of her jumper.
The creatures come for them, teeth bared, claws outstretched.
“Merry Christmas, dear,” says her mum, her smile brimming with festive cheer. Before she can say anything else, Rudolph’s nose is ripped from her jumper, and its flashing light is extinguished forever.
xx
Christopher Stanley lives on a hill in England with three sons who share a birthday but aren't triplets. He is the author of numerous prize-winning flash fictions, the darkest of which can be found spreading misery and mayhem in his debut collection, The Lamppost Huggers and Other Wretched Tales (The Arcanist, June 2020).
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This story is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are fictitious and any similarities to actual persons, locations, or events is coincidental. This work cannot be used to train artificial intelligence programs.
No AI tools were used in the writing of this story.
FAIRY LIGHTS © 2025 Christopher Stanley