The neighborhood Christmas party was always a little wild—too much eggnog, too many secrets bubbling under the surface of polite smiles—but this year someone had taken it to a whole new level.
I’d heard the whispers upstairs: something about a “special game” in the basement. Curious and already tipsy from spiked punch, I slipped away from the crowd and headed down the creaky wooden stairs. The basement was dimly lit, just a string of colored Christmas lights draped along the walls and soft holiday music filtering down from above.
In the far corner, behind a stack of old boxes and folding chairs, someone had rigged up a makeshift glory hole: a large piece of plywood propped against the wall with a decent-sized hole cut at waist height. Above it, a sprig of mistletoe was taped crookedly,
