23. My First Christmas Party Invitation from Hell
Mina
There was a time when I truly dreaded my bi-monthly counselor’s appointments, the professed pity and disappointment, the thinly-veiled threats, the subsequent lectures they inspired from my mother.
Over the years, as I’d come to realize how little power and interest Mr. Montresor really had, and as Mom had come to accept a plateau rather than a spike in my accumulation of write-ups as cause for celebration, the appointments had become just one more of the many minor inconveniences hampering my work.
As usual, the countdown calendar was on his desk when he called me in, a set of tear-off sheets with descending numbers under a picture of a terrified-looking kitten in a party hat.
Two hundred and eighty-two.
Almost Christmas now.
