You’re not going to see a Lucy December Christmas Special, for obvious reasons.  But you know what’s a rich, amazing, beautiful, powerful winter holiday with its roots in an oppressed people’s struggle for survival?  Hanukkah.

            This story can take place whenever, it really isn’t time-locked.

            Hanukkah was never “Jewish Christmas.”  It was far, far more than that.  Like many of our people’s holidays, Hanukkah was about survival.

            Passover?  We survived Egypt.

Sukkot?  We survived the Wilderness.

The Fast of Gedalia?  We survived Babylon.

Purim?  We survived Persia.

Hanukkah?  We survived Greece.

Yom HaShoah?  We survived the Holocaust.

Rosh Hashanah?  We survived another year.

            If there’s anything we Jews have learned over the millennia, it’s that nothing beats failed genocide as an excuse to throw a party.  I knew a thing or two about genocide, after all.  I survived my own.  Sort of.

            Every nation has tried to wipe out the Jews at some point or another.  For England, their last major act of oppression was near the end of the thirteenth century, and I was there for it.  I had a front-+row seat to the riots, burnings and the siege that slaughtered my family along with so many others.  I would have joined them, but fate intervened in the form of a single act of kindness from a creature of the night.  Kourosh son of Naudar, a man who had been turned into a vampire back in ancient Persia, had bestowed the same “gift” to me.  And that’s how we got Lucy December, the Jewish vampire.

            Religious vampires were rare, but not unknown.  Many of us clung to our past, our former lives, our traditions and heritage.  Sometimes it was religion, sometimes it was family or location.  My faith was my heritage, and it meant so much more to me than simple traditions or family memories.  It was all the humanity I had left, but it was also hope.  If we really were the chosen people, if we really had survived so much pain and suffering and oppression, then so could I.

            Religion was kind of difficult when holy things burned you, so I had to be creative.  Drinking blood wasn’t kosher, but Pikuach Nefesh, the principle of preserving life, meant that it was no longer unlawful so long as I did not kill.  But that was only one issue.  I could barely pray before the pain started, and I couldn’t even keep our traditions.  One time I intentionally rested on Shabbat, abstaining from work intentionally.  I nearly caught on fire as badly as if I had been dancing in a church.  But I found that if I didn’t have work on a given Saturday, I could get away with resting.  So there were ways around my limitations sometimes, if I were creative.

            The Jewish calendar was filled with festivals, feasts, and holidays.  Most were off-limits to me, but Hanukkah was an exception.  Despite all the press it got in the secular world, it was relatively secular and unimportant, especially when compared with Yom Kippur or Pesach, or even Sukkot.  Observing it properly would still harm me, but if I fudged it a little bit, played fast and loose with some of the details, I could still observe.  After a few years of experimenting, I had figured out a pretty good routine to observe the Festival of Lights without catching on fire, myself.  Traditionally, Hanukkah was an eight-day celebration, with different rites and prayers as the candles are lit one per night.  But if I jammed everything into the last night, it would work, sort of.  I still couldn’t touch anything with my bare hands and I had to keep the prayers short and sweet, but it was better than nothing.

           So there I was on the final night of the Festival of Lights, handling a menorah with gloves and tongs as if it were radioactive.  Eight candles of equal height, arranged in a straight line, with the shamash – the “helper” meant to light the other candles – rising higher in the middle.  The fires were small, the light dim to remind us that this menorah was for worship and not utility, a reminder that out faith was worth more than what we could personally get out of it.

            I positioned the elaborate candelabra near my window and then backed away, taking a moment to rest my hands, as I could feel the blessed silver’s heat even through my gloves.  I checked my supplies as I flexed my fingers, waiting for the warmth to die away.  Special candles, a lighter, and a bottle of special olive oil.  Truly ritualistically pure olive oil, in the way it was originally used, didn’t exist anymore, but we had found a good substitute.  In the same way that we built synagogues to make up for the missing temple, or the way that I fudged the details to celebrate Hanukkah, we had made our own approved oil for rituals.

            It wasn’t about the oil, or the candles, or any of the ritual objects, not really.  Like so many others of our holy days, Hanukkah was about survival.

            Over two thousand years ago, Antiochus Epiphanes tried to destroy Judaism.  He sacrificed a pig in the Temple and forced the priests to eat its meat.  He slaughtered forty thousand people in three days, and sold just as many more Jews into slavery besides.  He thought he would win, but he didn’t understand who we were.  He didn’t understand how well our people survived.

            I arranged the candles – oil cups with wicks – in the menorah, right to left, dropping them carefully in their holders. Then I took the bottle of olive oil, carefully unscrewing the cap.  I had to set it down again as a wave of holiness streamed out like smoke, taking a step back and closing my eyes.  It was like this every year.

            It’s just oil.  You can do this.

I took the bottle up again and steadily filled each candle before stowing the olive oil back in my pockets and using the lighter to lit the shamash and watch the tiny flame sputter to life.  Then, holding the shamash in my gloved hands, I used it to light the other candles.  There were three blessings for the Hanukkah lighting, one of which was meant for the first night only.  But since I was doing all eight nights at once, it made little difference.  But I had to recite it quickly, as every word made my head ache, made my lungs burn with fire.

            Baruch atah, Adonai Eloheinu, Melech haolam, shehecheyanu v’kiy’manu v’higianu laz’man hazeh.

            Blessed are You, Adonai our God, Sovereign of all, for giving us life, for sustaining us, and for enabling us to reach this season.

I lit the candle and quickly replaced the shamash, backing away from my menorah again.  My vision was swimming, and I needed a moment of distance before I could get back to the task at hand.  Slow and steady, and I could get through it.  I could survive this just as our people survived Antiochus.

            It wasn’t just that Antiochus Epiphanes slaughtered my people, he did it with the blessing of the Hellenized Jews – traitors who had assimilated with Greek culture and religion.  In our modern world of coexistence and freedom, it’s easy to forget how much was at stake for simple belief.  Hellenizing was not merely a personal choice, it was a rejection of your people and tradition and heritage and faith, and alignment with the enemies that would destroy them.  And so my people were surrounded, friendless, and betrayed by their own.

            I lit the second candle and said the blessing.

            Baruch atah, Adonai Eloheinu, Melech haolam, asher kid’shanu b’mitzvotav v’tsivanu l’hadlik ner shel Hanukkah.

            Blessed are You, Adonai our God, Sovereign of all, who hallows us with mitzvot, commanding us to kindle the Hanukkah lights.

            I tried to celebrate Purim once.  Purim is basically just a drunken party – it shouldn’t have been a problem, or so I thought at the time.  I could still remember the burning pain that built behind my eyes as I tried to observe it.  So why was Hanukkah different?  Why was this holiday okay, but Purim deadly and holy?  They were almost the same thing – survival, right?  Maybe it was because Purim was mentioned in the Tanakh, and thus was considered part of scripture.  The same could not be said for Hanukkah, no matter how much tradition was behind it.

            So where did this leave me?  Once again, on the outside looking in, cut off from my people and my heritage and everything I held dear.  So why try?  What use was there in being a Jew if you couldn’t follow any of its traditions?

            The answer was faith.  There was always faith.  And hope.  Our survival wasn’t because of our own strength, and there was a reason why we prayed.  We were God’s chosen people, and we endured through any amount of trials or danger.

            I lit the third candle and said the last of the blessings.

            Baruch atah, Adonai Eloheinu, Melech haolam, she-asah nisim laavoteinu v’imoteinu bayamim hahaeim baz’man hazeh.

            Blessed are You, Adonai our God, Sovereign of all, who performed wondrous deeds for our ancestors in days of old at this season.

            Wondrous deeds?  Yes, absolutely. Some miracles were blatantly supernatural and others less obvious, but that didn’t make them any less special.  Over two thousand years ago a motley army of oppressed, terrorized Jews defeated Antiochus Epiphanes, the heir to Alexander the Great’s empire.  God had promised to protect us, His people, to the ends of the earth.  And even in our darkest moments, He has been there.

            So, therefore, He would be there for me, one tiny little vampire who wanted to celebrate a holiday.  And I had five more candles to light, so I rubbed at my forehead to dispel the headache and got back to work.  No new prayers, but it was time to alternate the repeating ones.

            Baruch atah, Adonai Eloheinu, Melech haolam, asher kid’shanu b’mitzvotav v’tsivanu l’hadlik ner shel Hanukkah.

            My vision blurred for a second, but I had lit the fourth candle.  Halfway done.  And so much to be thankful for.  Not even just for myself, but for my people as a whole.  We had lived through so much.

            Antiochus Epiphanes tried to destroy us, but we fought back, led by Judas Maccabeus, whose name literally meant “The Hammer of Judah.”  Although he died long before he could see his people freed, the battle that he had begun continued until we won our freedom..  We didn’t hide.  We didn’t flee.  Nobody rescued us.  The Jews fought the Seleucid empire in all their glory, and defeated them.  For once we didn’t merely survive persecution, we won.  We earned our freedom with our own blood and sweat and steel.  And so what if my head ached?  I could do this.  I began to light the fifth candle.

            Baruch atah, Adonai Eloheinu, Melech haola-OW OW OW OW OW OW!

I had started smoking about halfway through that prayer.  The shock made me stumble and trip on my heels, crash into the little end table where I had set the oil and lighter, and tumble to the floor.  Whoever said that vampires were graceful, sexy beings was full of it.

            I caught my breath and closed my eyes, centering my mind again as I waited for the holy pain to pass.  Maybe I should have waited a little longer between candles.  But there were only three left now.  I was almost done.

            And then my neighbors started making noise, which completely ruined the mood.  Nothing felt more irreverent than trying to hold a holy ceremony to the sounds of a headboard thumping against the wall.  Why the hell did this apartment cost so much if I could hear right through the wall?  Seriously.

            I stood up, gathering the bottle of oil and the lighter and stashing them in my bathrobe pocket.  Yes, I was performing my holy rites in my PJs.  So sue me.  I brushed myself off and tried to ignore the neighbors.  It was funny, I couldn’t really remember hearing them much in the past – maybe some sounds from the television once in a while – but this?  Come on, today of all days?  How dare they not miraculously know that this was a bad time!  I rolled my eyes, laid off the mental sarcasm, and got back to work.  Sixth candle.  Blessing repeated.

            Baruch atah, Adonai Eloheinu, Melech haolam, asher kid’shanu b’mitzvotav v’tsivanu l’hadlik ner shel Hanukkah.

            So, what happened to Antiochus Epiphanes? When he realized how badly he was losing, he fled with his tail between his legs.  The shame drove him insane, and he drowned himself.  Or maybe he threw himself from his chariot and got trampled, sources varied.  The point is that he ended with all the dignity that he deserved.  His successors sued for peace with the Jews, granting us our religious freedom, which would last all the way into the Roman Empire.

            But then it ended.  The Romans sacked Jerusalem, destroying the Temple and scattering my people to all corners of the earth.  That was just the way things worked.  We won some, we lost some, but we always survived.  And we would never, ever forget our victories.

            The world’s loudest, randiest neighbors distracted me again. “Dammit,” I muttered as my train of thought fell away.  Why now?  My neighbor’s sex moans were the last thing I wanted to hear while lighting my menorah.  Hell, they’d be the last thing I wanted to hear at any other time, anyway.  And what were they doing?  Throwing furniture at the wall?  Holding a full MMA match?  I could swear I heard what sounded like a chair breaking.

            Stop.  Stop it, Lucy.  There will always be distractions.  Letting myself get annoyed would wreck my meager attempt at worship.  I closed my eyes and tried to block out the loud and chaotic noise and focus on what was truly important.

            I took up the shamash and lit the seventh candle.

            Baruch atah, Adonai Eloheinu, Melech haolam–

The thump shook the walls.  It sounded like a linebacker had crashed into it.

            “Dammit,” I muttered, and tried again.

            Baruch atah, Adonai Eloheinu, Melech haolam, she-asah nisim–

            Okay, that was a loud scream.  A really, really loud scream.  It honestly didn’t sound happy, but some people were weird like that.  And I supposed my neighbor was a weird guy.  He was certainly noisier than his partner.

            I walked over and rapped my knuckles on the wall.

“Keep it down in there,” I said, and hit the wall one more time for good measure.  There, maybe they’d get the idea and quiet down a little bit.  My sex life was never that noisy.  Why should anyone else get to have all the fun?

            I returned to my spot in front of my menorah and took in a deep breath.  I was really failing on this holy thing, wasn’t I?  I had let my attitude darken at the first distraction, I grumbled and complained when I was supposed to be praying.  Come on, Lucy.  Get it together.  Obey in your heart, not just with your hands.

            Right.  Seventh candle.

            Baruch atah, Adonai Eloheinu, Melech haolam, she-asah nisim laavoteinu v’imoteinu bayamim hahaeim baz’man hazeh.

Seven out of eight candles burned, their light framing the shamash in the center.  And now for the finale, the last candle which represented the eighth night.

            Eight nights.  Legend said that once the Temple had been freed, the priests only found enough undefiled oil to light the Temple’s menorah for one night.  And yet, those holy candles kept burning for eight nights, just long enough to prepare more oil.  God truly cared enough about us to protect us even down to the minutiae.  This was the hope that we had clung to in the two millennia since our Diaspora, and the hope that I had to believe would be the same for me.  I had lived on that promise for eight centuries.

            One candle left.  One more prayer.  One more way to honor our survival, and the power of the Lord above.  I took the shamash, preparing to light the eighth candle–

            –More thumping sounds.  I growled and held back a second, trying to think past the distraction, to remember why we lit our lights, why we did what we did, and how this meant that–

            –Another scream.  Come on, people!  Really!  I rolled my eyes, shook my head, and tried to think again about this holiday of praise and thanksgiving, of somber recollection and joy, of–

            “Help!”

            That one word.  I heard it.  I heard it too clearly.  Were those screams that I had been hearing of pleasure or fear?  Nah, unlikely. Maybe they were role-playing.  People did things like that.  And besides, that was a guy’s voice – men never got in that kind of trouble, right?  If there was a problem, he’d be the aggressor, not the victim.  It was none my business, anyway.  I should get back to what I was doing. 

           No. Of course men were also victims. What the hell was I doing? What was wrong with me? Why was I making lame excuses like this? I looked at the shamash in my hands and shook my head.  Hanukkah was a time of rededication, of remembering our roots and our faith, and of serving God through the rituals of the season.  But now one passage of Scripture echoed in my mind, unrelated to Hanukkah but strangely appropriate to the situation right now.  It damned me with its truth.

            And Samuel said, “Has the Lord (as much) desire in burnt offerings and peace-offerings, as in obeying the voice of the Lord? Behold, to obey is better than a peace-offering; to hearken (is better) than the fat of rams.”

            Absolute silence next door.  No more thumping, no more screaming.  Just the memory of that cry for help.

            Pikuach Nefesh.  Life was supreme. As a people we were devoted to celebrating, preserving, and saving life.  Even our most holy laws had to be set aside in the name of saving lives.  And God desired obedience far more than sacrifice.

            I put the shamash back in its holder.

            “Okay, you guys,” I said to the seven lit candles.  “Keep burning while I’m gone.  It’ll only be a few minutes, not eight whole nights.  You can do this.”

            I looked at myself.  Just a tiny Jewish woman in a terrycloth bathrobe and sweats, ready to go play superhero.  Or maybe just interrupt my neighbor en flagrante.  I thought about bringing my gun, but decided against it – if there was nothing wrong, then showing up at the door with a loaded weapon would be the worst imaginable thing I could do.

            What was his name?  Jeffrey?  Jim?  Jorge?  I lived on vampire hours, and it wasn’t like anybody talked to their neighbors anymore.  So I approached what’s-his-name’s apartment door, and knocked.  I waited a few seconds before knocking again.  Just in case there wasn’t really any danger and it was just loud obnoxious sex, I put on an Indignant Face.

            I lifted my hand to knock a third time when the door opened a crack.  I was met by a woman much taller, much blonder, and much bustier than I was.  The kind of knockout gorgeous that made tiny little brunet me feel self-conscious, which was stupid and immature of me.  Usually I didn’t care – centuries of life could temper anybody’s beauty standards and body image issues, but something about this woman just made me feel extra small and silly and conscious of that fact.  I felt ashamed as well.  Just what was I doing, pounding on neighbors’ doors and getting my nose all up in their business?  Bothering someone so beautiful, so sensual, so flawlessly perfect down to the last detail.

            And then I noticed that her face was on wrong.

            It was crooked, like a mask that had been pulled on the wrong way.  The nose was slightly off to one side, the mouth was misaligned, and I could see some of her true flesh peeking out from the corner of one eye.  I was looking at a flesh mask, hastily and poorly slipped on when I had knocked.  The rest of her body was hidden by a silk robe, pulled close and cinched tight.  I began to realize what was going on.

            “Can I help you?” the woman-who-was-not-a-woman asked.

            “Yeah, it’s Lucy from next door.  Can you two keep it down?” I asked, my arms folded.  “Seriously, it’s like the middle of the night or something.  Some people gotta sleep.”

            She chuckled, a delightful sound that made me instantly want to like her, but I looked at the tiny bit of exposed flesh beneath the mask to remind myself what she really was. 

“Oh, I’m sorry,” she said.  “I guess we were a little loud, weren’t we?”

            “Yeah, well,” I shrugged, and tried to take a surreptitious glance over her shoulder.  Was there any sign of an injured or imperiled man in there?  Or a man, at all?  “The walls aren’t even that thin.”

            “We’ll keep it down,” the blonde not-woman said.  She grinned, and I noticed the sharpness of her teeth, not hidden by the mask.

            “Good, thanks,” I said, trying to figure out where to take the conversation.  I just made something up.  “By the way, I know this is bad timing, but he’s still borrowing like five DVDs of mine.  Just saying.”

            She laughed again.  “That sounds like him,” she said, and winked.

            A moan.  Soft, weak, at the very edge of my hearing, but it was there.  Somebody inside that dark apartment was in pain.

            “Thanks,” I shot her a smile.  As a vampire, I’d need an invitation to get inside, but how could I manage that?

            “Good night,” she said, and began to close the door.  I opened my mouth, trying to think of something to say, some way to stop her or bring her back.

            “Miss?” I asked, my mind flailing for ideas.

            The door opened again.  “Yes?” she asked.

            “Well, uh,” I started stalling.  I needed an excuse, but my mind came up blank.  “Um, I, well, give me a second, I just forgot what I was going to see.  You see–”

            “Oh,” she said, and touched her cheek, her delicate fingers tracing the skin next to her nose.  “My face isn’t on straight, is it?”

            “What?” I asked.

            “I’m sorry, but you’ve seen too much,” she said.

            Her hands darted out, grabbing me by the forearms and yanking me into the apartment with sudden, inhuman strength.  I stumbled and barely regained my footing just before the woman lashed out, backhanding me across the room.  I stumbled and crashed into the far wall.  Well, at least that handled the invitation problem.

            She ripped off her human disguise like tissue paper, shrugging off the robe to unfurl a pair of leathery wings.  It was a Lilin, a Succubus.  A night demon of naked hunger and cruelty.  As beautiful as her disguise had been, her true form was hideous, a monster of fangs and claws and grotesquely exaggerated sexuality, the voluptuous shape of her twisted body a mockery of desire and lust.

           Some people romanticized the idea of a lusty demon, but this was wrong and stupid.  A succubus wasn’t a delightfully sexy little creature, nor was she a soul-stealing (but ultimately likable) temptress.  A succubus didn’t feel sexual attraction.  It didn’t like you.  It didn’t think you were cute.  But it would use sex as a lure to find and devour prey.  A succubus cared just as much about sex as a fisherman cared about the worm on its hook.

           My people called them the Lilim, named for the children of Adam’s supposed first wife.  Legend has it that King Solomon once commanded an entire troop of Lilim to dance for him, but Solomon was a notorious womanizer who liked demons way too much.  But here was one of them in my apartment building, eating my neighbor. 

           I got back to my feet and faced the Lilin, quickly analyzing the situation.  I was unarmed, unless you counted the lighter and bottle of olive oil in the pocket of my robe.  But the fact that she wore a flesh mask meant she was probably young, less powerful than a demon that could create a glamour from thin air.  So I might be able to win in a straight-up fight, it all depended on how quickly I could react.

            She charged with blinding speed, nearly shoving me o the floor with raw animal strength.  I aimed an uppercut at her chin, letting her own momentum keep her from dodging.  The demon’s wings folded and her head snapped back, giving me a chance to plant an elbow in her solar plexus.  Her wings folded around me, pinning me against her body.  The succubus leaned in and took a bite out of my neck, sharklike teeth shredding flesh and shedding blood.  She paused for a moment.

            “Your blood.  You are a vampire?” she asked.

            I answered her with a knee to her gut.  As the demon recoiled I wrapped my arms around her sizable chest and flung myself backward, flipping her in a suplex to slam her against the ground.  Her wings twitched and then flapped harshly, batting against me and forcing me to lose my grip on her.

            The succubus scrambled away from me as I stood to my feet, and we faced each other from across the room.

            “You’re a vampire?” she asked again.

            “Last I checked,” I said, pressing my hand against the wound in my neck.  Blood flowed between my fingers, barely staunched by the pressure.

            “Then I suppose we got off on the wrong foot,” she said.  “I’m sorry for attacking you, but I think you’d understand why.  Are you all right?  Can I get you anything?”

            I looked at her.  For a moment, I believed her.  She seemed friendly.  Pleasant.  It felt as though maybe we could talk this through, and it was all one big misunderstanding.  She certainly didn’t

            Except for one thing.

            “Where’s Jeff?” I asked.

            “Who?” she looked at me, her face a picture of confusion.

            “You know who I’m talking about,” I said.

            The demon shook her head, and I realized that she was being honest.

            “My neighbor,” I said.  “The guy who lives here.”

            “You mean Chad?” she asked.

            Chad?  Not Jeff?  Okay, I was way off.

            “Right, him,” I said.  “I heard him call for help.  Where is he?”

            The succubus chuckled and shook her head dismissively.  “He’s in his bed, clinging to life,” she said.  “I left just enough for one last snack tonight.  Would you like to share?  I’m sure you could use the blood.”

            I looked at her.  “Do not stand still when your neighbor’s life is in danger,” I said.

            “What?” she frowned at me.

            “It’s from Leviticus,” I said.  “He’s my neighbor, and you’re endangering his life.”

            The Lilin narrowed her eyes.  “A Bible-reader.  How unusual.  Are you going to try to stop me?”

            “You can leave right now,” I said.  The bleeding began to slow from beneath my fingers as my vampiric healing took effect.  “It’s been a long day, and I’m feeling forgiving.”

            “You are very strange,” the succubus said.  “But I haven’t tried feeding from a vampire before.  I wonder what it’s like.”

The demon lunged at me again. I tried to intercept her with another grapple, but razor-sharp claws slashed at my neck, reopening the wound.  I flinched from the pain, which gave her the opening she needed to slam into my body and shove me back against the wall.  My head hit hard enough to crack the drywall, and stars filled my eyes.  She pinned me with her arms and wings to hold me still, and leaned in.  A long, serpentine tongue lashed from her grotesque lips, cutting into the injured flesh of my neck like a razor blade.

And yet it wasn’t pain that I felt.  The waves of sheer lust emanating from the succubus took me off guard, making me forget myself, forget why I was here, even forget what day it was.  It wasn’t just a sexual influence, her presence was stronger, heavier.  Impossible to see or even think past.  She barely had to hold on to me, yet she kept me pinned against the wall in a vice grip.

            “Give in,” she near-whispered, the low tones of her voice like dark honey.  My breath caught.  “I can sense the desire in you.  So strong, so needy, so unfulfilled.  Let me have you and there will be no pain, only pleasure.”

           That tongue lashed inside my neck wound, giving a type of agony that went beyond words.  It snapped me out of the lust she was generating, but I was still too pinned to do anything.  I had to think.  There had to be something left that I could do.

           “I gave your neighbor the best night of his life,” she said, her breath hot on my ear, that razor-sharp tongue flicking over my cut flesh again.  “Allow me to do the same for you.  It would be a gentle mercy.”

           She let go of one of my arms as her clawed hand stole its way into my robe to grope me.  I fought back a wave of paralyzing disgust as I reached into my pocket and my hand closed around the bottle of holy olive oil.  It burned a little against my fingers, a tingling feeling through the glass that hadn’t been there before.

           “Scream for me,” the succubus whispered.  “Cry for me.  Gasp for me.  Indulge.  Be mine.”

           I whipped the bottle out and swung it as hard as I could at the Lilin’s face.  It shattered against her forehead, broken glass cutting her scalp and olive oil splashing onto her eyes and face, soaking her.  She squawked in surprise and let go of me, cringing backward in shock as the blood mixed with oil and streamed down her face to drip on her chest.

            I dropped the broken bottle and fished the lighter out of my pocket.  I flicked it open and shoved it in her face.

            “Get away from me!” the demon screeched and tried to bat at me.  It took a second, but the oil streaming down her face caught fire, setting the succubus alight.  She scrambled back and batted at the flames, screeching.

            I dropped the lighter and ran for the kitchen, looking for something that I could use as a real weapon.  Lighting her face on fire was flashy and cool, but it probably only bought me a few seconds of breathing room.

            I had to give it to Chad, his kitchen was nicer than mine.  I spotted a knife block at the far end of the counter and dashed for it just as I heard the succubus’s screams turn from pain to fury.  I grabbed for a chef’s knife, my fingers closing around the handle just as a very burnt and pissed-off demon charged into the kitchen and slammed into me, her claws scything through my back between my shoulder blades.  I stumbled and nearly fell, grabbing the entire block with both hands to remain steady.

            “Die!” the demon screamed as she slashed at me again.

            I whirled around and swung the wooden block like a club, smashing it into her burnt face and sending knives clattering everywhere in the kitchen.  The succubus recoiled back and clutched at her nose, and I brought up the chef’s knife in my free hand. 

Her eyes widened in fear just before I stabbed her in the chest.  Dark blood sprayed from the wound and the Lilin’s wings spread suddenly in shock and she screeched, flailing her arms wildly as she tried to back away from me.  I stabbed her again and again, pressing the attack until the floor beneath us was slick with her blood and her legs crumpled beneath her, sending the succubus to her knees.

“Why?” she asked me.  “Why are you doing this?”

            “Because he’s my neighbor,” I said and stabbed her through the temple.

            The demon’s eyes rolled back in her head and she fell limply to the floor, her leathery wings giving one last weak twitch before she fell still.  I shook my head and left the corpse behind.  In maybe an hour or less, her body would evaporate, leaving no evidence that she had been here at all.

            I ran into the bedroom and found Mr. Chad lying on his bed, most of the life force drained from him.  The shallow rise and fall of his breath was the only indication that he still lived, but it was enough.  He could recover from what the succubus had done, of that I was sure.  He’d probably just assume that the girl he took home knocked him out and tried to rob him, and frankly he didn’t need to know anything more about it.

            I made the call to the police on the way back to my apartment.  Luckily I had a few friends at the local precinct who were used to the weird monstery shit that surrounded my life.  They’d clean up any remaining loose ends.

            I returned home, changed out of my bloody, burnt clothes, and returned to my Menorah.  All the candles were still lit, which was nice.  It wasn’t a miracle, but it meant I didn’t need to relight all of them.  So I put on my gloves and took the shamash in my hands again, ready to light the final candle and complete the ceremony.

            I hesitated for a moment.  I had almost let my neighbor die.  Was I too selfish?  Was I really worthy to take part in this ceremony?  No, but who was?  My people knew better than most that it wasn’t about perfection, it was about the effort.  We tried, we made do, and most of all we survived.  What more could we ask for?

I had survived so far, for better or for worse. And I would simply have to do better in the future and hesitate less.  I had to have faith – after all, what else was there, in the end?  Just as my ancestors had survived in the face of unimaginable bloody oppression, so I could get over myself and be thankful.  I had so much to be thankful for, after all.  My life, my faith, my heritage – everything.  I could remain faithful.  I would remain faithful.  Forever.

            Hannukah was about more than survival, it was a promise.  Just as that candle lit my darkened apartment, so would I be a light to the world.  To the best of my ability, I would fight for life, fight for truth, and fight for my neighbors.

            I lit the eighth candle and said all three prayers.

            Baruch atah, Adonai Eloheinu, Melech haolam, shehecheyanu v’kiy’manu v’higianu laz’man hazeh.

            Baruch atah, Adonai Eloheinu, Melech haolam, asher kid’shanu b’mitzvotav v’tsivanu l’hadlik ner shel Hanukkah.

            Baruch atah, Adonai Eloheinu, Melech haolam, she-asah nisim laavoteinu v’imoteinu bayamim hahaeim baz’man hazeh.

            Blessed are You, Adonai our God, Sovereign of all, for giving us life, for sustaining us, and for enabling us to reach this season.

            Blessed are You, Adonai our God, Sovereign of all, who hallows us with mitzvot, commanding us to kindle the Hanukkah lights.

            Blessed are You, Adonai our God, Sovereign of all, who performed wondrous deeds for our ancestors in days of old at this season.

            I finished the ceremony with all of this in mind, and celebrated the survival of my people and heritage.  Even after all these years, life was still good.